“How was your father?”

  “Complaining about the heat, like everyone else. The poor King and Queen spent most of the time on the porch. But it was hot even there. The rest of us just milled around in the garden. I think he wears makeup. The King. He looked awfully brown and sort of smooth-looking.”

  “Like you.” Clay stroked one brown smooth breast. She pushed his hand away. “Listen, I said I’d go to dinner tonight with the Davises in McLean. They were there, at the Embassy. You don’t mind?”

  “Without me?”

  “Father’s coming, too.”

  “Then I’d better not.”

  “You’re not furious?” She looked at him from under heavy brows, suspecting ambush.

  “This is the third time in a week you’ve gone some place without me.”

  “But it’s so uncomfortable when Father’s there.”

  “Father wasn’t at that thing in Georgetown on Tuesday. Also…” Clay moved easily from charge to charge while Enid prepared her defense with customary skill, relying, as always, on the unexpected counterattack for which he was seldom prepared, despite a thousand days of marriage. In fact, at times he still could not believe he was married. Sometimes he awakened in the night and when he saw the sleeping Enid beside him in the bed, her hair like a dark stain on the pillow, he would experience a sudden panic: What am I doing here? How was the trap sprung? Is this sentence for life? But then he would light a cigarette and in the brief glow of the match remind himself that of all the girls he had known, only she had never bored him.

  “Peter said so, too.”

  Clay had missed what must have been a particularly damaging bit of evidence. “Peter?” he said, as though weighing that young man’s reliability as a witness.

  “Yes, he was here today.”

  Enid allowed the case to rest while she got out of the tub like a sleek water animal and picked up a crumpled towel from the floor where she had dropped it after her morning bath, and wrapped herself in the moldy folds.

  “I want a drink,” she announced and left the room. Clay followed, without will. What the rabbit must feel for the snake, the audience for the demagogue, Clay felt for Enid, as he followed her down the narrow stairs to the living room of their rented house. Enid always roared the word “rented” at visitors, wanting no part in surroundings so unlike those of Laurel House. Unlovely paintings of Naples under glass; dark mahogany; old chintz; a blond-wood coffee table with many rings of different sizes, tribute to the rented pantry’s diversity of glasses.

  Enid made herself a martini. She had just discovered martinis and she could, she declared, drink any amount without getting drunk, which seemed to be true. Drink merely made her lively, happy, loving, and it was then that Clay liked her best, at parties, when every man was attracted to her and she was entirely his.

  “Peter dropped by. I didn’t even know he was in town. That place really is a country club.” Clay sat in his usual chair, feet on the coffee table, while Enid sipped at her martini, eyes glowing. “Oh, I needed this! That sun! Those people! I wouldn’t be the Queen of England for all the tea in China!”

  “What did Peter want?”

  “Nothing. A friendly call. I try to discourage him, but he doesn’t take the hint. He is good-looking, though.” Enid picked up a silver cigarette box (a wedding gift from the staff of Senator Day) and studied her own reflection, which Clay thought odd, for Enid seldom looked at herself. Lack of personal vanity was her most startling trait.

  “He’s going to work on the paper this summer.” She put down the box, and he realized that it was Peter she had been hoping to find reflected in the smoky silver. Clay was immediately on guard. Brother and sister were an alliance he did not understand.

  She hoisted long legs onto the pale coffee table. The legs resembled dark expensive polished wood while the table seemed ordinary flesh. “I hope you realize that if he hadn’t seen us that first time, in the poolhouse, I’d never have married you.”

  “Thanks.” Clay looked at her with sudden distaste.

  “I didn’t mean it like that!” She was contrite. As usual, she was most wounding when she did not mean to be. She crossed his ankles with her own: pushed one foot beneath his trouser leg and tickled the hairs with her big toe. “I’m glad what happened finally. But, God, he’s a little sneak!”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Accident? In a pig’s eye! Who would be out in the middle of a thunderstorm in the middle of the night unless he’d been following us?” Enid denounced her brother; and Clay defended him. For one thing he liked Peter; for another, the boy was an important strategic position in the war, and the side that held him commanded a good deal of the terrain.

  “Anyway Peter said that Father said last night at dinner that you and I would be divorced long before I was twenty-five.”

  “Good old Blaise.” Clay groaned. “What a family!”

  “I guess we are awfully intense.” Enid stirred the martini with her forefinger. “But Father will come around.”

  “Who cares if he does?” asked Clay, who cared the most. The more he saw of the world, the more convinced he was that without money, a very great deal of money, he could never obtain any of those glittering prizes the Republic bestows so generously upon the rich, so haphazardly upon the poor. But as long as Blaise was irreconcilable, Clay’s career was at a halt.

  “Oh! Peter said something about your old girl friend.” He let that familiar cannonball drop out of range. “Apparently Diana’s involved with a Communist who wants to start a magazine.”

  “A Communist? Are you sure?” Clay was alert.

  “Of course I’m sure,” said Enid, obviously trying to recall what Peter had said. “They wanted Peter to put money into it, as if he had any, though he’ll get his before I do. And…”

  Clay stopped her. “This could be serious. For the Senator.”

  Enid looked at him blankly. The problems of others, including her husband’s employer, never seemed quite real to her.

  “Are you absolutely sure that Peter said he was a Communist?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he said, but then Peter’s such a liar you can never tell.”

  “I’d better call the Senator.” Clay stood up.

  “Oh, don’t go!” Enid was like a child, not wanting to be left alone. “I never see you when that awful Senate’s in session.”

  “You could have seen me tonight.”

  Aware that she had exposed an entire division to certain defeat, Enid hastily abandoned all positions, threw wide her arms, causing the towel to fall from her shoulders; then, acknowledging total defeat, reverted to their private baby talk. “Kiss dear puppy dog and tell her you don’t mind her being bad, bad, bad!”

  Clay kissed her, said he did not mind her being bad, bad, bad, and as he tasted her ginny mouth, grew excited and might have forgotten to telephone the Senator if the nurse had not chosen that moment to enter, carrying the baby in her arms.

  “For Christ’s sake!” shouted Enid. “Why don’t you knock? Why do you creep like that?”

  “That’s all right, Annie,” said Clay soothingly, pulling himself together. But Annie had fled, with Enid’s curses ringing after her. “Cut it out!” Clay spoke sharply, the spell broken. He was himself again. “You don’t want to lose her like you lost the others. You can’t shout at people like that.”

  “I can do any damned thing I please!” Enid drank the remains of the martini from the silver shaker; then she wrapped the towel about herself and went upstairs. Clay knew that the next day she and the nurse would again be giggling together. No matter how badly Enid behaved she never bore a grudge. She also spoke to everyone with the same degree of intimacy and lack of reticence, and though this candor was part of her charm, Clay had learned never to tell her anything that he would not want his worst enemy to know. As for the new nurse, she was still fascinated and thrilled at being treated as an equal. But she was not yet prepared to pay the price of Enid’s intimacy: the sudden rages, the elaborate insults, the alarming cruelty. Yet Enid was always genuinely hurt when her victims later reproached her with what she had said. “But you don’t understand, I absolutely love you!” Perhaps they didn’t; and perhaps she did.

  Clay tried to telephone the Senator. Mrs. Day answered the Senator’s telephone. “Burden’s taking a nap. He’s worn out after the garden party. It was so hot! And then we’re going to the White House tonight. Is it very urgent? Should I wake him?” Clay said that it could wait. Then he wished them a good evening in the enemy’s country and hung up. Moodily he opened his briefcase, began to work, lost track of time, and was not aware of Enid until she made a loud noise, causing him to drop some papers. “Don’t do that!”

  “I love it when you jump, like an old maid. Do I look all right?” Enid looked all right and he told her so. But she did not listen. She was as impervious to truth as to flattery. “Listen,” she said, “I feel awful, saying I’d go to this party and leaving you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Of course it isn’t all right. I just get carried away and say yes when I should say no. Half the time I don’t make any sense, anyway. If you want me to stay home, I will.”

  Completely vanquished, he told her to go to the party. He would stay home and work. She said that puppy dog was bad, bad, bad. He agreed but insisted that he would not have her any other way. She left saying how sorry she was and he duly noted that the only time Enid could ever bring herself to say that she was sorry was when she was not. He added this useful new weapon to his armory. Their war was love. Or their love was war. Either way, only in battle did they truly meet. He could not imagine life without Enid.

  IV

  At a signal from the President’s wife, the ladies rose. Led by Mrs. Roosevelt and the Queen, they left the men in possession of the State Dining Room. As the usher shut the dining room door, Burden moved from his place just below the left curve of the horseshoe-shaped table toward the center where President and King sat. The empty chair on the King’s left was swiftly filled by the Vice President, who exuberantly patted and prodded the little King, to the President’s obvious annoyance and Burden’s amusement. The knives were out between the President and his Constitutional if not political heir.

  Brandy was served; cigars appeared. Burden sat down between Blaise Sanford and an Englishman whose name sounded like Lord Garbage. They complained of the heat.

  “The President refuses to put in air conditioning.” Blaise chewed his cigar. “Says it’s bad for his sinus. Sinus, hell! What about the people that work here? What about us? Cardiac cases, that’s what we’ll be.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t care.” Like the others, Burden found it an effort not to stare at the President, who looked fit if somewhat overweight, the famous smile flashing on and off as though controlled by a master switch. Earlier, when Burden and Kitty had been presented, the President had given him the widest of smiles and then turned to the King and said in a stagy whisper, “He wants to live here, too!” The King looked faintly unsettled.

  Later Burden discovered that the President had been making the same little joke about all his rivals, most of whom were present—Hull, Vandenberg, Farley, as well as the fragile Harry Hopkins, who had already maneuvered himself close to the magic center of the table. It would be a scrap but Burden was increasingly confident. According to the Gallup Poll, Hull was the party’s first choice and he was the second choice, but since Hull was a Southerner and could not be nominated…Burden visualized himself at the head of the table; then he recalled his vow; no daydreaming. He tuned in on Blaise.

  “Of course maybe he wants us to have heart attacks. Some of us anyway.” Blaise chuckled.

  Lord Garbage smiled and turned to Burden. “You must come here often, Senator.”

  “Never!” Blaise answered for Burden. “They hate each other,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard by the President, who did not hear because his full attention was concentrated upon the Vice President, now kneading the King’s shoulder as though it were dough. The President’s smile was set; the cold gray eyes glared. Full of bourbon and gay malice, the Vice President ignored that withering gaze.

  It was explained to Lord Garbage (who seemed to have something to do with the Foreign Office) that although Burden belonged in the President’s party they were political enemies. “I can’t fathom your politics,” said the Englishman.

  “You should give it a try,” said Blaise coldly, reflecting Burden’s own irritation with those British who took pride in not knowing or, worse, pretending not to know how the American political system worked.

  Lord Garbage was apologetic. “One ought to know of course. It’s just that we’re so used to party loyalty. I mean in Parliament you have to follow your party leader or you get out.”

  “We don’t follow,” said Burden, “and we never get out. Voluntarily.”

  “But sometimes we drop the party leader,” said Blaise ominously, puffing blue smoke into Lord Garbage’s face.

  “It is hot,” said the Englishman. On all sides Burden saw faces flushed with heat and wine. He was suddenly seized by a sense of unreality, recalling the other Presidents who had sat in this same room wining and dining the magnates of their day, all forgotten now. They come and they go, he thought, comforting himself. Nothing mattered but the moment. Then he noticed the newly carved motto just below the mantel on the main facing of the fireplace: the pious hope of John Adams that “None but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.” Of course it mattered who governed. He pulled himself together. The trick was to avoid being overwhelmed by the swift rushing moment; to act as if the future did exist, as if one might indeed by doing good affect the lives of the unborn. But watching the President at the head of the table, Burden saw only vanity in that conceited face; nothing else, certainly no trace of virtus, to use Cicero’s word, that moral goodness which does not translate as “virtue.”

  Blaise and Lord Garbage were discussing friends in England. Lord Garbage (that couldn’t be his name) was assuring Blaise that an old friend had not really gone insane. “He just doesn’t like people, which is perfectly normal. He lives alone in the country. And reads Carlyle to the pig.”

  Burden gave this his full attention. “The pig?”

  “Yes. He used to read Gibbon, but he didn’t like the style.”

  “Your friend?”

  “No, the pig. Actually our friend rather likes Gibbon, and I don’t think he’s at all keen on Carlyle, but the pig finds Carlyle soothing. So what can he do?”

  Blaise laughed delightedly. “Burden, you must get to know the English. They’re not like us.”

  “Fortunately for you,” said Lord Garbage who might or might not have been making fun of them. Yet Burden did not at heart dislike the British, differing from many of his Senatorial colleagues who resented England’s eminence. Southerners still recalled with bitterness England’s betrayal of the Confederacy, while in the Northern cities any politician with not much to say could always count on the Irish to applaud if he threatened to punch King George in the snoot. Burden looked at King George’s long distinguished snoot and felt protective. The King seemed so fragile, so distinguished, so perfectly undeserving of anything but courtesy. Burden decided that this year he must definitely go to Europe and in the course of his travels propose himself for an interview with Hitler. Hitler would receive him at Berchtesgaden and Burden would begin by saying that he was speaking not for the Senate but for himself, and for world peace. The Chancellor would be attentive as Burden outlined a course of action which would take into account Germany’s legitimate interests while maintaining the good will of the Western powers. As Burden spoke, Hitler would take notes, muttering “Ja, ja,” from time to time.

  “I think there will be war this summer.” Burden’s reverie was shattered. He turned to the Englishman whose tone of voice had not changed at all; he might have been giving a review of the pig’s reading list. Blaise frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  Lord Garbage blew smoke out large curved nostrils. “Mid-July is our guess. The little man will do to Poland what he did to Czechoslovakia.”

  “And what will you do?” asked Burden.

  “I rather think we’ll fight, this time.”

  “How?” Blaise was scornful. “The Germans have ninety-five hundred planes ready for combat. How many does England have?”

  “None, I should think. Part of the charm of being a democracy is that one’s always unprepared.” He smiled. “How many planes do you Yanks have?”

  “We don’t need any because we’re not going to fight anybody.” Blaise was firm.

  “Yes, I read your newspaper. But Hitler has already said first France, then England, then America.”

  “He’s just bluffing, and who wouldn’t? The way you people give in to him, he’d be crazy not to try for more.”

  Burden stopped listening as the familiar arguments went back and forth. He knew them all. Essentially he was isolationist. He saw no reason for the New World to involve itself once again in the sheer bloodiness of the Old. But he also knew that it would be difficult to stay out, particularly with a President who had an itch to perform on the world stage. Like Wilson, thought Burden, looking toward the President who was now whispering something into the King’s ear. Yes, that was how Roosevelt saw himself, whispering to monarchs, obscuring domestic failures with foreign pageants. It was all too plain.