Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“That’s my father,” he said, and he struck Devereaux again as Sammener put down his coffee cup and came running down the gangway, his hand going for the .45 at his side.

“Regan!” he yelled. “Are you out of your mind? Regan, cut it out!” He seized David’s arms and pulled him away from Devereaux. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” David said, trembling now with the realization of what he had done.

“That’s a fool stunt, Regan,” Sammener said. “You... you better get below. Mercer, wake... wake the next man on the watch list. Come on, Regan, we’d just better...”

Devereaux straightened up from the gangway and wiped his hand across his nose. He looked at the blood on his fingers and then smiled his chipmunk grin and said, “Just a second, Jonah.”

“He lost his head, George,” Sammener said. “I’ll have him relieved and—”

“He lost his head indeed,” Devereaux answered. “I think we’d better wake the captain.”

On April seventh David Regan stood a captain’s mast, and it was recommended at that primary court that David’s case be presented before a Naval court-martial. On April sixteenth he stood before a board of officers on the Juneau and was found guilty of violation of Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which stated Any person subject to this code who strikes his superior officer or lifts up any weapon or offers any violence against him while he is in the execution of his office shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial might direct .

The lawyer charged with David’s defense pointed out that George Devereaux had been returning to the ship from a liberty and was not actively engaged in “the execution of his office,” but the defense was reminded that an officer is in the execution of his office when engaged in any act or service required or authorized to be done by him by statute, regulation, the order of a superior, or military usage. In general, the court advised, any striking or use of violence against any superior officer by a person subject to military law, over whom it is the duty of that superior officer to maintain discipline at the time, would be striking or using violence against him in the execution of his office.

It was pointed out to the court that George Devereaux had provoked the attack upon himself, and that he was drunk at the time of the attack, but the prosecution maintained that Article 112 of the Code, the article relating to drunkenness on duty, did not relate to those periods when, no duty being required of them by orders or regulations, officers and men occupy the status of leisure known as “off duty” or “on liberty,” which status George Devereaux was occupying at the time of the attack.

They could have given David a dishonorable discharge in addition to whatever punishment they decided upon within the specified limits of the Code. Instead, and because of the mitigating circumstances — the attorney for the defense constantly harped on a duality that permitted Devereaux to be engaged in “the execution of his office” where it suited the prosecution’s case, but to be “off duty” or “on liberty” where it did not — David was sentenced to five years at hard labor without pay or allowances, but his punishment did not include a dishonorable discharge.

On May third he was put aboard a transport in irons, and shipped to the Naval Retraining Command at Camp Elliott in San Diego, where he began serving his term.

Aboard the Hanley , the captain called Devereaux into the wardroom and delivered a flowery speech, the true substance of which was contained in the four words “I told you so.”

The girls from Phi Sig had somewhere acquired an Army Air Corps parachute, painstakingly dyed it a shocking red, and hung it from the ceiling of the gymnasium in a billowing canopy of brilliance. The Omega Epsilon girls had hand-fashioned dozens and dozens of long-stemmed roses, threaded them on strings, and trailed them from the gym ceiling so that the room was bathed in a literal shower of flowers, the huge silk parachute serving as an umbrella to protect the dancers from the crepe-paper downpour as they circled the floor to the beat of the band at the front of the gym. The dance had been labeled, appropriately though perhaps unimaginatively, The Shower of Roses Ball. The beat of the band throbbed through the hall, pounded the dancers, fired the feet of Amanda Soames, who swirled about the gym in yellow taffeta, amazed that she was here going round and round in the arms of a stranger beneath the Army Air Corps parachute somewhere acquired by the girls from Phi Sig.

Her intentions, up to six o’clock, had certainly been honorable. She had worked in the rehearsal room on the second floor of Ardaecker Hall until almost five-thirty, immune to the bright May sunshine that lazily sifted through the open windows, sitting at the piano and striking chord after chord, translating each note to the manuscript paper that rested on the piano rack, clamping the pencil between her teeth as she struck yet another chord, fascinated by the task she’d set herself. She was working with a blue-moon tune, a typical I–VI–II–V front phrase arranged in the key of C, strings carrying the first four bars, with flutes picking up the countermelody on the second four. She struck a C-major seventh, and then an A-minor ninth, and a D-minor ninth, and a G-dominant with a flatted ninth thrown into the chord, a bit too dramatic, perhaps, but that was the influence of Gillian Burke. She worked hard, and her intentions, up to six o’clock, had certainly been honorable.

“Make it big!” Gillian had said. “Arrange it as if you were Scriabin!” waving her arms, aware of the mirror behind her. Her knowledge of classical music never failed to surprise Amanda. Gillian seemed to be a hopeless “Nutcracker Suite” addict, and yet she was able to identify obscure symphonies after hearing only the first few bars, a terrifying feat of memory, which even Amanda could not duplicate. Her musical sense, too, was uncanny. It had seemed outrageous to Amanda even to attempt so pretentious an arrangement for a popular ballad like “’Til Then,” and yet she began to recognize the showmanship inherent in such an approach, and eventually admitted that it would be effective, and never once forgot that it was Gillian who had said, “Make it big!”

At five-thirty she had gone back to the dorm, and immediately into the shower down the hall. She had just turned on the water when Gillian burst into the room, threw off her robe, and took the stall alongside hers. In a matter of three minutes, as the steam rose from each booth to provide a background for their conversation, they were both shouting at each other heatedly over the drumming noise of the water, and Amanda had begun to regret leaving Ardaecker, begun to wonder why on earth she had gone back to the dorm at five-thirty.

“I told Morton I was staying home to study tonight!” she shouted.

“Are you married to Morton?” Gillian shouted back.

“Of course not!”

“Are you engaged? Are you pinned?”

“No, but—”

“Do you even have an understanding?”

“No, Gillian, but—”

“Hurry up. It’s getting late.”

“I just wouldn’t want him to think I lied to him.”

“You didn’t lie. Call him up and tell him you’re going out, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Well, that isn’t what’s bothering me, exactly.”

“Then, what is, exactly?” Gillian turned off the water and came out of the stall. Her hair was soaking wet, plastered to her skull, her lashes hung with glistening drops of water. She picked up her towel from the washbasin and began rubbing herself briskly.