Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"We will fight them on the beaches," said Rollie loudly, "we will fight them on the hills." He sat down. "We will fight them in the streets… No more Cretes, no more Norways… No more getting pushed out of any place."

"I wouldn't talk like that, old man," Hoyt said. "I had a private conversation not long ago. Chap in the Admiralty. You'd be surprised at the name if I could tell it to you. He explained to me about Crete."

"What did he say about Crete?" Rollie stared at Hoyt, a slight belligerence showing in his eyes.

"All according to the overall plan, old man," said Hoyt. "Inflict losses and pull out. Cleverest thing in the world. Let them have Crete. Who needs Crete?"

Rollie stood up majestically. "I'm not going to sit here," he said harshly, a wild light in his eye, "and hear the British Armed Forces insulted by a runaway Englishman."

"Now, now," Cahoon said, soothingly. "Sit down."

"What did I say, old boy?" Hoyt asked nervously.

"British blood spilled to the last ounce." Rollie banged the table. "Desperate, bloody stand to save the land of an ally. Englishmen dying by the thousand… and he says it was planned that way! 'Let them have Crete!' I've been watching you for some time, Hoyt, and I've tried to be fair in my mind, but I'm afraid I've finally got to believe what people're saying about you."

"Now, old man," Hoyt was very red in the face and his voice was high and rattled, "I think you're the victim of a terrible misunderstanding."

"If you were in England," Rollie said bitingly, "you'd sing a different tune. They'd have you up before the law before you'd have a chance to get out more than ten words. Spreading despondency and alarm. Criminal offence, you know, in time of war."

"Really," Hoyt said weakly, "Rollie, old man…"

"I'd like to know who's paying you for this." Rollie stuck his chin out challengingly close to Hoyt's face. "I really would like to know. Don't think this is going to die in this restaurant. Every Englishman in this town is going to hear about it, never fear! Let them have Crete, eh?" He slammed his glass down on the table and stalked back to the bar.

Hoyt wiped his sweating face with his handkerchief and looked painfully around him to see how many people had heard the tirade. "Lord," he said, "you don't know how difficult it is to be an Englishman these days. Insane, neurotic cliques, you don't dare open your mouth…" He got up. "I hope you'll excuse me," he said, "but I really must get back to the studio."

"Of course," Cahoon said.

"Terribly sorry about the play," said Hoyt. "But you see how it is."

"Yes," said Cahoon.

"Cheerio," said Hoyt.

"Cheerio," said Cahoon, with a straight face.

He and Michael watched the elegant, seven-thousand-five-hundred-dollar-a-week back retreating past the bar, retreating past the defender of Crete, retreating to the Paramount Studios, to the prop plane afire that afternoon against the processed clouds ten miles off the Hollywood-Dover coast.

Cahoon sighed. "If I didn't have ulcers when I came in here," he said. "I'd have them now." He called for the check.

Then Michael saw Laura walking towards their table. Michael looked down at his plate with great interest, but Laura stopped in front of him.

"Invite me to sit down," she said.

Michael looked coldly up at her, but Cahoon smiled and said, "Hello, Laura, won't you join us?" and she sat down facing Michael.

"I'm going anyway," Cahoon said before Michael could protest. He stood up, after signing the check. "See you tonight, Mike," he said, and wandered slowly off towards the door. Michael watched him go.

"You might be more pleasant," Laura said. "Even if we're divorced we can be friendly."

Michael stared at the sergeant who was drinking beer at the bar. The sergeant had watched Laura walk across the room and was looking at her now, frankly and hungrily.

"I don't approve of friendly divorces," Michael said. "If you have to get a divorce it should be a mean, unfriendly divorce."

Laura's eyelids quivered. Oh, God, Michael thought, she still cries.

"I just came over to warn you," Laura said, her voice trembling.

"Warn me about what?" Michael asked, puzzled.

"Not to do anything rash. About the war, I mean."

"I won't do anything rash."

"I think," said Laura softly, "you might offer me a drink."

"Waiter," said Michael, "two Scotch and soda."

"I heard you were in town," Laura said.

"Did you?" Michael stared at the sergeant, who had not taken his eyes off Laura since she sat down.

"I was hoping you'd call me," she said.

Women, Michael thought, their emotions were like trapeze artists falling into nets. Miss the rung, fall through the air, then bounce up as high and spry as ever.

"I was busy," Michael said. "How are things with you?"

"Not bad," Laura said. "They're testing me for a part at Fox."

"Good luck."

"Thanks," Laura said.

The sergeant swung round fully at the bar so that he wouldn't have to crane his neck to see Laura. She did look very pretty, with a severe black dress and a tiny hat on the back of her head, and Michael didn't blame the sergeant for looking. The uniform accentuated the expression of loss and loneliness and dumb desire on his face. Here he is, Michael thought, adrift in the war, maybe on the verge of being sent to die on some jungle island that nobody ever heard of, or to rot there month after month and year after year in the dry, womanless clutch of the Army, and he probably doesn't know a girl between here and Dubuque, and he sees a civilian, not much older than he, sitting in this fancy place with a beautiful girl… Probably behind that lost, staring expression there are visions of me unconcernedly drinking with one pretty girl after another in the rich bars of his native land, in bed with them, between the crisp civilized sheets, while he sweats and weeps and dies so far away…

Michael had an insane notion that he wanted to go up to the sergeant and say to him, "Look here, I know what you're thinking. You're absolutely wrong. I'm not going to be with that girl tonight or any other night. If it was up to me, I'd send her out with you tonight, I swear I would." But he couldn't do that. He could just sit there and feel guilty, as though he had been given a prize that someone else had earned. Sitting beside his lovely ex-wife, he knew that this was still another thing to sour his days; that every time he entered a restaurant with a girl and there was a soldier unescorted, he would feel guilty; and that every time he touched a woman with tenderness and longing, he would feel that she had been bought with someone else's blood.

"Michael," Laura said softly, looking with a little smile over her drink, "what are you doing tonight? Late?"

Michael took his eyes away from the sergeant. "Working," he said. "Are you through with your drink? I have to go."

IT might have been bearable without the wind. Christian moved heavily under his blanket, tasting the sand on his cracked lips. The wind picked the sand off the flinty, rolling ridges and hurled it in malicious bursts at you, into your eyes, your throat, your lungs.

Christian sat up slowly, keeping his blanket around him. It was just getting light and the pitiless cold of night still gripped the desert. His jaws were quivering with the cold and he moved about, stiffly, still sitting, to get warm.

Some of the men were actually sleeping. Christian stared at them with wonder and loathing. Hardenburg and five of the men were lying just under the ridge. Hardenburg was peering over the ridge at the convoy through his glasses, only the very top of his head above the jagged rocky line. Every line of Hardenburg's body, even through the swathing of the big, thick overcoat, was alert, resilient. God, Christian thought, doesn't he ever have to sleep? What a wonderful thing it would be if Hardenburg got killed in the next ten minutes. Christian played deliciously with the idea for a moment, then sighed. Not a chance. All the rest of them might get killed that morning, but not Hardenburg. You could take one look at Hardenburg and know that he was going to be alive when the war ended.