Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

This applies to regular Navy men, who constantly look forward to shore duty and retirement, all but the brass hats, who are having a career. It’s even true of the British Navy, some of whose officers I met not long ago in a certain port. A rumor of Germany’s collapse reached us that night, and it was touching to see the hopeful wishing of those Britishers. The rumor turned out to be premature, as you must know, but Germany may be finished by the time you get this letter. Give Japan one year after that.

I met a couple of fellow pilots who had been over Tokyo and they told me how it felt: pretty good, they said, because none of the planes in their group got hit. (My squadron has not been so lucky.) They were on their way back to the U.S. after completing their missions and they were happy about that. But they were tensed up, their faces were stiff and reacted quite violently to their emotions. There’s something about pilots that reminds you of racehorses – developed almost to an unhealthy point. I hope I’m not that way to other eyes.

Our squadron leader Commander Wilson is, though. (He’s no longer censoring mail so I can say this.) He’s been in for over four years now, but he seems to be exactly the same gentlemanly Yale man he was when he came in. He has, however, a certain air of arrested development. He has given his best to the war, and will never become the man he was meant to be. (He plans to go into the consular service afterwards.)

Apart from one or two rain squalls the weather has been good: bright sun and shining blue sea, which helps with the flying. But there’s a fairly strong swell, which doesn’t. The old tub lurches and strains along, and every now and then she wiggles like a hula girl and things slide off onto the floor. The cradle of the deep, to coin a phrase. Well, I’m off to bed. Affectionately,

Larry

It was a fairly impressive letter, with a certain sadness running gray through its perceptions. One sentence stayed in my mind – “He has given his best to the war, and will never become the man he was meant to be” – because it seemed to apply to Chalmers himself as well as his squadron commander. The third letter was dated 4 July 1945:

Dearest Mother:

We’re fairly near the equator and the heat is pretty bad, though I don’t mean to complain. If we’re still anchored at this atoll tomorrow I’m going to try to get of the ship for a swim, which I haven’t had since we left Pearl months ago. One of my big daily pleasures, though, is the shower I take every night before going to bed. The water isn’t cold, because the sea at temperatures around 90 can’t cool it, and you’re not supposed to use much, because all the water we use on board has to be condensed from seawater. Still, I like my shower.

Other things I would like: fresh eggs for breakfast, a glass of cold milk, a sail off the Point, a chance to sit and chat with you, Mother, in our garden between the mountains and the sea. I’m terribly sorry to hear that you are ill and your sight has failed. Please thank Mrs. Truttwell on my behalf (hi, Mrs. Truttwell!) for reading aloud to you.

You have no cause to worry about me, Mother. After a not-unexciting period (in which our squadron lost Commander Wilson, and too many others) we are fighting a safe war. So safe I feel guilty, but not so guilty that I’m going to jump overboard and swim rapidly in the direction of Japan. Good news from there, eh? – I mean the destruction of their cities. It’s no secret by now that we’re going to do to Japan what we’ve already done to that certain island (which shall be nameless) where I flew so many missions.

Affectionately,

Larry

I put the letters back in the envelope. They seemed to mark points on a curve. The boy or man who had written them had passed from the eager idealism of the first letter into the rather impressive quick maturity of the second, and declined in the third into a kind of tiredness. I wondered what Chalmers himself could see in his letters that made him want to read them aloud to his son.

I turned to the girl, who hadn’t moved from her hassock: “Have you read these letters, Betty?”

She raised her head. The look in her eyes was very dark and far. “I beg your pardon? I was thinking.”

“Have you read these letters?”

“Some of them. I wanted to see what all the shouting was about. I think they’re boring. I hated the one about bombing Okinawa.”

“May I keep the three I’ve read?”

“Keep them all, why don’t you? If Father finds them here, I’ll have to explain where I got them. And it will be just another nail in Nick’s coffin.”

“He isn’t in his coffin. It doesn’t help matters to talk as if he is.”

“Don’t fatherize, please, Mr. Archer.”

“Why not? I don’t believe people know everything at birth and forget it as they get older.”

She reacted positively to my sharp tone. “That’s the doctrine of Platonic reminiscence. I don’t believe it, either.” She slid off the hassock and out of her lethargy and came toward me. “Why don’t you give the letters to Mr. Chalmers? You wouldn’t have to tell him where you got them.”

“Is he at home?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea. I don’t really spend all my time at this window watching the Chalmers house.” She added with a quick wan smile: “Not more than six or eight hours a day, anyway.”

“Don’t you think it’s time you broke the habit?”

She gave me a disappointed look. “Are you against Nick, too?”

“Obviously I’m not. But I hardly know him. You’re the one I know. And I hate to see you caught here, between two fairly dismal alternatives.”

“You mean Nick and my father, don’t you? I’m not caught.”

“You are, though, like a maiden in a tower. This low-grade war of attrition with your father may feel like a battle for freedom, but it isn’t. You just get more and more deeply engaged with him. Even if you do succeed in breaking away, it won’t be into freedom. You’ve got it arranged so another demanding male will take you over. And I do mean Nick.”

“You’ve got no right to attack him–”

“I’m attacking you,” I said. “Or rather the situation you’ve put yourself in. Why don’t you move out of the middle?”

“Where could I go?”

“You shouldn’t have to ask me. You’re twenty-five.”

“But I’m afraid.”

“What of?”

“I don’t know. I’m just afraid.” After a silence she said in a hushed voice: “You know what happened to my mother. I told you, didn’t I? She looked out this very window – this used to be her sewing room – and she saw a light in the Chalmers house when there wasn’t supposed to be one. She went over there and the burglars chased her out and ran over her and killed her.”

“Why did they kill her?”

“I don’t know. It may have been just an accident.”

“What did the burglars want from the Chalmers house?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did it happen, Betty?”

“In the summer of 1945.”

“You were too young to remember, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but my father told me about it. I’ve been afraid ever since.”

“I don’t believe you. You didn’t act afraid the other night, when Mrs. Trask and Harrow came to Chalmers house.”

“I was afraid, though, terribly. And I should never have gone there. They’re both dead.”

I was beginning to understand the fear that held her. She believed or suspected that Nick had killed both Harrow and Mrs. Trask, and that she herself had acted as a catalyst. Perhaps in some dark place of her mind, back beyond memory and below the level of speech, was the false but guilty knowledge that her infant self had somehow killed her mother in the street.