Captain James M. B. Whittaker, U.S. Army Air Corps, was twenty-five years old.
He was tall, pale blond and slender, with leopard-like moves. He was wearing a superbly tailored pink-and-green uniform and half Wellington boots. The uniform and the boots had both come from Savile Row in London. The boots had cost just about as much money as the Air Corps paid Captain Whittaker each month, and the uniform had cost a little more than the boots.
Whittaker had never considered what the uniform and boots had cost, mostly because he really had no idea how much money he had. Whatever his civilian income was, it was more than he could spend. There was a lawyer in New York who looked after his affairs and saw to it that there was always a comfortable balance in his Hanover Trust checking account.
This is not to suggest that Whittaker was simply a rich young man who happened to be in uniform. There were silver pilot's wings on the breast of his green blouse. He was checked out (qualified to fly) in fighter, bomber, and transport aircraft. Beneath the wings were ribbons representing the award of the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, several lesser awards for valor, and brightly colored ribbons indicating that he had had overseas service in both the European and Pacific Theaters of Operation.
At the moment, Captain James M. B. Whittaker, Harvard University '39, was solemnly considering what he believed to be irrefutable evidence that he was a miserable, amoral, good-for-nothing sonofabitch.
This solemn consideration sometimes came upon him when he'd taken a drink or two more than he should have. When he had a load on (and he had been drinking, more or less steadily, for the last three days), truth raised its ugly head, and he could see things with a painful clarity.
He had started drinking before he'd boarded the MATS (Military Air Transport Service) C-54 at London's Croydon Airfield.
Taking leave of Liz Stanfield had been very painful. He loved Liz and she loved him, and there were certain problems with that. For one thing, Captain Elizabeth Alexandra Mary the Duchess Stanfield, WRAC (Women's Royal Army
Corps), a pale-skinned, splendidly bosomed, lithe woman in her middle thirties, was not really free to love him. There was a husband, Wing Commander the Duke Stanneld, R.A.F He was down somewhere, "missing in action," the poor sonofabitch.
Only a miserable, amoral, good-for-nothing sonofabitch, such as himself, Capt. Whittaker reasoned, would carry on the way he had with a married woman whose husband was missing in action, and a fellow airman to boot. That was really low and rotten.
And it wasn't as if he was free, either. He was in love himself. Her name was Cynthia Chenowith, and he had loved her from the time he was thirteen and she was eighteen, and he had gotten a look at her naked breast as she hauled herself out of his uncle Chesty's swimming pool at the winter place in Palm Beach.
It didn't matter that Cynthia professed not to love him (that was the age difference, he had concluded): He loved her. And a man who loves a woman with his entire soul, who wants to spend the rest of his life with her, caring for her, making babies, is not supposed to go around fucking married women. Unless, of course, he is a miserable good-for-nothing sonofabitch.
Capt. Whittaker had had the foresight to bring with him on the MATS C-54 three quart bottles of single-malt Scotch whiskey. Half of one had gotten him to Casablanca, and the other half had sustained him from Casablanca to Cairo.
Since he had been in Cairo, he'd worked his way through all of the second bottle and one quarter of the third. The airplane was broken. The pilot had told Capt. Whittaker, as a courtesy to a fellow flyer, that he'd lost oil pressure on Number Three and had no intention of taking off again until they had replaced--rather than repaired--the faulty pump. One was being flown in from England. When it had been installed, they would continue on their flight, which would ultimately terminate in Brisbane, Australia.
Until the airplane was repaired there was a good deal to see and do in Cairo.
Madamejeanine d'Autrey-Lascal--who was thirty, tall for a French woman, blond, blue-eyed, and who saw no need to wear a brassiere--leaned close to Capt. Whittaker and laid her hand on his.
Madame d'Autrey-Lascal had been left behind in Cairo when her husband, who had been managing director of the Bane d'Egypte et Nord Afrique, had gone off to fight with the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle. She had been in the bank lobby when Capt. Whittaker had appeared to change money and to see if the bank, with which his family's firm had had a long relationship, could do something about getting him into a decent hotel. He had spent the previous night in the transient officers' quarters at the airfield and really didn't want to do that again.
They had been introduced quite properly, after which it had seemed to Madame d'Autrey-Lascal simply the courteous thing to do to offer to drive him to Shepheard's Hotel. The bank would call in as many favors as it could to get him accommodation in Shepheard's. No promises. The place was always jammed.
The assistant manager who greeted them said that he would try to find something. No promises. But perhaps if the Captain would not mind waiting for a bit in the bar...
It had seemed to Madame d'Autrey-Lascal that simple courtesy dictated that she not just leave him stranded high and dry in the bar at Shepheard's. If the bank's influence could not get him into Shepheard's, then something else would have to be arranged.
Capt. Whittaker spoke French, which was unexpected of an American, and they chatted pleasantly. She told him that her husband was off with General de Gaul
le, and he told her a story about de Gaulle that took her a moment to understand. It seemed that General de Gaulle had declined an invitation to visit with President Roosevelt, on the grounds that it was too long a walk.
But finally she understood and laughed, and then he told her about London.
She hadn't been in London since 1939, and she found what he told her very interesting.
By the time they had had three drinks from his bottle of single-malt Scotch whiskey, it occurred to Madame d'Autrey-Lascal that it didn't look as though the assistant manager was going to be able to find a room for him in Shepheard's (and if he did, it would be little more than a closet), and that there was absolutely no reason she couldn't put him up overnight, or for a day or two, at her house.
The first time she suggested this, Capt. Whittaker smiled at her (and she noticed his fine, even teeth) and told her that she was very kind, but he wouldn't think of imposing.
She told him it would be no imposition at all; the house was large, and at the moment empty, for her children were spending the night with friends.
He repeated that he wouldn't think of imposing. And then he lapsed into silence, broken only when she laid her hand on his.
"Sorry," Whittaker said.
"I was thousands of miles away."