“Mr. Hayworth, the American Expeditionary Force has a problem, and I’m afraid only you can help us with it.”
He smiled uncharitably. “I know your problem, and it is going to appear in tomorrow’s Times, right on the first page. And you’re here to talk some sense into me, as you Americans say.” He rose from behind his desk. “It won’t work, Colonel. You can save your breath.”
I worked my face into a puzzled expression. “Pardon me, Mr. Hayworth? I’m having difficulty following you.”
“Don’t toy with me, Colonel.”
I shrugged. “Let me begin again, Mr. Hayworth. As you know, the AEF has been charged with the defense of Brighton. We have decided to redouble the city’s fortifications. Our engineers have determined that only the heaviest street blockades will deter panzers. So we are requisitioning your printing presses in your basement.”
Perplexed, he chewed on his mustache a moment. Then he began to color, first a pink, then a gratifying red. “You—you have the gall to come in here and bluff me like some Chicago gangster?”
“If you will step to your window and look below, Mr. Hayworth.”
Stiff with anger, he rose from his chair and marched to the window. He leaned out to see the street.
The 4th Engineers were staging quite a production. Filling St. James Street were bulldozers and a crane and two backhoes, generator and compressor trailers, and several 6x6 heavy trucks. Engineers were removing jackhammers from the trucks.
I said over the roar from the street, “We intend to remove your printing presses by their roots, and place them across King’s Road at the foot of West Street. Those presses, plugging up the street, will give the panzer commanders something to worry about after the invasion.”
Hayworth’s voice sounded as if his collar had been suddenly cinched from behind. “This is an outrage. For you—you foreigner to dare come into this office—”
“I only request any architectural plans you may have, so the engineers can best avoid structural damage to your fine building here.”
An engineer started an air compressor. A jackhammer fired, echoing along the street.
Hayworth gasped for breath. “This is filthy blackmail.”
“I also recommend that your people leave the building for the rest of the day, for their own safety.”
He held up his hands. His breathing was ragged. “All right, Colonel. I surrender. I will cancel the photo and story.”
“Sir?”
“I won’t print it. Call off your dogs.”
“Once again, Mr. Hayworth, I’m not following you. But perhaps in the interest of cooperation among allies, I can postpone this operation, if that’s your request. And several days from now I’ll review whether we need your printing presses.”
I nodded good-bye and left him standing at the window. Half an hour later, when the last of the 4th’s machines pulled out of St. James Street, he was still at the third-floor window and still red.
The photograph was never published. The gossip was never printed.
Next day, General Clay threw that morning’s Brighton Times on my desk and said only, “How is a baseball fan supposed to follow the Dodgers when all he’s got are these goddamn English newspapers?”
General Clay met with Lady Anne’s father, Earl Selden, half a dozen times before S-Day. General Stedman usually went with us. The three would pore over their charts and move their tank models over a table. I would watch Lady Anne as she sat in a leather wingback chair, her legs crossed, her red mouth slightly puckered, her sable hair framing sublime features. She seemed to be simmering.
She was a skilled pianist. Frequently, as her father and the two generals discussed tactics, she would walk to the Bosendorfer piano and play Chopin or Debussey from memory. She played liltingly, hauntingly, in sharp contrast to her character, I thought. At these times she appeared contemplative, staring at the wall or the dried flowers. General Clay was so immersed in the earl’s lessons and the tactics they were hammering out, I’m not sure he ever heard her.
But this ethereal piano-playing may have been a ploy, another part of her carefully constructed self. On one occasion, Generals Clay and Stedman and the earl left the study for a walk, the earl first dipping into a humidor to remove three Cuban cigars. The moment they were out of earshot, Lady Anne broke into boogie woogie. It was an American beer hall tune, “Over the Bars,” by James P. Johnson. Her head bent low, she beat the keys while her leg jumped in time. I would not have been more surprised had she broken wind.
When the boogie was finished, she moved immediately into a stride tune I didn’t know, another St. Louis number, her left hand fanning left and right as she pounded out the bass. She shook the piano. A line of sweat appeared on the nape of her neck, glistening in the low light. After she had flattened the keys with the last chord and the echo had fled the room, she said to herself, “Well, let’s be proper, shall we?” And it was back to Chopin well before her father and the generals returned. I never mentioned her boogie to the general, because I didn’t think he would have believed me.
In all the time I was with General Clay and Lady Anne, the only time she recognized my existence, other than by handing me her wrap on occasion, was during the last meeting at the earl’s home. She was sitting under a lamp gazing at a prewar copy of Country Life without turning the pages. She wore the inward, focused expression of one scheming.
Abruptly she looked up from her magazine. Her gaze swept the room to find me. She caught my eyes for a full five seconds. Then she winked. A full-blooded, daring, omniscient wink. Something an American steelworker would do. She stapled me to the chair with it. She smiled quickly and returned to her magazine.
I confess it worked. Layers of intrigue fell away from her. Light in the room seemed to shift, making shadows on her face less wicked. The breezes of conspiracy that always brushed her hair and carried her scent were stilled.
With the wink Lady Anne told me she was in this life for a frolic. I believed her, and I worried less about General Clay from then on.
But I’m not done with my examination of her, or of their relationship.
Why mankind is afflicted with war is an enigma that may never be solved. The question has perplexed our greatest thinkers for centuries, and I will leave the puzzle to them.
But each war, each battle, produces a host of small riddles, miniature mysteries made trifling by the vast sweep of appalling events. I list several here because they were as much an ingredient of the invasion as were the combatants’ lofty military tactics, and because, unlike the grand questions of the ages, these puzzles are more my size.
Six days before S-Day, a Stuka swept across a field on the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames estuary. Its Jumo engine had stalled for lack of fuel, probably due to a leak in the tank, Coastal Command later concluded. Ten feet above the ground at the edge of a field of winter wheat, the dive bomber’s starboard wing clipped a power pole. The plane flipped. The Stuka landed on its back, crushing the pilot and copilot. The plane did not burn.
Coastal Command removed the bodies, the machine guns, and ammunition belts. Curiously, the plane was not carrying its standard complement of three bombs. Rather, under each wing, where a 110-pound bomb usually was, was a wood crate.
“Rather fragile wood boxes,” Harold Dartmore told me. “They were designed to crash open when dropped from the dive bomber.”
Dartmore was with the Civilian Repair Organization during the war. A day after the Coastal Command stripped the Stuka of everything lethal, Dartmore and his crew arrived with their blow torches and trucks. Anything of use would be wired onto RAF planes or melted down. Sixty percent of all damaged RAF fighters were returned to the air by the CRO, an amazing record.