The moon was coming up now, over the old trees and the scarred buildings, and there was a tinkle of glass where some soldiers and their girls were walking over a window that had been blown out in the raid.
"B… all gunnery," Michael said softly to himself, turning into the Dorchester, past the doorman with the decorations from the last war on his uniform. "B… all gunnery," Michael repeated, delighted with the phrase.
There was dance-music swinging into the lobby, and the old ladies and their nephews solemnly drinking tea, and pretty girls floating through on the way to the American bar on the arms of American officers, and Michael had the feeling, looking at the scene, that he had read all about this before, about the last war, that the characters, the setting, the action, were exactly the same, the costumes so little different that the eye hardly noticed it. By a trick of time, he thought, we become the heroes in our youthful romances, but always too late to appear romantic in them.
He walked upstairs to the large room where the party was still in progress and where Louise had said she'd be waiting for him.
"Look," said a tall, dark-haired girl near the door, "a Private." She turned to a Colonel next to her. "I told you there was one in London." She turned back to Michael. "Will you come to dinner next Tuesday night?" she asked. "We'll lionize you. Backbone of the Army."
Michael grinned at her. The Colonel next to her did not seem pleased with Michael. "Come, my dear." He took the girl firmly by the arm. "I'll give you a lemon if you come," the girl said over her shoulder, receding in silk undulations with the Colonel.
"A real whole lemon."
Michael looked around the room. Six Generals, he noticed, and felt very uncomfortable. He had never met a General before. He looked uneasily down at his ill-fitting tunic and the not-quite-polished buttons. He would not have been surprised if one of the Generals had come over to him and taken his name, rank and serial number for not having his buttons polished properly.
He did not see Louise for the moment, and he felt shy at going up to the bar, among the important-looking strangers at the other end of the room, and asking for a drink. When he had passed his sixteenth birthday he had felt that he was finished with being shy for the rest of his life. After that he had felt at home everywhere, had spoken his mind freely, felt that he was acceptable enough, if no more, to get by in any company. But ever since he had joined the Army, a latter-day shyness, more powerful and paralysing than anything he had known as a boy, had developed within him, shyness with officers, with men who had been in action, among women with whom otherwise he would have felt perfectly at ease.
He stood hesitantly a little to one side of the door, staring at the Generals. He did not like their faces. They looked too much like the faces of businessmen, small-town merchants, factory owners, growing a little fat and over-comfortable, with an eye out for a new sales campaign. The German Generals have better faces, he thought. Not better, abstractedly, he thought, but better for Generals. Harder, crueller, more determined. A General should have one of two faces, he thought. Either he should look like a heavyweight prizefighter, staring out coldly with dumb animal courage at the world, through battered, quick slits of eyes, or he should look like a haunted man out of a novel by Dostoevsky, malevolent, almost mad, with a face marked by evil raptures and visions of death. Our Generals, he thought, look as though they might sell you a building lot or a vacuum cleaner, they never look as though they could lead you up to the walls of a fortress. Fortinbras, Fortinbras, did you never migrate from Europe?
"What're you thinking about?" Louise asked.
She was standing at his side. "The faces of our Generals," he said. "I don't like them."
"The trouble with you is," Louise said, "you have the enlisted man's psychology."
"How right you are." He stared at Louise. She was wearing a grey plaid suit with a black blouse. Her red hair, bright and severe above the small, elegant body, shone among the uniforms. He never could decide whether he loved Louise or was annoyed with her. She had a husband somewhere in the Pacific of whom she rarely spoke, and she did some sort of semi-secret job for the OWI and she seemed to know every bigwig in the British Isles. She had a deft, tricky way with men, and was always being invited to week-ends at famous country houses where garrulous military men of high rank seemed to spill a great many dangerous secrets to her. Michael was sure, for example, that she knew when D-Day was going to come, and which targets in Germany were to be bombed for the next month, and when Roosevelt would meet Stalin and Churchill again. She was well over thirty, although she looked younger, and before the war had lived modestly in St Louis, where her husband had taught at a college. After the war, Michael was certain, she would run for the Senate or be appointed Ambassadress to somewhere, and when he thought of it, he pitied the husband, mired on Bougainville or New Caledonia, dreaming of going back to his modest home and quiet wife in St Louis.
"Why," Michael asked, smiling soberly at her, conscious that two or three high-ranking officers were watching him stonily as he talked to Louise, "why do you bother with me?"
"I want to keep in touch with the spirit of the troops," Louise said. "The Common Soldier and How He Grew. I may write an article for the Ladies' Home Journal on the subject."
"Who's paying for this party?" Michael asked.
"The OWI," Louise said, holding his arm possessively.
"Better relations with the Armed Forces and our noble Allies, the British."
"That's where my taxes go," Michael said. "Scotch for the Generals."
"The poor dears," Louise said. "Don't begrudge it to them. Their soft days are almost over."
"Let's get out of here," Michael said. "I can't breathe."
"Don't you want a drink?"
"No. What would the OWI say?"
"One thing I can't stand about enlisted men," Louise said, "is their air of injured moral superiority."
"Let's get out of here." Michael saw a British Colonel with grey hair bearing down on them, and tried to get Louise started towards the door, but it was too late.
"Louise," said the Colonel, "we're going to the Club for dinner, and I thought if you weren't busy…"
"Sorry," Louise said, holding lightly on to Michael's arm.
"My date arrived. Colonel Treaner, PFC Whitacre."
"How do you do, Sir," said Michael, standing almost unconsciously at attention, as he shook hands.
The Colonel, he noticed, was a handsome, slender man with cold, pale eyes, with the red tabs of the General Staff on his lapel. The Colonel did not smile at Michael.
"Are you sure," he said rudely, "that you're going to be busy, Louise?"
He was staring at her, standing close to her, his face curiously pale, as he rocked a little on his heels. Then Michael remembered the name. He had heard a long time ago that there was something on between Louise and him, and Mincey, in the office, had once warned Michael to be more discreet when Mincey had seen Louise and Michael together at a bar. The Colonel was not in command of troops now, but was on one of the Supreme Headquarters Planning Boards, and, according to Mincey, was a powerful man in Allied politics.
"I told you, Charles," Louise said, "that I'm busy."
"Of course," the Colonel said, in a clipped, somewhat drunken way. He wheeled, and went off towards the bar.
"There goes Private Whitacre," Michael said softly, "on landing barge Number One."
"Don't be silly," Louise snapped.
"Joke."
"It's a silly joke."
"Righto. Silly joke. Give me my purple heart now." He grinned at Louise to show her he wasn't taking it too seriously.