So Little Time (78 page)

“And what?” Madge asked him. “And what?”

“If I can get out,” Jeffrey said, “where I can hear a gun go off—” He had hated it once and now it seemed the most desirable thing in the world. He only hoped that Madge would not say the obvious thing—that he might be too old. “I don't mean to sit in Washington, and I can't sit here—”

“Sit where?” Madge said.

“In this damned study,” Jeffrey said, “and look out of this damned window.” He had not meant to say it. He had not meant to hurt her. “Madge,” he told her, “I did not mean that exactly. It isn't that I don't like it, but God, Madge, don't you see?”

There was something left of him yet, something that was not gone.

50

Old Soldiers Never Die

Once in 1917 Jeffrey had passed through Washington, and now in December 1941, the city was much the same. It was a bleak morning with a stormy chill in the air and the station was crowded, just as it had been back in 1917, with swiftly moving people; and their faces looked as they had then, wholly concentrated on their own thoughts. It was hard to get a taxicab, and early as it was you had to wait to get a table in the hotel dining room.

While Jeffrey waited for his breakfast and waited for a reasonable time to call on Bill Swinburne, he tried again to recall what Bill Swinburne was like, now that Bill Swinburne had suddenly become more important to him than anyone in the world. Jeffrey wanted to say the right thing and do the right thing.

He kept looking at all the officers he saw, and a good many of them had the ribbons of the last war. If he were in uniform he could show up as well as a lot of them and perhaps better. He could wear two gold V's on his left sleeve for his twelve months overseas. He could wear the World War ribbon with three stars on it for three offensives, which was more than a lot of men in uniform could; and besides he could wear the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre if that were regulation still—not that the Croix de Guerre meant much because the French had always been passing them out to pilots, but still it was a ribbon that you got for fighting.

Jeffrey tried to remember about Bill Swinburne; he did not want solely to think of him as being always tight at the Squadron Reunion Dinners. Minot had mentioned Bill Swinburne now and then, since Minot was always loyal to everyone in the Squadron. There had been something about trying to get Bill Swinburne a job, and then another job, and that was all that Jeffrey could remember. But now he was going to the Munitions Building to see his old friend Bill Swinburne, who must have been a first-rate fellow.

The Navy Building and the Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue of course had never belonged there. They had been built as a result of an old emergency and here they were again in the midst of a new one. Officers and civilians were passing in and out and it seemed to Jeffrey that if he wore the uniform again, even the new coat that looked so British, he would not have forgotten how to hold himself. He had been reasonably careful about his figure. With a coat properly tailored about the shoulders he would not look badly and he would know what to do with his hands. Many of the officers seemed to be his age, majors or lieutenant colonels, and he supposed you had to have that rank if you reached his age, but they wore their uniforms like civilian clothes.

There were guards at the doors examining the passes and Jeffrey had no pass. He was taken to the long reception desk just below the stairs where a thin, tired-looking girl looked up at him from her memorandum pad.

“I wanted to see Colonel Swinburne,” Jeffrey said.

“Have you an appointment with him?” she asked.

Jeffrey said he had an appointment, because he thought it would be better to say so, though it was not entirely true.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Where is he?” Jeffrey repeated and he listened to the footsteps and voices in the corridors. “I don't know. He's in here somewhere.”

“Swinburne?” the girl said. “How do you spell it?” Jeffrey spelt it and the girl picked up a mimeographed list and then she wrote down the number of a room.

“What do you want to see Colonel Swinburne for?” she asked, and Jeffrey smiled at her.

“I thought maybe I could get back in,” he said. “If you could get him on the telephone and tell him I was here—”

She still looked tired. Her eyes looked older than his although she was much younger.

“You want to get back?” she said. “You mean in the army?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “There seems to be a lot of army here.”

But she was in a hurry and other people were waiting. She asked his name and if he could identify himself.

“If you'll ask him to come down,” he said, “he knows me. He'll come down.”

She used the telephone and she said yes, he was coming down if Jeffrey would wait right by the desk, and Jeffrey stood there for fifteen minutes waiting. As he saw the people move back and forth his interest did not flag. They were mostly older officers but some of them were younger. The lieutenants were the best. He could see their pilots' wings and he stood staring at the sheer beauty of their youth. It made him remember that you had to be nearly physically and mentally perfect to get your wings. The features of those boys were completely familiar to him—the same eyes and the same set of the lips and the same arrogance that flying officers always had. They reminded Jeffrey of all the faces in the Squadron and it gave him a strange aesthetic pleasure to see them. Then he saw an officer, a lieutenant colonel, coming down the stairs and striding toward the desk. His hair was gray and close-cropped, his face looked sodden and heavy. He had a mustache that was streaked with gray.

“Where's that man?” he was asking the girl, and then Jeffrey spoke to him.

“Bill,” he said. “Hello, Bill.”

Bill Swinburne looked at him in the way in which acquaintances of their age always regarded each other, and his face broke into a quick mechanical smile.

“Why, Jeff!” he said. “Why, Jeffie!” And Jeffrey was sure he had never called him Jeffie back there in the Squadron. “Jeffie, you look just the same.”

“So do you, Bill,” Jeffrey said and he knew both were lying.

“Give him a badge,” Bill Swinburne said, and the girl at the desk handed him a badge with a number on it.

“Come on, Jeffie,” Bill Swinburne said. “Come up to the room. I'm sorry to keep you waiting but this is quite a war—quite a war.”

They climbed a flight of stairs and began walking down a corridor.

“Keep on walking,” Bill Swinburne said, and it seemed to Jeffrey that they walked for a long way before they came to Bill Swinburne's office. It was a small room with two desks, neither of which was occupied. Bill Swinburne sat down behind one of them and Jeffrey drew a chair up beside it.

“Well,” Bill Swinburne said, “it's great to see you, Jeffie.”

“It's great to see you, Bill,” Jeffrey said.

Then for a second they sat looking at each other.

“I don't want to take up too much of your time, Bill,” Jeffrey said, and then he was telling about himself as though he were a clerk applying for a job, and somehow his enthusiasm was dying.

“I know,” he heard Bill Swinburne say, “I looked you up, Jeffie. You're in
Who's Who
. I think we can work something. You've done a lot of scribbling, haven't you?”

Jeffrey looked at the bare office. It occurred to him that he was a better man than Bill Swinburne ever was, but Bill Swinburne ranked him now.

“Yes, quite a lot,” Jeffrey answered.

“And the movies,” Bill Swinburne said, “that puts you in a real category. The Chief's been interested in the movies.”

“What have the movies got to do with it?” Jeffrey asked.

“Public relations, boy,” Bill Swinburne said. “Of course, I can't promise you, but I think there's a spot for you in there. The Chief was talking about the movies yesterday. Wait a minute, Jeffie.”

“What about Intelligence?” Jeffrey asked. “Isn't there something else?”

Bill Swinburne shook his head.

“Wait a minute, Jeffie,” he said. “We can't all be in there batting, but maybe I've got a spot for you. Stay right there. Don't move.”

Colonel Swinburne had opened an adjoining office door and closed it and Jeffrey sat there waiting. He could see what was coming—Public Relations, and the movies—and then Bill Swinburne opened the door again.

“Come on,” he said. “Come on, Jeffie.”

They crossed a room with a green carpet where two officers sat behind desks and Bill Swinburne opened another door. Then he was in a third room, larger than any of the others, with a map of the world on the wall, and there was a general behind another desk. Jeffrey could see the stars and the ribbons.

“This is a friend of mine, sir,” Bill Swinburne said. “Mr. Wilson. He was a pilot in the old Squadron.”

The General looked up at him and he was an old man too.

“Oh,” he said, “the old Squadron? The one that was always bombing Conflans. Captain Strike—did you know Strike?”

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said. “He was my captain.”

“And you want to get back, do you?” the General asked.

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said. “If I could get into the field.”

He saw he had not said the right thing because the General's face hardened.

“You all want to get overseas, don't you?” the General said. “Well, so do I want to, but some of us have got to stay right here and we've got to build up public relations. The Colonel here says you're familiar with the movies.”

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said.

He stood—the General did not ask him to sit down—he simply stood there listening to the General talking. It would take time, the General was saying. If he would come in tomorrow and fill out an application and meet Colonel So-and-so, there was room in the Public Relations particularly for someone who had been overseas and who knew the spirit of the Air Corps.

Jeffrey knew there was no use talking back to a General. He could see that they were being kind to him—very kind. He could be in uniform again, but he could not get anywhere at all. Finally he and Bill Swinburne were passing through the room with the green carpet and back into the third room, and Bill Swinburne slapped him on the shoulder.

“It's in the bag,” Bill said. “Come back again tomorrow.”

But Jeffrey knew that he would not be back again tomorrow. He thought of the young officers he had seen downstairs and he knew that he was out of it. He might go back tomorrow, and like Bill Swinburne, pretend that he was in it, but somehow it was not his war any longer.

“Thanks, Bill,” he said. “It's been swell seeing you.”

“Yes,” Bill answered, “it's been like old times, hasn't it?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey answered, “like old times.”

The only consolation that stayed with him as he walked out to the street was that he had tried, but what he had expected had been too much to ask.

He had a chair on the four o'clock to New York and time lay ahead of him. He would have to tell Madge in the evening and he did not like to face it, because he suddenly suspected that Madge had known it all along. There was nothing he could do but go to the hotel.

It was too early in the morning for a drink. He did not believe in drinking before noon, and in rare times when he had done so, he had never done it by himself; but now he knew he was going to do it.

The bar was just off the main entrance of the hotel and it had a welcome name emblazoned near its door: “Men's Bar”—and that in itself was funny. If you lived long enough a great many things were funny. Back in the last war it would have been obvious that any bar was a men's bar, and now well-conducted hotels had to label their barrooms as carefully as they labeled their retiring rooms—Gentlemen's Bars, and then that middle ground, the Cocktail Lounge, where the sexes could mingle. He had never been to a bar so early in the morning and he found himself moving toward it furtively. He even glanced around to be sure that no one noticed him particularly. There was a step leading up to the Men's Bar with an illuminated green sign thoughtfully placed upon it marked “Step up,” and Jeffrey was about to step up when he saw that the bell captain was beside him.

“The bar doesn't open till twelve, sir,” the bell captain said.

“What?” Jeffrey answered, and he tried to look incredulous and amused at such a regulation. “Not till twelve?”

He had an idea that everyone was watching him and he moved quickly away to buy a newspaper. Now that he was deprived of the solace he had been seeking, he could not remember ever having been so anxious for a drink. Nevertheless, although he knew he must wait till twelve, he was determined now that he would not be the first one in that barroom. He read the
Washington Post
, page after page, deliberately, until five minutes after twelve; then he waited five more minutes before he arose and returned to the Men's Bar. The doors were open now, and his foot was on the step again when he heard his name called. His first instinct was to leap away from the place, but it was too late to pretend that he was going anywhere else. He knew that that would make him look ridiculous. At any rate there was no time for anything. It was Beckie's husband, Fred, and he was the last person Jeffrey wanted to see because he knew that Madge would hear about it eventually.

Fred and Jeffrey maintained that odd relationship of being husbands of best friends, an accident which neither of them could help. Jeffrey had always put up with it and he supposed that Fred had too. Fred still had that handsome band-leader look that went with his particular time in Yale, and it still seemed to Jeffrey that Fred was trying to live in the pages of
This Side of Paradise
, and
The Beautiful and Damned
, and
The Great Gatsby
, when all the boys and girls were gay, oh so gay.