Appetite For Life_ The Biography Of Julia Child Part 4

One afternoon when Julia and Gregory Bateson were having drinks on the hotel porch, she again met Betty MacDonald, who thought that Julia had, when she knew her in Washington, "a highly developed security sixth sense." Betty was a journalist with Scripps-Howard when she was recruited by the OSS because she had lived with a j.a.panese family in Hawaii and had learned the language in order to go to j.a.pan. "Pearl Harbor ended this goal," she wrote. Her husband, a lieutenant commander and journalist who would later found the Bangkok Times Bangkok Times, was stationed in Kandy, and Betty was on temporary duty (from New Delhi) in Ceylon with MO (Morale Operations, otherwise known as black propaganda). Betty was tanned from tennis, was outgoing, and loved puns. She liked Julia immediately, she says, especially the fact that "bureaucracy did not faze her at all. She was always making fun of the bureaucrats." Betty would later become the historian for the women of the OSS (Sisterhood of Spies (Sisterhood of Spies, 1997).

Colonel Richard P. (d.i.c.k) Heppner (on leave from Donovan's law firm) arrived to be their CO. He was a handsome graduate of Princeton and Columbia Law School. Ellie worked for him in one room off a large basha hut housing the War Room, maintained by Paul Child and Jack Moore. The third room of the basha hut was occupied by Heppner's deputy (Lieutenant Colonel Paul h.e.l.liwell) and secretary. The Registry occupied its own basha hut. The MO lived on what they called "Fleet Street," with field photography laboratories (John Ford's branch) on "Hollywood Boulevard."

The civilians, including Julia McWilliams, socialized with the officers. The youngest officer, Byron Martin ("He was pert, bright, and lots of fun," writes MacDonald), was a decade younger than Julia and also a former Pasadenan who was impressed with both officers and civilians of the 404th Division. "They were sophisticates, and I often thought Julia was the most sophisticated of all. She was witty, fun, extremely well-informed, and always the most personable. I adored her and generally regarded her as my peer, despite the actual age difference, thanks to her warm personality."

While Ivy League men and women of the OSS China Command were privileged and educated, they were in search of more worldly knowledge. Years later, Julia, gazing heavenward with her hand on her chest, would say, "I was a playgirl looking for the light." The OSS was called "Oh So Secret" or "Oh So Social," or even "Oh Such Sn.o.bs" (probably the military view). They may have suffered from GI food and dysentery, but the distance from familial boundaries, the threat of danger, the excitement of service and adventure, and the anesthetic of gin created a compelling camaraderie, leading to many affairs, several marriages, and, ultimately, quite a few divorces.

PAUL CUSHING CHILD.

By May 1 (when she first mentions his name in her diary), Julia McWilliams met Paul Child on the tea planter's veranda that was now the main headquarter's building. Paul was an older man, a friend of Bateson's who was an urbane and multilingual OSS officer and artist working with Generals Donovan, Wedemeyer, and Chennault to create the maps and graphs for the War Room of the OSS China Command, first in New Delhi (fondly called "Per Diem Hill") and then in Kandy. By the end of the month she placed a long description of him in her diary: I have a nice time with the office men-not Whee Whee, but pleasant. There is Paul Child, an artist who, when I first saw him, I thought as not at all nice looking. He is about 40 [he was forty-two, she almost thirty-two], has light hair which is not not on top, an unbecoming blond mustache and a long unbecoming nose. But he is very composed. I find him both pleasant, comfortable and very mentally get-at-able. We have dinner frequently and go to the movies. on top, an unbecoming blond mustache and a long unbecoming nose. But he is very composed. I find him both pleasant, comfortable and very mentally get-at-able. We have dinner frequently and go to the movies.

Initially, their meeting was tainted by her love of practical jokes. One day at lunch, according to Louis Hector (a great piano player from Miami, Florida), she announced she was "really terribly tired because she had spent so much time the evening before censoring all the outgoing mail." Paul, sitting at the same table, blanched, "grew very agitated, got up from the table, [and] ran to the commanding officer ... to demand why he had not known that his letters were being censored and particularly who was censoring them." Heppner calmed him down, recognized Julia's sense of humor, and suggested that her jokes thereafter not disturb "the morale of the operations."

Paul's first mention of Julia McWilliams by name in his letter-diary to his twin brother, Charlie, was on July 9, 1944, when he wrote she "has a somewhat ragged, but pleasantly crazy sense of humor." On July 19 he sent a photograph (as he did of other friends) to his brother, referring to "the 6'2" bien-jambee bien-jambee [leggy] from Pasadena." The picture, in which she is seductively bending one leg for the camera, showed her lying on an Army cot. Paul sent the picture of her and the interior of his hut, to show his brother their living quarters: "a typical 10/11 feet [hut] with coir matting, woven cadjan walls, wooden shutters and army bed with folded-up mosquito net above." Paul's letters, which he considered an art form, drew vivid verbal pictures of the country, people, and women. [leggy] from Pasadena." The picture, in which she is seductively bending one leg for the camera, showed her lying on an Army cot. Paul sent the picture of her and the interior of his hut, to show his brother their living quarters: "a typical 10/11 feet [hut] with coir matting, woven cadjan walls, wooden shutters and army bed with folded-up mosquito net above." Paul's letters, which he considered an art form, drew vivid verbal pictures of the country, people, and women.

Though Paul and Julia (and Jack Moore) would take trips together to mountain communities, Paul was writing to his brother about all the women on the post, eager to find a lover to replace the great love of his life, Edith Kennedy, who had died just months before he joined the OSS. He was still half in love with Nancy Toyne, wife of a British officer and part-time mistress of Tommy Davis, the husband of his longtime Boston friend Nancy Davis. (Paul had earlier spent time with Tommy in New Delhi, but his letters to his brother Charlie call Nancy "Zorina-a s.e.xy dame.") Though Nancy and Tommy would eventually divorce, Paul changed her name to "Ellen" when he typed his diary letters.

Julia was as inexperienced with s.e.xual skills as she was at kitchen skills, both essential talents admired by Paul. He had dated several women in the Command and thought Julia a bit "hysterical." She seemed "slightly afraid of s.e.x," he wrote his brother, "but extremely extremely likable and pleasant to be around." He had always chosen women who were unafraid of their own s.e.xuality, and he appeared to have little in common with this gangly girl from California. He was a ladies' man, worldly, a decade older than she and several inches shorter. To Julia, he seemed inaccessible. One could gather from the letters Paul was writing to his twin brother in Washington that he had settled on the seduction of Jeanne Taylor, who was coming to a.s.sist him and Jack Moore in the War Room. Jeanne, according to Jack Moore, was very genteel and intellectual, a good painter and art school graduate, good-looking but with bad skin. She was Julia's age, but more sophisticated (later, Jeanne and Cora DuBois became lovers when they returned to Washington). likable and pleasant to be around." He had always chosen women who were unafraid of their own s.e.xuality, and he appeared to have little in common with this gangly girl from California. He was a ladies' man, worldly, a decade older than she and several inches shorter. To Julia, he seemed inaccessible. One could gather from the letters Paul was writing to his twin brother in Washington that he had settled on the seduction of Jeanne Taylor, who was coming to a.s.sist him and Jack Moore in the War Room. Jeanne, according to Jack Moore, was very genteel and intellectual, a good painter and art school graduate, good-looking but with bad skin. She was Julia's age, but more sophisticated (later, Jeanne and Cora DuBois became lovers when they returned to Washington).

Moore, whom Julia met in Washington, was a GI (draftee) and the former art student a.s.signed to Paul Child the year before. He lived on the compound and would watch the civilians leaving for the town every afternoon. The OSS, he said, comparing it with the later CIA, was about "heroics" and idealism. They were "tremendously educated and interesting people" who did "wild and dangerous things." The new technology allowed them to make a bicycle that folded into a parachute and a camera that looked like a matchbook. Not surprisingly, William Colby (later head of the CIA) would call the OSS "an exercise in improvisation."

One day Mountbatten came in to find Child and Moore crawling around on the floor with a three-dimensional map for the British/American invasion of Burma (their two-dimensional maps had already been sent to Churchill). "It's a waste!" the Supremo declared. Of course, the men had already discovered that the topography of the central Irrawaddy Valley was virtually flat: there was no terrain.

Moore, who knew Julia first but Paul best, described Paul's perfectionism, his intellectual rigor and precise, almost effete, speech of an aesthete. Paul, he added, was a masculine black belt in jujitsu and had fine taste in women. There was "nothing ever ambiguous about his interest in women."

Mountbatten was the "one hero in my life," said Paul Child in 1979 when an IRA terrorist bomb blew up Mountbatten's yacht. "He was charming, witty, handsome, intelligent. We need such n.o.ble, splendid people in this world! To think that anyone would kill him!" He told another journalist at that time that he "wanted to go into a corner and bawl."

Though there were numerous c.o.c.ktail parties and dances off the base, Julia complained in her diary about the few dates she had in what one man claimed was a paradise for unmarried women. "There aren't any attractive Americans at all-I did meet 3 English I liked-and have a date Tuesday-that is all." She threw herself into golf, which several of the men played, and devoted diary s.p.a.ce to men, particularly Paul Child and Dillon Ripley. She mentions Guy Martin, "a cute fellow and a live wire," who was Byron's brother and a fellow Pasadenan. Julia liked the younger man enormously, but not in a romantic way.

Guy Martin was a Navy officer (his brother was Air Force) on leave from Donovan's law firm, who was stationed in Kandy for nearly a year, though he worked also at the Navy base in Trincomalee. He compared the climate in Kandy to that of Lake Arrowhead. He remembers long talks with Paul and his interest in seeking out good places to eat when they had to travel: "He was an intellectual, curious, observant, with a lively mind about everything." If Paul was "tense" and "not an easy man," Guy found Julia to be a "wonderfully normal human being without hang-ups." One time they were fooling around the pool and she picked Guy up and threw him in the water. She was "exuberant and extraordinarily outgoing socially-if you put her with a hundred people, by the end of the afternoon she would know fifty by name."

By July 1, Julia was a.s.suring herself that she enjoyed the emotion of anguish. She was bored dancing with drunken correspondents. But she cheered up herself and the office with an official-looking order for the Fourth of July: "It has been reliably reported that OSS/SEAC is planning some kind of a blow-out in celebration of the American 4th of July (date commemorates a British-American controversy in the late 18th century)." The recipients recognized the McWilliams humor.

A study of OSS doc.u.ments she sent back to Washington reveals an occasional refreshing break with the numbers and espionage codes: at the bottom of an official doc.u.ment stamped "Confidential" is her typed message: "If you don't send this Registry some kind of a report or something, I shall fill the pouches with itching powder and virulent bacteriological diseases, and change all the numbers, as well as translate all the material into Singhalese, and destroy the English version" (May 25, 1944). On another occasion she asked, "Would it be possible for you to send us by Air Pouch one of those books you have giving people numbers and funny names, like 'fruitcake' #385. Frequently we find references to them here and no one knows who on earth is being referred to.... This doc.u.ment will be kept very securely in a fire-proof Mosler safe, and will be available to no one except Col. Heppner."

Following a concert of Beethoven ("The master was murdered," she declared), which she attended with Gregory Bateson and two other men, Julia had a "lovely Sunday" taking photographs of an elephant with Paul Child, Jack Moore, and a couple of others. "Sunday, I decided I thought Paul was really very attractive. Now, I think I am rather jealous because he suddenly thinks Peachy is wonderful, and I thought he liked me." She rightly concludes that "he likes a more worldly Bohemian type than me.... Wish I were in love, and that what I considered really attractive really attractive was in love with me." While she was considering a guy named Gunner (Lieutenant Commander, OSS, Michelson), who seemed to like her, neither Dillon Ripley ("quite attractive in a scholarly rather aesthetic carefully cultured, nice way," she told her diary) nor Fisher Howe ("attractive in a warm big gay way") seemed interested in her. Howe, who would later serve in Oslo with Paul, knew Julia briefly in Washington and came to Ceylon to inspect camps with Ripley (he eventually headed the maritime unit in Trincomalee). He says Julia had a "highly sensitive" role at the "nerve center" of the region. was in love with me." While she was considering a guy named Gunner (Lieutenant Commander, OSS, Michelson), who seemed to like her, neither Dillon Ripley ("quite attractive in a scholarly rather aesthetic carefully cultured, nice way," she told her diary) nor Fisher Howe ("attractive in a warm big gay way") seemed interested in her. Howe, who would later serve in Oslo with Paul, knew Julia briefly in Washington and came to Ceylon to inspect camps with Ripley (he eventually headed the maritime unit in Trincomalee). He says Julia had a "highly sensitive" role at the "nerve center" of the region.

THE BRAIN BANK.

Julia would later disparage her work as "file clerk" and wish that she could have been more "academic (I could be studying things)," yet all the sensitive doc.u.ments of spying (which is gathering information) came through her hands and she organized the system for numbering and cross-referencing them. She described her work as "leading a mythical piece of poisoned fruitcake dropped in a manila envelope project through an imaginary system and every time I got it started somebody has something else." Yet Byron Martin, formerly a bomber navigator and in Air Force Intelligence before being a.s.signed to the OSS, where he worked in the basha next to Julia, a.s.serts that her work, "in which she was privy to virtually every top secret," was vital: "It required a person of unquestioned loyalty, of rock-solid integrity, of unblemished life style, of keen intelligence. It required a person of deep-set seriousness far removed from the outgoing, gay, warm Julie we always hear of at first." She had "a truly awesome responsibility." Betty MacDonald wrote, "Morale in her section could not have been higher."

According to Louis J. Hector, head of the Secretariat, Julia insisted that all security doc.u.ments had to be located in one place. When she was in China the following year, senior officers, especially Colonel Paul h.e.l.liwell, resisted, complaining that they had to have each paper taken down a flight of stairs and across a courtyard. She "held her ground" with the "support of the commanding officer ... and the Registry in Washington," says Hector. Julia broke the tug-of-war with h.e.l.liwell by moving the SI files to the office beneath the colonel, cutting a hole in the floor, and installing a dumbwaiter right beside his desk, demonstrating her stubbornness and creative imagination.

Initially, Julia did not have much time to date because, until help arrived, she worked late nights and four hours on Sunday that summer. There was no time to "scintillate" (one of her favorite words). She had become boring socially, and bored with being a "file clerk"-even though Betty MacDonald called the Registry the "OSS brain bank." By mid-September, her a.s.sistant, Patty Norbury, arrived, just as Julia "reached the saturation point." The reports and letters in OSS files reveal the volume and complexity, cross-indexing, and endless code numbers clogging her office. Patty, a soft-spoken Ohio woman, asked for the transfer because she was looking for her husband, who had been shot down and captured by the j.a.panese. He would indeed be recovered.

Since the Allies had begun overwhelming the German airpower and retaken Western Europe, military attention focused on beating back the j.a.panese in eastern Asia. Most of the espionage work centered on the Burmese peninsula, which the j.a.panese held. Their two j.a.panese-Americans could not speak or write j.a.panese well, but the missionaries' children, such as Howard Palmer, whose parents were missionaries in Thailand, were fluent in their respective languages. Headquarters worried about the three M's: morale, monsoons, and malaria. They were cutting j.a.panese supply lines and depots and engaging in underwater sabotage, while the British and Americans were pushing through the Burma Road to China. Julia learned to keep confidences from several branches of government (there was talk of mutual spying between the British and the Americans). Good training for her work in the food world fifty years later.

The ever-curious Bateson, according to Julia, "went out on an exploring trip from Ceylon with several military fellows because he was interested in studying the people, especially their nose-picking habits and other anthropological things." Guy Martin remembers him wearing a tennis outfit to travel the countryside with a guide. Because he knew the Burmese superst.i.tion about the color yellow, he suggested that they drop yellow dye into the Irrawaddy River and have the MO branch spread rumors that when the Irrawaddy runs yellow, j.a.pan will be kicked out. He won permission, according to Betty MacDonald, but the dye, which turns yellow in ocean salt water, just sank in the fresh water. Southeast Asia seemed an anthropologists' or linguists' workshop for American academics hired by the OSS, just as all the European towns counted only as art for the Oxford scholars recruited by British intelligence.

Ceylon was an Elysium far removed from reality [Jane Foster wrote to Betty MacDonald] where everyone had an academic interest in the war but found life far too pleasant to do anything too drastic about it. To the red-blooded Americans ... Ceylon [was either] another form of British tyranny-frustration without representation [or] ... a palm-fringed haven of the bureaucrat, the isle of panel discussions and deferred decisions.

Jane Foster was one of the most important persons that Julia Child met in Ceylon, important because of the devastating effect she would have on the lives of Julia McWilliams, Paul Child, and others in the years to come. Born in San Francisco the same year as Julia, Foster joined the Communist Party in California in 1938, though she later dropped her membership-more a "Cadillac communist" than a serious one, writes MacDonald. Foster applied to work in counterintelligence because she was antifascist and had lived in Java (her California master's thesis was on the Batu Islands). She was short with blond hair and freckles and "the jolliest party girl on land or sea; the only communist who had a sense of humor," according to Guy Martin. Everyone enjoyed Jane's sense of humor, including Paul Child. She and Julia, who she thought had a "phenomenal memory," enjoyed laughing together.

Humor continued to be Julia's way of dealing with the tedium of her paperwork-for she would have preferred to be out in the field with Bateson, trudging through jungles and talking to native people. One day she addressed a memorandum to Louis Hector and d.i.c.k Heppner saying that henceforth all doc.u.ments would be cla.s.sified by the color of the ink, using a super-sensitive, color-determining apparatus. She explained this new panchromatic cla.s.sification so convincingly, says Hector, that "the commanding officer took the bait, stormed out of his office [and] into the Registry" to berate Julia. She broke into laughter. "He joined [in] and announced that Julie was one of the things that made life tolerable in the far reaches" of the world.

By September, Julia and Paul had learned a great deal about each other. She learned he had lived in Paris during the 1920s and was a gourmet. Serious and introspective, he could be loquacious with friends. He worked on freighters, traveled the world, and taught French and art at Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut in the 1930s (where Paul wrote the school song, "Men of Avon," in 1941 and one of his students was future folksinger Pete Seeger). Though he suffered from a weak stomach since a bout with dysentery in Mexico, and from migraines since a near-fatal accident in 1941, he was a black belt who taught jujitsu. He was a great admirer of women with beauty and brains (Julia would eventually learn about Edith Kennedy, the "flirtatious, witty, naughty, dynamic and intelligent" woman, in Paul's words, with whom he had lived for more than a decade).

Before joining Mountbatten's office in New Delhi, Paul worked in Washington in the Visual Presentation Division (graphics and photography department) with Budd Schulberg, Garson Kanin, Ruth Gordon, John Ford, Bob Vance, Cora DuBois, and Eero Saarinen. Before that he had done professional portrait photography while he taught at Avon. His letters to his brother revealed that one day, out of curiosity, he took apart an old movie camera made in Dresden in 1909, went to Spanish cla.s.s after work, and that night dined with a couple with whom he took turns reading James Joyce's Dubliners Dubliners. Such versatility could not have been immediately evident to Julia McWilliams.

THE CURRY BELT.

What Paul learned about Julia was somewhat misleading. "She is a gourmet and likes to cook," he innocently informed his brother Charlie. "She is trying to be brave about being an old maid!" He added, "I believe she would marry me (but isn't the 'right' woman from my my standpoint!)." In this three-page description (September 7, 1944) to Charlie, Paul called her a "warm and witty girl," devoted to music, who gasps when she talks, gets overstressed in conversations ("her slight atmosphere of hysteria gets on my nerves"), and lacks savoir faire. He concluded that she is "in love with her father, in an unconscious and pleasant way ... [for he] sets the key for much of her thinking and acting." She has a good mind but is a sloppy [unchallenged] thinker and given to "wild emotionalism," which he blamed on the fact that she has "moved safely within the confines of her cla.s.s and station and consequently had almost no challenge." He feels sympathy for her "fear" of but "fascination" with s.e.x because he "knows what the cure is," but it "would be too much for Dr. Paulski to risk attempting." The "working-out implies training and molding and informing," which would take more time and effort than he wanted to devote. He sought a companion "who has been hammered standpoint!)." In this three-page description (September 7, 1944) to Charlie, Paul called her a "warm and witty girl," devoted to music, who gasps when she talks, gets overstressed in conversations ("her slight atmosphere of hysteria gets on my nerves"), and lacks savoir faire. He concluded that she is "in love with her father, in an unconscious and pleasant way ... [for he] sets the key for much of her thinking and acting." She has a good mind but is a sloppy [unchallenged] thinker and given to "wild emotionalism," which he blamed on the fact that she has "moved safely within the confines of her cla.s.s and station and consequently had almost no challenge." He feels sympathy for her "fear" of but "fascination" with s.e.x because he "knows what the cure is," but it "would be too much for Dr. Paulski to risk attempting." The "working-out implies training and molding and informing," which would take more time and effort than he wanted to devote. He sought a companion "who has been hammered already already on life's anvil and attained a definite shape." on life's anvil and attained a definite shape."

Julia saw Paul on almost a daily basis. When he received a jar of geranium jelly from his brother, Julia, Peachy, and Jane Foster helped him eat it at one breakfast sitting. When Tommy Davis and his other friends visited Kandy, they all expressed pleasure in her company. With Cora and Tommy she had Australian gin and canned orange juice in Paul's room before dining at a local Chinese restaurant. Paul was attentive, but beyond her reach.

They shared an interest in food in this region a.s.sociated with the Indonesian "rijsttafel" curry belt, where a curry lunch is an all-day affair: There are three curries [according to Louis Hector]: one meat, usually lamb; one fish, usually shrimp; and one fowl, usually chicken. One first lays down a good bed of rice all over a plate, takes generous helpings of each of the three curries, and then covers this all over with as many condiments as the human imagination can devise: chopped coconut flavored with curry powder, paprika, pepper, cardamom, crumbled bacon, crumbled fried bananas, and chutneys of every hue and flavor. The whole is washed down with much beer and the event ends with everyone taking a lovely Sunday afternoon nap. It was Julia who organized these in Kandy.

Julia remembers that the food cooked on the base was a "sort of Singhalese-Western ... mixture ... that was very nice," but it was cooked in unsanitary conditions, which led to "Delhi Belly." She also remembers that Dillon Ripley collected "durian fruit that stunk to high heaven." Ripley undoubtedly loved the fruit, but Julia described it as smelling like "dead babies mixed with strawberries and Camembert. They served it to us several times in our mess. Then they banned it!"

Just after a visit by General Donovan and a great c.o.c.ktail party and dinner with Chinese and American generals, Heppner was promoted to full colonel at the same time the October monsoon rains drenched the compound, occasionally dampening Julia's papers. Weights held the pages down against the wind gusts. Several times a week the electricity went out in the hotel. Mists shrouded the peaks. A walk in the underbrush was a brush with leeches. When rats invaded one major's office, a native exclaimed in the usual participle manner, "Burning much coconut-putting on mouse machine. Master catching much rats." It was not unusual to see either a four-foot lizard or a saffron-dressed monk from the monastery up the hill. A welcome respite from the rains came with the appearance of Noel Coward, who stayed for a week at the request of his friend Mountbatten.

One day in late October, after yet another "flying circus"-much coming and going of Generals Stilwell, Wedemeyer, Merrill, Stratemeyer, Donovan, Mountbatten, and others-Julia heard the news: Stilwell was removed from China and the bra.s.s was moving. Her boss, d.i.c.k Heppner, took over in Kunming, and Wedemeyer took over China from Stilwell. Paul Child wrote to his brother in December that his "wonder woman" had not yet appeared, but he received Christmas greetings from "my three Jays": Julia, Jane, and Jeanne. Paul was soon transferred to China during the last days of 1944. It would not be too many weeks before Julia was transferred too.

The effect of the OSS presence in Ceylon is best explained by Guy Martin, who after attending an OSS reunion with Betty MacDonald in Bangkok in 1991, returned to what is now Sri Lanka. Among the group of Siamese he helped to train in Trincomalee-men who went into Thailand on missions for the OSS-sixteen were at the reunion: they were all MIT graduates and all engineers, one a foreign secretary, one the head of the Army, another the head of a large bank, another the head of the university. After 1948, when the British granted independence to Ceylon, the OSS-trained people were leading their country.

Julia's experience in Ceylon was formative in teaching her survival skills, organization, and responsibility. Paul told a Smith College interviewer decades later that the pressure of wartime work brought out her "innate capacities." This land of tea and elephants proved to be rich soil for a developing friendship with Paul Child. She still lacked much of the "worldly knowledge" he had sought in vain in his lengthy a.n.a.lysis of her. But he had added in the letter to his brother that "she responds to companionship and love and is extremely extremely likable and pleasant to have around." likable and pleasant to have around."

Chapter 7.

TO C CHINA WITH L LOVE.

(1945).

"Julie is tough and full of character, a real friend."

PAUL CHILD, letter, September 3, 1945

AFTER TEN MONTHS in Mountbatten's headquarters in Kandy, Julia McWilliams left the lush jungle foliage of Ceylon at 7 in Mountbatten's headquarters in Kandy, Julia McWilliams left the lush jungle foliage of Ceylon at 7 A.M A.M. on March 8, 1945. Her plane, rising with the sunrise, headed north from the equator toward the teeming delta city of Calcutta.

Julia had a week in this city where American OSS personnel often experienced their first culture shock at the uglier manifestations of British imperialism. (SEAC meant Save England's Asiatic Colonies, the cynics believed.) Julia's reaction to the fleshpots of Calcutta was a moral one: I remember I was horrified and disgusted and disturbed when I was going to China and I came up to Calcutta ... horrified by the group of people in headquarters; they were into dirty s.e.x; nurses necking in the living room ... it all seemed so degenerate. I talked to Colonel Heppner [later in China] about it because it looked like a brothel. You have to have someone running things....

FLYING THE HUMP.

On March 15 she flew "the Hump" from Calcutta, India, to Kunming, China, to set up and run the OSS Registry in China, now the focus of the war. This flight over the Himalayas with their 15,000-foot peaks was the most dangerous route of the war, for planes had to fly at twice their normal alt.i.tude. Some on board prayed while most of the thirty pa.s.sengers made it a white-knuckled 500-mile trip. On the plane, an unpressurized and freezing rickety C-54, they wore parkas and parachutes and carried oxygen masks. The Himalayan peaks were veiled by rain clouds, and the wind currents, sometimes clocked at 250 miles per hour, could flip, toss, and suck down a plane in seconds. As many as 468 Allied aircraft ultimately went down on that route, leaving what historian Barbara Tuchman called an "aluminum trail" from India to China, from Mandalay to Kunming. Because the j.a.panese occupied Burma in the spring of 1942, it became a vital but costly lifeline: 1,000 persons would be lost.

On board, Julia chatted with Louis Hector and Betty MacDonald regaled them with the story of OSS officer Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Lee (an Oxford-educated missionaries' son) and newsman Eric Sevareid parachuting from a disabled plane only months before, with time to grab a bottle of Carew's gin before jumping.

After nearly three hours, Julia's plane suddenly began to plummet, the lights went out, pieces of ice ticked against the window, and one of the men got quietly sick into his handkerchief. According to Betty MacDonald, who would give the best description of flying the Hump, "the C-54 shuddered, leveled off with a roar," found a hole in the clouds, and eventually headed for the red clay runway just south of the city of Kunming. Julia sat confidently reading a book. Betty, who thought Julia was "so cool," still clutched Chester, her gremlin lucky charm (a pilot at a dance in Calcutta once asked to borrow Chester to make his first Hump flight).

The plane landed at Roger Queen Airport, just north of blue Kunming Lake, and taxied beside a long row of shark-faced Flying Tiger planes. Two minutes later another plane landed. Blue-jacketed coolies were grading the edge of the field, MacDonald remembers: Julia, climbing down first, looked over the low, red hills and the curling rooftop of a small temple near the field, received a cheerful "Ting hao" greeting from some red-cheeked children, and turned back to her fellow pa.s.sengers. "It looks just just like China," she told us. like China," she told us.

Betty's first reaction was how natural and free the people were, even after seven years of j.a.panese occupation of their coastal lands. She had never seen any Indian children happily romping. Yet here in China there was a greater sense of the war and imminent danger. Paul Child, who flew in earlier, said Kunming "looks like California, feels like Denver."

d.i.c.k Heppner and Paul h.e.l.liwell met the plane, three hours overdue, nervous about the OSS personnel on board. Their OSS jeep took them past millet fields, rice paddies, and a flock of ducks and into the walled city of Kunming. The "OSS girls" (who were outnumbered by the men twenty to one) lived in a red-tile-roofed building with circling balconies in a large garden of a new suburb. The next morning she and Betty took a truck trip to the Detachment 202 compound over muddy roads crowded with rickshaws and wagons and with fetid sewers flowing down the middle of the road. Julia met with Colonel Richard P. Heppner. Many of her OSS a.s.sociates-together with OSS officers freed after various victories in Europe-were a.s.sembling in China: Ellie, Peachy, Rosie, and Paul.

The OSS moved into China at this late date in the war under the leadership of Captain Milton "Mary" Miles of the Navy, who disliked the OSS and was an ally of General Tai Li, the head of Chiang Kai-shek's secret service (the Gestapo, Stilwell called it). It was what one historian called a "forced [and] unhappy alliance with Miles and Tai Li." The previous fall, Chiang Kai-shek demanded and won the ouster of Stilwell, an intellectual Yankee (Paul Child called him "the Sunday School Teacher" because of his wire-rimmed gla.s.ses) who spoke Mandarin and Cantonese and hated the warlords, especially Chiang, whom he called "a peanut" because he would not attack the j.a.panese. (One of Stilwell's a.s.sistants in the Imperial Hotel was Dean Rusk, who later served as Secretary of State for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.) The OSS was now openly in China, the center of its focus after MacArthur went into the Philippines and the Marines took Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

General Albert Wedemeyer, Mountbatten's Chief of Staff, was appointed to take Stilwell's place. "He was a tall, blond, blue-eyed, upper-cla.s.s man with a German temperament," says Guy Martin, who was quartered for a while at Wedemeyer's house while he supervised demolition agents. Wedemeyer, whom Paul Child affectionately called Uncle Al (to get past the censors), brought in his good friend Heppner from Kandy to be OSS commander in SEAC. Heppner in turn asked Paul Child to join him. That January, Paul met with Donovan, Wedemeyer, Chennault, and Hurley to plan the design for Wedemeyer's China War Room. Paul reluctantly left his well-organized and well-equipped Kandy War Room to begin again, first in Chungking, the free China capital and the location of the American Emba.s.sy. By spring the War Room was moved south to the mountain city of Kunming (headquarters for the OSS and Chennault's Flying Tigers, now under Chiang Kai-shek). Journalist Theodore White earlier called the city a "medieval cesspool" with filthy alleyways, an opium stronghold. Kunming, once home of the refugee university fighting the Chiang dictatorship, was now a wealthy black-market center.

Julia, always excited by new adventure, this time China, and by her proximity to the war itself, was not excited by the minutiae or the volume of the paperwork. Her office primarily served intelligence branches, opening, numbering, and directing all mail and order forms. She had to devise a simpler system for code names and keeping track of the secret papers; she and Lieutenant Colonel h.e.l.liwell used pouch labels to speed up and secure the information. Her "Confidential" letters to other agents were riddled with number and letter codes as well as detailed instructions that reveal the tediousness of her job.

It is evident from her letters that she took care of promotions for her staff and lifted their spirits when needed. She had a staff of nearly ten a.s.sistants. Her task was daunting at this critical point in the war when the United States was planning an attack on central j.a.pan. Years later, when she disparaged her work as "a clerk," Paul declared: "She was privy to all messages, both incoming from the field, or Washington, etc., and outgoing to our agents and operatives all over China-Burma-India."

Louis Hector remembers the day she turned over "a small, heavy steel footlocker which contained a large cache of tan, tallowy bits about the size and shape of Hershey's chocolate kisses, each wrapped in a greasy bit of paper." She handled this secret currency with tact and secrecy. It was their "operational opium" to pay spies.

No matter how valuable the doc.u.ments she handled, Julia hated the work she did. Though she sc.r.a.pped her original card-indexing system from Kandy because of lack of time, she despised the daily routine and longed for real spy work. But the daughter of John McWilliams was hired to do this job and set her jaw to tough it out, a personal characteristic of honor combined with stubbornness that would carry through her personal and professional life. The McWilliams backbone was as firm as it was tall.

Early spring winds brought brick-colored dust that coated her teeth and eyes and covered the rice fields and the old walls in Kunming. The "dust was deep and omnipresent," said Paul Child, who had arrived in China before Julia. His presence made the temporary a.s.signment far more appealing, for she enjoyed his company and hoped a romance with him would begin.

Paul was struggling with the difficulty of beginning yet another War Room, securing equipment, and waiting for a team of seven, which would include Jack Moore and (by June) Jeanne Taylor. He came to China, as he had to India, "at General Wedemeyer's request" and immediately loved this "unquenchable and gutsy country," its mountains, its food, and its "beautiful" people. Yet he confided to a friend that he felt like a man from Mars, out of place in the military environment: "These military humans are no soil for my roots. Warfare, with which I am intimately connected, never was my work of art, and though I help shape the clay I detest the statue." Paul asked for carte blanche in his work, and Heppner and Wedemeyer gave it to him. As he wrote in his diary: "Whatever happens in my life I'm going to be Stage Manager, take in the money at the Box Office, write the play, act in it and have a box seat for the performance."

Yet Paul was indescribably lonely, still looking for the woman of his dreams. Julia was apparently not considered for this role, but their friendship was deepening. He reported to his brother Charlie that "Julie, who is here on temporary duty, is a great solace." She listened to his complaints about lack of office equipment and supplies and his battle with his stomach and the Yangtze Rapids (equivalent to the Kandy Kanters and Delhi Belly and also known by some as the Chiang Kai s.h.i.ts).

CHUNGKING AND KUNMING.

The plane to Chungking in April brought Julia to Chiang Kai-shek's capital on the Yangtze River. It was a city that seemed to be built on one hundred hills and cliffs, a cosmopolitan, intense, overpopulated place that Paul Child, who had been there at the beginning of the year, called a "busted and ragged city" but "wildly stimulating." A painting of Chungking he would create, from a photograph, hung on their dining room wall in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, for years.

The Chinese, whom she loved to look at, stared at her light brown hair and towering presence. Children were aggressively friendly. The weather in Chungking was more extreme, and the water and clothes were always brown. Though the plum trees were in blossom, Julia had little time for touring. She was sent to reduce and organize the files (the staff was "dull, slow, dense") in keeping with the system set up in Kunming, which would now be the central headquarters. Chungking, "a mail room run by a girl with a mind like a withered rose," Julia wrote to a friend, made Ceylon look "civilized, beautiful, green, and comfortable." With the usual woman shortage, there were plenty of dinner parties following gin after the hard workday. News that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died arrived as Julia was leaving, and she was uneasy about getting back to Kandy.

Returning to Kunming, she became increasingly aware that she would not be going back to Kandy. "China was more formal; Ceylon had been like a big family." Yet three months later Julia concluded that China "is so much alive." Betty MacDonald remembers being in the mountains of western China with the j.a.panese all around, "so it was a different feeling. You felt behind enemy lines. That made for camaraderie-several marriages and the breakup of others." She became openly involved with Heppner.

Julia did indeed like Kunming, for it reminded her of California with blue mountains beyond the eucalyptus trees. This city in the hills of southern China was in the backcountry, so it had what one historian calls "the atmosphere of a frontier town." It was not only the end of the supply line to China, it was now the base of Detachment 202, from which all field projects were organized, where Chinese troops were trained, and where sabotage teams were sent into the field. The plateau was over 6,000 feet above sea level-west of Burma and north of Hanoi and French Indochina. The soil was the red soil of Burma and the surrounding hills were bare; but beyond the city lay Kunming Lake and high above it a cloudy Camelot of temples carved in the rocks of the mountains.

The Chinese wore padded blue coats, tucking their hands into opposite sleeves; the shopkeepers wore embroidered slippers; and herds of black pigs roamed the countryside. It was all very colorful, but, as her friend Ellie said, an environment that was "ominous and austere." The Chinese were either eking out a living or serving with the ragtag group of peasant soldiers exploited by greedy merchants (who sat out the war) and corrupt politicians. The scorn of ignorant GIs did not help, though the presence of so many missionaries' children in China may have diminished some of the racism inherent in the war in Asia.

Paul wrote to his brother: Julia and I managed to borrow a jeep from a friend last Sunday afternoon and, after buying a bottle of mulberry wine, struck off into the great unknown, for about 40 miles. The weather was incredibly inspiring: hot sun and cool air, sparkling sky, breeze enough, scattered clouds. The great mountains lay around us like back-broken dragons. G.o.d what beautiful country-the mud villages with their green-tiled towers, the herds of black swine, the blue clad people, the cedar smoke, the cinnamon dust, were all eternally Chinese, and connected us with the deep layers of past time. We saw a beautiful red sandstone (avon color) bridge set in the midst of a paddy-field. The stones were all wind-worn, like the tourelles at Chateau Neiric, so they looked like soft loaves of bread. We sat on it and drank our wine, and got sunburned, and looked at the mules going over it, and relaxed, and life came right for a spell.

Paul smoked a new pipe given him by Charlie, who regularly sent cigars and film. After taking pictures of each other and wandering through a graveyard, Julia and Paul returned from "a good afternoon," Paul concluded on April 17, 1945. Such tranquil moments were few.

CHIANG VS. MAO.

The records Julia McWilliams kept in Kunming were more vital and her trustworthiness more important than ever before. The files bulged with data of the OSS training of Chinese infiltrators, of the internal political strife, and the b.u.mbling of the Chinese, who had little heart for bravery or risk after years of fighting and internal corruption. Not only was the OSS caught in the crosshairs of Chinese political factions; it also instigated some of the conflicts. Julia, like the others, heard fascinating firsthand stories from the interior, stories they were not allowed to set down in words.

The major internal conflict for years was between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung, especially since the j.a.panese split free China in two. Chiang in the south was a powerful warlord with shaved head who ruled official China in Chungking. He knew one English word, "darling," for he was married to a Wellesley graduate. He "converted" to Christianity for her, but only by the widest stretch of the imagination could he even be regarded, in Theodore White's words, as "an Old Testament Christian." The OSS considered him and his loyal henchman and spymaster General Tai Li to be corrupt, ruthless, and more interested in fighting for power against the communists in the north than against the j.a.panese. In White's view, Chiang ran a "corrupt political clique that combines some of the worst features of Tammany Hall and the Spanish Inquisition." Stilwell, before he left, had called it "this rotten regime."

Julia shared the view of the old China hands that Chiang was a cruel despot. Many of her friends and colleagues were born in China, the children of missionaries, and loved the people. The missionaries' children believed that the Allies would do better to back the communists in the north, who could fight with greater heart. Their views would, in the McCarthy era of the 1950s, cost many their careers and reputations. By the time Julia came to China, the U.S. amba.s.sador, Patrick Hurley, nicknamed "the Albatross" by the OSS group (he once called Chiang "Mr. Shek"), was completely in the pocket of Chiang, and Wedemeyer had to apologize for courting the communists' help in the war against the j.a.panese. Julia would confide in a friend eight years later, "We never ran into anybody who did not distrust and dislike the Chiang regime (possible exception of that fool, Pat Hurley)." Paul told his brother that "the war of back alleys, back rooms, big parties, magnificent wh.o.r.es, and equally magnificent blackmails ... almost becomes the 'real' war and the news-war is only the surface expression."

Mao Tse-tung led the Yenan communists in the mountains of northern China. It was generally considered by those with experience in China that Mao and Chou En-lai (Paul Child was very impressed that he spoke excellent, though accented, English) would make effective allies against the j.a.panese. Overt diplomatic missions, long urged by Stilwell, to get the joint cooperation of these warring Chinese factions together to fight the j.a.panese were thwarted by Chiang. (His political clout was reinforced by a number of Americans who were paid for writing pro-Chinese propaganda.) Covert operations in both regions continued.

THE OSS WOMEN.

Rosamond (Rosie) Frame, who spoke fluent Chinese and worked in covert espionage, exposed some Chinese nationals' collaboration with j.a.pan in the south. Her partner was later severely injured in retaliation for their mission. Rosie was enterprising. (She told the childhood story of being given $2,000 by her missionary parents for schooling in Switzerland and finding her way to the school by herself.) Later she went on to Heidelberg and the University of Chicago.

According to historian Harris Smith, Julia's intelligence files "bulged with reports about the incompetence of the Chinese [Chiang] military command." He adds that "OSS officers were sickened by the treatment [that] the Chiang government afforded its troops." They recorded attacks against OSS convoys by Chinese government troops posing as bandits and murdering Chinese agents who worked for the OSS. Despite these revelations and the shifting alliances, Chiang kept the public relations ear of the Allies.

Rosie Frame, who had broken all the hearts on the ship from California to India with Julia and exposed the Chinese collaborationists, was compiling target studies for the Chinese in Chungking, where she was romanced by Paul in January. He told his brother that it was a "pa.s.sionate friendship though not profoundly profoundly pa.s.sionate." Soon he realized she was not his ideal woman. After he left for Kunming and Julia arrived in Chungking, Rosie helped Julia organize the intelligence files there. The daughter of a Christian college dean in China, she spoke Mandarin and Cantonese as well as French. Paul described her woman hockey player's figure, yet praised her attractiveness, brilliance, and energy. Betty MacDonald called her "one of the most alert, brilliant women the OSS sent into the field, a modern Mata Hari." She also called her "Sub Rosy" and described her romantically clad in fur-lined flying jacket, boots, and slacks, with a carbine strapped over her shoulder. After the war Rosie would marry Thibaut de Saint Phalle, whom Betty described as the "scion of a famous French family," who was with the OSS on the China coast. pa.s.sionate." Soon he realized she was not his ideal woman. After he left for Kunming and Julia arrived in Chungking, Rosie helped Julia organize the intelligence files there. The daughter of a Christian college dean in China, she spoke Mandarin and Cantonese as well as French. Paul described her woman hockey player's figure, yet praised her attractiveness, brilliance, and energy. Betty MacDonald called her "one of the most alert, brilliant women the OSS sent into the field, a modern Mata Hari." She also called her "Sub Rosy" and described her romantically clad in fur-lined flying jacket, boots, and slacks, with a carbine strapped over her shoulder. After the war Rosie would marry Thibaut de Saint Phalle, whom Betty described as the "scion of a famous French family," who was with the OSS on the China coast.

Other friends from Washington and Ceylon lived with Julia in the women's house: Ellie Thiry, Marjorie Severyns, and Peachy Durand, who was transferred from Chungking. Ellie, while working in Chungking the previous month, had fallen in love with a British major named Basil Summers (whom she would eventually marry).

In the women's house, white parachute silk draped the common room and deep blue coolie cloth covered the beds. The women were crowded five or six in a room, until Julia took over an addition to the women's house, where she bunked with Mary Livingston Eddy, who had arrived (considerably later than expected, from Cairo) to take over the Registry. Because Julia had the office under control and Heppner wanted her to stay, she and Mary decided to divide the work between them.

In a letter to a former colleague in Kandy, Julia confided that the OSS originally intended to send her to Calcutta when Mary arrived, and that she indeed received "propositions" to enter Secret Intelligence. But "by the time I learned anything about China the war would be over." She was now convinced, she told her father, that China was the important place, "a life or death issue," and "S.E.A. is now all British, and this is really US, and the OSS has a big contribution to make." No one did her job better than she. She had an unflappable nature and daring enough to make a great spy.

Mary Livingston joined the OSS to escape a failed marriage to a man named Eddy (she would marry Dillon Ripley after the war) and served in Algeria and Italy before China. She was five feet eight inches tall and elegant. Despite her New York 400 background she was adventurous and roughed it with aplomb. Unflappable as Julia, she enjoyed walking through the rice paddies to work with Paul, who remembered stumbling over a corpse there one day. Of her roommate, Julia wrote: "We had our sleeping bags and rolled them up on a cot made of ropes for a mattress across the bars of the cot. I would have loved to have Clorox because the plumbing, even when it worked, smelled so bad." Mary: "I was in awe of Julia because she was older and so much in possession there; we knew what was going on and the people were fascinating. We had a big house and a cook who prepared American food, but Kunming had a lot of good restaurants and it was a treat to go out to eat."

They were accustomed to mechanical breakdowns (occasionally Julia would get all lathered up in the shower and the water would stop running), so when the projector stopped in the middle of a movie, everyone waited patiently. When the lights came up, they knew it was not an electrical failure, but a proclamation by radio: Churchill announced that Germany had surrendered that day, May 9, 1945. According to Ellie's diary: "We listened to the announcement, and n.o.body said a word, except 'that's that,' and we returned to the show. Soon it will end here as well, they all thought."

EATING CHINESE.

Julia was dining at a local Szechwan restaurant one hot summer night several weeks later with Jeanne Taylor and three men, including Paul Child and Al Ravenholt, a correspondent who spoke Chinese and knew the restaurant scene. On the other side of the pink silk screen was a Chinese general and his party of friends. After much noisy drinking the general became sick. "It was fortunate 2 gals were tough and worldly," Paul wrote, "because there's something about a Chinese general vomiting loudly a few feet away that might otherwise have taken the fine edge off the bowl of eels and garlic we were eating."

Julia was always hungry; in fact, Paul would later say, "she's a wolf by nature." But China awakened her discriminating taste: "[American] food in China was terrible; we thought it was cooked by grease monkeys. The Chinese food was wonderful and we ate out as often as we could. That is when I became interested in food. There were sophisticated people there who knew a lot about food.... I just loved Chinese food." She was just as impressed that her sophisticated colleagues "talked so much about" the food they ate.

In 1995, she recalled a visit to a family restaurant-probably Ho-Teh-Foo-in a building several stories high surrounding a courtyard where the kitchen was located. The waiter would "yell down the order and when ready they would pull the trays up by rope. The entire family was in the kitchen, mother and grandmother and children-just like the French family-everyone had a good time." She relished the pleasure the Chinese took in dining, "making these great swooping, slurping noises as they ate." She also preferred small portions of a great variety of food: "nuggets of chicken in soy sauce, deep-fried or in paper; always rice, pork, sweet-and-sour soup. The duck was always good, and everyone had a good time." Manners dictated that when reaching for a bowl in the middle of the table, they had to keep "one foot on the floor, where we placed the tea when it was cold and the bowls when they were empty."

Though some praised the Army mess, the bland American food cooked by the Chinese in the barracks, Julia did not; she told Parade Parade magazine in 1994 about "the terrible Army food: rice, potatoes, canned tomatoes and water buffalo [sic]. We would sit around and talk about the wonderful meals we remembered." Betty remembers "mostly potatoes and stuff from cans" but not buffalo meat in the Army chow. This official cooking was presumably more sanitary, but Betty remembers that "we would get dysentery easily." At one time or another, everyone (particularly Paul Child) suffered from some form of diarrhea or dysentery. One day one of the local chefs, who had been cooking over hot charcoal, was found dead on the floor. Dinner was served anyway. magazine in 1994 about "the terrible Army food: rice, potatoes, canned tomatoes and water buffalo [sic]. We would sit around and talk about the wonderful meals we remembered." Betty remembers "mostly potatoes and stuff from cans" but not buffalo meat in the Army chow. This official cooking was presumably more sanitary, but Betty remembers that "we would get dysentery easily." At one time or another, everyone (particularly Paul Child) suffered from some form of diarrhea or dysentery. One day one of the local chefs, who had been cooking over hot charcoal, was found dead on the floor. Dinner was served anyway.

Those with educated mouths demanded taste and authenticity. Spending time with Paul meant more adventurous hunting for food, which was secured by OSS personnel who had been born in China and knew the language well. Louis Hector, who remembered the "beautiful Yunnan hams and the purple potatoes," said Paul and Julia "organized the splendid feasts," but Paul would remember that Theodore White first introduced him to the best eating places. Of course, in dining out they risked infection (the Chinese fertilized with "night soil [human waste]"), but the risk was worthwhile. Julia learned about Peking, Szechwan, Cantonese, Annamite, and f.u.kien techniques. As she noted in 1945, Chinese cuisine emphasized diversity, elegance (small portions), and health. "I am very, very fond of northern, Peking-style Chinese cooking. That's my second favorite [cuisine]. It's more related to French; it's more structured," she wrote.

The restaurant as such originated in China (though its flowering in the West was due to French traditions) in the T'ang Dynasty (618907 A.D.). A.D.). According to anthropologists Peter Farb and George Armelagos, during the ancient Chou Dynasty twenty different methods of cooking were practiced in this oldest and most developed cuisine, where "a knowledge of food and drink marked one as educated." According to anthropologists Peter Farb and George Armelagos, during the ancient Chou Dynasty twenty different methods of cooking were practiced in this oldest and most developed cuisine, where "a knowledge of food and drink marked one as educated."

Paul's five years in France, beginning in 1925, led to talk of French cuisine and the dishes he looked forward to eating. He and Julia talked endlessly about food; as Gertrude Stein said about the French in general, they talk about talking about food. Paul met Stein and many other artists in Paris, including sculptor Jo Davidson and newspaperman Paul Mowrer, now married to Hadley Hemingway (Ernest's first wife). He spoke lovingly of the preparation of quenelles and souffles. For a girl who grew up thinking of the kitchen as "a dismal place," Julia found revelations in the local Chinese cuisine and Paul's food talk.

THE CHILD TWINS.

Julia was learning a great deal about Paul and his identical twin brother, Charles (Charlie or Charleski), who was married with children and working for the State Department, first in Washington and for a while in San Francisco. The father of Paul and Charlie died when they were six months old, and their mother, Bertha May Cushing (of the famous Boston Cushings), supported them and an older sister, Mary (or Meeda), by singing in Boston and Paris and through the kindness of strangers. His mother, an utterly impractical, pre-Raphaelite creature who died in 1937, taught her boys that (in Julia's words) "artists are sacred." Paul, whose only real family was Charlie's family, returned from China with paintings and hundreds of photographs of the country and its people.

Paul's letters to his brother reveal his romantic consideration of several women in the compound. It had been Rosie Frame first in New Delhi, then in Chungking. Now it was Marjorie Severyns, who was bright, quick, and "my kind of woman." The compet.i.tion was "ferocious," said Paul: "even the snaggle-toothed, the neurotic, the treacherous and the dim-witted among the women are hovered over by men, as jars of jam are hovered over by wasps." But for Marjorie "the humming turns to an angry roar." Guy Martin agreed: "She was sort of the ladylove, everybody thought of her as being very s.e.xy; she had that kind of appeal. Marjorie and Rosamond were the best-looking ones." Marjorie, the child of missionaries and a graduate of the University of Washington, had several affairs. However, Paul's worldly charm (and devotion to women) could not defeat his chief rival, news correspondent Al Ravenholt, whom she would wed after the war. "None of the women seem to be the answer to my loneliness," he wrote Charlie, after mentioning Rosie Frame and Nancy Davis, whom he still claimed to love deeply but who was writing only once a month. And he always came back to Edith Kennedy: You will never know what it is to feel profoundly lonely, to have y[ou]r vitals twisted by the need for companionship ... but when you have sown the seed of love, weeded and watered its field, reaped its harvest and stored the golden grains, and: Then! The barn burns down, and the fields are flooded-well you become empty, unbased, and bereft.... since Edith's death I am rootless, or soil-less.

He was able eventually to tell Julia about the woman he had loved for seventeen years, who died painfully of cancer just months before he joined the OSS. He would tell her about their house on Shepard Street in Cambridge and the earlier apartment in the rue d'a.s.sas in Paris. Edith was an intellectual, a friend of May Sarton and Helene Deutsch, and the mother of three boys before she became involved with Paul, nearly twenty years her junior.