IX

Though he had twice been angered by her, John Grandin felt himself obliged, perhaps out of a sense of duty, to discuss Billie as objectively as possible. He and Cliff lay in the shade of the sun umbrella, and they were as much alone together as if they had been on a desert island. Grandin was keenly aware of the intimacy, but for the time being he tried to put it from his mind.

“It’s none of my business, Cliff,” he said, “but there’s something I’ve noticed.”

“What’s that, Johnnie?”

“Well, Billie doesn’t seem to realize the seriousness of what’s ahead for you—or for her. It’s your responsibility to make her realize it.”

Cliff gazed unhappily over the water. “Billie and I—” he said—“we can’t talk about these things, that’s what’s the matter. When I try to, she almost acts like she doesn’t know what the heck I’m talking about. Gosh, I don’t like speaking this way behind her back, but it’s the truth.”

“You must remember, Cliff, your experiences have been different from hers. There is no way for Billie to grasp them.”

“But she doesn’t even take the war seriously, do you know it? I mean Billie doesn’t seem to know what’s going on. When I talk about the war—”

“She feels left out. It’s something she has had no part in. You’ve been away, living an exciting life of your own, and maybe you’re even going back to it.”

“You’re darn right I am, but she acts like she doesn’t believe me at all.”

“She believes you, Cliff. Only—”

“Only what?”

“Perhaps she’d rather not believe. Billie doesn’t want to hear about it. Like many people, she’d rather not know. When something doesn’t fit into their scheme of things, they simply pretend it isn’t so.”

“That’s it! That’s just it, Johnnie,” he said emphatically, astonished that someone else could express for him what he himself hadn’t been able to put into words. “She’d rather not know—Billie doesn’t want to know . . .”

“She’s young, Cliff. You happen to have been through a good deal lately; but Billie— Everything’s been happening to you; nothing to her.” He finished lamely: “You know it isn’t her fault, don’t you?”

Cliff gazed moodily into the surf, his forehead troubled and frowning. “Gee, sometimes I even think—” He broke off, as if disgusted with himself.

“Better not say it.”

Surprised, he turned. “What was I going to say?”

“Some such thing, I suppose, as—that you should have waited till after the war.”

“Gosh, that’s exactly—”

“Well, you mustn’t even think it.”

“I’ve got things to do, darn it,” he said vehemently. “I can’t settle down yet, not while the war is on!”

“I’ve noticed Billie doesn’t believe you’re going to get back into the service. Not even yet.”

“I am, though, I certainly am. I’ve got to!”

“Then”—without even caring, Grandin wondered how much he had any right to be saying this—“then you’ve got to make her accept it and know it. Otherwise, it’s not fair.”

Cliff’s feelings came out in a rush of words. “Johnnie, that’s the whole trouble, that’s the very thing that’s been on my mind, I can’t get rid of it, I simply don’t know what to do about it. You’re right, you’re absolutely right—men understand these things; women don’t. When I tell Billie I’m serious about going back, I run up against the same thing every time. How can I make her believe when she won’t? Like you said, she doesn’t want to. And so we—we talk about something else, or—don’t talk at all. . . .” After a moment he went on again, but in another voice entirely, low and serious: “There only one thing that helps. I love Billie. I’ve always loved her. We used to have swell times together. She’s the best girl I ever had. There’s nobody I’d rather be with. We always had a wonderful time. From the day I went away, we planned to get married. I was the happiest guy in the world to think she’d even have me. And all through boot camp and the ’Canal and the months in the hospital, I thought of Billie and couldn’t wait to get back to her. Well, now we’re married. . . .” He fell into a gloomy silence, then, as if he had nothing more to say.

Grandin felt an infinite sympathy for him and wished he could have been of some help. Life was pretty poorly ordered, he reflected, when all one could do in such a case was stand aside and feel sorry.

“I don’t know, Cliff; it’s your problem,” he said. “But there’s one thing you can do. Why, my lord, you and Billie may be separated for six months, or several years, possibly even forever. You’ve got to make her face it, Cliff. She’s headed for a dreadful unhappiness otherwise. It’s not your fault—your whole interest is taken up with getting back into the service, and I can’t say I blame you. But if you don’t see to it that Billie accepts the fact right off, then I think—and mind you, I don’t like to say this, because you haven’t got a mean hair on your head—I think you’re being very cruel to her. . . .” Then, because this kind of talk was making Cliff uncomfortable, he changed the subject to one nearer his heart. “Tell me about you and Guadalcanal, Cliff. You never have, you know.”

At once Cliff seemed relieved. “You know something,” he said, turning with a charming and touching freshness toward Grandin. “Every night just like clockwork, those rascals came over. Sure as it got to be one o’clock, right on the nose, they’d start slamming down out of the sky. If we got any sleep at all, it was only before one o’clock or after three.”

“What did you do during those hours?”

“Do! There wasn’t anything to do. When we heard the siren we’d scram out of our holes and beat it for the antiaircraft. Then we just stayed there till they went away, that’s all.”

But Grandin was unsatisfied. Here was firsthand experience, yet he was getting nothing out of it. “Didn’t you send up planes yourselves?” he asked.

Cliff laughed, delighted. “Heck, we didn’t have any to send up. We didn’t have anything. Those were the days when we had just moved in, before the Army came or the Navy or anyone else. All we had was what we brought in on our backs. Gee, last night I laughed right out loud, to think how those rascals always waited till we hit the sack before they started coming over. Billie wanted to know what I was laughing at.”

“But when the Japs were overhead—” Grandin urged—“when they were actually dive bombing—what was it really like?”

“Like?”

“For example”—he felt foolish indeed suggesting anything so obvious, but it might lead to some tangible revelation—“there must have been a lot of noise, certainly?”

“I’ll say! There was a heck of a lot of noise. Talk about excitement! But gee, it all happened so quick you didn’t begin to think about it until it was over.”

“Couldn’t you—well, see anything?”

“Nothing but a lot of gun flashes. Of course the searchlights poked around the sky and once in a while they found a plane but most of the time they didn’t. Anyhow it was pretty as— It was very pretty, specially if it was a nice night.”

As he had often realized before, John Grandin noticed again how the man of action seems unable to recapitulate what he has been through. Cliff’s stories consisted largely of great gaps, nothing was really accounted for, nothing narrated, so that one had to ask a dozen questions to find out—and even the questions produced answers which answered nothing. It was almost as if the dramatic things of life (at least for the purposes of “story”) happened to the wrong people; they were seldom able to communicate the event. They did not remember the telling detail which, reproduced, would have made the experience come alive again, recognizable as truth; and if they were unable to call up the significant touch, it may well have been because they had not experienced the thing in any real sense, the sense of getting something out of it—had not, so to speak, been aware of what they had been through. The revealing episode which one recognized as having actually happened without question, and which would have enabled one to identify oneself with the story, was always missing. Perhaps, he reflected, “experience” requires more than experience: perhaps it takes imagination as well.

“I should think that after you’d got settled down,” Grandin suggested, “you’d have been mad as hell for being called out every night?”

“Mad? I don’t know, maybe we were, Johnnie, I can’t remember. But when everything got going at once, we forgot about it. A little excitement never hurt anyone, you know. We were kept so hopping busy we never had time to think whether we were mad or not. Gee, it was fun, in a way. I mean exciting.”

“Fun?”

“Well, I suppose it wasn’t fun, maybe. Maybe that’s the wrong word.” But it was obviously the right one. Cliff’s zest in talking about it told all too plainly that it had been fun, great fun; and that if he were given the choice right now between a night like that and a mild Nantucket evening, there was little doubt as to which he would choose.

Even had he been more articulate, nothing new was to be learned from Cliff’s account. It was a common narrative, nowadays. One read it in every paper, heard it on all sides. Boys home from the fronts told more or less the same thing—one could have anticipated almost everything they had to say, and even, in many cases, told the story better than they did. Why was it, then, that John Grandin listened with such admiration, attention, and interest? He wondered himself why he should be hanging on every word of a recital which, in these times, was by no means unique. One of the things which held him was Cliff’s eagerness to share an experience which the marine knew could never be Grandin’s—and because of which, possibly, he pitied him. In a sense that he was not aware of, Cliff was trying to give him something of his youth, or at least of what it was like to be young in 1943. John Grandin was touched by the effort and the gift, even though they made him feel more remote from Cliff than ever.

“Johnnie,” he said suddenly, “you’re a wonderful guy, do you know it?”

“Why, I—”

“No, I mean it, I really mean it. You can’t imagine what it means to me, Johnnie, to be able to talk about these things. Ever since I came back I’ve been thinking about them a lot. Out there, I don’t think a single thought ever entered my head; but lately—well, what I’ve been through, what all the other guys are going through, it’s something you’ve got to speak of, once in a while. You’re a good listener, Johnnie. I guess that’s why I pick on you.”

“I’m interested, Cliff.”

“I know it, that’s what I feel about you and it means a lot to me.” He scooped up a handful of sand and began pouring it over his knees. “You’re the kind of guy who understands things. I feel I could talk to you about—well, about a lot of things.”

“I’m very flattered, Cliff, but—it probably has little to do with me. You’d find others the same. Don’t you think it’s largely, perhaps, because you haven’t talked with others before?”

“Maybe you’re right, Johnnie, but women—they never understand. When you come right down to it, I guess men are the only ones you can talk with. You even more than most.”

“But we scarcely know each other, Cliff.”

“Gosh, I don’t feel that at all. Do you, Johnnie? It isn’t the first time I’ve wanted to talk,” Cliff said, studying the sand he was filtering through his fingers. “I’ve wished I could talk to you seriously before, but it takes a long while before I begin to make up to people. I mean I’m not the familiar type. I like to judge people awhile before I make up my mind about them.”

Again John Grandin felt the prying inquisitiveness about Cliff’s personal life which he had experienced outside the shower a few days ago and which he knew he had no right to ask about. More than ever, but with a sinking sensation, a helplessness, he felt impelled to ask questions of this sort now. It was an acute discomfort on his part for wanting so unreasonably to know. His compulsive curiosity made him realize—and he didn’t give a damn now—that some sinister process operated within him beyond his control.

“What about your friends on Guadalcanal?” he said. “Didn’t you have some congenial companions you could talk with there—share ideas with?”

“I had some wonderful buddies,” Cliff replied effusively. “But I don’t remember that we ever talked much. But gee, we had some great times! Some of the swellest fellows I ever knew. My best buddy was Walt Farnsworth. He’s a prince, Johnnie, a prince! You couldn’t ask for a better buddy in the world. Jeepers, you should have seen him eat! Why, he could eat more than ten fellows put together. It did you good just to see him stow it away! The amount of chow he put under his belt made you feel good just to watch him. I was crazy about Walt, and you would be too. From the time we shipped out of San Diego, right up to when I was sent back, Walt and I went through everything together, and on leave, boy, the times we had, in Sydney and Melbourne and some of those places!”

Though he remembered too well the rebuke outside the stall shower, John Grandin could not help asking what about Sydney and Melbourne? He knew the danger, but he didn’t care now; recklessly he even hoped Cliff got the idea.

“What about those times,” he asked, “in Sydney and Melbourne?”

“What about them, Johnnie?”

“Did you and Walt— I mean, didn’t you—”

“If you mean did we have a high old time, we sure did. Boy, we had a circus! The food that Walt tucked away, why it would have done your heart good to see it.”

“But what about girls, Cliff?”

“Why do you ask, Johnnie?”

“I suppose I mean, after such isolation on Guadalcanal with the troops, sex must have meant—meant—”

“Oh, sex,” Cliff said with a smile as if they had been talking about nothing more serious than the weather. “Well, I guess sex has its place, but I never thought of it much. Jeepers, you don’t have time. Anyways, isn’t it the same everywhere?”