Dexter and George Porter exchanged a glance. Both knew that their father-in-law disdained MacArthur, whom he’d been referring to as “Dugout Doug” since the Japs had sent him packing from the Philippines last March.
Tabby and Grady sat across from Dexter, ignoring each other a bit too pointedly. He suspected their feet were intertwined under the table and considered dropping his napkin for a look, like a man in a comedy.
“November has been the Allies’ best month yet, thanks in large part to boys like this one,” the commandant said, raising his glass to Grady. “We’ve an encirclement in Stalingrad and landings in North Africa. Our enemies have begun to suffer in earnest: twenty thousand Japs dead on the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea! Malaria, jungle rot . . . that putrid flesh swells so they can’t even pull on their boots. They’re marching barefoot through the mud.”
“Mud is a petri dish for parasites,” said George Porter, offering his surgeon’s perspective. “Bacteria enters through a tiny opening in the skin, and before you know it, you’ve dysentery, tapeworm . . .”
Several guests set down their forks, but the old man added with relish, “How about those biting flies in Tobruk? The Krauts are used to forests; they’ve never seen a desert fly. The bites become infected, and pretty soon they’re dragging gangrenous limbs across the sand!”
“Winter in Russia,” boomed the commandant, waving for another capon. “The Krauts’ frostbitten fingers are snapping off like plaster of paris!”
Mrs. Hart, one of the few ladies present, had gone very white. Sensing the need of a fresh topic, Dexter said, “Say, I was pleased to see so many girls at work in your Naval Yard, Admiral.”
“Ah, I’m glad you noticed,” the commandant said. “The girls have surpassed our highest expectations. You’d be surprised—I know I was—they actually have some advantages. They’re smaller, more limber; they can fit inside spaces the men can’t. And housework makes them dexterous, all that knitting and sewing, darning socks, mincing vegetables . . .”
“We treat our girls too gently, that’s a fact,” declared a dyspeptic-looking man at the far end of the table. “In the Red Army, girls work as medics—they carry the wounded off the battlefields on their backs.”
“They fly planes, too,” someone said. “Bombers.”
“Is that true?” Tabby asked.
The old man chuckled. “Soviet girls have been raised a little differently from you, Tabatha.”
“Let’s not forget,” said the commandant, “the Red Army has a whole division whose job is to stand behind the soldiers and shoot them if they try to desert. These are not gentle people.”
“I hope you don’t let girls do everything the men do, Admiral,” Cooper said.
“Of course not,” the commandant said. “Jobs requiring physical strength or sustaining of extreme conditions, those are all off-limits. In the trades the girls are what we call ‘helpers’—they assist a man senior to them. And we keep them off the ships.”
Bitsy, who hadn’t uttered a word so far, suddenly spoke up. “Girls can’t go on ships?” she asked. “Is that a rule?”
“Oh yes. We’re quite firm about that.”
“Girls can’t go on ships in a naval yard?”
Everyone turned to look at Bitsy. With her high color and windblown hair, she looked beautiful, as if her restless unhappiness had amplified some fire in her. Dexter watched the old man, wondering if he would rein her in, but Arthur looked on impassively while the commandant sputtered about close quarters and tight spaces. “You understand,” he said more than once, to which his guests—all except Bitsy, who regarded him bitterly—wagged their heads like jack-in-the-boxes.
After bowls of peach melba, the commandant’s wife offered a tour of the house, where Commodore Perry had lived a hundred years before. Tabby and Grady accepted, along with several others. Dexter meant to join but changed his mind when Cooper rose; more preening over Grady he could live without. The commandant broke out brandy and cigars, and the talk returned to quashing the Philippine uprising, several guests making an avid audience.
Dexter was logy from the heavy lunch; he wanted to splash cold water on his face. An elderly Negro steward showed him to a powder room that proved occupied; then to a second one farther away, near the kitchen. When that door proved to be locked as well, Dexter told the steward he would wait. He was about to push open a pair of casement doors leading outside to the greenhouse when he heard noises behind him. He moved back to the bathroom door and stood near it, listening. Whispers, groans, sighs—there was no mistaking what was taking place behind that door. His first thought—of his daughter and Grady—made the blood drain from his skull.
“Ohhh . . . ohhhh . . . ohhh . . .”
Rhythmic female moans rose in volume and urgency from inside the bathroom. Dexter lurched away and staggered through the casement doors onto the dry grass. Vertigo made a fun-house riot of the Naval Yard below, and he sagged against the greenhouse, gasping. At last he bent over, elbows on his knees, and let the blood flow back into his head. He’d come close to passing out.
“Daddy?”
He straightened up hastily, blinking. Tabby’s voice had come from above, and he threw back his head to look up. There she was, waving from a window at the uppermost part of the house. The intensity of Dexter’s relief induced a fresh wave of faintness. His knees felt watery. Something must be wrong with him to have thought such a hideous thing.
“Daddy, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he called weakly. “I’m right as rain.”
“Come look. The view goes all the way ’round.”
“I shall,” he cried, and bounded back inside at the same moment that the bathroom door opened and George Porter emerged half-smiling, adjusting his waistcoat with hands still damp from washing. He looked as startled as Dexter was. Hastily George shut the bathroom door, the woman presumably still inside. Dexter suddenly knew that it was Bitsy—as if he’d recognized the timbre of her hysterics in those moans he’d heard through the door. His violent astonishment was impossible to hide, and George saw it. He smiled uneasily and Dexter smiled back, straining for the hale neutrality he’d always brought to his brother-in-law’s indiscretions. As they walked in silence toward the dining room, Dexter felt a need to say something to blunt the appalling thing he’d witnessed. Nothing came to mind.