Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

  Pause. “It’s Gordon, isn’t it?” Jessica said.

  Alexandra sighed. “It’s me. My life, my work, what I want, where I’m going, what makes me happy.”

  Silence.

  “Should I be worrying about you?” Jessica said.

  “No,” Alexandra said.

  “You do know that I’d do anything for you, don’t you?” Jessica said. “And I guess that’s really all I wanted to say. That I’m here if you need me. And that—oh, brother, Alexandra Eyes, I mean, come on—you never let me do anything for you.”

  “Thanks,” Alexandra said.

  “Now is Cassy going to be over there or what?”

  “Uh—huh. She’ll be here tonight.”

  “So I don’t have to worry about you, right?” Jessica said. “You’ll talk to her if you need someone—right?”

  Alexandra was rolling her eyes. “Right,” she said.

  Promptly at four Alexandra, rang the bell of Lord Hargrave’s offices on South Audley Street. The offices were contained in a four-story Victorian house of red-orange brick, gray stonework, white window sash and black wrought-iron railing. The front entranceway extended out in a porch from which a large wrought-iron lantern was suspended. Alexandra was standing just past the lantern, in the recess of an enormous mahogany door. There was a single brass knob in the middle of the door and a brass mail slot to the left of it, on which was engraved:

  Hargrave World Communications, Ltd.

  The door was opened by a pleasant young woman who introduced herself as Antonia. She led Alexandra right upstairs. There were the sounds of telephones ringing in the house, of typewriters clacking away, but thus far there had been no sign of where these sounds might be coming from. It simply appeared to be a gracious old home of gorgeous woodwork, sedate carpets, and paintings and furniture older than the hills. Alexandra looked up the stairs; the gallery of portraits. and pictures on the stair wall continued upward for another two flights. On the second landing Antonia led her down the hall, knocked softly on a set of mahogany parlor doors and slid them slightly apart. “Alexandra Waring, Lord Hargrave,” she said softly. And then she nodded and stepped back, sliding the one door back for Alexandra to pass through.

  She stepped into a very large, wonderful room that was part library, part office. At the far end of it were tremendous windows in a bay, looking out over South Audley Street and down Stanhope Gate, and then the room widened slightly, with bookcases from ceiling to floor, and a few leather chairs, lamps and tables. There was a very large Persian rug, dark wood floors gleaming at the edges of it.

  But this end of the room was a square sort of office, with a heavy carpet down, and there was Lord Hargrave’s ornate and obviously very old desk that had papers piled in mahogany boxes all over the place. There were a few shelves along the walls, holding books and things—a brass sextant, a crystal globe—and there were several old paintings. There were a large leather couch, coffee table and chairs, and back to the side of the doors was a huge wardrobe, whose doors were opened at the moment, displaying a four—foot television screen inside.

  “My dear, hello, how very wonderful it is to see you,” Lord Hargrave said, coming around his desk and holding out his hand to her.

  As Alexandra took a step forward, one of the floorboards beneath the carpeting creaked.

  “Hello, Lord Hargrave,” she said, taking his hand.

  He smiled, bowed slightly and kissed it, making her smile. “One of the few pleasures of growing older in England,” he said, winking as he straightened up. “Certainly the weather is not. Here, my dear, do please sit down. I cannot tell you how very glad I was to hear you were coming,” he continued, walking over to the double doors and sliding them open. “Ah! Miss Dillon, wonderful—I was just coming to look for you.” He stepped back as a woman rolled in a tea cart. “I hope you don’t mind if Miss Dillon does the honors, Alexandra. I’m afraid I’m quite particular when it comes to my tea.”

  “No, of course not,” Alexandra said, sitting on the edge of her chair, legs together to the side, hands folded in her lap. ‘This is a wonderful treat.”

  As Miss Dillon poured tea, Lord Hargrave talked a little about milk subsidies (his family estate was used primarily as dairy land now); asked Alexandra’s opinion of how the American subsidy program had gone so wrong (“You are, are you not, my dear, from a farming background?”); and answered Alexandra’s question about the building they were in.

  “Oh, my, no,” Lord Hargrave said. “Our home was in Regent’s Park. This was the home of my grandfather’s mistress, Mrs. Rivers. That’s her portrait over there. Interesting woman, really. Of course, it was not public knowledge, the relationship Mrs. Rivers maintained with my grandfather—though perhaps some people were aware of it. One never knows, does one?” He chuckled. “There was a Mr. Rivers, or so she always maintained, though most people found it a trifle odd that anyone could be posted to India without leave for fifty-seven years.”

  And then, finally, he eased into the subject of the purchase of DBS News, during which time he rose out of his chair and began to walk back and forth, discussing the structure of the new company if they were to buy it. Alexandra listened to him, sipping her tea, nodding and murmuring assent as he went along. And then Lord Hargrave abruptly stopped in his tracks and turned to her, tilting his head to the side. “You’re not very keen on buying DBS News, are you? Jackson was, initially. But I could tell yesterday he was cooling on the idea and now here, with you, the idea seems to be positively freezing.”

  Alexandra had to laugh a little.

  “Well, no matter,” Lord Hargrave said with a wave of his hand, moving to sit down again, “I was only trying to do my friend Jackson a favor. And I suppose I still am—you are going to use our offer to your advantage, I hope.”

  “They’re sending Cassy over tonight,” Alexandra told him. “To represent Darenbrook Communications.”

  “Oh, good,” he said, clapping his hands. “The whole show. What fun—I’d love to see what you get out of them.” He leaned forward. “Cassy’s in on it too, I suppose. I imagine she’s much fonder of all of you than she is of the board.”

  Alexandra laughed. “You probably know more than I do about what’s going on right now. All I know is that Jackson asked me to come here and listen to your offer.”

  “But you knew he wasn’t really going to buy it, didn’t you?” Lord Hargrave asked her. “No offense, my dear, but DBS News isn’t worth very much without the related companies—the cross-resource aspect, you understand.”

  “Not worth much to you,” Alexandra said, correcting him.

  He smiled. “You are very loyal, aren’t you?”

  “I know what it’s worth,” Alexandra said.

  “No, I meant to Jackson. You’re very loyal to him.”

  “I owe him a great deal,” she said. “And that’s why I’m here. Otherwise I don’t think it’s a good idea for me or any DBS News employee to vie for ownership of the institution we work for.”

  “Really,” Lord Hargrave said. “You don’t believe that liberating journalists from corporate types in management is a good thing?”

  She blinked several times, leaning forward to put her cup and saucer down on the tray. Then she sat back and looked at him. “I don’t believe in journalists as their own profit-oriented business managers, no. The temptations on many levels in such an arrangement are too much. And speaking for myself, I think I have a long enough road back to being a first-class reporter again as it is. I’ve had to do things—and involve myself in things—in this past year on a business level that I hope I never have to do to such an extent again.”

  She shrugged. “But I was hired to launch a new news network on commercial television, and so I’ve had to involve myself in commercial things. And lately I feel the detriment, as a journalist. Too much time being concerned with management, policy—even too much time spent in planning meetings—starts to affect my outlook. Many times, in the past few months, I’ve felt
as though I’m somewhere way out there”—she held out her right hand—”while the world is way over here—” She held out her left hand. “And we’re just looking at each other, admiring each other, but not interacting the way we should be.

  “But you know,” she added suddenly, leaning forward, “one of the most wonderful things about my tour across America is that it makes me know—with every cell in my body—that we’re on the right track. And sometimes…” She stopped herself.

  “Sometimes,” Lord Hargrave said, nodding once.

  “Sometimes I think that the reason why I keep getting shot at is—because Somebody doesn’t want me wasting any more time trying to become a celebrity,” she said, laughing. “Like—here’s the shortcut kid, now, right now, now, this very day, it’s time to put your all into introducing the United States to the United States in the context of its very complicated self. And to an extent we’ve started to do that. Our affiliate reporters, rough as some of them may be—but only for now, because we’re training them and they’re getting better every day—our affiliate reporters don’t talk like TV people. They talk like reporters who live in a certain part of the country, a part they know like the back of their hands and want to introduce to viewers.”

  Lord Hargrave was smiling.

  “We are so diverse in the States,” she went on, “I really believe that our way is the only way to properly educate people about the country we live in, so they can really understand national news. Understand the basic areas where we hang together as a country, and the reasons behind our constant conflicts. And a big part of my job—whether I like it or not—is to provide, along with my fellow New York editors, that kind of culturally bland glamour stuff that people seem to need if they’re to watch network news. I’m the lure DBS uses to hook them, so we can drag them into the process of understanding the news until they learn enough so it becomes easy and second nature—like local news is for them. If viewers can’t read, fine. If they’re relatively uneducated and frightened of the world outside their town or city or block or front door, fine. All I’ve got to do is strut my stuff past their window and hope they invite me inside—and if they do…” She laughed. “It’s all over. Our guys take over. Open the door and in marches America, accents and all!”

  Lord. Hargrave laughed.

  “Because, you see,” she said, shifting in her seat, gesturing with her hand, “if we teach a little something about different pockets of America each night—in our stories, in the way our reporters talk and walk and see the community around them—over the weeks and months viewers just start to know things. They get educated. And it’s not from remembering specifics from our newscast, it’s from the whole DBS News process. Ours is really an endeavor to use broadcast commercial television to revitalize viewers’ curiosity, their capacity to learn, and to break down that resistance that comes with not knowing how to read properly, for example—”

  “None of which has much to do with running shareholders’ meetings in the newsroom,” Lord Hargrave said.

  Alexandra smiled, shaking her head. “No. It doesn’t.”

  Lord Hargrave reached for a biscuit, took a small bite and slowly chewed it, watching her carefully. “I know quite a bit about you. Are you aware of that?”

  Alexandra shrugged.

  “Does that mean yes or no?” Lord Hargrave asked her.

  “I know you’ve made some inquiries about me,” she said.

  “And I’ve been told you are quite trustworthy,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

  “So you would keep a confidence, if I were to ask you to.”

  “A personal one, yes,” she said. She smiled. “I can’t promise anything if it has to do with the fate of the world, though.”

  “If I were to make you a proposition, Alexandra,” Lord Hargrave said, “and you chose not to accept it—could you maintain a confidence about that?”

  “You mean, don’t tell Jackson.”

  Lord Hargrave nodded. “No one need be upset if nothing were to come of it.”

  Alexandra smiled, shaking her head. “This is why I would never make it in business. You guys play games with rules I have never understood.”

  He smiled. “Someday you must ask Jackson about how it happened that I hired Dr. Kessler and he showed up for work at Darenbrook Communications,” he said. “We’ve played many games over the years, Jackson and I, but we’ve remained good friends. And we’ve made good money too.” He paused. “But this is not a game for you, Alexandra. This is what’s known as the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  Alexandra waited.

  Lord Hargrave pressed his index finger against his mouth, looking at her. Then he lowered his hand and said, “I would like you to do for me what you are doing at DBS, only I wish you to do it internationally. English language, of course, but we’ll do four translations to start French, German, Spanish and Japanese.”

  Alexandra sat there, her expression unreadable.

  Lord Hargrave smiled. “That’s right, my dear. I would like you to anchor my global newscast.”

  49

  Alexandra and Cassy Have a Talk

  Alexandra called the Connaught at six o’clock from Lord Hargrave’s offices and found that, yes, indeed, Catherine Cochran had checked in.

  “Hi,” Alexandra said.

  “Hi,” Cassy said. “You don’t suppose I could sneak to a play sometime between dinner and the studio, do you? Diana Rigg is in something somewhere.”

  “Ah, yes,” Alexandra said, “something somewhere. I hear it’s supposed to be very you—know.”

  “You’re sounding uncharacteristically jokey, my dear,” Cassy said, “which makes me suspect it’s going to cost Darenbrook Communications plenty to keep DBS News.”

  “Enough to be interesting,” Alexandra cheerfully assured her.

  Instead of just meeting for dinner, Cassy asked Alexandra if she wouldn’t mind going for a walk first, to get out and wander around and get some exercise. Alexandra thought it was a wonderful idea and went back to the Ritz to change into her “airport” shoes. She met Cassy downstairs and the women set out from the front door of the Ritz, heading west on Piccadilly, along Green Park. They debated about cutting down through the park to Buckingham Palace but decided to wander on into Belgravia instead and promptly got lost. The fact that they had neglected to bring a map seemed to be a source of delight for them both. “You, Alexandra?” Cassy said. “You who still carries a map of New York City?”

  “That’s just for emergencies, subway and bus routes,” she said. “I always carry one for whatever city I’m in, like any good reporter should. But I decided to leave my map in my work bag tonight, figuring that you, certainly, would bring one.” She stopped, gesturing to the intersection they had reached: Pont Street, Chesham Place, Belgrave Mews, Lowndes Place. “Which way?” Cassy pointed in the direction of Pont Street and so they walked that way, and Alexandra sighed, smiling, slinging her arm through Cassy’s, pressing her shoulder into hers. “I frankly love the idea of not knowing where I’m going—for an hour or two. Know what I mean?”

  Cassy smiled, walking along. “Yes.” She looked at her. “And it must be a relief not to be recognized.”

  “You mean it’s nice that everyone’s looking at you again,” Alexandra said, laughing.

  “No one’s looking at me,” Cassy said. “No one looks at a forty-three-year-old woman walking with a thirty-year-old who looks like you.”

  “Well, they’re looking at this forty-three-year-old,” Alexandra told her. “Look at that man there. What is it about blondes, anyway?”

  “Good evening,” the man said pleasantly, walking past. He had only glanced at Alexandra and had said it to Cassy.

  “See?” Alexandra said, giving her a slight shove, making them weave on the sidewalk.

  They had fun. It was a warm, gray-sky summer evening, and it was London, so everything seemed astonishingly attractive and neat and tidy, if not slightly magical. For a while they
talked about what new concessions Cassy thought she could get out of the board for DBS News, but that conversation somehow slipped away to Cassy’s son, Henry, and Cassy adjusting to the idea that he now had a life of his own, quite separate from hers.

  They knew they were in Knightsbridge, then, because they stumbled upon Harrods. They decided to continue down Brompton Road, only to discover at the Victoria and Albert Museum that they were somehow not on Brompton Road anymore but on Cromwell Road. “Now where did it go?” Cassy said, turning around, scratching her head.

  “Exhibition Road!” Alexandra suddenly said. “Oh, I want this come on, I want to see something. But wait—” she said a second later, yanking Cassy back to a stop. “Which way is north? Oh, this way, I think,” she said, turning them around and charging onward, pulling Cassy along. And so they walked up Exhibition Road between the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  “I take it we’re in Kensington,” Cassy said later, standing on the traffic island in the middle of Kensington Gore Road that Alexandra had dragged her onto. The light had changed and traffic was flying past them on both sides.

  “Okay,” Alexandra said, taking hold of her arm with one hand, “now look at that and tell me what you see.”

  Cassy looked, “I see Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park,” she said. And indeed, they were looking at an entrance leading into the magnificent acres of green.

  “No,” Alexandra said, “I meant the gate. What do you think of it?” Then she frowned, looking up and down the road. “I think this is the one. This is Exhibition Road, right?”

  “Right,” Cassy said.

  In comparison with others in this part of London, the very tall, black wrought-iron gate in front of them seemed a bit plain—though it was quite stately and elegant all the same, as black wrought-iron English any things tend to be. There were two inner carriageways, through which one lane of traffic was entering the park and the other leaving it; and there were two outer walkways for pedestrians. Flanking the carriageways on high were four lanterns.