Establishment

by Howard Fast

  Hargasey sighed and spread his hands. “All right. This is something talking don’t help and talking don’t solve.” He took a script out of his jacket pocket. “I brought you another one. Girl in the French Resistance.” Sally’s eyes widened. “Captured. German concentration camp. Escapes. Gives her life so the man she loves can live and dies with a German firing squad singing The ‘Marseillaise.’”

  This time Sally did not dispute his syntax or remark on the ambiguity. She threw her arms around him and hugged him. “Alex, I adore you. You never heard me sing. I’m not great, but I’m all right. I mean, I do carry a tune.”

  ***

  Judge Hampton Fremont telephoned Harvey Baxter and asked him to stop by his chambers at five o’clock that same afternoon.

  “What do you suppose it is?” Kimmelman asked when Baxter told him about the call.

  “God knows! Possibly he’s heard something from the Appellate Division.”

  “If he has, wouldn’t it be unethical for him to tip you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How did he sound? Good? Bad? Depressed? You know he’s rooting for Barbara.”

  “I don’t know, just said he wanted to see me.”

  “You could have asked him whether it’s good or bad news.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Boyd, you don’t ask a judge a question like that. I’ll go over there and then I’ll know what he has to say. And don’t say anything to Barbara. Don’t get her hopes up or down.”

  Fremont was pleasant but serious. “Sit down, Harvey,” he said. He finished signing some documents; then he looked up and stared at Baxter unhappily. “You lost,” he said. “The Court of Appeals upheld Judge Meadows. I just learned about it. You’ll know officially tomorrow.”

  Baxter nodded forlornly. “I was afraid of that.”

  “I called you in to find out whether you intend to go to the Supreme Court?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good. Take the steps immediately, and we’ll continue Mrs. Cohen at liberty. That may give you another six months. Not that the Supreme Court will hear your arguments. They’ll never grant certiorari.”

  “Why not? We have a tremendous issue here. It goes far beyond the question of a simple misdemeanor.”

  “That’s just it, Harvey. We’ve let these two lunatic committees drive us into the most ridiculous and obscene bind the federal courts ever fell into. Never in my memory has the issue of contempt been used to punish people of principle. Well, we’ve dug our own hole. You see, any challenge in these cases becomes a direct challenge to Congress’ right to enforce its subpoenas. If the court hears one of these cases on a constitutional issue—and there are some—it faces a pretty predicament. If it decides for the government, it vitiates the Bill of Rights. If it decides for the defendant, it vitiates the power of Congress. Perfect horns of a perfect dilemma, and the answer is usually a denial of certiorari. But they’ll brood over it and talk about it and examine their conscience, and that will take time, maybe three or four months, maybe a year if their calendar is heavy, and in that time who knows what can happen? We might even come to our senses, God willing. I hate to see that woman go to prison. It offends me, not only because she’s Dan Lavette’s daughter, but because she is something. So just hang in there, Harvey, and give it the full run.”

  “You can count on that, your honor.”

  “And remember that I’m here. There’s not a great deal that I can do, but if worse comes to worst, I can ease it over some of the rough spots. I like that girl.”

  “So do I,” Baxter said.

  ***

  Barbara found herself unperturbed by the news. The telephone had rung while she was writing, and she found herself resenting the interruption. Harvey Baxter went into a long explanation, telling her that Judge Fremont was continuing her freedom on her own recognizance, that she was not to worry, and that he and Boyd Kimmelman were working on their brief for the Supreme Court.

  “What on earth is certiorari?” she wanted to know.

  “Just a fancy name for the Supreme Court’s willingness to hear a case. If they grant certiorari, they will hear our plea.”

  “Good. Carry on, Harvey,” she said almost indifferently.

  Then she went back to work. The morning hours were best, and she treasured them. Sam had been entered in nursery school from nine to two in the afternoon, and that left the morning hours free. Barbara was well aware that she lived in two worlds: the specific, controlled world she created on blank sheets of paper, and the real world, uncontrolled and seemingly created by madmen. Fourteen years had gone by since she had begun to write as a professional, and she frequently felt that it was only because she could lose herself in this managed world of her own creation that she had been able to survive. Out of the real world, the day before, had come a letter from David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister of Israel.

  “My dear Mrs. Cohen,” he wrote. “The sacrifice your husband made for our freedom has only now come to my attention. I realize that nothing I can say will lessen your grief. I am writing to tell you that we will never forget, and that his name, along with the names of so many others fallen in the struggle, will be enshrined not only on a monument to their memory but in our hearts as well.”

  It was a small country. But in spite of the fact that the prime minister had signed the letter himself, it irritated her. She did not enjoy condolences. In her mind, she composed a reply which she never sent: “My dear Mr. Ben-Gurion, I know you bear no responsibility for my husband’s death, but since you have written to me, I shall now tell you how I feel about the matter. I do not think that there is any such thing as a noble death, a heroic death, or a good death. I have lived most of my adult life around the sound and smell of war, and it is a smell that reeks of all the filth that man has created. Since I am a woman, I give myself the privilege of being an outsider. I stand at the rim of a lunatic asylum called civilization, and I listen to the obscenities of so-called leaders. I don’t know why I am saying all this to you. God knows, the Jews have suffered enough. But my own suffering is very personal. I want my husband here beside me, and my husband is dead. Nothing will change that.”

  Brooding after Harvey Baxter’s telephone call, she wondered whether indeed the world in the pages she created could be different from the reality. It was not her nature to bog down on the problem of who she was and where she was going; she felt she knew exactly who she was, and sooner or later she would be going to prison; but the pages she wrote presented other problems, and the work came slowly and painfully.

  But at least it’s different, she told herself.

  At lunchtime she ate scrambled eggs and practiced her Spanish with Anna. After her years in France, Barbara spoke French like a native, but her Spanish was kitchen talk and no better. She had been trying to teach French to Sam, but he was more adept with the Spanish he picked up from Anna. The result was confusing, to say the least.

  “I’ll get Sam if you want me to,” Anna said, “if you want to go on working.”

  “No. The work has become totally pointless, and when that happens, it’s best to leave it alone for a while. I’ll pick him up, and then we’ll wander over to Grant Avenue, where my strange mother has rented space to open an art gallery.”

  “But she had a gallery on Russian Hill.”

  “Ah, no. That thing on Russian Hill was a museum. My mother is always a step ahead of the world, but it doesn’t appear to catch up with her. She decided to establish a museum of modern art, but San Francisco never worked up any enthusiasm about it. The legend that we’re really cultured is only a legend. Under the white collars and the umbrellas, we’re still a frontier town. This project is actually a business, an art store, only when it’s an art store, Anna, it’s called a gallery. There never has been a truly fine gallery in town, but mother intends to change all that.”

  Jean was changing it in
a second-story floorthrough on Grant Avenue, just off California Street. Barbara entered with Sam, who wrinkled his nose at the smell of fresh paint and looked around in amazement. Dan, in jeans and a blue work shirt, was painting the walls dead white while Eloise, also in jeans, was working on a repainted Louis Quatorze chair, trying to remove the paint with sandpaper and solvent. Jean, who was preparing tea, welcomed them, hugged Sam, and informed them they were just in time to eat. “I want to paint like grandpa,” Sam demanded. Dan climbed down from his ladder and handed his paintbrush to Sam.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Jean cried.

  “It doesn’t matter. The walls are white anyway.”

  Sam, under Dan’s guidance, began to smear an unpainted part of the wall while Jean and Eloise put out tea things on a bridge table. Barbara, somewhat awed, watched the proceedings in silence.

  “Don’t judge it the way it is now,” Jean said. “We have three gallery rooms right through the building, front to rear. The rear room has a skylight. The floor will be carpeted, pale tan, just a shade darker than cream. Spots to light the pictures. The office is off the middle room.”

  “It’s going to damn well be the classiest gallery west of the Rockies,” Dan said.

  “More paint,” Sam said.

  “We deal in only the Moderns,” Jean went on. “Nothing farther back than the Expressionists. They are going to look at Pollock, Rothko, Ajay, Klee, Calder, Kandinski, and Marin, and they are going to like them and appreciate them and buy them, and the Philistines will be vanquished.”

  “Whatever that means,” Dan agreed.

  “Will he eat oatmeal cookies?” Eloise asked.

  “He loves them.”

  “I see it, but I don’t believe it,” Barbara said, removing the brush from Sam’s hand and trying to wipe the paint off his face while he protested violently. “Only because we’re going to have oatmeal cookies,” she explained to him. “Or would you rather paint? Paint or cookies?”

  “Cookies,” Sam decided instantly.

  “Takes after his grandfather,” Jean said. “What don’t you believe, Bobby?”

  “Dan Lavette painting walls. Jean Seldon in jeans—I’m not trying to pun—and work shirt. Who was it said, ‘There is no San Francisco society without Jean Seldon?’”

  “But I’m not Jean Seldon. I have been Jean Lavette, Jean Whittier, and now we’re giving Jean Lavette another try. It’s a whole new ball game, as your old man would say. We’re having more fun than any of us ever dreamed of having, and who knows, we may make some history.”

  “But, mother, you can’t sell those artists in San Francisco. You know that. Oh, they might buy a Georgia O’Keeffe, if it’s a bona fide buffalo skull that they can recognize, but Calder and Klee? Never.”

  “We shall educate them, shall we not, Eloise?”

  “We’ll try.”

  “And how does it work? Are you all three partners?”

  “Only the ladies,” Dan said. “I’m the janitor.”

  “And what about your boat, daddy? And the days you and mother are going to spend sailing the bay?”

  “That’s not out. I’m doing a whole new set of plans. I’m not sure I want a yawl. I’m not completely sold on it, so now I’m designing a cutter. Don’t you worry. Another year, and Sam’ll be able to sail with me. Between him and Freddie, I have me a crew. What about it, Eloise, will you let me teach Freddie how to sail a boat?”

  “Why not? He’s seven now. And Joshua’s a year old. You won’t exclude Josh because he’s not your grandson?” she asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Is he a year old?” Barbara asked in surprise. “What happens to us?”

  “A great deal happened to you,” Eloise said. “You know, he was born so soon after Bernie died.”

  Barbara closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “What is it, Bobby dear?” Jean asked her. “Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly all right. It’s just that people are strange. I’m strange. Harvey Baxter called me today to tell me that the Appellate Division had turned down our appeal and supported Judge Meadows—and do you know, I had forgotten all about it.”

  ***

  “By those who know it exists,” Lucy told her husband, “the club is called the establishment. That’s a British term.”

  “I know,” Tom said somewhat petulantly. “I have been there, you know.” He resented Lucy when she became too didactic, yet he always listened and he was constantly amazed at the things she picked up, the people she knew.

  They were having breakfast in the solarium of the old Sommers mansion on Pacific Heights. Alvin Sommers had died of a stroke three months before, leaving his home and everything else he owned to Lucy, and she and Tom had moved into the house a few weeks later. It was a magnificent graystone structure of eighteen rooms, one of the first great homes to have been built on Pacific Heights and only four lots from John Whittier’s house. That did not perturb Tom. Whittier had cancer and was dying in the hospital. Tom did not desire him dead, but at the same time he recognized that this way he would be spared the unpleasantness that could develop from having him as a neighbor.

  They no longer built houses with solariums, and Tom was not too comfortable with an indoor jungle, but Lucy would not touch it. It had always been their breakfast room and tea room, and since it meant so much to her, Tom was content to let it be. His old home had been rented out. He could have pressed Lucy to live there, but in all truth he preferred the archaic grandeur of the Sommers place.

  “Tom, I’m not trying to be superior,” Lucy said gently. “I would never dream of marrying a man who was my inferior in any way, and it’s time you accepted that. It’s just that the English use of the term fascinates me. They accept the fact that a small group of men exercise control, that it always has been that way and that it will continue to be that way. We delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.”

  “Some of us do and some of us don’t,” Tom said.

  “Of course,” Lucy went on, “they do not refer to themselves as the establishment. They would consider it pompous and gauche, and these men are neither pompous nor gauche. They are very practical, down-to-earth people.”

  “Go through it again,” Tom said, his eyes half closed. He remembered the names only too well, but a request like that pleased Lucy. Tom was not conscious of the mother-and-child game they played, yet he fell into it partly out of his own need and partly because of Lucy’s response.

  “Joseph Langtrey, First New York Trust.”

  “He’s the only Easterner. That’s odd.”

  “He keeps a place in Sonoma County. He has three thousand acres there. He raises grapes and horses.”

  “I suppose their equivalent exists in the East,” Tom said. “Probably in Chicago too.”

  “Not precisely the equivalent. All right, we have Mark Fowler, newspapers; Ira Cunningham, steel; Louis d’Solde—how would you describe him?”

  “Submarines, tanks, chemicals—it goes a long way. I don’t know how far.”

  “Geoffrey Culpepper, very quiet. You know, there is almost nothing about him. I know he has a place in La Jolla, down near San Diego, but apparently no one knows where. Electronics, communications, that sort of thing. He’s very big in television manufacture, Culpepper Electronics, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Diodes, microwaves. A lot more that truthfully I don’t understand. He also controls a string of radio stations and three television stations. Well, so much for our mystery man. The last of the group is Oscar McGinnis.”

  “And all one has to say is oil, which just about sums it up. The question is, Lucy, where do we fit in? These are giants. We have a net worth in the neighborhood of three hundred million.”

  “It’s not too bad a neighborhood.”

  “It’s still very small potatoes. You say they call themselves the club?”r />
  “Just that. The club. When Mark Fowler asked me to lunch with him, I had no idea what he wanted. He was an old friend of my father, and I thought it was simply a gesture. Actually, I had heard rumors of the group, people calling it the Bayside establishment. But no one really knew who they were. Fowler simply laid it all out for me. Oh, nothing earthshaking. Six important, influential men of affairs who meet once a month to discuss the country’s economy and political direction. Of course, that’s euphemistic. Men like these do not hold debating sessions or gossip to hear themselves talk. But he stressed that there is no formality, no minutes, no notes taken. He mentioned that he trusted my discretion almost in passing, but it sank home. In the same way, he suggested that you might like to join them at their next meeting, at Langtrey’s place.”

  “Why didn’t he come to me directly?”

  “I suppose that would have formalized it. I imagine they eschew anything that smacks of formality. I’m the daughter of an old friend. It could come off simply as an expression of interest. I mean, that’s actually what Fowler said, ‘Tom Lavette, interesting young man. We’d like to chat with him.’”

  “That’s all?”

  “Isn’t it enough? I know it’s a cliché to say that one doesn’t see the forest for the trees, but the Seldons and the Sommers too have been fussing with the trees for a hundred years now. First there was the bank, and then Dan Lavette’s shipping line and his property and the airlines, and then the combination of both, and then the taking over of the Whittier interests, and now your father’s fleet of tankers—and you keep yourself engrossed with each little bit of it, like someone putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the picture on the puzzle is. But the plain truth is that today we are a power on this coast. Giannini, Hearst, Crocker, Hughes—none of them has the diversity of influence that we can exercise. And it’s been quiet. Except for that idiocy on your sister’s part, we’ve kept our heads down, and I imagine the club likes the display of prudence and good taste.”