I turned to see a thickset man with a full beard. He embraced Ritt and then they shadow-boxed each other. Ritt introduced us, out of breath.
‘Amory Clay, the most beautiful photographer in the European theatre. Meet Waldo Fartface.’
More raucous laughter. I said hello, pleased to meet you.
‘Are you English?’ the man asked, looking me up and down. ‘But in an American uniform. I like that.’ He looked at my sleeve badge. ‘Ah, war correspondent, like me. Welcome to the club.’
‘I am indeed English.’
‘Well, listen, my English beauty, if you’re a photographer there’s one man here you have to meet.’ He started shouting in Spanish. ‘Dónde está Montsicard?’
A shout in reply came from one of the poker tables and ‘Waldo’ led me over to the table — he was reeling drunk, it was clear by now — where a thin young man in a cheap suit stood up. He had very olive skin and the white of his open-necked shirt seemed to glow against it.
‘Felip Montsicard, meet a beautiful English photographer.’ We shook hands and Waldo turned to me. ‘Felip was the best fucking photographer in the Spanish war.’
Waldo lurched off leaving me with Felip Montsicard himself. I felt I was in some sort of weird parlour game. Who would I meet next? Marlene Dietrich? Maurice Chevalier? Oscar Wilde?
Montsicard offered to refill my glass and off he went leaving me alone again. I lit another cigarette and moved to the window, feeling the density and weight of the heavy gold brocade curtains hanging there, held back in a swag by plaited black velvet bands. Across the room, surrounded by cheering onlookers, Brandon Ritt was breaking up a chair, stamping it to tinder, as if it had attacked him in some way.
Montsicard returned with my champagne.
‘You are photographer? With who?’
‘Global-Photo.’
‘Is good.’ He had a thick Spanish accent. ‘I am with Life.’
‘I know.’
‘So you know who I am. Montsicard, the photographer.’
‘Yes, it’s a pleasure to meet you.’
‘You know Capa? He’s here also.’ He pointed at a poker table, at a small-dark haired man studying his hand.
‘No I don’t know him.’
‘That’s Capa.’
Ritt was now throwing the remains of the chair out of the window on to the place Vendôme.
‘He means well,’ Montsicard said, diplomatically. ‘But Ritt is very unhappy. In love matters, you know.’
I saw Jay Fielding pushing his way across the room towards me, his cropped hair gleaming with water droplets.
‘Where’ve you been?’ I asked.
‘Taking a shower, I told you.’
I looked round and saw Capa sliding out of his seat at the poker table, heading for the drinks. Jay scanned the room.
‘They’re all here tonight. Look, there’s Irwin Shaw. George Stevens, John Steinbeck. .’ he smiled at me. ‘All we need now is Marlene Dietrich.’
And then Marlene Dietrich walked in.
Charbonneau was actually very annoyed when I told him where I’d been. Extremely annoyed.
‘Brandon took you there? To the Ritz?’
‘He just said come to a party. How was I to know?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why no telephone call?’
‘I thought you were in Bordeaux. Ritt asked and I said you were out of town.’
His exasperation made his voice uncharacteristically shrill. He was growing even more annoyed.
‘But I was here — here in my apartment, doing nothing.’
‘How was I to know?’
‘Irwin Shaw was there?’
‘Everyone was there, yes, and Irwin Shaw. Everyone. Even Marlene Dietrich.’
‘Putain!’
He paced about his little sitting room, sulking, cross. Just as in his New York apartment the walls were lined with ascending columns of books, heading for the ceiling.
‘I saw Robert Capa and met Felip Montsicard.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Photographers. Famous photographers.’
‘I don’t give one shit for photographers.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘Did you speak to Shaw?’
‘Yes, for quite a long time.’
‘What about?’
‘I can’t remember. I was shockingly drunk by then.’
‘Ce n’est pas vrai. Ce. N’est. Pas. Vrai.’
He calmed down after a while and we went to the Café de Flore across the street and had a plate of carrots and a bottle of very bad Burgundy.
‘I have news,’ I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage, as we finished the wine.
‘You’re going to marry Ernest Hemingway.’
‘I’ve been assigned. Finally. I’m going to the US Seventh Army in the Vosges mountains.’
5. THE SUPER-TANK
ALL OF US, the four journalists and two photographers, sat in our folding canvas chairs waiting for Colonel Richard ‘Dick’ Bovelander to arrive. We were sitting in the chilly entrance hall of the small chateau near Villeforte in the foothills of the Vosges mountains, west of Strasbourg, some miles behind the notional front line that the US 7th Army was holding, now in November 1944.
Our mood ranged from very disgruntled to indifferent. Colonel Bovelander, commanding officer of the 631st Parachute Infantry Regiment, to which we were all assigned, did not like the press. He had kept us well away from all combat, far in the rear, corralled in a series of houses — an abbey, maisons de maître, and now a chateau — as the 7th Army advanced remorselessly on the Rhine. We had been taken to see the mayors of liberated villages present bouquets to various American units. We had visited base hospitals and rear-echelon supply dumps. We had witnessed hundred-lorry convoys passing by; had photographed tank transporters debouching their tanks; we had watched squadrons of P-51 Mustang fighters take off from airbases on ground-support missions. And so on. In short, we had witnessed everything that a modern army did in the field, except fight.
We had lodged a unanimous protest on behalf of our newspapers and magazines, hence this face-to-face encounter with Colonel Bovelander. Of the six of us, there were two women — me and a veteran reporter for McCall’s named Mary Poundstone (who, I strongly suspected, didn’t much like me. Mary preferred to be the only woman in the team). The four men, three journalists and a photographer from Associated Press, weren’t too unhappy with this boring but easy life. It was Mary and I who had allied to provide the consensus, this united front of free expression, and we were not going to be cowed by Bovelander’s bluster.
He strode in, accompanied by his public relations officer. Bovelander was thirty-two years old, one of the youngest regimental commanders in the US Army, fair, tall and handsome, and was wearing his trademark, a red bandana tied loosely at the throat. ‘Farm boy,’ Poundstone had sneered when she’d first seen it. ‘Oh, yeah. Nice touch.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Bovelander began without any formalities, ‘your protest has been noted — and rejected. I resent this waste of my time. Anyone who does not follow the precise instructions of Captain Enright here,’ he indicated the PRO beside him, ‘will be arrested and charged.’
‘Charged with what, pray?’ Mary Poundstone called out.
‘Insubordination. Good morning.’
He smiled and walked out.
‘Well, at least we protested,’ I said.
‘I’ve got to get reassigned,’ Poundstone said and went to speak to Enright.
I wandered out on to the rear terrace that overlooked a long untended garden. The lawns had been churned up by vehicle tracks and at the far end by an ornamental stable block was an advanced dressing station that had a big tarpaulin with a red cross draped over the stable’s tiled roof. I lit a cigarette and wandered over. I knew a few of the medics — they were as far behind the front as we were and seemed to travel with us as we advanced. I saw a young private I knew — Ephraim Abrams — stacking packs into the back of a jeep that had its engine running. I had taken Abrams’ photograph standing by an abandoned 88 mm field gun and developed the print so he could send it back to his parents in New Jersey.