‘It’s Gold of Ophir sir.’
‘All right I want two dozen sent down to the Brevoort immediately… Miss Elaine… No Mr and Mrs James Herf… I’ll write a card.’
He sat down at the desk with a pen in his hand. Incense of roses, incense out of the dark fire of her hair… No nonsense for Heaven’s sake…
DEAR ELAINE
I hope you will allow an old friend to call on you and your husband one of these days. And please remember that I am always sincerely anxious – you know me too well to take this for an empty offer of politeness – to serve you and him in any way that could possibly contribute to your happiness. Forgive me if I subscribe myself your lifelong slave and admirer
GEORGE BALDWIN
The letter covered three of the florists’ white cards. He read it over with pursed lips, carefully crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. Then he paid the florist from the roll of bills he took from his back pocket and went out into the street again. It was already night, going on to seven o’clock. Still hesitating he stood at the corner watching the taxis pass, yellow, red, green, tangerine-colored.
The snubnosed transport sludges slowly through the Narrows in the rain. Sergeant-Major O’Keefe and Private 1st Class Dutch Robertson stand in the lee of the deckhouse looking at the liners at anchor in quarantine and the low wharfcluttered shores.
‘Look some of em still got their warpaint – Shippin Board boats… Not worth the powder to blow em up.’
‘The hell they aint,’ said Joey O’Keefe vaguely.
‘Gosh little old New York’s goin to look good to me…’
‘Me too Sarge, rain or shine I dont care.’
They are passing close to a mass of steamers anchored in a block, some of them listing to one side or the other, lanky ships with short funnels, stumpy ships with tall funnels red with rust, some of them striped and splashed and dotted with puttycolor and blue and green of camouflage paint. A man in a motorboat waved his arms. The men in khaki slickers huddled on the gray dripping deck of the transport begin to sing
Through the brightbeaded mist behind the low buildings of Governors Island they can make out the tall pylons, the curving cables, the airy lace of Brooklyn Bridge. Robertson pulls a package out of his pocket and pitches it overboard.
‘What was that?’
‘Just my propho kit… Wont need it no more.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Oh I’m goin to live clean an get a good job and maybe get married.’
‘I guess that’s not such a bad idear. I’m tired o playin round myself. Jez somebody must a cleaned up good on them Shippin Board boats.’ ‘That’s where the dollar a year men get theirs I guess.’
‘I’ll tell the world they do.’
Up forward they are singing
‘Jez we’re goin up the East River Sarge. Where the devil do they think they’re goin to land us?’
‘God, I’d be willin to swim ashore myself. An just think of all the guys been here all this time cleanin up on us… Ten dollars a day workin in a shipyard mind you…’
‘Hell Sarge we got the experience.’
‘Experience…’
‘I bet the skipper’s been drinkin beaucoup highballs an thinks Brooklyn’s Hoboken.’
‘Well there’s Wall Street, bo.’
They are passing under Brooklyn Bridge. There is a humming whine of electric trains over their heads, an occasional violet flash from the wet rails. Behind them beyond barges tugboats carferries the tall buildings, streaked white with whisps of steam and mist, tower gray into sagged clouds.
Nobody said anything while they ate the soup. Mrs Merivale sat in black at the head of the oval table looking out through the half-drawn portieres and the drawingroom window beyond at a column of white smoke that uncoiled in the sunlight above the trainyards, remembering her husband and how they had come years ago to look at the apartment in the unfinished house that smelled of plaster and paint. At last when she had finished her soup she roused herself and said: ‘Well Jimmy, are you going back to newspaper work?’
‘I guess so.’
‘James has had three jobs offered him already. I think it’s remarkable.’
‘I guess I’ll go in with the Major though,’ said James Merivale to Ellen who sat next to him. ‘Major Goodyear you know, Cousin Helena… One of the Buffalo Goodyears. He’s head of the foreign exchange department of the Banker’s Trust… He says he can work me up quickly. We were friends overseas.’
‘That’ll be wonderful,’ said Maisie in a cooing voice, ‘wont it Jimmy?’ She sat opposite slender and rosy in her black dress.
‘He’s putting me up for Piping Rock,’ went on Merivale.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why Jimmy you must know… I’m sure Cousin Helena has been out there to tea many a time.’
‘You know Jimps,’ said Ellen with her eyes in her plate. ‘That’s where Stan Emery’s father used to go every Sunday.’
‘Oh did you know that unfortunate young man? That was a horrible thing,’ said Mrs Merivale. ‘So many horrible things have been happening these years… I’d almost forgotten about it.’
‘Yes I knew him,’ said Ellen.
The leg of lamb came in accompanied by fried eggplant, late corn, and sweet potatoes. ‘Do you know I think it is just terrible,’ said Mrs Merivale when she had done carving, ‘the way you fellows wont tell us any of your experiences over there… Lots of them must have been remarkably interesting. Jimmy I should think you’d write a book about your experiences.’
‘I have tried a few articles.’
‘When are they coming out?’
‘Nobody seems to want to print them… You see I differ radically in certain matters of opinion…’
‘Mrs Merivale it’s years since I’ve eaten such delicious sweet potatoes… These taste like yams.’
‘They are good… It’s just the way I have them cooked.’
‘Well it was a great war while it lasted,’ said Merivale.
‘Where were you Armistice night, Jimmy?’
‘I was in Jerusalem with the Red Cross. Isn’t that absurd?’
‘I was in Paris.’
‘So was I,’ said Ellen.
‘And so you were over there too Helena? I’m going to call you Helena eventually, so I might as well begin now… Isn’t that interesting? Did you and Jimmy meet over there?’
‘Oh no we were old friends… But we were thrown together a lot… We were in the same department of the Red Cross – the Publicity Department.’
‘A real war romance,’ chanted Mrs Merivale. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’
‘Now fellers it’s this way,’ shouted Joe O’Keefe, the sweat breaking out on his red face. ‘Are we going to put over this bonus proposition or aint we?… We fought for em didnt we, we cleaned up the squareheads, didnt we? And now when we come home we get the dirty end of the stick. No jobs… Our girls have gone and married other fellers… Treat us like a bunch o dirty bums and loafers when we ask for our just and legal and lawful compensation… the bonus. Are we goin to stand for it?… No. Are we goin to stand for a bunch of politicians treatin us like we was goin round to the back door to ask for a handout?… I ask you fellers…’
Feet stamped on the floor. ‘No.’ ‘To hell wid em,’ shouted voices… ‘Now I say to hell wid de politicians… We’ll carry our campaign to the country… to the great big generous bighearted American people we fought and bled and laid down our lives for.’