“Certainly, Major, I will be glad to.” As she turned to leave, she looked at me as if Harding had asked her to take out the garbage.

I was beginning to get the feeling that the English were pretty good at letting you know that they meant exactly the opposite of what they were saying. I looked at my shoes. No, they were clean and shiny.

“You’ll have to excuse Daphne,” Harding said as he stood up from his desk. “She’s gone through the Blitz from the beginning and lost some friends. It didn’t make her and some of the other staff happy to hear Ike’s nephew got himself appointed to a soft job here. Especially not with the news that they’ve just lost Tobruk in North Africa, along with twenty-five thousand prisoners. Now let’s go see Ike.”

I considered how I could thaw out Daphne while I followed Harding up the stairs. He led me through a suite of offices and knocked on a set of double doors. I stopped thinking about Daphne with some difficulty. I had just time enough to feel nervous about meeting Uncle Ike again. A sergeant opened the doors and gestured us in.

“William, very good to see you!” Though he was a distant relation, Ike grinned widely and extended his hand to shake mine. He looked older, of course, than the last time I saw him. He was smiling but the rest of his face looked serious. His eyes locked on to mine and it seemed like he was trying to see inside my head. It was as if he was looking for something that he wanted, something that I could give him. Only I didn’t know what it was. Or if I even had it.

I suddenly didn’t know my left from my right. I’d tried to stammer out something while beginning to salute, then finally got my right hand in the right place when I saw he wanted to shake hands. I tried not to sound like the jerk I felt.

“Uncle… I mean General…,” I managed to say. OK, so maybe I should have tried harder.

Ike laughed, and immediately put me at ease. “Sit down, son. We won’t dwell on military protocol today.” He sat in a leather chair and motioned for the two of us to seats opposite him, then he lit a cigarette.