So Little Time (33 page)

He could see the black smoke still billowing above the plane and he heard voices. He heard the voices before he saw the men. First he saw their helmets, streaked with yellow paint, above the crest of the yellow hill, and then he saw four German infantrymen walking carefully toward the plane, and glancing toward the woods. That lack of assurance made Jeffrey very sure that he was near the lines. He only found out later that he was in no man's land, and that the lines were very fluid. The men held their rifles ready as they approached the burning plane, and the sight of the rifles made Jeffrey move his hand to his side very slowly. He touched the holster of his forty-five regulation automatic which he had strapped over his leather flying coat that morning. He had not fired one since he left officers' school in the States, but now he drew it.

As the soldiers stood there examining the plane, Jeffrey heard a sound carefully described by war correspondents—something like a train of cars crossing a trestle bridge. He knew it was a shell before it struck. It landed in the field near the crest of the hill and burst in a wave of dirt and smoke. The four men by the plane threw themselves on their faces, then were up, running for the crest of the hill, and then were gone, but the shellfire continued. There was nothing erratic about the fire; the shells seemed to be groping blindly for something to destroy, moving methodically up the slope, and over the crest and out of sight. Someone told him later that it must have been artillery searching for machine-gun nests, and that he was lucky that the woods were not the target. Stan opened his eyes when Jeffrey touched him. It was necessary to lean close over him to hear what he said.

“What,” Stan asked him, “God-damned sort of management is this?”

Jeffrey told him to keep still and asked him how he felt.

“Boy,” Stan said, “how about a drink?”

As a matter of fact there was a full canteen on the doughboy's belt. When Jeffrey took it off, he felt completely familiar with everything. Reaction was setting in on him so that nothing upset him any longer. He did not give a damn about anything, except to get out of there. His mind and body felt filthy dirty, and he wanted to get out of there, but they had to wait for night.

All that he could remember were snatches of that day—odd moments spent crawling through the thickets and looking for a path. The burst of firing kept drumming in his ears, the rattle of machine guns, the sound of light artillery, but nothing stirred in the wood. He never forgot the smell of it, a combination of moldy leaves and of vanished human beings and the cordite fumes from the shelling, and the faint antiseptic odor of mustard gas. The shadows finally told him that it was late afternoon and that he had been asleep. Stan was beside him, ashy white, with his eyes closed, breathing slowly. It must have been the rustling in the bushes that awakened Jeffrey because he remembered the sound before he saw what caused it. Everything had been black until he opened his eyes, and then he saw a figure of a man not ten feet away. The shadows and the sunlight mottled his gray uniform. It was a German soldier, probably some confused straggler looking for his outfit.

It would have been different if the man had seen him first, but as it was, the face was turned sideways when Jeffrey opened his eyes. It gave him the opportunity to reach his holster and get the automatic out of it. His only thought was that the soldier must be kept quiet for reasons of safety, that there must be others where he came from, and that he must not get back to the others. The sound he made had caused the soldier to turn. The German's shoulders had been stooped forward as he pushed his way through the thicket, and he was holding his rifle ready. Jeffrey could see the face, wan, and drawn with fatigue and covered with a dusty stubble of blackish beard. He could see the lips draw back. He could hear the startled intake of breath and Jeffrey remembered speaking, without any thought that the other might not understand his language; and he even remembered that his voice had a thin, unpleasant treble.

“Drop that gun,” he said.

Though the expression came to him naturally, it sounded melodramatic. Jeffrey wanted to get it down to common sense and reason; he always thought that if they could only have talked they could have reached some understanding, for they were two human beings. As it was there was no opportunity to consider either action or consequence. He was often ashamed, not for what he did, because that was a question of survival, but for the way he acted afterwards. When the muzzle of the rifle jerked in his direction, he did not know he had fired until he heard the shot. The impact of the bullet hurled the man backwards. He was on his back, kicking in the bushes, by the time Jeffrey was on his feet. Jeffrey could hear the other's breath coming in snoring gasps and the sound made him bend forward and retch. That was when he knew that Stan Rhett had seen it all, for he heard his voice.

“Bull's-eye,” he heard Stan say and except for the firing to the right, which did not matter, they seemed to be surrounded by silence, like the silence of a deserted house.

Toward dusk, just as he was thinking they should be moving, Stan spoke and said that he thought that he was going. It took Jeffrey an appreciable time to comprehend that Stan was saying that he thought he was dying, and Jeffrey told him that he wasn't, that he had stopped bleeding, that he would take him in right now. He lifted Stan in his arms and got part of him across his shoulders and began walking through the trees to the south until he found one of those paths which were always cut through French forests. Every few minutes he would have to rest and put Stan down. At such times he would ask how he was, and at first Stan said he was fine, but toward the end he did not talk. It was nearly dark when he met an infantry patrol. There were six of them. He remembered the bayonets and the flat tin hats.

“Leave him down, buddy,” he heard someone say. “He's all right now.” And then some stretcher-bearers must have come.

It should have been easier to walk with the load off his shoulders, but the ground moved so uncertainly that he stumbled and fell flat on his face, and then someone took his arm.

They took him to a small dugout which had been scooped from a cut in the side of the road, the command post of a battalion, where an infantry major sat on an ammunition box with a map in front of him. Jeffrey must have told who he was. He remembered answering questions and he remembered being given something hot to drink. A non-com from the patrol must have been with him too, because Jeffrey heard the enlisted man answer when the Major asked a question. It was difficult for him to keep his attention on the Major. The place was lighted by a single candle by the map and all objects would blur and then come into focus.

“What about the other one?” he heard the Major ask.

“Dead, sir.” Jeffrey heard the voice behind his back. “Dead when the Lieutenant brought him in.”

Everything was as black as though something had struck him in the head. He was always glad of it. There was nothing else he wanted to remember.

21

Careful How You Stir Them, George

Although it was only one o'clock, the afternoon papers were out, and Jeffrey bought one at Columbus Circle—not that there would be anything much except headlines. The British had made another bombing raid on Berlin. Churchill had appealed to the French people not to fight Britain. German planes had swarmed again in considerable force over the south and east coasts of England. Jeffrey dropped the paper into one of those cans with swinging tops. He wished that he could break himself of the habit of seeking for the latest news when most of it meant nothing, but he knew that he would keep on doing it, chiefly out of a fear that he would miss something colossal and unbelievable. It had been that way since the spring, and that uncertainty and shock of defeat had steadily grown worse. It was beyond imagining what was going to happen after the fall of France; he no longer could face the news objectively. He kept wondering if that month of October, 1940, were as clear in Europe as it was in New York, with the same full moon and the same high tides. With those tides and the autumn fog over the channel, conditions were correct for an invasion, and people who ought to know, if anyone knew anything, were saying that October was the invasion month. With clear weather in the daytime, the ceiling was infinity, and the moon was right for night bombing.

As he crossed toward the corner of 59th Street, he wondered whether everyone else shared his feeling of suspense, but he could see no sign. The crosstown traffic was waiting for the green lights, and the skyview windows of the taxicabs were open. When he passed the open door of a drugstore, he could see the lunch-hour crowd—the girls and boys from the office buildings, pressing against the soda counter, slipping on and off those revolving leather stools, eating pale sandwiches stuffed with lettuce and mayonnaise, and gulping double orange juices because they were rich with vitamins. There was that steamy smell which always permeated drugstores during the lunch hour, and the white coats of the counter boys were spattered with chocolate and butter and coffee. He could see the display of brightly packed confections by the cigar counter where you paid your check—Tootsie Rolls and Baby Ruths and Coconut Mounds and Crunchies and Chock-Full-o'-Nuts bars, or whatever the names of all those things might be. They were heaped up beside a display of electric razors and electric heating pads. For the first time, he rather liked the spectacle because it pushed the war out of his mind. It reminded him that it was time to buy a stick of shaving soap, but he could not walk around all day carrying it in his pocket.

It was already so late that he would have to take a taxicab and he decided to go east on 59th Street and find one at the Plaza. Jeffrey always liked the Plaza, if only because it was one of the few surviving buildings in New York which had been with him always. He thought of that song in the Twenties about the professional jazzer who played at the Plaza; and working out the words took his mind off the war. By the 59th Street entrance to the Park, General Sherman was all in gold with his gold angel walking at his horse's head, and the nude lady on top of the marble fountain was basking in the sun, and three Victorias with spavined horses stood in the sunlight, and the balloon men and the peanut men were out. He felt better seeing them, for they also pushed the war away. The windows of the Fifth Avenue busses were open and their green sides towered above the roofs of the motors. He saw the stores with the contorted figures of pale blond and brunette models disporting themselves in static groups, decked in the latest evening gowns. The models were physically undesirable, consumptive, hollow-chested wraiths, an effect which might have been deliberate so that one's attention could be wholly focused on the clothes. The driver of the taxicab he took was listening to his radio, which was discoursing on the mild benefits of a certain laxative. The driver gave a start, and the voice was cut off in the middle of a syllable.

“The Clinton Club,” Jeffrey said.

It put him in a false position to give the name of the Clinton Club, since Jeffrey was not a member, but simply going there for lunch. In spite of the number of times he had been there, he was always acutely conscious of not being a member. Although he could tell himself as often as he liked that the Clinton Club was a dull and stuffy place and actually an object of fun, Jeffrey was always careful to arrive late so as to be sure that Minot Roberts would be there first. He did not want to sit in the little room off the main rotunda and have the doorman keep eyeing him through the half-opened door while he tried to read the London
Sphere
. No matter how emphatically Jeffrey told himself that it was complete foolishness, he could not escape the belief that the doorman was thinking that he was not quite the right type to be there. Yet the doorman was kind, benevolent and old, looking just as the doorman of the Clinton Club should look. Jeffrey squared his shoulders and walked into the little marble hall with the double marble staircase which led upward to the main rooms. He found himself taking off his gray felt hat, and then he wondered whether he should not have left it on until the boy from the coatroom had come to get it.

“Is Mr. Roberts in yet?” Jeffrey asked. “Mr. Roberts is expecting me for lunch.”

He should not have said that Mr. Roberts was expecting him for lunch. It was in the nature of offering an excuse for being there at all, a betrayal of a fear that he might have been thrown out if Mr. Roberts were not expecting him for lunch. He should have simply asked whether Mr. Roberts was there yet, and should have kept his hat on, but the doorman was very gentle, very kind.

“Who is it, please, sir?” the doorman asked, and Jeffrey misunderstood him. He always did misunderstand the doorman of the Clinton Club.

“Mr. Roberts,” Jeffrey said. “Mr. Minot Roberts. He's expecting me for lunch.” And the doorman was still very gentle, very kind.

“Your name, please, sir,” he said.

“Mr. Wilson,” Jeffrey said, and then he found himself adding, although immediately afterwards he knew it was unnecessary, “Mr. Jeffrey Wilson,” but the doorman was very kind. His every action was a deliberate effort at reassurance, a gentle, thoughtful endeavor to put Jeffrey at his ease.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Wilson,” the doorman said, “Mr. Roberts is expecting you. He is in the Oak Room. Will you go right up?”

They never referred to the place where one drank in the Clinton Club as “the bar”—they called it the “Oak Room.”

“Your hat, sir,” the doorman said as Jeffrey started up the stairs.

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “excuse me.” He had completely forgotten his hat. He might have gone up to the Oak Room still holding it, if the doorman had not been kind.

Instead of being heavy or pretentious or baroque, the Clinton Club had a slightly run-down atmosphere of solid tradition which reminded Jeffrey of a club off Piccadilly. Everyone in the Clinton Club felt able to pass the time of day with everyone else, since merely being there made it socially safe to do so, and as Jeffrey made his way toward the Oak Room, several members looked up at him, obviously expecting to see a friend, and to call a friendly greeting. It seemed to Jeffrey that when they saw him, although he knew it was his imagination, their glances betrayed puzzled incredulity, and they turned from him hastily back to their papers, except for one older member who called him “Bobby” by mistake and then apologized. The Oak Room was not garish like the Oak Room of a hotel or a chophouse. The paneling was decorous Jacobean, and the wooden chairs and tables looked as though they had come from a public room in an English Inn. The man behind the bar looked gray and benign, like the doorman, used to the vagaries of gentlemen. Two members were shaking poker dice in the corner, and Minot was at a table by himself. Minot looked as though the room had been made for him. He looked like a drawing in
Punch
. Minot wore his clothes carelessly, although they fitted him as smoothly as a Hollywood actor's. He had a way of lounging in the oak chair without having either his coat or waistcoat drift upward the way Jeffrey's always did. Jeffrey realized again that he could never be like Minot in this world or the next.