“It’s hard to believe that anyone as much in the public eye as Vivian Playfair could be a secret drinker without being detected long ago.”
“There’s more than one kind of alcoholism,” returned Hilary. “It can be periodic. That’s the kind that’s easiest to conceal for any length of time. Some of them can go for weeks or months without alcohol and then, suddenly, they have to spend a few days drinking themselves blind. And it can happen to those who have everything to live for, at least, apparently.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. It happened to my husband.”
It was the first glimpse that Tash had had into the long past that must have shaped Hilary’s present. How differently we would feel about people if they could carry visible pasts around with them . . .
“Every few months he used to drink himself into a blackout,” said Hilary. “And he always insisted on driving when he was blacked out. That’s what killed him. When I saw the gash on Vivian’s car last night, and the bruise on her forehead, I remembered one night when he came home with a crushed fender and a broken head. He hadn’t the slightest idea of what he had hit or how he had pulled out of it or where he had been.”
“That would explain her periodic absences,” said Tash. “Going off some place to drink by herself. She couldn’t do that here. And it might explain those periodic changes in her appearance. Not illness, just a colossal hangover. But what about that letter she gave me to mail?”
“Writing to someone who supplies her with liquor and a place to drink it in privacy, trying to hide the fact from Jeremy.”
“You think he knows now?”
“He must suspect something by this time.”
“How could she be such a fool?”
Hilary lit another cigarette. “Who knows? The surface of life gives little indication of what lies underneath until something like this happens. I used to think I had made my husband happy. Obviously, I hadn’t. I’ve always thought Jeremy had made Vivian happy, but perhaps he hasn’t.”
“There are cures, aren’t there?”
“Oh, yes. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. My husband tried everything: psychoanalysis, hypnosis, group therapy, biochemical therapy, antabuse. Everything. Nothing worked.”
“If she continues this way, she’ll destroy him.” Hilary nodded.
“If it comes out—as it almost certainly will in an election campaign—people may feel sorry for Jeremy, but they won’t vote for him. Not even if he divorced her.”
“He won’t divorce her,” said Tash.
“Why not?”
“He is not the kind of man who would desert a wife in trouble when she needs him most.”
“I wonder if voters would feel the way you do?”
“Women voters would.”
“Then God help Jerry! If this comes out, he’s locked into disaster.”
“What do you mean?”
“If he goes on living with her, the taint will rub off on him. Some men will think he’s weak, others will wonder if he drove her to it. But if he divorces her, women like you will say he deserted a wife in trouble in order to save his career. Politically, he’s damned if he leaves her, and damned if he doesn’t.”
“We’re just guessing,” said Tash. “This may not be the truth at all.
“Want to bet? She’s going into a private nursing home day after tomorrow. For a checkup. At least that’s what the press release will say. Tash, I wouldn’t blame you if you resigned now. There’s not going to be any future in politics for anyone who worked for Jeremy Playfair.”
“I’m not in politics.”
Hilary’s eyes grew pensive. “So, like the rest of us, you’ve fallen for the Playfair mana.”
“Bunk!” Tash spoke as crisply as she could. “To me this is just an interesting job. Material for my future memoirs.”
Hilary didn’t bother to answer such nonsense. There was a pen in her hand and she was drawing high-heeled shoes all over Tash’s engagement pad.
“If you’re going to stay, you’d better move in here pretty soon. Now Jerry has announced his candidacy, we’ll be in the campaign before we know it, and you won’t have time to commute between Leafy Way and your apartment. You’ll be working twenty-four hours a day.”
“All right.” Tash rose. “I’m dining out this evening, but after dinner I’ll go home and pack a bag and come back here. It’ll be a nice change from a newspaper office, where you work thirty-four hours a day.”
Hilary was halfway to the door when Tash stopped her.
“There’s one thing we’ve forgotten.”
“What?”
“The canary. Alcoholism wouldn’t explain that.”
“No,” said Hilary. “Nothing we know explains that.”
Bill Brewer had chosen a restaurant in the hills with a view of city lights tumbling down sloping ground to the harbor, where they were reflected in water. He was waiting at a table by a window when Tash arrived.
“Don’t blame me for being late. Blame Barlovento. I got bogged down in their imports and exports again and forgot the time.”
“Campari soda?”
“Something stronger tonight, please. Rum, I think.” Bill ordered a daiquiri. “You look worried.”
“I am.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Tash took a sip of the cold, bitter-sweet drink and smiled over the rim of her glass at Bill. “I like talking to you. I can say anything that comes into my head without worrying for fear you’ll misunderstand. I really need that tonight, but there mustn’t be any leaks.”
Bill laughed. “Have you forgotten that our paper is owned by a man who is supporting Playfair for re-election? No matter what you tell me tonight, I can’t publish it.”
“Censorship?”
“Of course. In a Freudian society, freedom of the press means freedom to print four-letter words, but you can’t print the truth about international oil. Sex is the new opiate of the people.”
“Don’t you believe in anything? Not even sex?”
“Oh, I believe in dry martinis and you. What’s this all about?”
Tash told him.
“I wonder if any love story ever has a happy ending,” he said. “I remember so well when Jeremy married Vivian. He was really in love with her then.”
“There must be some happy endings.”
“I’ve never known one in real life. I loved my wife and what happened? She died of cancer before she was thirty . . .
“This is Jeremy Playfair’s unlucky year, saddled with a wife whose behavior could wreck him, and stuck with a strike he can’t settle without antagonizing some block of voters. Is it really bad luck? Or could it be the work of someone out to get him?”
“Oh, Bill, what a horrid idea! Do you think Hilary’s right about Vivian Playfair?”
“It’s possible, but not probable.”
“Why not?”
“Alcoholism is escape. What has Mrs. Playfair to escape from?”
“An exhibitionist would love being a governor’s I. wife,” said T°sh. “But a reticent person might find it torture after a year or so.”
“Or she might fall in love with another man,” said Bill. “How about Carlos de Miranda?”
“That’s lunacy!” retorted Tash. “Do you think any woman married to Jeremy Playfair would look at any other man?”
Bill didn’t try to return that ball. Apparently, he decided that it was not in his court.
They had reached coffee and liqueurs when he was called to the telephone.
Tash saw a change in him when he came back.
“I’m going to put you in a taxi now,” he said. “I have to get back to the office.”
“What’s happened?”
“A clash between dockworkers and Barloventan exiles on the waterfront a few minutes ago. Two men killed, more than a dozen wounded.”
When Tash reached Leafy Way with her suitcases she was waylaid by Hilary at the front door.
&nb
sp; “We need you.”
“But it’s nearly midnight!”
“Did you think I was joking when I said we work twenty-four hours a day?”
In the Florida Room, the air was thick with tobacco smoke. Job Jackman stood where Carlos had stood the night before, his back to the fireplace, smoking the inevitable cigar. Jeremy sat negligently perched on the edge of a window seat. Carlos, arms folded, stood leaning his back against a table.
In a crisis Job was a different man from the one Tash had met two days ago. Even his voice had more authority now.
“ . . . and now you must get the strike settled.”
“Agreed,” said Jeremy.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Give the strikers whatever they want.”
“Disagreed.”
Job took the cigar out of his mouth and flicked away the ash.
“Jeremy, being called neo-fascist and pro-Communist at the same time is quite a feat, but that’s what’s happening to you now in the evening papers. If you call out the National Guard, it’ll be even worse. You’re not running for re-election in Barlovento. Why do you care if people there starve a little?”
“I’ve already called out the National Guard.”
“Without consulting me?”
“There is no law or precedent that says I have to consult you.”
“Do you know why you’ve never lost an election? Because I’ve managed all your campaigns.”
“This isn’t campaign strategy. This is state policy.”
“Are you going to be like the President who said to his campaign manager: ‘Mr. Tweed, God elected me!’ ”
“Job, I am not going to turn myself into a robot who jumps through hoops every time you push a button marked Votes. It’s not the end of the world if I lose this election. Right now, I’m pretty sick of the whole thing. Carlos, doesn’t your family still have a place on one of the islands where I could retire?”
“Cayo Siesta in the Sotavento group. Casa Miranda is yours, Jerry, whenever you care to go there.”
“But the election!” It was almost a wail from Job. “Think of all the people who’ve worked for you without pay ever since you entered politics! Can you let them down by walking out in a moment of pique?”
“Pique?”
“Sorry, maybe that’s the wrong word, but—”
“That is the wrong word. Two men have died, others have been wounded, because I listened to you too long and did not call out the National Guard. What I feel now can scarcely be described as pique.”
“What are you going to do now?” Job’s voice was chastened, almost meek.
“Tell the strikers at the meeting tomorrow that if they will not accept the new terms, I shall ask the courts for an injunction against the strike.”
It was the first time Tash had slept at Leafy Way. Perhaps it was the brightness of the moon, shining through an uncurtained window which she had left open for air that woke her in the middle of the night.
When she couldn’t get back to sleep, she went over to the window and stepped out on a balcony there. It was hardly a working balcony, just an architect’s whim, only about two feet wide.
She stood looking across a lawn blanched by moonlight to a belt of trees, then glanced down at the stone terrace below the balcony.
It was a shock to find herself looking down directly into another human face that was looking up at her.
She had not heard a sound. The moment was so still that her first thought was: hallucination.
For this was a face that had haunted her memory for a long time: pale eyes, blurred and blind-looking, the elfin smile of of a fallen angel.
For an instant, neither he nor she moved or spoke. The shock of mutual discovery cast a spell over both of them.
Then, still soundless, he melted across the grass into the trees.
She went through the motions of calling the guard room on her bedside telephone. She was not surprised when Captain Wilkes called back an hour later to say that his men had not been able to find anyone in the grounds.
9
NEXT MORNING, the executive offices were as grimly busy as a command post on the edge of a combat zone.
Everyone knew that violence on the waterfront was now held in check only by the presence of national guardsmen.
At twelve noon the Governor went to the State House to meet representatives of all three parties—the strikers and the Barloventan immigrants and Barloventan political exiles—in a last effort to patch up some sort of truce that would at least avoid further bloodshed.
Carlos went with him as interpreter. Job remained at Leafy Way with Tash, putting together the rough draft of a statement which the Governor was to make on television at seven o’clock that evening.
Whether a truce was established or not, he wanted to make a short, clear statement of the issues so that the electorate would know what was going on while it was going on.
The executive offices were in such turmoil that Job and Tash went to work in Jeremy’s own office on the floor above, the Octagonal Room, a tower room with a view of the garden on all eight sides.
It was the first time Tash had worked with Job, and she found him less easy to work with than anyone else in the Tennis Cabinet. The little courtesies that lubricate social mechanisms were neglected by Job. Perhaps they were incompatible with the Boss Tweed role he wanted to play in politics. That populist tradition demanded sand in the machine, not oil.
All morning Tash had an uncomfortable feeling of gears clashing, gritty surfaces grinding together, and abrasive metals uttering high-pitched squeals.
What Jeremy or Carlos would have conveyed as a smiling request, Job growled as a surly command, while the series of cigars in his mouth made the atmosphere almost unbreathable by one o’clock.
Yet it was impossible to work with him without recognizing one thing: his single-minded devotion to Jeremy’s service. Job had what Bill Brewer called a fundamentalist mind. He would never be troubled by self-doubt, or by doubt of any chief to whom he had given allegiance.
When he had cut Tash’s first rough draft from thirty pages to twenty, it was better. When he had cut the twenty-page version to fifteen pages, it was still better.
He lit a cigar complacently. “Have you any suggestions now?”
“Yes. I would cut three more pages and reduce the total to twelve instead of fifteen.”
“Which paragraphs would you cut?”
“I wouldn’t cut by paragraph. I’d cut by line. We have fifteen pages of twenty-five lines each. I would cut five lines from each page. That’s a total of seventy-five lines or three pages.”
“And it would still make sense?”
“More sense than before. Cutting by paragraph is butchery, but cutting by line is surgery. There’s hardly any blood. Almost like cutting a callus off your heel.”
“Where did you learn this?”
“Working for newspapers and magazines that would cut anything to the bone to make room for a four-line ad.”
“Let’s see you cut this.”
Tash went through the script with a soft-leaded pencil as swiftly as if she were making merely typographical corrections.
Job took it from her and read.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” It was the mildest of his colloquial expressions. “If Jeremy retires, will you write speeches for me?”
“Maybe. Shall I have this typed now?”
“Yes, and tell the secretariat to make a dozen Xeroxes and put them on Jeremy’s desk in this room.”
A tap on the door.
“Sorry.” It was Hilary’s voice. “You’ll have to get out now. The TV men are here to set up their equipment.”
“Let’s go and have a snack in the mess,” said Job to Tash.
Outside, the corridor seemed narrower now it was choked with an unseemly clutter of cables, monitors, strobe light fixtures, throat microphones, and other mysteries which men from a network were dragging into the Octagonal Room.
In the mess hall,
Job planked a pocket radio on the table beside his cup of coffee and tuned in a local station that was hitched to one of the national networks.
“. . . according to a reliable source, strikers and immigrants have both made concessions to compromise, but the Barloventan political exiles are refusing to yield an inch. This afternoon, the Orioles . . .”
Job switched off his radio.
“Damn those expatriates!” He pronounced it as if it were spelled “expatriot.”
“I thought you were for them last night.”
“I’m not for them or against them. I don’t give one ice-cube in hell about them or their lousy island. All I care about is the Governor’s future.”
A girl from the secretariat brought them two copies of the Xeroxed statement.
As Tash read, she herself was now surprised to see how her Barloventan researches that had taken her so many hours of tedious work were now reduced to a few brisk sentences without losing anything essential.
Job looked up from the text. “Well?”
Tash spoke cautiously. “I think it’s quite good.”
“Good? It’s terrific! The delivery time is right, too. It takes Jerry about two minutes to read a page of twenty-five lines aloud, so twelve pages will take him about twenty-four minutes.”
“Is he going to read this?”
“Yes, but the television audience won’t know it. He’ll have the script on the desk in front of him, below the camera, where the audience can’t see it, but he can glance down at it whenever he wants to. He’s practised that until it looks as if he wasn’t reading at all.”
“Do you think this will change opinion in the legislature?”
“Probably not. A good speech will change a politician’s mind, but not his vote. We’re aiming to change voters’ opinions. Then the legislators will have to follow suit, or lose votes.” Job looked at his watch. “Nearly seven. Want to go up to the Octagonal Room or shall we watch here?”
“Wouldn’t we just be in the way up there?”
“Probably.”
“Then let’s watch it here.”
Men and women from research and secretariat were drifting into the mess hall to hear the speech. Job went to the TV set and turned knobs until there was a flash of the state flag on screen and a voice from off screen intoned:
Helen McCloy Page 8