And my days of pleasure cruises across the seas were over, that much I knew—at least for as long as Hitler had his U-boats haunting the waters. And so I offered my beloved Sea Cloud to the navy. “She’s a patriot, just like I am,” I said to Admiral King, Chief of the U.S. Navy, when I made my offer. At the rate of a dollar a year, my massive ship was theirs on lease until we had won the war. Admiral King told me they would use her as a convoy carrier, to transport American sailors across the waters, patrol for German subs, and provide safe passage through the dangerous waters that I knew firsthand.
And my contributions to the cause were not going to stop there, I learned. Deenie, who was done with high school and studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, volunteered for a USO tour to perform for our forces on the Mariana Islands. I hated the thought of her going to the South Pacific; I felt as if I might as well have been sending a child off to war. But I knew there would be no stopping her, just as there had never been any stopping me.
The most unexpected moment of the war happened early the next spring, when Margaret came to my sitting room to announce a surprising visitor. “Mrs. Davies?”
I looked up from my armchair, where I sat reviewing the minutes of the most recent General Foods board meeting. “Yes?”
The young woman clasped her hands before her waist, jutting her chin forward as she declared, “The…er, the president is here to see you.”
I rose from my chair, putting my papers aside. “He…he is?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where is Mr. Davies?” I asked.
“Mr. Davies is already in the drawing room. We’ve shown the president in to him. They await you.”
I flew down the stairs and found the two men seated before the fireplace. President Roosevelt looked relaxed in a pinstriped suit, a straw boater resting in his lap. Several dark-suited men, the president’s security guards, stood sentry-like near the doorway and throughout the hallway. “Ah, Mrs. Davies!” The president smiled affably when he saw me, but he didn’t rise. Lingering leg paralysis from an earlier bout of polio gave our commander in chief more and more trouble these days, Joe had told me, even though the broad public did not know this fact.
“Mr. President, it’s an honor,” I said. And a surprise. “Can…can I offer you something, sir? Something to drink perhaps?”
“As a matter of fact, there is something I’ll be asking for, but not to drink. Please, Marjorie, come sit. This affects you, after all.”
My stomach clenched. Joe’s face was unreadable. I lowered myself into the empty armchair across from Roosevelt. The president looked from me toward Joe, and then he said, “I realize this visit is unexpected, so how about I cut right to it?”
Joe and I both nodded. “Outwardly, the war effort is going well,” the president said, his highbrow manner of speaking so familiar to me after the many fireside chats and addresses I’d listened to throughout his more than ten years in office.
“Yes,” Joe answered. I could tell by my husband’s creased expression that he had been caught just as unaware as I had by this drop-in.
“But Stalin is a tricky fellow,” Roosevelt went on, cocking his head to the side. “It’s no secret to you, Joe, that Churchill and Stalin loathe each other. Churchill doesn’t trust Stalin, and Stalin suspects Churchill of imperialist intentions. Stalin feels that he has spent more blood than all the rest of us combined, and he’s not entirely wrong—those Reds have been mowed down on the Eastern Front something fierce. And Stalin has grown impatient with it. He is enraged with us for not opening up additional fronts. He thinks we’re deliberately trying to bleed him white. Churchill has a plan, but Stalin won’t hear it. We can’t let the whole damned thing fall apart. Not this late in the game, when we are so close.”
A pause. Silence, but for the rhythmic ticktock of our Fabergé clock on the mantel. Out in the hallway one of the security guards coughed. Roosevelt broke the silence: “I need to get through to Stalin. To convince him that we are all on the same side. That we want to see the Nazis whipped just as much as he does.” The president looked squarely at my husband, his eyes burning with an intensity that belied his genteel manner of speech. “I need you in Russia, Joe. The name Stalin means ‘Man of Steel’ and that is the damned truth—the man is well-near impenetrable. But he trusts you, and that’s not something that I can say about anyone else.”