Winter of the World (77 page)

At that moment, Woody realized that Eddie was more than just Chuck’s pal.

That was weird.

There were three loving couples around the table: Papa and Mama, Woody and Joanne, and Chuck and Eddie.

He stared at Eddie. Chuck’s lover, he thought.

Damn weird.

Eddie caught him staring, and smiled amiably.

Woody tore his gaze away. Thank God Papa and Mama haven’t figured it out, he thought.

Unless that was why Mama had invited Eddie to join in a family dinner. Did she know? Did she even approve? No, that was beyond the bounds of possibility.

‘Anyway, Cobb has no choice,’ Papa was saying. ‘And in everything else he’s a liberal.’

‘There’s nothing democratic about it,’ Joanne said hotly. ‘Cobb doesn’t represent the people of the south. Only white people are allowed to vote there.’

Gus said: ‘Nothing is perfect in this life. Cobb supported Roosevelt’s New Deal.’

‘That doesn’t mean I have to invite him to my wedding.’

Woody put in: ‘Papa, I don’t want him either. He has blood on his hands.’

‘That’s unfair.’

‘It’s how we feel.’

‘Well, the decision is not entirely up to you. Joanne’s mother will be throwing the party, and if she’ll let me I’ll share the cost. I guess that gives us at least a say
in the guest list.’

Woody sat back. ‘Heck, it’s our wedding.’

Joanne looked at Woody. ‘Maybe we should have a quiet town hall wedding, with just a few friends.’

Woody shrugged. ‘Suits me.’

Gus said severely: ‘That would upset a lot of people.’

‘But not us,’ said Woody. ‘The most important person of the day is the bride. I just want her to have what she wants.’

Rosa spoke up. ‘Listen to me, everyone,’ she said. ‘Don’t let’s go overboard. Gus, my darling, you may have to take Peter Cobb aside and explain to him, gently,
that you are lucky enough to have an idealistic son, who is marrying a wonderful and equally idealistic girl, and they have stubbornly refused your impassioned request to invite Congressman Cobb to
the wedding. You’re sorry, but you cannot follow your own inclinations in this any more than Peter can follow his when voting on anti-lynching bills. He will smile and say he understands, and
he has always liked you because you’re as straight as a die.’

Gus hesitated for a long moment, then decided to give in graciously. ‘I guess you’re right, my dear,’ he said. He smiled at Joanne. ‘Anyway, I’d be a fool to
quarrel with my delightful daughter-in-law on account of Pete Cobb.’

Joanne said: ‘Thank you . . . Should I start calling you Papa yet?’

Woody almost gasped. It was the perfect thing to say. She was so damn smart!

Gus said: ‘I would really like that.’

Woody thought he saw the glint of a tear in his father’s eye.

Joanne said: ‘Then thank you, Papa.’

How about that? thought Woody. She stood up to him – and she won.

What a girl!

(iv)

On Sunday morning, Eddie wanted to go with Chuck to pick up the family at their hotel.

‘I don’t know, baby,’ said Chuck. ‘You and I are supposed to be friendly, not inseparable.’

They were in bed in a motel at dawn. They had to sneak back into barracks before sunup.

‘You’re ashamed of me,’ said Eddie.

‘How can you say that? I took you to dinner with my family!’

‘That was your Mama’s idea, not yours. But your Papa liked me, didn’t he?’

‘They all adored you. Who wouldn’t? But they don’t know you’re a filthy homo.’

‘I am not a filthy homo. I’m a very clean homo.’

‘True.’

‘Please take me. I want to know them better. It’s really important to me.’

Chuck sighed. ‘Okay.’

‘Thank you.’ Eddie kissed him. ‘Do we have time . . . ?’

Chuck grinned. ‘If we’re quick.’

Two hours later they were outside the hotel in the navy’s Packard. Their four passengers appeared at seven-thirty. Rosa and Joanne wore hats and gloves, Gus and Woody white linen suits.
Woody had his camera.

Woody and Joanne were holding hands. ‘Look at my brother,’ Chuck murmured to Eddie. ‘He’s so happy.’

‘She’s a beautiful girl.’

They held the doors open and the Dewars climbed into the back of the limousine. Woody and Joanne folded down the jump seats. Chuck pulled away and headed for the naval base.

It was a fine morning. On the car radio, station KGMB was playing hymns. The sun shone over the lagoon and glinted off the glass portholes and polished brass rails of a hundred ships. Chuck
said: ‘Isn’t that a pretty sight?’

They entered the base and drove to the Navy Yard, where a dozen ships were in floating docks and dry docks for repair, maintenance and refuelling. Chuck pulled up at the Officers Landing. They
all got out and looked across the lagoon at the mighty battleships standing proud in the morning light. Woody took a photo.

It was a few minutes before eight o’clock. Chuck could hear the tolling of church bells in nearby Pearl City. On the ships, the forenoon watch was being piped to breakfast, and colour
parties were assembling to hoist ensigns at eight precisely. A band on the deck of the
Nevada
was playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.

They walked to the jetty, where a launch was tied up ready for them. The boat was big enough to take a dozen passengers and had an inboard motor under a hatch in the stern. Eddie started the
engine while Chuck handed the guests into the boat. The small motor burbled cheerfully. Chuck stood in the bows while Eddie eased the launch away from the dockside and turned towards the
battleships. The prow lifted as the launch picked up speed, throwing off twin curves of foam like a seagull’s wings.

Chuck heard a plane and looked up. It was coming in from the west, so low it looked as if it might be in danger of crashing. He assumed it was about to land at the naval airstrip on Ford
Island.

Woody, sitting near Chuck in the bows, frowned and said: ‘What kind of plane is that?’

Chuck knew every aircraft of both the army and the navy, but he had trouble identifying this one. ‘It almost looks like a Type Ninety-seven,’ he said. That was the carrier-based
torpedo bomber of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Woody pointed his camera.

As the plane came nearer, Chuck saw large red suns painted on its wings. ‘It
is
a Jap plane!’ he said.

Eddie, steering the boat from the stern, heard him. ‘They must have faked it up for an exercise,’ he said. ‘A surprise drill to spoil everyone’s Sunday
morning.’

‘I guess so,’ said Chuck.

Then he saw a second plane behind the first.

And another.

He heard his father say anxiously: ‘What the heck is going on?’

The planes banked over the Navy Yard and passed low over the launch, their noise rising to a roar like Niagara Falls. There were about ten of them, Chuck saw; no, twenty; no, more.

They headed straight for Battleship Row.

Woody stopped taking pictures to say: ‘It can’t be a real attack, can it?’ There was fear as well as doubt in his voice.

‘How could they be Japanese?’ Chuck said incredulously. ‘Japan is nearly four thousand miles away! No plane can fly that far.’

Then he remembered that the aircraft carriers of the Japanese navy had gone into radio silence. The signal intelligence unit had assumed they were in home waters, but had never been able to
confirm that.

He caught his father’s eye, and guessed he was remembering the same conversation.

Everything suddenly became clear, and incredulity turned to fear.

The lead plane flew low over the
Nevada
, the stern marker in Battleship Row. There was a burst of cannon fire. On deck, seamen scattered and the band left off in a ragged diminuendo of
abandoned notes.

In the launch, Rosa screamed.

Eddie said: ‘Christ Jesus in heaven, it’s an attack.’

Chuck’s heart pounded. The Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, and he was in a small boat in the middle of the lagoon. He looked at the scared faces of the others – both parents, his
brother, and Eddie – and realized that all the people he loved were in the boat with him.

Long bullet-shaped torpedoes began to fall from the underbellies of the planes and splash into the tranquil waters of the lagoon.

Chuck yelled: ‘Turn back, Eddie!’ But Eddie was already doing it, swinging the launch around in a tight arc.

As it turned, Chuck saw, over Hickam air base, another flight of aircraft with the big red discs on their wings. These were dive bombers, and they were streaming down like birds of prey on the
rows of American aircraft perfectly lined up on the runways.

How the hell many of the bastards were there? Half the Japanese air force seemed to be in the sky over Pearl.

Woody was still taking pictures.

Chuck heard a deep bang like an underground explosion, then another immediately after. He spun around. There was a flash of flame aboard the
Arizona
, and smoke began to rise from her.

The stern of the launch squatted farther into the water as Eddie opened the throttle. Chuck said unnecessarily: ‘Hurry, hurry!’

From one of the ships Chuck heard the insistent rhythmic hoot of a klaxon sounding General Quarters, calling the crew to battle stations, and he realized that this
was
a battle, and his
family was in the middle of it. A moment later on Ford Island the air-raid siren began with a low moan and wailed higher in pitch until it struck its frantic top note.

There was a long series of explosions from Battleship Row as torpedoes found their targets. Eddie yelled: ‘Look at the Wee Vee!’ It was what they called the
West Virginia.
‘She’s listing to port!’

He was right, Chuck saw. The ship had been holed on the side nearest the attacking planes. Millions of tons of water must have poured into her in a few seconds to make such a huge vessel tilt
sideways.

Next to her, the same fate was overtaking the
Oklahoma
, and to his horror Chuck could see sailors slipping helplessly, sliding across the tilted deck and falling over the side into the
water.

Waves from the explosions rocked the launch. Everyone clung to the sides.

Chuck saw bombs rain down on the seaplane base at the near end of Ford Island. The planes were moored close together, and the fragile aircraft were blown to pieces, fragments of wings and
fuselages flying into the air like leaves in a hurricane.

Chuck’s intelligence-trained mind was trying to identify aircraft types, and now he spotted a third model among the Japanese attackers, the deadly Mitsubishi ‘Zero’, the best
carrier-based fighter in the world. It had only two small bombs, but was armed with twin machine guns and a pair of 20mm cannon. Its role in this attack must be to escort the bombers, defending
them from American fighters – but all the American fighters were still on the ground, where many of them had already been destroyed. That left the Zeroes free to strafe buildings, equipment
and troops.

Or, Chuck thought fearfully, to strafe a family crossing the lagoon, desperately trying to get to shore.

At last the United States began to shoot back. On Ford Island, and on the decks of the ships that had not yet been hit, anti-aircraft guns and regular machine guns came to life, adding their
rattle to the cacophony of lethal noise. Anti-aircraft shells burst in the sky like black flowers blossoming. Almost immediately, a machine-gunner on the island scored a direct hit on a
dive-bomber. The cockpit burst into flames and the plane hit the water with a mighty splash. Chuck found himself cheering savagely, shaking his fists in the air.

The listing
West Virginia
began to return to the vertical, but continued to sink, and Chuck realized that the commander must have opened the starboard seacocks, to ensure that she
remained upright while she went down, giving the crew a better chance of survival. But the
Oklahoma
was not so fortunate, and they all watched in terrified awe as the great ship began to
turn over. Joanne said: ‘Oh, God, look at the crew.’ The sailors were frantically scrambling up the steeply banked deck and over the starboard rail in a desperate attempt to save
themselves. But they were the lucky ones, Chuck realized, as at last the mighty vessel turned turtle with a terrible crash and began to sink, for how many hundreds of men were trapped below
decks?

‘Hold on, everyone!’ Chuck yelled. A huge wave created by the capsize of the
Oklahoma
was approaching. Papa grabbed Mama and Woody held on to Joanne. The wave reached them and
lifted the launch impossibly high. Chuck staggered but kept hold of the rail. The launch stayed afloat. Smaller waves followed, rocking them, but everyone was safe.

They were still a long quarter of a mile offshore, Chuck saw with consternation.

Astonishingly the
Nevada
, which had been strafed at the start, began to move off. Someone must have had the presence of mind to signal all ships to sail. If they could get out of the
harbour they could scatter and present less easy targets.

Then from Battleship Row came a bang ten times bigger than anything that had gone before. The explosion was so violent that Chuck felt the blast like a blow to his chest, though he was now
almost half a mile away. A spurt of flame spewed out of the No. 2 gun turret of the
Arizona
. A split-second later the forward half of the ship seemed to burst. Debris flew into the air,
twisted steel girders and warped plates drifting up through the smoke with a nightmare slowness, like scraps of charred paper from a bonfire. Flames and smoke enveloped the front of the ship. The
lofty mast tipped forward drunkenly.

Woody said: ‘What was
that
?’

‘The ship’s ammunition store must have gone up,’ Chuck said, and he realized with heartfelt grief that hundreds of his fellow seamen must have been killed in that mammoth
detonation.

A column of dark-red smoke rose into the air as from a funeral pyre.

There was a crash and the boat lurched as something hit it. Everyone ducked. Falling to his knees, Chuck thought it must be a bomb, then realized it could not be, for he was still alive. When he
recovered, he saw that a heavy scrap of metal debris a yard long had pierced the deck over the engine. It was a miracle it had not hit anyone.