IX

“Woods Hole—all out!”

In the pleasant confusion that followed, everyone forgot everyone else. The friendships of the journey were abandoned in the business of the moment, the matter of luggage and things to attend to. John Grandin felt a kind of excitement he had not felt in years, the excitement of arriving at a new place. Added to this was the pleasure of knowing that in a few moments, only a very few moments more, he would be seeing Ethel.

The boat was in from New Bedford. Riding high at the end of the pier, sending up great gusts of black smoke into the bright midafternoon air, it shut off all view of the wide seascape and the open sea beyond. Curiously it resembled a piece of stage scenery, a prop boat in an operetta; if one ventured behind the painted canvas, stage hands would be discovered, shooting craps among the slats and ropes. Heedless that it might be illusion, the passengers streamed off to the steamer.

John Grandin stood in the cinder path, waiting. The Boston train was due at any moment. The Howards passed. Catching his glance, Mrs. Howard gave him a meaningless exaggerated shrug, as if in answer to a question she hadn’t quite been able to get—one of those pointless gestures in passing which are yet a kind of social exchange.

Down the track in the opposite direction from which he had come, rolling slowly along under the great willow and cottonwood trees, its chuffing panting engine sending the hanging branches swinging upward, came the train from Boston. With gigantic sighs and groans it rolled to a stop. In the pleasantest agitation, he waited while the passengers climbed down. Seeing that the Nantucket boat was under steam, they hurried along the pier as if they expected the gangplank to be thrown back on the landing at once. Grandin stood watching for his wife. As the crowd thinned out, he was gradually filled with misgiving. Was it possible she had missed connections in Boston? The last of the passengers had left the train; workmen had begun at one end to sweep out. Bitterly disappointed, he looked up helplessly at the empty cars. There was still no Ethel in sight.

Worse than disappointed, he was angry. His chagrin turned at once to anger that Ethel should have been so careless as to miss the train in Boston; it was so unlike her. Now what was he going to do? Wait all night in Woods Hole till the next train in the morning? He gazed miserably at the steamer, its decks crowded to the rail, and felt helpless to decide what ought to be done. It was a bad start for the long-­promised holiday, perhaps even a bad sign—or was there going to be any holiday at all? He could never have anticipated such a turn of events as this; he did not know when he had been so disappointed. Husbandlike, it did not occur to him to worry; his only feeling was one of anger that she had been late in Boston.

Unwilling that anyone should be witness to his disappointment, he turned his back on the steamer, took Ethel’s letter from his book, and pretended to read it, as if looking up some information. At this moment of his exasperation, his wife stepped out from behind the last car. Smiling faintly, she came up the cinder path. All his anger at once fell away as he realized what had happened; in her confusion, she had got off the wrong side of the train.

“I didn’t know,” she said as she came up. “They opened the doors at both sides and—how was I to know?”

He laughed. “Darling, I’m not blaming you. I’m only too glad you’re here at all!”

“Thanks.” As he kissed her, she stiffened slightly, her shoulders back. He knew she had never really liked being kissed in public but he paid no attention and kissed her again.

“If you knew what a bad moment I had, when everyone got off and no Ethel.”

“I’m glad,” she said.

But as they started toward the steamer, he sensed that something was wrong.

He refused to bother his head about it now; there were too many other things to attend to. He was only aware of irritation again because, as always, she had picked a fine moment to be difficult. Maybe he was imagining it. But now he heard her clear her throat. No, he wasn’t imagining anything. There was trouble ahead; and his heart sank as he realized it would be hours and hours before he would even know what the matter was.

He tried a joke. “It isn’t the book, is it?”

“What isn’t the book?”

“After all, I only brought one.”

It didn’t work. Ethel was looking straight ahead at the gangplank and seemed not to have heard. He felt as though he were walking alone.

“Or maybe it’s the new appointment.”

“What new appointment?”

“Really, Ethel.”

“Oh, the appointment. Congratulations!”

He checked their bags with a porter on the lower deck and then they went up the stairway. No band played; there was not even the accordion man he had expected to find, like the one on the Coney Island ferry. The boat was astir with people finding themselves places. Children ran everywhere; even dogs seemed to be on the loose, free and unattended. He found chairs for themselves against the wall of the closed salon on the promenade deck, rather than along the outer rail. Though it was hot here, he was sure it would be breezy enough when the boat sailed.

“How are the boys?”

“Fine. They sent their love to you.”

“Your father and mother?”

“All right.”

The boat was underway. It pushed slowly and silently from the pier, giving the illusion that it was the pier and the mainland that moved off, while they remained stationary. Presently the engines started up more vigorously and a steady but not-­unpleasant throb began to make itself felt throughout the length of the steamer.

“What do you think,” he said. “I found that old rubber-­lined bag we used to carry diapers in. Remember? The canvas one? Thought it might come in handy for wet bathing suits.”

“Good idea.”

He leaned forward and covered her hand with his. “Are you glad to see me?”

“Are you me?”

“Of course! If you knew how I felt, back there, when you didn’t get off with the others.”

“Yes; you said.”

He released her hand. “What’s the idea, Ethel?”

“What’s what idea?”

“Oh Lord.”

The fact that she didn’t protest made him know he was right. Something was wrong. He sat back and looked at her. She wore a smart plain brown suit, a close-­fitting brown hat like a beret, and alligator shoes. Her legs were sleek and attractive in what were probably her only nylons. She did not at all appear to be the mother of two boys, and herself over thirty; but her hazel eyes looked coldly past him and her face was set in an uninviting mask which made her seem, for the moment, far older. She cleared her throat.

“Okay. Tell me, Ethel.”

“Hm?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Why, nothing.”

“I asked what is the matter?”

She opened her bag and drew out matches and a pack of cigarettes; but after several tries in the blowing wind, she said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to light it for me, if you will.” Her Thank you, then, was as clipped and polite as if they had just met for the first time.

An aproned boy came around shouting that the cafeteria below decks was open for business. They were not due to arrive at Dune House till seven-­thirty; probably later, since it was now nearly five o’clock.

“I’ll go down and get some sandwiches,” he said. “What would you like?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“We ought to eat something. It’ll be hours before dinner. Ham? Cheese?”

“I don’t care, anything.”

Standing in line in the corridor below he thought of that habit of hers, the nervous slight clearing-­of-­the-­throat. Ten years of it had taught him what it meant: an “issue” was brewing. It was so characteristic that Ethel herself was unconscious of it, though he had often pointed it out to her. He had ceased doing that, however; there was no sense in giving up a good card; angry as it made him, it was a sign useful to know. His nerves had grown so accustomed to it that when he heard the sound he automatically asked himself, Now what?

Another sign of strain was Ethel’s habit of answering a question with a question, so that when he asked What’s the matter? she invariably answered What? as if she hadn’t heard. Perhaps it gave her time to think—she didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say. Even in the thick of a quarrel he always felt sorry for her: she expressed herself so pointlessly, she was never able to hold up her end of the argument, she burst into tears, walked out of the room, or repeated, parrot-­like, the things he himself had said. Today there was no telling what was wrong. But his conscience was clear; it was something in Ethel’s mind. All he could be sure of was that the boat trip he had been looking forward to was now spoiled for them both.

The small cafeteria was crowded; it was next to impossible to get to the counter. The harassed counterman was having a fine time being put upon by the clamoring crowd. King of the moment, he played favorites, took the orders of the old regulars, and seemed not to hear the demands or pleas of newcomers and unknowns. When he got round to listening to Grandin he merely turned to him, raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes, as if to say, Well who do you think you are? “One ham, one cheese, and two cokes, please,” Grandin said. The counterman turned away with a wearied expression which said, You may get them before we arrive in Nantucket; and then again . . .

Waiting for the order to be filled, Grandin shifted in the pressing crowd and glanced about at the passengers behind him. Farther back, barely inside the room, was the big soldier he had noticed on the train, the one who had offered him his seat. Grandin caught his eye and signaled over the heads of the crowd to ask what it was he wanted; he could save him the trouble of fighting his way through to the counter. The tanned face lit up; he called out in a loud stage whisper, “One ham, one cheese, two cokes.” Grandin was curiously pleased; and as he engaged the attention of the snooty counterman and doubled the order, it occurred to him—and again he was pleased by the thought—that the young man had already found a girl.

When he emerged into the open space of the lower deck, the soldier, all smiles, was waiting for him, his money in his hand. He seemed almost unreasonably delighted and grateful; the small kindness scarcely merited such effusive thanks. Grandin pushed the money aside and said, “Forget it.” The soldier took the tray with the sandwiches and cokes in one hand, and with the other he clasped Grandin’s arm in an impulsive friendly gesture.

“Come over here a minute, sir. I want you to meet my wife.”

There was no reason why he should not have been prepared for this, but Grandin could only be surprised. The soldier, gripping his arm familiarly, led him to a chair at the foot of the stairway. Here sat a dreamy-­eyed young woman, rather colorless, yet extremely beautiful. The young man said, “Billie, I want you to meet— I mean, this is my wife, sir: Mrs. Hauman.”

Grandin bowed and was about to say how-­do-­you-­do when the girl got up from her chair and exclaimed: “Why Mr. Grandin—hello!”

He was dumbfounded then to discover that the girl had been one of his students in the semester just ended. “Of course,” he said, anxious to recover his error, “you are Miss—you were Miss—”

“Cowles,” she said, and smiled. “I’m not surprised. You never could remember my name in class, could you, the whole year . . .”

It was worse than that. Try as he did to make the name register, she had never made any impression on him whatever, except to this effect: she was the one student in the entire class whose name he had never been able to bring to mind. Luckily, the fact that he had again forgotten seemed lost on her husband, for whom Miss Cowles must have been The Only Girl In The World.

The soldier was joyous that his wife and this man should have known each other as student and professor. At once he busied himself to find another chair and suggested that they sit down and eat their sandwiches together. His eager hospitality gave the occasion the festive air of a party, a mood that Grandin was reluctant to break up by explaining that his wife was waiting on the upper deck. With some misgivings (he remembered Miss Cowles only too well now), he invited the Haumans instead to join him and Ethel. They accepted with such alacrity that he could only be surprised again, this time because of their willingness to spend the voyage across in company with a pair of strangers. For strangers they were, regardless of the fact that he and Miss Cowles (or Mrs. Hauman) had spent a good part of that year facing each other over a classroom desk.

Going up the stairway it occurred to him that he had made a serious mistake. Not only would the presence of these young people prove to be a long and tiresome bore, but also Ethel was certain to suspect a motive: he was taking refuge in the company of strangers in order to avoid or put off the issue of their quarrel. If she thought such a thing, he was hardly to blame; heaven knew he had tried hard enough to bring it out, whatever it was.

Soon they were eating their sandwiches on the windy upper deck, sitting back in their chairs and maintaining the appearance of a group of friends enjoying themselves. Hauman alone did not sit back. With his big hands clasped together and his elbows on his knees, he sat on the edge of the small folding chair, which miraculously did not collapse under him, and leaned forward eagerly into the group.

“Well, Miss Cowles”—Grandin had made an effort to remember the name—“I didn’t know you were a married woman.”

“Please say Billie,” she said, and then added, “I wasn’t. Cliff and I were only married yesterday.”

“Oh,” Ethel said, “so this is a honeymoon. Congratulations, Mr. Hauman!”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“In fact,” Billie went on, “Cliff is the reason why I guess I didn’t pay much attention in class the last few months. I guess I even missed whole lectures, didn’t I?”

“I—yes, I believe there were a few times I was obliged to mark you absent. . . .”

But she was paying no attention. She smiled artificially at the Grandins, just as artificially at her husband, and desperately tried to keep herself together and her large white hat from being blown away. A strong breeze blew in from the sea and tore at everything loose it could find. The dying corsage on her white-­silk frock swung back and forth; she clutched at it to prevent its being ripped from her dress. Her hair blew about her eyes so that she was obliged to keep her fingers to her forehead in order to see. The full skirt whipped about her knees, adding a tiny fluttering tremolo to the general noise of the wind.

Ethel kept up an amiable conversation with the Haumans. Under the circumstances, Grandin marveled at his wife’s ability to do this; the more so because she had no gift for small talk. Though inwardly troubled by he knew not what, she was yet able to maintain the social conventions as if nothing was the matter. With him, Ethel was a poor dissembler, unable to mask her feelings; to strangers, even to friends, she presented a front that revealed nothing of herself. Further, she showed an interest in the Haumans which he knew, in view of their quarrel, she could not really feel, except for the irresistible fact that they were honeymooners. He was grateful to her for this; it absolved him from the responsibility of taking part, for he soon discovered that he had no grounds for conversation with them.

Billie was as pretty as a picture; an apt description, since it said everything about her that was to be said. Her husband was painfully polite, seemingly without character or mind, and so awkward on the edge of the small camp chair that it made Grandin uncomfortable to look at him. He was truly a giant, six-­feet-­two or -­three, and heavily built: enormous shoulders, large head, blond curling hair, blue eyes—the athlete, the American idol, uninteresting. The face was handsome, but curiously without anything in it, besides radiant health, to hold one’s interest. The only features not in keeping with the magazine-­cover type were the blond curls, which were a little too long at the back of the neck, and the incongruous way his baby mouth turned up at the corners, so that Hauman resembled a cross between a Bacchus and a Cupid by Rubens.

As Grandin was dismissing this unsuitable notion, he heard Ethel ask what was the meaning of the little silver bars on his shirt collar; and for the first time, he noticed these bars himself.

“That’s my rank, ma’am,” Hauman said. The tone was almost apologetic.

“Cliff’s a captain,” Billie volunteered, “in the Marines.”

This announcement was little short of astonishing to John Grandin, but Hauman seemed uncomfortable about the whole business. He was extraordinarily attentive and eager to please, but as soon as attention was turned on himself he seemed to withdraw.

“I don’t blame you for not knowing,” Billie said. “Cliff has the most beautiful uniforms but he never wears them, not even the Marines’ emblem—and none of those stunning service ribbons. He says he doesn’t have to when he’s on leave. I get so mad. All he ever wears is shirt and pants. I wish you could see his hats. He has the most thrilling hats.”

“Caps,” he said.

“Don’t you wear a cap?” Ethel asked.

“This, ma’am.” He pulled from his pocket a plain overseas cap, marked like his collar with double silver bars; like everything about him, it was immaculately clean and fresh.

“Are you on furlough, Captain?”

“No, ma’am. Sick list.”

“He doesn’t look very sick, does he?” Billie said.

“I should think not. For a few weeks?”

Somewhat sheepishly, Captain Hauman admitted he had been on the sick list for over half a year.

It came out then that he had been on Guadalcanal from the first landing, went through the worst of it under the earliest and worst conditions, had been wounded last December, flown out by ambulance plane when he was well enough to be moved, and then returned by ship to San Diego, where he had spent a long recuperation. The nature of the injuries, how he had got them and where, under what conditions, he didn’t say—his modesty amounted almost to a phobia—but he was now almost entirely fit again, he said; and certainly he looked it. He returned home to Bridgeport only a week ago and yesterday married Billie Cowles, whom he had known slightly in high school, gone with later, and looked forward to coming back to throughout all of Guadalcanal. He had been an enlisted marine since the month he was graduated in 1941 from Syracuse University—where, Grandin suspected, he had most certainly been a football hero. Since that time he had risen in two years to the rank of captain at the age of twenty-­four. To Grandin, who was so often struck by the maturity of the young, this seemed an early age indeed. It spoke of Hauman’s qualities as a soldier and a leader—as a young man fitted for today. In the presence of this marine captain almost half his age, John Grandin began to feel, strangely, the younger of the two.

It was ironical now to recall the young paratrooper who had sat all day in the smoker entertaining the men with stories of his training at a Georgia camp, while Hauman, who could have held them enthralled, had not opened his mouth; but Grandin found his mind turning to other things. He wondered ruefully what he had written—or not written—in his last letter to Maine. . . .

Plied by Ethel with polite questions, Hauman began to reveal a good deal about his background. As he himself seemed to emphasize, he was definitely up-­from-­the-­ranks. It wasn’t entirely Grandin’s fault that he had got the impression Hauman didn’t belong on a luxury train. By his manner, he insisted he was from a working-­class family; that he and his wife should have had reservations on the Pullman was because of their honeymoon. Further, the suspicion about the football hero was correct; he had won a scholarship at Syracuse on the strength of his athletic talents and physique. During his four years, however, he had declined the easy life that went with such a scholarship, preferring instead to earn his room and board by waiting on table, wrapping bundles before dawn for one of the city’s newspapers, tending furnaces. In high school he had worked as a soda jerker and at the same time kept house for his widowed father. “My daddy’s a carpenter. He’s a wonderful man,” he said. “I’m first-­generation American, because my daddy’s a Hollander.”

A couple came by. The man peered frowningly at the foursome and then smiled and saluted; a most amiable and friendly smile. It was the Howards. As they passed on, Mrs. Howard was heard to say: “I never saw so many dogs and children in my life, my god.”

While her husband talked, Billie Hauman seemed indifferent, even bored. She listened with a vague smile, and though her eyes constantly sought her husband’s, it was clear that her mind was not on him. She was languorous, indolent, all but drowsy; which was hardly to be wondered at if last night had been her wedding night. It turned out that this was what she was thinking of.

“We had such a lovely wedding,” she said to Ethel, with a sigh very like homesickness. “The bridesmaids wore yellow. Weren’t they nice, Cliff? Didn’t you think Marion looked just darling?” Her smile was more lazy and languorous than ever, her eyes half closed. “Queer to think of it now. Just last month I had my room done over at home. And now I’m going to move out. Really it looks awful nice, doesn’t it Cliff. I just love it. . . .”

“Seems funny to be sitting on a steamer like this,” Hauman said, “without plane cover or protection. Not a plane in sight.”

“Really, that’s all they can talk about,” Billie said. “They all the time have to talk about the war.”

“Well gee, Billie honey, there is a war on.”

“Still, other people have other things to talk about, occasionally.”

Hauman smiled pleasantly. “Billie seems to think the war is something that’s happening on the front page of the papers and nowhere else. I almost think she doesn’t believe it.”

“I believe it all right. Why wouldn’t I, with you in uniform, and wounded—maybe even going back one of these days. But honestly,” she said to Ethel, “Cliff follows the war like my brothers and dad follow sports. He knows who all the generals are on all the fronts, in Africa and Alaska and I don’t know where-­all.”

“Are you going back?” Ethel asked.

“Yes, ma’am, you bet I am. Just as soon as I can.”

“When will that be?”

“Well, I’m not sure, ma’am. But as soon as this honeymoon’s over, I report in Brooklyn for another physical. They’ll check me over to see if I can get back in. Oh, I can, all right. They don’t think so, but I’m just as good as anyone else.”

“You do look it,” Ethel said; and her husband could not but agree. He believed he had never seen such a strikingly fit physical specimen in his life.

“Cliff could get an honorable discharge just like that,” Billie said. “But he won’t take it. Sometimes I think—well . . .”

“Now honey,” he said, and he smiled charmingly at Ethel. “Billie doesn’t mean it, ma’am, but just to tease me she says I think more of the Marine Corps than I do of her. She doesn’t seem to realize—well, that—”

“That what,” Billie challenged. “You see? He can’t explain it himself.”

“Well gee, what can a fellow do?” He touched Grandin’s sleeve. “That’s a nice jacket, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so. My daddy would look nice in that. Wouldn’t he, Billie?” He fingered the tweed. “My daddy loves nice jackets.”

“Do you know something, Mrs. Grandin? All the time Cliff was in San Diego in the hospital, he never once let me go out there to see him. And he was there since last December.”

“Billie could never get it through her head, ma’am, why I didn’t want her hanging around San Diego. What would she do out there, with no friends, and me in the hospital? San Diego is no place for a young girl.” The childish mouth broke into a winning smile. “Anyhow, I came home to you, didn’t I—Mrs. Hauman?”

Billie turned away with a blush. “Did you know there’s going to be a full moon, Mrs. Grandin? I looked it up.”

“Yes, we heard.”

“In fact that’s why we chose this time for our honeymoon, isn’t it Cliff? On account of the full moon. . . .”