The living room open to the rafters, and from them, suspended by nearly invisible wires, a huge sailfish moved slowly in the breeze from the air-conditioning. The ceiling was painted a soft blue, and it appeared the fish was swimming overhead.
“That’s Geoff’s first big fish,” Porter Craig said. “He caught it when he was eleven.”
“He insisted on having it mounted, of course,” Helene Craig picked up the story, “and I didn’t have the heart to tell him no. So we had it stuffed, and then we didn’t know to where to put it, so it wound up there.”
“I think it looks great there,” Barbara Bellmon said, and giggled. “But I want to be here when someone tries to dust it!”
“It takes two people, on two ladders,” Helene said. “One holds the fish, and the other vacuums it. Very delicately.”
The mental picture was amusing, and Jack smiled.
Colonel Lowell joined them.
“Have you got a pocket in your shorts, sweetheart?” he asked.
“That’s an odd question,” Marjorie said. “But yes, I do.”
He handed her a sheet of typewriter paper, folded twice.
“Stick this in it, and don’t let anybody see it,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Take a look at it later, when you go to bed,” he said.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
“None of your business, Sergeant. Butt out. This is between the young lady and me.”
She put the sheet of paper in her hip pocket.
Barbara and Hanni walked up to them.
“Is this the time to tell everyone about Second Lieutenant Lowell and his Packard?” Barbara said. “Or has liquor loosened my tongue?”
“I’d love to hear it,” Jack said.
“I’ve heard it,” Marjorie said. “So you can start, Mother, while I powder my nose.”
She touched Jack’s arm, smiled at him, and walked away.
“I think I’ll have another one of these, please,” Barbara said to the barman. “I really don’t know where to begin. There are so many twists and turns. . . .”
“Well, I remember when he went in the Army,” Helene said. “Porter and I had just come from our honeymoon, and their grandfather had us to dinner and told us—I’m sorry, Craig, but this is true—that Craig had been . . . asked to leave Harvard. . . .”
“ ‘Kicked out’ is the term,” Colonel Lowell said. “It seems to be a family tradition. Geoff got the ax, too, from Fair Harvard, didn’t you, Geoff?”
“Guilty,” Geoff said.
“Do they send you those once-a-month pleas to send them a check?”
“As regularly as clockwork,” Geoff said.
“Anyway, Jack,” Geoff’s mother said. “Both Craig and Geoff started out as enlisted men, like you. They . . . left college . . . and as a consequence were drafted.”
“I finished college, and I still got drafted,” Jack said.
“And they earned their commissions on the battlefield,” Helene Craig said proudly.
“I can’t let that slip by, Helene,” Lowell said. “Geoff got his commission that way, but I earned mine on the polo field.”
“Excuse me?” Jack said.
Barbara Bellmon giggled. “That’s absolutely true.”
“There I was, Jack, the happiest draftee in the United States Constabulary,” Lowell said. “In Bad Nauheim, Germany. I was the golf pro for the brass. I got paid to play at least eighteen holes a day. I had a private room at the golf club, no reveille, no formations, no chicken—”
“What’s the Constabulary?” Jack asked.
“It was a military force consisting mainly of eighteen-year-olds, ” Lowell said seriously, “who raced around Germany in highly simonized tanks and armored cars, sirens screaming, while the Germans, who were supposed to be awed, had a hard time to keep from laughing out loud.”
“It was more than that, and you know it,” Barbara said, adding, “My father was the commanding general.”
“Her father played polo, and hated the French, which is certainly understandable,” Lowell said. “And then it came to his attention that I also played a little polo. I soon found myself playing as number three on the U.S. Constabulary polo team. That was even better than being the golf pro.”
“Daddy was determined to beat the French team—” Barbara said.
“Determined to really whip, humiliate, the French team,” Lowell interrupted. “A wholly commendable ambition. But there was a little problem. Frog officers won’t play with enlisted men, theirs or anybody else’s. And the star—I say, with all modesty— of the U.S. Constabulary polo team was PFC Lowell.”
“So Daddy got Craig a commission,” Barbara said, chuckling.
“Just like that?” Jack asked.
“One day I was a PFC, and the next day a second lieutenant, Finance Corps—detailed Armor,” Lowell said. “My understanding of the arrangement was that I would get out of the