Melville Goodwin, USA Page 11

  “Well, maybe it isn’t if you say so,” the General said, “but I’ve got my car waiting. Someone had better send it away.”

  He was not suggesting that I should do it, but it was time for me to go. It was none of my business any longer how Mel Goodwin or Dottie spent the rest of the night. Things had moved to a conclusion, and a part of the conclusion was that it was time for me to go. Also, it was not a time to call him Mel.

  “I’ll tell your driver, sir,” I said. “I’ve got to get some sleep. The group is going to do something or other tomorrow at half past nine.”

  “Sid, I simply can’t go tomorrow morning,” Dottie said. “I’ve got a dreadful headache, I mean a dreadful, diplomatic headache.”

  “Well, it was a good diplomatic dinner,” I said.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sid,” the General said.

  “I certainly hope so, sir,” I said.

  “Good night, dear,” Dottie said, and she kissed me.

  Neither Dottie nor the General spoke as I left the room, and their silence urged me to leave it quickly. It was a quarter to one in the morning I saw as I looked at my watch, and when I closed the door the echo of “the sounding furrows” lay there behind me.

  The manner in which Mel Goodwin and Dottie Peale spent their spare time should certainly have been no concern of mine. I am convinced that I was not jealous, though Helen said I was when I told her the story that night at Savin Hill. I was not theoretically disapproving, for in wartime one developed a delightful tolerance concerning who was sleeping with whom and why. War, whatever it might do to improve broad-mindedness, fortitude and capacity for self-sacrifice, was not calculated to bolster the abstinences of the flesh. Besides, Paris was Paris, and even in peacetime that magnificent city, once one of the most gallant, and still one of the most tolerant in the world, acted as an aphrodisiac to foreign visitors.

  The European Theater of Operations, even in its most antiseptic periods, was never conducive to the small refinements or the dalliances of romance. Emotions and desires were expressed there in very direct terms, and nobody cared much what you did as long as you didn’t do it all over the place and as long as it did not interfere too much with the fixed routine of duty. Yet there were some limits in the ETO, particularly for generals. What annoyed me, I think, about those few days of pilfered bliss, aside from the blatant obviousness and the crudity of the whole affair, was the naïveté displayed by Melville A. Goodwin. It was unbecoming and absurd, at least so it seemed to me, that the General at his age should have acted like a first lieutenant. Granted he had fallen for Dottie like a ton of bricks, there was no reason why he should have fallen flat on his face in public. There was no reason, either, why he should have attached himself to the VIP group and have followed them to USO and Red Cross installations and even to the tomb of the unknown soldier. He need not have gravitated to Dottie’s side on every possible occasion nor have displayed an air of lovesick comedy even in the way he helped her on and off with her mink coat.

  There was no reason either for Dottie to look continually like the cat that had swallowed the canary. Granted he was a major general, there were plenty of others like him; but I did not mind about Dottie. After all, the General was a feather in her hat and something to talk about later, and you had to do something for the boys in those days, if only out of patriotism—but I felt sorry for the General, in his ostrichlike obtuseness. He should have realized that just as soon as I sent his driver home, everyone at the motor pool would know what had happened at the Ritz and he might have refrained from taking Dottie conspicuously around in his car afterwards—but I suppose she liked the two-star insignia.

  At about noon the next day the General appeared at the bar of the Ritz and seeing me there made him slightly self-conscious, although he was very genial.

  “Well, hello, Sid,” he said. “We had a lot of fun last night, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, we certainly did,” I said.

  He looked at me uncertainly and then he smiled.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, “why not admit it?”

  “Why not?” I said. “It’s easier.”

  Then he looked at me in a hard way, because, after all, troops were troops.

  “I admit it and I’m proud of it.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” I told him.

  “I’m proud of it,” he said, “but I don’t want any of this to hurt anyone. You understand?”

  He must have seen that I did not like the way he said it.

  “I’m not referring to you, Sid,” he said. “I don’t see any reason why there should be any talk. Do you?”

  “No,” I said, “not particularly.”

  “What the hell do you mean,” he asked, “by ‘not particularly’?”

  “Well, there’s your driver,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, “don’t worry. That boy’s been around, but I wouldn’t want anything in any way to reflect on …”

  He did not finish what he had to say because Dottie appeared at that moment.

  “Oh,” she said to the General, “I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting, sir. Oh, Sid, here you are, too.”

  “Yes,” I said, “here I am.”

  She was in her tailored suit again with a gold pin at her throat, and as usual she looked as though she had slept for hours.

  “Sid, darling,” she said, “Mel wants to go with us to see Napoleon’s tomb. He’s never seen it. I think he ought to, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but don’t you think it would be just as well if he saw it some other time?”

  “Oh, Sid,” she said, “don’t be so stuffy, darling. This is Paris.”

  “You’re damned well right it is,” I said.

  “Sit down, Dottie,” the General said, “and let me take your coat. We ought to have a drink before we see the tomb. What do you want to drink, Dottie?”

  “Oh, Mel,” Dottie said, “imagine your not knowing—a double Martini, dear.”

  “That’s right,” the General said, “imagine my not knowing.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Everybody else will be here in a minute. Why not put off visiting that tomb?”

  “Oh, Sid,” Dottie said, “don’t be so sour just because you see I’m happy,” and she scowled at me and then she watched the General, who had gone to the bar himself to order her double Martini.

  “Well, stop looking as though you’d swallowed a canary,” I said.

  “Oh, Sid,” she said, “he isn’t really a canary,” and then she held my hand for a minute under the table. “Darling,” she whispered, “do you know, I really think I love him.”

  “Well, that’s swell,” I said, “but don’t love him in the bar”—I spoke very quickly because the General was coming back, carrying her double Martini himself—“Just remember, Dot, he’s a pretty simple guy.”

  “And I’m pretty sick of complicated guys,” she said.

  It was rather touching to see the proud, happy expression on the General’s face as he carried the Martini. At any rate, it was none of my business, and we were going to Aachen on Wednesday. It would all be over on Wednesday.

  My duties at that period were exclusively limited to interpreting the wants and desires of my company of trained seals and to seeing that everyone was reasonably comfortable and happy and understood and loved the army, and these duties were onerous and absorbing. What Dottie did and what Mel Goodwin did fell entirely beyond my sphere of responsibility, but when I told Helen that night at Savin Hill that I had been disappointed in the General, she said that I had not been disappointed but repeated that I was jealous—not actively perhaps, but at any rate subconsciously.

  “You know,” Helen said, “you used to be half in love with her. You were when I first saw you.”

  There was no reason whatsoever for Helen to make me into a character in that romance at the Ritz. I had evidently not given my reminiscences the proper values, something that often happened when I told things to Helen, though no one’s wife, who had re
mained in the Never-Never Land with other loved ones, could be expected to grasp what one thought or felt in the ETO. She could not understand why I seemed to think of Mel Goodwin as being too good for what had happened to him at the Ritz, and then exasperatingly Helen went off on another tangent.

  “Sid,” she asked me, “were you faithful to me in the ETO?”

  I did not even have to say that I was faithful to her, Cynara, in my own fashion, and if she did not believe me, there was nothing further I could add to reassure her, especially since Helen had been reading recently about the sex habits of the American male. She simply did not understand that there were not many women in the ETO. She seemed to have convinced herself that there had been Wacs and Waves and Red Cross girls and theatrical entertainers over there by the million. It was hard to make her realize that the competition had been terrific and that I had never cared much for competition.

  “But, Sid,” she said, “you know you’re very attractive.”

  “You don’t seem to realize,” I said, “that a different sort of attraction was needed over there.”

  It did not reassure her when I told her that a surprisingly large percentage of men in the ETO had been faithful to their wives and sweethearts, if only through stress of circumstance or because they were not fast workers.

  “You boys,” Helen said, “always stick together.”

  It was just as well to leave it at that, and perhaps we boys always did stick together, and this may have been why I found myself defending Melville Goodwin. In fact, for a little while back there in Paris I was considered an authority on the love life of General Melville Goodwin by many high-ranking officers.

  The morning I called to discuss the final arrangements for the departure of the VIPs from Paris, I found that the officer in charge was one of Mel Goodwin’s contemporaries, a harassed-looking man whose name was Struthers. At least he was harassed at the moment, as people usually were when they embarked on VIP planning. When we had finished with the details of our paper work, he asked me to close the door and offered me a cigar.

  “Say, Skelton,” Colonel Struthers said, “you must have quite a time running that three-ring circus.”

  I told him it was a very broadening experience. The colonel lighted a cigar carefully and looked at the ceiling.

  “What’s your reaction to all this about Mel Goodwin?” he asked.

  “What about him, sir?” I asked.

  He appeared relieved by my question, since it indicated that I had tact and discretion, even though I had not been educated at the Point.

  “I have served with Mel,” he said, “out in the Philippines. We used to have quite a time at Baguio—I wonder if those damn Japs have messed up Baguio.”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir,” I said, “but it must have been quite a place from what I’ve heard.”

  “Yes,” the colonel said, “Baguio is quite a place—cool up there in the hills. You wouldn’t believe there could be such a quick change in climate.”

  His thoughts had moved to Baguio, and I could not follow them.

  “Mel’s had a lot on his mind,” he said. “This is off the record, you understand. I’m a friend of General Goodwin’s, and she’s not a bad-looking gal, not bad-looking at all.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Someone was saying you used to know her,” the colonel said, “back on a newspaper or somewhere. She looks pretty good-looking to have been on a newspaper.”

  “There are good-looking girls,” I said, “on newspapers occasionally.”

  “It’s all right for Mel to have a good time,” the colonel said, “but I’m a friend of his.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Not that Mel needs friends,” the colonel said, “and he deserves to have a good time.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “But it isn’t like him. I’ve never seen Mel step off like that. It’s all contrary to his record.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Men are damn peculiar about women, particularly when they haven’t seen any for quite a while.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, maybe it’s just as well she’s moving out on Wednesday,” the colonel said. “These things get around. It would be different if he’d been a ladies’ man previously.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I’m glad we’ve had a frank talk about this. There are always jealousies in the service, and there are some damn fools who don’t like Mel. If there’s anything you can do personally to keep things normal, it might be a help, Skelton. People like Mel and me have to stay in this army when the war’s over.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “This is all confidential. I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, come and see me,” the colonel said, “any time you’re in Paris. I’ve got a nice apartment with everything under control. I wish I’d told Mel about it. Well, good-by and good luck.”

  It was a relief to know that I was not being stuffy, but strictly professional, in worrying about Melville Goodwin’s private life. Someone was always bound to notice when a general stuck his neck out. Someone was always looking for a flaw in a general’s personal record.

  VII

  Always More Brass Where He Came From

  Tuesday was a very busy day what with checking orders and getting out mimeographed itineraries and briefing the VIPs on conditions in the forward areas. It was necessary to tell them that they would have comfortable, warm quarters, good food and occasional other forms of sustenance, but still, life would not be quite as soft as in Paris and they would have to excuse the army if the trip occasionally assumed a camping-out aspect. For example, each VIP would be issued an emergency ration just in case the system should break down. There was never any serious possibility of this happening, however, because of the interest taken in the trip by the high echelons. In order to make everything absolutely watertight, it was decided on Tuesday morning that Colonel Struthers himself, because of his familiarity with transport, should be put in general charge, but this did not take the personal details off my shoulders. I not only had to run errands for the colonel but I had to continue giving friendly advice about toothbrushes, cameras, shoes and foot powder. By four o’clock that afternoon, however, a short time was allowed me to do my own packing. I was up in my room right in the middle of it when the General knocked on my door.

  “Go right ahead,” he said. “Don’t mind me.” And he sat on the edge of the bed while I continued putting things into my kit bag.

  “Dottie’s packing up, too,” he said. “She says I make her nervous watching. She told me to run out for half an hour. You don’t mind my waiting here, do you?”

  I told him to wait as long as he liked and that there was some rye in the bathroom but that I was short of Scotch.

  “Dottie really knows how to pack, doesn’t she?” he said.

  Dottie was the only one in that crowd who could put things in her suitcases and know where everything was afterwards. She was one of those people who could move into a strange room for overnight and be all settled in ten minutes.

  “Yes, she’s certainly good at it,” I said. “Has she got a headache?”

  From the way the General hitched himself back on the bed you could see that he was used to making himself comfortable anywhere.

  “Yes, another of those headaches,” he said. “She won’t be able to attend the dinner tonight. She’s been quite a headachey girl lately, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They call it migraine in French.”

  The General laughed as though I had said something that only he and I could understand.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Sid, did anyone ever tell you you’re a damn nice guy?”

  “Not very frequently,” I answered.

  “Well, I’m telling you.”

  “Well, thanks a lot,” I told him.

  “You know, once when I was finishing with Tank School at B
enning,” the General said, “I acquired a dog. He was just a mutt, but he kind of attached himself to me. I couldn’t seem to get rid of him, and I remember how he looked when I was packing up to leave. He knew sure as fate we would never see each other again. He couldn’t read but he knew I was ordered to Hawaii. He didn’t know Mrs. Goodwin but he knew Muriel didn’t like dogs. He knew he wouldn’t make the boat, and I was packing. Well, that’s the way I feel this afternoon.”

  “There’s some rye in the bathroom, sir,” I said.

  “I don’t need any God-damned rye,” the General said. “I don’t believe in drinking when I’m emotional. God damn it, I can’t believe this is over.”

  The General stood up, paced across the room and back and sat down again.

  “Maybe it’s just as well,” he said, “everything considered. You know how I feel, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ve got a working idea.”

  “You don’t mind my talking to you frankly, do you?” the General said. “My God, I’ve got to talk to somebody.”

  “No, of course I don’t mind,” I said.

  “Maybe I’m not used to this sort of thing,” the General said. “It doesn’t fall into any regular category with me. It’s separate. It hasn’t got anything to do with anything else, but I’m proud of the whole damn thing. You see what I mean?”

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” I said. “It’s a pretty good way to feel.”

  The General stood up again.

  “Sid,” he said, “I’ve been thinking something over. Dottie and I were talking about it. My aide got killed last month. I consider aides expendable. If I asked for you, would you like the job?”

  Dottie always liked to maneuver things, but it was also kind of the General to think of me.

  “Yes, sir,” said, “I’d like it, but I don’t think it would look well under the circumstances, do you?”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose it would, under the circumstances.”

  “Well, thanks just as much,” I said.

  Even though I was not sure whether it was Dottie’s or his idea, it was the pleasantest invitation I had received in the course of the war.