American Dreams (75 page)

'By the Allies,' said one of the callers.

'By both sides,' he retorted.

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The General's motives, of course, could not be deduced from the strident text of the polemical ad as it appeared. Reaction was instantaneous. One boiling hot night someone torched delivery trucks parked in a fenced compound at the brewery. Joe was summoned from bed at three a.m.

At noon next day, when he motored to the Union League Club for lunch, the temperature was already near a hundred degrees. The back of 468

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his suit of summer-weight wool was sweated through. On the club staircase he paused to mop his forehead, short of breath.

As he passed crowded tables on his way to his customary small one by a window, a man named Reginald Soames hailed him from a table where he sat with two other club members. Soames was British, attached to the consulate in Chicago. He and Joe had served on charity committees. Joe found him a self-centered blowhard. Soames had studied a year at Heidelberg and was always peppering his talk with German words and phrases, in a horrible accent. Still, courtesy dictated that the General acknowledge the greeting.

'Joe,' said Soames when he approached the table; he refused to use Joe's military title. 'I saw the advertisement to which you subscribed.'

Soames's two friends stared at the General with ill-concealed repugnance.

'I frankly think the sentiments expressed are beneath contempt.'

'You're perfectly entitled to your opinion. And 1 needn't explain myself to you or anyone. Good day.'

He felt the racing of his heart as he turned away. Sunlight glaring through the windows seemed to flash and blind him momentarily. His step was unsteady; one of the waiters rushed forward, but the General waved him off. Behind him, Soames said in a voice intended for his hearing,

'Americans are the spiritual cousins of we English. Therefore to favor letting the Hun off lightly - how do you explain it? Not merely as misplaced loyalty, but something else. There's a good German word. Feigheit.'

Cowardliness.

It was not to be borne by a man who'd risked himself in the Civil War and again in Cuba. Purple in the face, the General whirled around and stormed back to Soames.

'I will not tolerate insults from the likes of--'

The sentence broke off. The General made a strange choking sound,
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clutched at his throat. LCatch himP one of the others shouted as Joe toppled forward.

He flung his hands toward the table, caught the white cloth, and pulled it down with him. China and crystal smashed. Serving bowls spilled and shattered. A green wine bottle gurgled its contents on the club's expensive carpet.

The General lay half conscious, frightened and ashamed of showing weakness. The back of his head rested in a puddle of brown gravy. He tried to rise and couldn't. He saw anxious faces peering down, then nothing.

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It must have been a hundred degrees in the room. And the smell!

Liniment, perspiration-soaked sheets. lisa had forbidden electric lights, instead setting beside the bed, trimmed low, one of her treasured lamps from the days of coal oil -- an expensive lamp, retrieved from the attic, carefully unwrapped, cleaned, filled, and lit. The globe and lower vase were milky glass, pale blue, hand-painted with American Beauty roses.

The lamp had brightened the music room for many years. Fritzi well remembered how her mother loved it.

j'

She knelt at the bedside, took her father's frail veined hand in hers. The General turned his head toward her on the bolster. His eyes looked small and queerly cold, like the eyes of a dead robin she'd found and held in her arms as a child.

White stubble covered his cheeks. He spoke from the right side of his mouth, the words thick, full of saliva. The left side of his face was stiff. Tritzchen.'

'Papa. Wie bist du?"

'Besser."1 He surely didn't look better. 'I'm so sorry it happened, Papa.'

'Danke.' He tried to touch her hair, but he was too feeble. His smile was no more than a twitch of his lip.

'You'll get well, Papa, this will pass.' Out in the hall, she and a surprisingly chastened Joey had heard the physician's verdict. Their father had survived the stroke and might walk again someday, but never unassisted.

LJa, wirklkh.' Sure enough.

i came as fast as I could from Texas. I need to ask forgiveness for making you angry for so long. I had to go to New York, I couldn't have done otherwise, but I know the pain it caused you, and I'm sorry for it. No matter how we differ about things, I love you, always.'

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His papery fingers stirred ever so slightly in hers. iMeine liebe Tochter.' My. dear daughter. And then, like a benediction, he uttered one more word. LVergeben?

Forgiven.

A foul odor rose from the bed. Full of despair, Fritzi searched the dark for the burly nurse. 'He's soiled himself.'

The General's eyes watered with shame. She touched his hand. 'Rest, Papa. I'll look in again.' A tear glistened in the candlelight as it ran down his cheek into the white stubble.

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85 Bombs

Paul heard about the General's stroke the moment he stepped in the door at Cheyne Walk. lisa had cabled the news. He hoped he hadn't contributed to the seizure but had no way of knowing. At least his uncle was still alive.

Coming home restored Paul's spirits. This was true despite his son Shad's tendency to reply to any question or remark with what Americans called lip. Shad had grown into a tall and awkward boy. He attended a public school in the country. Betsy, eleven and budding into puberty, remained tractable and affectionate. How long that would last neither parent could guess.

Lottie was a trial, like most six-year-olds, but Teddy, three, had shifted overnight into one of those affectionate and docile stages beloved by harried mothers.

Their excellent cook, Phillipa, announced that she was leaving to work at a munitions factory, hand-cutting fuses for shells. Having chopped and diced with fine Sheffield knives for so many years, she was prized for her skill. Julia was sympathetic. Along with hundreds of other women, she spent long hours at a dingy warehouse in the East End, standing at a trestle table, packing soldiers' ration kits.

Paul and Sammy shot some yacht-racing and steeplechase footage on a freelance basis. Compilations of several picture subjects into a 'news reel'

were now in regular distribution in the U.S. He sold to the Pathe and Gaumont weeklies, and did assignments for a new one, Hearst-Selig News Pictorial. Even with occasional work, and no danger of starvation, he was unhappy, though. He carried the failure of his American tour like an invisible stigma. Michael Radcliffe took pity on him. At least once a week
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they went out for fish and chips and beer, then a visit to a Leicester Square cinema. Not to be entertained, but to see the astonishing news film produced by the government.

A particularly stirring release depicted brave Tommies facing a bayonet charge by Hun infantry. The Huns were clearly savages, stabbing fallen enemies without mercy, as in Paul's Belgian footage. Surviving Tommies retreated across a stream and dug in. Artillery found the range to support them as the Huns mounted a second assault.

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Shells landed in the stream, sending up huge water spouts. Shells exploded on the enemy-held side, and bodies of Huns flew through the air.

Tommies with clenched teeth fired smoking machine guns until the last enemy dropped. Then the Tommies waved their helmets and cheered. The title card commended their gallant action.

"I investigated this one,' Miohael said. He was sunk in his loge seat with a cigarette burning in his fingers. 'Crock of shit, start to finish.'

'Fake? I thought so.' Paul had taken part in plenty of film fakery in his early days.

'I can guide you to the exact spot near Staines where it was shot. The so-called Huns are some of our finest lads. There are protective buttons on the bayonets. A spring attachment on the rifle barrel retracts the bayonet when it strikes something. The shells exploding in the water are bladders filled with gunpowder, set off by electric wires. Ground bursts are buried powder cans. The flying bodies are dummies, obviously. It's all stage managed by the high command. Another bloody triumph for integrity, what?'

Germany sent huge silver airships across the Channel to drop bombs and terrify the city. Several times Paul and Julie watched the spectacle from the roof at Cheyne Walk. The enemy airships coasted serenely at altitudes above seven thousand feet, untouched by the long guns on the ground.

Bomb damage was generally light and spread over a wide area, but the psychological terror was enormous.

On a bright summer day, Paul arrived at the dark brown halls of the Reform Club, where Jules Verne's fictitious adventurer, Phileas Fogg, had wagered that he could circle the globe in eighty days. Paul was there in response to an unexpected luncheon invitation. Lord Yorke occupied his usual table, chatting up the first lord of the Admiralty, ruddy-faced Winston Churchill. Paul had met the egotistical politician in South Africa during the Boer War. Their greeting was mutually cordial. Churchill called him Dutchie and handed him a fine Havana cigar before he swaggered off.

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'We had best get the nasty part out of the way first,' Lord Yorke said.

Paul had accepted the invitation with a certain foreboding, which now seemed justified. 'By appropriating and showing the Belgian footage - my property, I remind you, Paul - you violated my trust. I could have prosecuted.'

'Why

didn't you?'

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'Because you have two qualities I admire. Talent, which is marketable, and integrity, which unfortunately often proves to have a negative cash value. Devil of a lot of good the pictures did you in the colonies. Walkouts, cancellations - not exactly a star turn, my boy. Setback for your career, I'd say. Punishment enough.'

'Look, sir. If you invited me here to rake over the past, I'll leave right now.'

'Oh, sit down, don't posture.' His lordship waved flamboyantly. 'What I wish to discuss with you is a reversal, or at least a modification, of certain official policies. Whitehall will shortly permit a limited number of civilian journalists and cameramen to travel with the army.'

Paul almost laughed at the man's brass. 'Are you offering me a job?'

'I am offering to consider your return to the fold, following negotiations.'

'I

walked out on you.'

'Of course you did. I am prepared to overlook your headstrong, not to say unethical, behavior. I want to send you and your camera to the front.

I desire, as always, to employ none but the best.'

Paul was so excited, he almost shouted in agreement. He checked his enthusiasm: 'Sounds like I'd be under government supervision.'

'Indeed, yes. With rigid restrictions. Kits inspected so that no long-focus lenses are taken into forward areas. No filming within forty yards of an aircraft, that sort of rot. However, you would be working regularly.'

'This is sudden. Let me think.'

'Think over a scotch. I'll have one m'self. Waiter? Now!'

Paul's head whirled. He couldn't deny his hunger to see the war firsthand, with proper credentials. It would require compromise. What would Michael do in his situation?

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Wasp-tongued Michael always seized the main chance; he'd agree at once. Following a brief ritual of haggling, and an excellent plate of Dover sole and boiled potatoes, that was exactly what Paul did. His lordship was pleased. As they left the club, he stuffed a note into Paul's breast pocket.

'There's ten quid. Advance against salary. Take the wife out. A good dinner, a show, with my compliments.' With a roguish roll of his eyes he added, 'It was always my intent to lure you back. Be a good chap and ring the personnel director straightaway. Regards to the missus. Cheerio.'

He leaped into his chauffeured Rolls limousine before Paul could hand back the ten-pound note.

I

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The thought of an evening out pleased Julie. They'd lost Barbara, their maid, to another munitions factory in her native Scotland, so Julie arranged for Michael's wife, Cecily, to stay with Betsy, Lottie, and Teddy.

She and Paul took a taxi through darkened streets to the Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych, a fine old Edwardian establishment with an excellent carvery.

They ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding complemented with a good bottle of claret, then at half past seven hurried a few steps to the Vaudeville Theater in the Strand, where Chariot's Revue was playing. Paul had gotten a pair of tickets in the stalls, on an outside aisle.

About nine forty-five, in the midst of a comedy number performed by a tenor and the popular star Eustacia Van Sant, a rumbling explosion shook the auditorium. The quick-witted actress stepped to the footlights with a reassuring smile. 'Ah, gun practice again.' People who had risen in their seats resettled themselves. Paul stuffed his program in his side pocket and whispered:

'I doubt it. Do you want to stay here while I have a look?'

'Absolutely not.'

He waited a minute, so it wouldn't appear that they were fleeing. They stepped into the curtained passageway that led up and out to the lobby. As they crossed the lobby, another explosion in the direction of Wellington Street lit up the night. Paul hurried that way, clasping Julie's hand.

Searchlights speared upward around the horizon, toward a point above the central city. Sirens wailed. Pedestrians fled past him in the dark.

'Zeppelins. Zeppelins.' Looking up, he saw a long, tapered airship pinned by the intersecting beams.

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Ground batteries in distant Green Park opened fire. Incendiary shells aimed at the silver leviathan traced blue-white trails upward but fell short. Two taxis with dim running lights, heading past each other, were caught by a second stupendous bomb burst in the Strand. The taxis disintegrated in a burst of fire.