Saigon: A Novel Part 17

They had met at a Baltimore exhibition of oriental art only a week or two after Joseph's return from Saigon and he had found her warm, uncomplicated American nature soothing after the emotional turmoil he had suffered in Asia. The daughter of a devout North Carolina lawyer, who had christened her two sisters Faith and Charity, she had been entranced by the Shermans' Queen Anne plantation home on her first visit to Charles County; she had sighed over the grandeur of the Great Hall and the sweeping staircase of carved walnut, claimed to be able to identify Joseph's ears and nose in the gilt-framed portraits of nine generations of Shermans on its paneled walls, and had charmed his father into allowing her to spend her first night in the creaking four poster in which the family maintained General Robert E. Lee had slept during numerous visits as a young man.

Although Joseph had never admitted it, the simple charm of her enthusiasm for Virginia's golden age - which for him had paled rapidly as his fascination with the ancient Orient grew - had influenced him deeply in his decision to propose marriage to her. At a loose end after completing the ma.n.u.script of his book on the tributary states in June 1936, he had reluctantly taken over the running of the plantation estate at his father's suggestion - "just for a year or two" - so that the senator could devote himself more fully to political duties in Was.h.i.+ngton. Tempe, as his wife was affectionately known in the family, had just completed her law studies and had been thrilled at the prospect of becoming first lady in one of Virginia's most elegant and historic houses; they had been married in the late summer of that year in a lavish ceremony on the lawns overlooking a spectacular sweep of the James River and the senator, because of the warmth of his feelings for Tempe, had made the wedding the social event of the year, hiring two bands and inviting many leading political figures from Was.h.i.+ngton. Joseph had been uncomfortably aware at the time that the deep pangs of misery he suffered in his return from Indochina had influenced him to make a hasty marriage, but he had never spoken to her of the past and as the months and years slipped by, his painful memories had gradually faded from his mind.

Their first son, Gary, had been born a year later, the thirty-fifth Sherman of the male line to have begun life in the old plantation house, and while Joseph's energies were absorbed mastering the unfamiliar day-to-day problems of managing the estate and its crops. Tempe threw herself with relish into the task of organizing the small army of black domestic servants who still ordered the social and domestic life of Virginians of their cla.s.s. Although Joseph had felt a restlessness stir within him occasionally as their life settled into unchanging routines, the five years of marriage had been marked generally by a quiet contentment, and both he and Tempe had been delighted by the birth of their second son, Mark, in the early autumn of 1941.

The first reports of an ominous j.a.panese military buildup around Saigon that reached the United States in early November had made Joseph realize suddenly that a year or two had gone by without his giving any thought at all to his blighted love affair with the beautiful Annamese girl. Then mental images of j.a.pan marching her modern military legions through the ancient lands where he had once felt so enraptured by the past made him wonder how Lao and her family night be faring. Had she married Paul Devraux after all? Had they continued to live in Saigon? And if they were still there, how was Paul himself faring, soldiering under the tutelage of the j.a.panese? Such thoughts drifted in and out of his mind throughout that autumn, hut the pa.s.sage of time seemed to have dulled his interest and he told himself that what he felt was no more than curiosity for people and events that could no longer affect his own Life.

Like everybody else, however, he had been stunned by the momentous events of that first Sunday in December. News of the blazing, broken s.h.i.+ps and dying sailors, coming over the radio just after he and his family had finished a leisurely lunch in their paneled dining room, had made him and all other Americans realize suddenly that the vast empty wastes of the Pacific could no longer protect them from the spreading turmoil of war in Asia. Throughout that Sunday he anti Tempe had discussed their apprehensions in hushed tones so that their small son, Gary, shouldn't hear, hut it wasn't until Joseph sat listening to his father talk pugnaciously on the floor of the Senate about retaliation that he became fully aware of what his true reaction had been all along a subdued sense of elation!

The raid on Pearl Harbor would force America to carry the war deep into Asia, and instinctively he knew his own involvement would be inevitable. The war would almost certainly take him back to the continent whose history had fascinated him for so long, and the surge of pleasure he experienced at the prospect made him appreciate clearly for the first time just how unsatisfying his rural existence had become. This sudden awareness of his true feelings made him blush inwardly, arid he glanced quickly at Tempe, fearing that something of these guilty thoughts might have showed on his face. But his wife, to his relief, remained oblivious; she had already turned her attention back to his father, who still held the floor below them.

For a long time j.a.pan has been swaggering around Asia looking for war, but now, Mr. President, let j.a.pan be in no doubt she's got a real war on her hands! The United States is well on the way to securing a navy that will dominate two oceans, and an air corps that will command an all-skies airplane fleet. By attacking Hawaii, j.a.pan probably hoped to keep us on the defense at home. But we can tell j.a.pan loud and clear from this chamber today, Mr. President: 'We will not stay at home - and we will not stay on the defense!'"

Once more Nathaniel Sherman paused lengthily to heighten the impact of his words, and in the sudden silence it became clear that the entire Senate and the public gallery had fallen under the spell of his skillful oratory. For a moment he gazed around the chamber, nodding his head fiercely. "Let there be no mistake, Mr. President," he continued at last, speaking more quietly than before. "This war is our war now - and not only in Asia. We will have to fight in Europe too - and we'll win in both arenas. Today we announce: 'The American people are going to take hold, and when they're finished there'll be a new order. This order for the marauding nations will be: Keep the international law! Maintain the peace of the world! Dismiss your robber bands! Get back to the confines of your own country-and stay there!'"

He sat down abruptly as he finished speaking and stared belligerently towards the United States flag behind the vice- president. From the public gallery there was scattered applause, and even the senator from Texas, who had ceded the floor so reluctantly, nodded approvingly in Nathaniel Sherman's direction. Murmurs of support rose from all sides of the chamber until the vice-president politely ordered the resolution to be read again and put the formal question "Shall it pa.s.s?" Without further comment the roll was called, and after Senator Sherman had recorded his "yea" he was the first to rise from his desk. As he limped along the aisle towards the exit, silence fell briefly on the Senate, as though the sight of his disfigured body had a hypnotic effect on all those present. The swing door rocked back and forth on its hinges for a moment or two after he had gone, and the tap of his cane was clearly audible in the hushed chamber as his footsteps receded slowly along the tiled pa.s.sageway outside.

2.

The chill afternoon wind sweeping across the West Front terrace of the Capitol plucked fractiously at the flaps of their heavy winter topcoats as Tempe, Joseph and Guy waited for the senator. Against the leaden, overcast sky the cream stonework of the majestic rotunda seemed to glow with its own inner luminosity, and although there were several hours of winter daylight left, the black wrought-iron lamps on the stone bal.u.s.trades facing the Mall were already beginning to flicker into life.

"Daddy certainly knows how to make a fine speech, doesn't he?" said Guy excitedly, hopping from foot to foot to keep warm.

"He not only knows how - he always knows where and when to do it to achieve the greatest impact for himself," replied Joseph acidly. "That one was more contrived than most."

Guy's sixteen-year-old face crinkled in puzzlement as he studied his elder brother's face. "Why is it, Joseph," he asked in a troubled voice, "that you always seem to go out of your way to put Daddy down?"

Joseph continued gazing along the Mall in the direction of the presidential memorials, his eyes narrowed against the stinging wind. "Let's just say, Guy, that I'm not so starry-eyed as you are in general about politics and politicians"

The young boy continued to stare at him in consternation for a moment, then hearing the unmistakable tap of a can on the flagstones, shrugged and turned away.

"Did you enjoy that fighting speech from a winded old warhorse, young fella?" Nathaniel Sherman clapped Guy affectionately on the back and winked broadly at him. "Do you think we made the Sherman family viewpoint clear enough?"

"It was just wonderful, Daddy," replied the sixteen-year-old, falling into step beside him as they started down towards the broad greensward of the Mall.

The senator glanced more circ.u.mspectly at Joseph, aware that his silence implied a hint of criticism. "It was nice to see you in the gallery again, Joseph," he said quietly. "It's a few years since you've been up there, isn't it?"

Joseph nodded grimly without looking at his father. "I guess today's a special enough occasion to break old habits, whatever they may be."

"We all admired your address very much," broke in Tempe quickly, moving close to the senator and kissing him on the cheek. "It was quite uncanny - you seemed to say just what was on everybody's lips."

He stopped and patted her hand affectionately. "Thank you, my dear. You always manage to make my battered old heart feel young again."

As the four of them hurried on down the broad terrace of steps side by side, Joseph stole a quick glance at his father. His eyes still glittered brightly from the excitement generated by his speech in the Senate, and Joseph found himself wondering again at the eager, almost adolescent relish with which he still grasped every opportunity to steal the limelight. The terrible visible mutilation he had suffered in the hunting accident might have encouraged a different man to shun public life, lie reflected, but his father, he was sure now, never had any compunction about exploiting for his own ends the sympathy his appearance invariably provoked.

On his return from Saigon five years before, Joseph had felt an angry compulsion to confront him over the accident that had caused Chuck's death; but somehow the sight of the disfiguring injuries themselves had always proved too daunting, and in the end he had never been able to bring himself to speak of what he had learned from Ngo Van Loc and Jacques Devraux. As they descended in silence toward Union Square, Joseph turned Guy's mystified question over in his mind and concluded uneasily that perhaps his own lack of courage had helped harden his hostile att.i.tude towards his father and made him more inclined to avoid his company. His mother had been glad to move to Georgetown completely as soon as he and Tempe took over the running of the plantation house, and since then he had seen his parents on no more than two or three occasions each year.

Do you think the j.a.panese will really invade California, Dad? I heard on the radio there was a rumor going around out there in the West that they already had."

Guy's voice broke into Joseph's thoughts, jerking him back to the present. They were pa.s.sing the mounted statue of Ulysses S. Grant on Union Square, and all four of them were dwarfed by the life-sized bronze figures of Grant and a group of Civil War soldiers frozen in a moment of fear as they struggled with their plunging horses and a wheeled cannon. Nathaniel Sherman stopped suddenly beside the ma.s.sive statues and turned back to look at the Capitol; the red, white and blue United States flag strained at its staff in the high wind, furling arid unfurling spectacularly against the background of the pillared dome, and Joseph saw his father's mouth tighten with emotion.

"n.o.body knows exactly what this war will bring, Guy," he said after a moment's thought. "It might change all our lives before it's finished. I hope it'll be all over before you're old enough to have to fight in it - but if it isn't, never forget that we're the inheritors of many great traditions." He turned to look westward along the Mall towards the slender stone needle of the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument. "We've been tested many times before and we've never been found wanting. But maybe our greatest test is coming now. All these symbols around us here in the heart of our capital, remember, should help to stir us to defend that proud heritage."

He was off immediately he had spoken, stumping along quickly with the aid of his cane beneath the flailing branches of the plane trees, his head forward, his shoulders hunched into the driving wind. Tempe and his two sons had to walk fast to keep up with him, and he didn't slacken his pace until they reached the Sherman Field Museum of Natural History standing in the shadow of the red sandstone towers of the Gothic castle which housed the headquarters of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution. Built in the style of a Florentine Renaissance palace, the Sherman Field Museum's rounded arches and simple bal.u.s.trades of rose-white Tennessee marble harmonized with the pink granite of the adjoining Freer Gallery of Art finished a year earlier in 1923, and on its western side gleaming new stonework indicated that a further wing had been added recently. Although separately financed by a Sherman family trust, the museum, like the others ranged along the Mall, had been placed under the Smithsonian's administrative control, and when the senator and his sons entered the building they found half-a-dozen prominent members of the inst.i.tution's board of regents among the crowd of distinguished guests gathered inside. Nathaniel Sherman greeted them all by their first names, then acknowledged the chief justice, three or four other senators and half-a-dozen congressmen with quick handshakes as he pa.s.sed through the throng. A tiny rostrum had been set up beside a broad ribbon strung across the entrance to the museum's new west wing, and beyond it the black bulk of a huge African bush elephant was visible, standing on a central pedestal with Its trunk and forelegs raised in a posture of raging aggression. Above the entrance arch to the new galleries letters spelling out "The Charles Sherman Memorial Wing" had been inscribed in gilded Gothic script.

An attendant helped Nathaniel Sherman off with his coat, and a little ripple of applause greeted him when he stepped up onto the rostrum. "Ladies and gentlemen, when we set the date or the opening of this new wing of the Sherman Museum six months ago, none of us knew what a dark day it would turn out to be for America," he said, his expression grim and unsmiling. "But I saw no point in postponing our little ceremony, and I thank you all for attending in this time of deep national crisis.. . . Most of you know that when my father died in 1922 he made a bequest with which the Sherman Museum was founded. Since then it has proved itself a valuable adjunct to the bigger Smithsonian Museum of Natural History that faces us across the Mall. As a field museum we've always concentrated on the collection and exhibition of rare wild animals and many of you will be aware that in making some of the early collections my family suffered a tragic loss in the jungles of Indochina He stopped speaking and dropped his eyes to the lectern for an instant, although he was speaking without notes. "That's why ladies and gentlemen, these new galleries are dedicated to the memory of my late son, Charles. When he died on the threshold of life he showed great promise for the future and his untimely death was, I believe, a loss not only to his family but also to our country. He had high political ambitions and a strong desire to serve the nation, but first and foremost he was a young man of great courage and a fine huntsman and he was responsible for collecting many of the animals which visitors to the museum over the past sixteen years have enjoyed seeing."

He hesitated again, and when he looked up, those standing closest to the rostrum could see that his eyes had become suddenly damp. "Many of you present here today will know that I sustained my own injuries in the accident which cost Chuck his life. And, ladies and gentlemen, I've not missed him less as the years have gone by. It was this continuing sense of loss that decided me to pay an added tribute to his memory in the shape of a composite tableau of the finest animals he shot in Indochina. The exhibits have been gathered together for the first time in the wing named for him, and they const.i.tute a public memorial to his courage and skill."

He paused again and beamed at the family group where Joseph stood with Tempe, his mother, Guy and his sister, Susannah. "This, ladies and gentlemen, I should add, I've been keeping as a little surprise until now - even my family didn't know about the new tableau. But all of them were as fond and as proud of Chuck as I was -- and will, I hope, share my pride that an appropriate permanent tribute has at last been set up to his memory." The senator picked up a pair of ceremonial scissors and stepped down from the rostrum. "So it gives me great pleasure to declare open the new Charles Sherman Memorial Wing of this museum.'

Polite applause swelled from the gathering as the senator snipped through the tape, and uniformed waiters appeared immediately bearing trays of drinks and canapes. But Joseph brushed past them without accepting anything and hurried ahead of the crowd into the new gallery. In front of the memorial tableau he stopped and stared numbly at the huge black seladang bull which had killed his brother; its long murderous horns were lowered in an att.i.tude of attack, its cloven hooves pawed the jungle floor, and two ferocious blue eyes glared out through the gra.s.s at his feet. The red banteng bull which Chuck had dropped from two hundred yards with a single shot the day before he died stood with its head raised in anger on one side of the seladang, and on its other flank the buffalo Joseph himself had spotted when he climbed a tree held its great scimitar-shaped horns belligerently low, ready to charge. A realistic riverside background of plain and jungle had been constructed around the animals, and in the gra.s.s by the seladang's feet a bra.s.s plaque announced: "Charles Sherman, at the age of twenty-one, courageously sacrificed his life to kill this prime example of a male seladang during a collecting expedition for the Sherman Field Museum of Natural History in the jungles of Cochin-China in 1925. The buffalo and banteng exhibited in this special memorial tableau, both fine bull animals in their prime, were also shot by the same hunter."

As Joseph stared down at the seladang, a terrible image of his brother thras.h.i.+ng in his death throes beneath its horns filled his mind, and he closed his eyes to blot out the sight of the animal. At that moment he felt a hand on his sleeve and he turned to find his mother standing pale-faced beside him.

"How could he do such a thing?" asked Joseph in an incredulous whisper.

For a moment Flavia Sherman didn't reply. In her mid-fifties, there was little trace left of the radiant beauty she had possessed at the time of her visit to Saigon; the birth of Guy in early middle age had taken a heavy physical toll on her, and her thickened figure had never regained its earlier grace. Her features too had slackened and bore the dull, withdrawn expression of one long since resigned to living in retreat inside her own thoughts and confidences. As she stared at the tableau, her mouth twisted with distaste and Joseph realized with alarm that she was on the point of tears.

"It's a shrine to masculine violence, Joseph," she said, speaking in a barely audible voice. "And to your father's foolish male pride -it's not a memorial to Chuck at all."

Joseph took her arm gently to comfort her and, glancing up, he saw his sister, Susannah, approaching quickly, carrying two gla.s.ses. Clear-skinned and as lovely in the flower of her womanhood as her mother had been in her own youth, she was already staring at the stuffed animals, and a worried frown clouded her face. From their expressions she realized instinctively how they felt about the tableau, and seeing tears in her mother's eyes, she turned her head anxiously in her father's direction; flanked by Guy and Susannah's politely attentive husband, Nathaniel Sherman was gesturing with his cane towards the African elephant on its central pedestal and smiling with pleasure as he headed in their direction.

"For glory's sake, Joseph, don't say anything to him here in public," pleaded Susannah quietly, handing her mother one of the gla.s.ses and taking her elbow to guide her away. "We must all bite our tongues for Daddy's sake. He doesn't mean badly."

Joseph took several paces backward across the gallery and pretended to scrutinize the tableau from a distance through half-closed eyes; he watched his father lead Guy and Susannah's husband to the gla.s.s and begin talking animatedly about the dead animals, gesticulating every now and again with his cane. Guy stood close to the senator, obviously hanging on his every word, and seeing them together like this against the vivid green jungle backdrop made Joseph stare. For a moment he didn't fully understand why; then he realized it was the tall, erect bearing of his younger brother. Beside the hunched figure of the senator, Guy seemed to stand ramrod straight, and Joseph suddenly saw again the square-shouldered figure of Paul Devraux striding away into the crowds of the Rue Catinat in his captain's uniform, saw too Jacques Devraux riding proudly upright at the head of their pony train as they trekked into the jungle. His younger brother's dark head contrasted vividly with the snowy white hair of the senator, and the smoldering resentment rose up suddenly within him with renewed force. Searching quickly among the crowd, Joseph found Tempe, seized her by the arm and without offering any explanation hurried her out of the museum into the windswept December afternoon.

3.

In the chauffeur-driven limousine that took them to Union Station, Joseph sat apart from his wife in one corner of the back seat, staring out at the grandiose buildings of official Was.h.i.+ngton without really seeing them. Even after they were settled in their seats on the Richmond train he remained silent, and Tempe, sensing that he wished to be left alone with his thoughts, didn't venture to question him; instead she got on quietly with the woolen shawl she was crocheting for their baby son. Sometimes she caught him watching the little ivory crochet hook abstractedly as she worked the wool, and whenever their eyes met she smiled quietly at him. But these gestures of sympathy did nothing to soften his mood, and the train was approaching Richmond through the gathering darkness of the wintry afternoon before he finally spoke.

"I'm sorry, Tempe," he said, reaching out to take her hand in a conciliatory gesture, "I just couldn't stay in that gallery a moment longer."

"I know." She smiled fondly and put down her work. "You've never liked the museum, have you? It brings back too many unhappy memories, doesn't it?"

He stared at her, surprised by her intuitive understanding of his feelings. "How did you know that? We've never talked about it."

"We've only been there once before together. I made you take me soon after we met the moment I discovered you were one of those famous museum Shermans, don't you remember? You explained everything very politely, but even then you looked uneasy -just as you did this afternoon when we went in."

"1 suppose it brings back the memory of Chuck's death too vividly - but I didn't know I was that transparent."

"You're not transparent - you just underestimate the power of female in tuition." She covered his hands with both her own. "I have a feeling it wasn't just the war and your father's insensitivity that made it worse today She hesitated and dropped her eyes. "I think perhaps, Joseph, those animals help to remind you of something else too, don't they?"

"What do you mean?"

"When I first met: you, you'd just come back from Indochina. You were tense and fretful for a long time - even for a while after we were married."

"The Frenchman who took us hunting on our first trip was killed while I was there," replied Joseph hastily. "I think it upset me more than I knew at the time. It probably helped open the old wound of Chuck's accident - that's all it was."

Tempe let go of his hand and took up her crochet-work once more. "I sometimes wondered, Joseph, if you'd had an unhappy love affair."

For a second or two he gazed at her in astonishment. "How did you guess?"

She frowned and bent her head suddenly to unravel a snag in one of the loops of the shawl. "There's only one thing that makes a man behave the way you did, Joseph. I didn't ask you about it then because it wasn't any business of mine what had happened before we met. But I often used to feel your thoughts were far away. And since we left the museum this afternoon, it's been like that again - as if I'd lost you somehow."

Joseph stared at her, perplexed, aware that she had put her finger on a truth he'd previously refused to admit, even to himself.

"Do you mind talking about her?"

Joseph turned away quickly to look out of the window. "It was all such a long time ago."

"Who was she?"

"An Annamese girl - a mandarin's daughter in Saigon."

"Was she in love with you?"

Joseph shook his head uncertainly, still gazing blankly at his own reflection in the darkened window. "No, I don't think she was."

"But you loved her?"

"Perhaps 1 did - I don't really know anymore." He shook his head again and sighed loudly. "But I guess you're right, I did let her get under my skin for a while."

Tempe succeeded in righting the faulty st.i.tch, and Joseph watched her hands resume their rhythmic movements in her lap.

"Did you make love with her?"

She half whispered the question, and for a moment he continued staring at her moving hands as though hypnotized. "No, I didn't," he said slowly. "Annamese mandarin families are very strict about those sort of things."

Tempe didn't look up, and Joseph felt the rocking motion of the train begin to change as they slowed on the approach to Richmond. "Let's just forget all about it, shall we?" he said, standing to put on his coat. "It's all in the past. We've got enough to worry about now with Pearl Harbor."

As they drove down the mile-long drive flanked by tall poplars, the lights of the tall Queen Anne plantation house were visible through the misty darkness. Inside the front hail the smiling black nursemaid for the children who greeted them a.s.sured them that their sons were peacefully asleep, but Tempe nevertheless ran up the great curved walnut staircase to look into the nursery. When she came down again to join him in the paneled dining room her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears.

"The sweetest sound in the world, Joseph, is the whisper of a sleeping child's breath," she said softly. "I can't bear to think our happiness might be spoiled by the war."

He switched on the radio in his study while she was upstairs and he nodded absently in reply as he listened to the voice of a newscaster reporting details of the new j.a.panese invasion of Hong Kong and Malaya. In Europe the Russians were claiming to have repulsed Hitler's forces around Rostock, but fifty German divisions were still reported to be pressing around Moscow. Not until her shoulders began to shake did he notice she was crying, and then he put a comforting arm around her. They stood listening to the news together for several minutes before he signaled for supper to be served, but when the food came neither of them was able to eat much.

"I shall have to go, of course," he said in a flat voice when the servants had removed the last of the dishes.

She nodded numbly from the other end of the table, realizing there was no choice. "What will you do?"

"The air corps, I think - if they'll have me."

Later, as he sat at the leather-topped desk in his study writing a letter applying to enlist in the air corps and undergo flight training, she came up behind his chair and put her arms around him. "Mark told me he would like to give you this to keep you safe wherever you go," she whispered, pressing something soft into the palm of his right hand.

Joseph smiled as he looked down at the lucky rabbit's foot mounted on a little gold chain that Tempe's father had given them as a christening gift for their second son; since the baptism six weeks before, the talisman had hung on the baby's cot.

"Is Mark sure he can spare it?" asked Joseph, smiling.

"He absolutely insists." Tempe blinked back her tears. "He says he feels lucky enough already having such a fine Daddy-and you might need it more than him."

Joseph slipped the rabbit's foot into his pocket. "All right - I know better than to argue with a two-month-old Sherman male who'll surely scream the house down if I make him sore."

After she'd left the room Joseph sat down beside the log fire that crackled in the hearth and looked over the letter he'd written. As he finished reading it he felt again a faint tremor of exhilaration pa.s.s through him; whatever the war held in store, it would take him away from the soporific daily round of Charles County, and for that he was at least grateful to the j.a.panese militarists. He folded the letter and was sealing it in its envelope when a sudden rus.h.i.+ng noise in the chimney startled him, and the next moment a shower of soot cascaded into the grate, extinguis.h.i.+ng the fire and filling the room with smoke. A series of m.u.f.fled shrieks echoed from inside the old flue, and Joseph dashed outside to peer up at the roof.

Against the faint light of the night sky a dark wedge of shadow was visible on the rim of the chimney, and as he watched, it seemed to grow larger. Another series of shrieks echoed across the silent Virginian countryside, and Joseph's heart beat faster suddenly as he realized that one of the garden peac.o.c.ks had flown onto the roof and was spreading its tail above the chimney stack. Frantically, he scooped up several handfuls of gravel arid flung them at the tiles until the frightened bird flapped away screeching into the darkness.

After he had damped down his study fire he went upstairs and found Tempe seated in a nursing chair in the children's bedroom. Their baby son was drawing contently at one of her exposed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but her own face was pale with anxiety. "I can smell burning, Joseph - and what was that terrible noise?"

"One of the peac.o.c.ks got up onto the chimney," he said, trying to keep his voice casual. "It knocked some soot down into my study - that's all."

"But didn't you once tell me that's always been a bad omen in your family - when a peac.o.c.k flies to the roof?" She started up in the chair, her eyes widening with alarm, and her movement plucked the nipple from the baby's mouth. Immediately the child began to scream, and Joseph dropped to his knees beside them.

"Relax, both of you," he whispered and stroked Tempe's hair as she settled the baby at her breast again. "I did mention it, I guess - but its just a crazy old wives' tale. Don't worry."

Within a few minutes the baby fell asleep, and Joseph took him from her and lowered him gently into his cot. When he joined her in the canopied Robert E. Lee four-poster which she had renovated for their own use, she was still tearful and she clung to him fiercely in the darkness, Inside his head he could hear still the eerie wail of the peac.o.c.k on the roof, but the heavy maternal ripeness of her body pressed against him gradually aroused him, and before they slept he made love to her, whispering all the time tender protestations of affection and devotion which he knew in his heart he didn't really feel.

4.

The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter-bomber of the Fourteenth United States Army Air Force bucked and bounced in the strong December winds driving down out of China as it climbed and banked above the convoy of j.a.panese supply freighters plowing doggedly across the Gulf of Tongking into Haiphong. Two of the s.h.i.+ps had already been hit and were burning, and other planes of the Fourteenth's 308th Squadron were plunging through the smoke to bomb and strafe the remainder. As Captain Joseph Sherman leveled out at the top of his climb and brought the nose of his P-40 around to dive for a second time, a third s.h.i.+p, obviously carrying munitions, exploded, shooting a tumbling fountain of orange fire high into the air. Flying level above the coast, Joseph watched the flames consume the s.h.i.+p and saw clearly the antlike figures of the j.a.panese seamen flinging themselves into the sea; for an instant their tiny, helpless bodies were silhouetted against the glare, then they were gone.

Without any feeling of compa.s.sion Joseph eased his stick forward to drop the nose of the P-40 once again into an att.i.tude of attack and held his hands steady as the aircraft rushed down towards the vessels leading the frantic dash for the safety of the harbor. Liquid tongues of flak from the j.a.panese sh.o.r.e batteries were already licking up towards other Warhawks of the squadron as they wheeled above the fleeing s.h.i.+ps, but the closeness of anti-aircraft fire had long since ceased to unnerve him. He watched carefully for a second or two, then adjusted his controls fractionally to steepen his dive, confident that he would be able to unload his two remaining hundred-pound wing bombs and climb away to the east before the harbor guns could pick him up.

As the P-40 gathered speed, a stray sh.e.l.l exploded close in front of its nose, rocking the whole aircraft, but it failed to deflect its dive, and Joseph released his hundred-pounders onto a limping freighter and pulled out in time to rake the bridge of the s.h.i.+p ahead of it with six 12.7-millimeter Browning machine guns mounted in the plane's wings. A new blaze of light lit his c.o.c.kpit from behind as he flew on, indicating that his bombs had found their mark, and when he had put himself beyond the range of the harbor guns, he turned and saw that the freighter was burning furiously.