91 REVERe STREET
465
plausible difficulty, which made Mother's life one of much suffering.
She did not have the self-assurance for wide human experience; she
needed to feel liked, admired, surrounded by the approved and
familiar. Her haughtiness and chilliness came from apprehension.
She would start talking like a
grande dame
and then stand back
rigid and faltering, as if she feared being crushed by her own
massively intimidating offensive.
Father's old Annapolis roommate, Commander Billy "Battleship
Bilge" Harkness, was a frequent guest at Revere Street and one
that always threw Mother off balance. Billy was a rough diamond.
He made jokes about his "all-American family tree," and insisted
that his name, pronounced
Harkness,
should be spelled
Herkness.
He came from Louisville, Kentucky, drank whisky to "renew his
Bourbon blood," and still spoke with an accent that sounded-so'
his colleagues said-"like a bran-fed stallion." Like my father, how–
ever, Commander Billy had entered the Naval Academy when he
was a boy of fourteen; his Southernisms had been thoroughly rubbed
away. He was teased for knowing nothing about race horses, moun–
taineers, folk ballads, hams, sour mash, tobacco . . . Kentucky
Colonels. Though hardly an officer and a gentleman in the old Vir–
ginian style, he was an unusual combination of clashing virtues: he
had led his class in the sciences and yet was what his superiors called
"a
mathmaddition
with the habit of command." He and my father,
the youngest men in their class, had often been shipmates. Bilge's
executive genius had given color and direction to Father's submissive
tenacity. He drank like a fish at parties, but was a total abstainer
on duty. With reason Commander Harkness had been voted the man
most likely to make a four-star admiral in the class of '07.
Billy called his wife
Jimmy
or
Jeems,
and had a rough friendly
way of saying, "Oh, Jimmy's bright as a penny." Mrs. Harkness was
an unpleasant rarity: she was the only naval officer's wife we knew
who was also a college graduate. She had a flat flapper 's figure,
and hid her intelligence behind a nervous twitter of vulgarity and
toadyism. "Charlotte," she would almost scream at Mother, "is this
mirAGE, this MIRacle your
own
dining room!"
Then Mother might smile and answer in a distant, though cosy
and amused, voice, "I usually manage to make myself pretty com–
fortable."
