«We don't want you hungover when you begin your happy rest-and-recupera-tion program on Monday morning,» Commander Bolemann had explained.
«Well, I suggest that you go over to the house and see Mrs. Sayre and Martha now—Jerry, call up and tell them he's coming.»
«Aye, aye, sir,» the Admiral's aide said.
«And as soon as I'm through here, I'll come home, and we can have a chat. There's someone I want you to meet.»
'"Aye, aye, sir,» Weston said.
«Jerry, run down Major Williamson, and ask him if he could come by my quarters at, say, 1530.»
«Aye, aye, sir.»
«I'm really glad to see you, Jim,» Admiral Sayre said, offering Weston his hand again.
Weston sensed he had been dismissed.
Mrs. Jean Sayre, a tall, slim, gray-haired woman with gentle and perceptive eyes, came out the front door of Quarters Number One as Jim Weston drove the Buick into the driveway.
«Oh, Jim,» she said when he stepped out of the car, «when I heard you escaped from the Philippines, I was afraid you'd look like death warmed over! You look wonderful!»
She hugged him. He felt his eyes start to water and closed them. When he opened them he saw Martha, standing in the door. She was tall and slim, and looked very much like her mother. She was deeply tanned and her sun-bleached blond hair hung down to her shoulders.
What is she now, twenty-three, twenty-four? And a goddamn widow! Goddamn it! Did they have a kid?
She came halfway down the walk to him as he walked toward the door.
«Well, look what floated in with the tide,» she said.
«Don't I get a hug?» he asked.
She hugged him. He was uncomfortable when he felt the pressure of her breasts against his abdomen, and quickly broke away.
«Mother said I wasn't to ask you how you were, or comment on your appearance,» Martha said. «So I won't.»
«I'm fine, thank you for asking.»
«You look good,» she said. «God, Jimmy, I'm glad to see you.»
«I didn't know about Greg, until just now,» he said. «Jesus Christ, I'm sorry.»
«Let's go in the house,» Mrs. Sayre said, coming up behind them. «There's no champagne, but 1 think we should have a drink.»
A dark-skinned man in a crisply starched white cotton jacket stood just inside the door.
Christ, he's a Filipino messman. We let them join the Navy, but only as messmen. They're our Little Brown Brothers, not good enough to serve as real sailors.
«Good morning, sir,» he said.
»
Buenos dias
,» Weston said.
«Pedro, would you roll the bar onto the patio?» Mrs. Sayre asked. «Despite thehour, we are going to have a drink. Possibly two. You remember Captain Weston, don't you? He's a dear friend of the family.»
«Yes, ma'am,» the messman said.
Does that mean he remembers me? I don't remember him.
«That being the case,» Martha said, as they walked through the house and onto the patio, «dear friend of the family, why didn't you call and tell us you were coming? For that matter, why didn't you call and just tell us you were alive?»
He met her eyes, and noticed how blue they were.
«I don't know, Martha,» he said. «The last couple of weeks have been really hectic.»
They sat down on upholstered white metal lawn furniture. The way she was sitting—innocently, of course—Weston could see a long way up her cotton skirt. She was not wearing hose, and he remembered Janice telling him that silk stockings were almost impossible to find.
Pedro wheeled a bar loaded with whisky bottles onto the patio, then stood, obviously waiting for orders.
«What would you like, Jim?» Mrs. Sayre asked.
Among the nearly dozen bottles on the bar, there was a bottle of good scotch, scotch too good to be diluted with water. Without thinking about it, Weston asked, in Spanish, for «some of the good stuff, a double, please, ice but no water.»
«That's new,» Martha said. «When did you learn to speak Spanish?»
«Ninety percent of U.S. forces in the Philippines are Filipinos,» Weston said, as much to the messman as Martha. «You either learn to speak Spanish, or you don't get much done.»
«Permission to speak, sir?» the messman asked.
«Of course,» Weston said.
«Sir, there was a story in the newspaper. It said there were guerrilla forces operating on my home island of Mindanao.»
«Yes, there are,» Weston said.
«Sir, and you were there?»
Weston nodded.
«Just a minute, Pedro,» Jean Sayre said. «Make the drinks. I'll have whatever Captain Weston is having.»
«Good scotch, ice, double, no water, ma'am.»
Weston felt anger well up within him.
«With a little water. Fix a single for Miss Martha.»
«Yes, ma'am.»
Weston was surprised at his fury at her treatment of the Filipino.
«Then make yourself whatever you want, pull up a chair and sit down with us. Captain Weston's going to start at the beginning and tell us everything.»
«Yes, ma'am,» the messman said. «Thank you.»
Christ, I should have known better. She's what an officer's lady is supposed to be.
He sensed Martha's eyes on him, and knew somehow that she had seen his reaction.
«Pedro's been taking care of us for a long time,» Martha said. «He was Daddy's steward on the
Lexington
. When Daddy made rear admiral and came ashore, Pedro came with him. You don't remember him?»
«I thought you looked familiar, Pedro,» Weston said.
That's bullshit. If he was here the last time I was here, he was simply part of the furnishings. I was as bad then about our Little Brown Brothers as I thought Mrs. Sayre was now.
Pedro made the drinks, handed them around, then took a Coca-Cola for himself and pulled up a chair.
«The last we heard, Jim, you'd been sent to a Navy Catalina Squadron at Pearl… Wait a minute. What should we drink to?»
«Greg,» he blurted without thinking.
«Greg,» Mrs. Sayre said softly, raising her glass.
Martha, looking at Jim, raised her glass but didn't speak.
«You were at Pearl, Jim?» Mrs. Sayre said. «How did you get to the Philippines?»
«I flew a Catalina into Cavite on December eight,» Weston began, and related, over the next hour, his experiences in the Philippines. He left out, of course, the less pleasant aspects. But he did tell them, in some detail, about Sergeant Percy L. Everly, USMC—now First Lieutenant Percy Everly, U.S. Army Reserve—and about how Brigadier-General Wendell W. Fertig came to be a brigadier general.
«That was very clever of him,» Mrs. Sayre said, «wouldn't you say so, Pedro? No one would pay much attention to a reserve lieutenant colonel, would they?»
«I am afraid not,» Pedro said. «He apparently knows Filipinos.»
«And admires them,» Weston said, hoping it would please the messman. His face showed it did.
«I wonder if I could not be useful there,» Pedro wondered out loud. «I have sixteen years in the Navy and Mindanao is my home.»