The Way You Look Tonight

by Richard Madeley

  Stella watched as brother and sister whooped past, seawater dripping from their woollen bathing costumes and brandishing enormous water pistols as they ran. ‘Ouch! Hey!’ she cried, as a jet of water hit her square above one eye. ‘I’ll get you for that!’

  The children chased past her, oblivious, onwards up the shelving sand to the two-storey white-painted wooden beach house that stood behind a raft of picnic tables and several fiercely smoking barbecues.

  ‘The little darlings,’ Stella snorted, ruefully wiping her eye with the back of one hand. ‘How many of them are there, exactly?’

  ‘Ethel’s been pushing one out pretty much every year since 1951,’ Dorothy told her. ‘I think even she and Bobby are beginning to lose count. God help them if they ever have twins. Let’s see . . . Kathleen, Joe, um, Robert . . . her lips silently mouthed the rest of the names, marking them off on one hand and then uncurling the fingers of the other.

  ‘Yeah, I think that’s all of them,’ she frowned at last. ‘Seven, at the last count.’

  ‘Seven?’ Stella repeated in disbelief. ‘But from what I’ve read, Ethel can only be in her early thirties.’

  ‘Yup, thirty-four last April. Three girls and four boys already. The youngest is Mary – she’s two; three in September.’ Dorothy shrugged. ‘Irish Catholics. It’s their thing. Ethel’ll be pregnant again by Christmas, I guarantee it.’

  Stella turned to take in the scene around her. There were about fifty or sixty people at the barbecue, most standing around on the sand or sauntering down to the ocean, now that Bobby and Ethel’s brood had stampeded inside behind their two eldest siblings.

  She was sure she recognised some of the men, particularly the older ones. ‘Haven’t I seen that man’s picture in the paper?’ she whispered to Dorothy, pointing surreptitiously.

  Dorothy shaded her eyes. ‘You mean the well-fed middle-aged guy in the Hawaiian shirt?’

  ‘Yes, talking to the tall man in trunks with his back to us.’

  ‘Ha! I can assure you, Stella, when that tall guy turns around you’ll recognise him all right. That’s Ted Kennedy. He’s probably the best-looking man here. The pork chop he’s talking to is the senator for Massachusetts, Benjamin Smith. Big friend of the family. When Jack won the Presidency two years ago he had to give up his seat in the Senate, of course. Benjamin took his place, but only to keep it warm for Teddy.’

  ‘What do you mean, keep it warm?’

  ‘Teddy was a little too young under the rules to be a senator back then,’ Dorothy explained. ‘But he turned thirty a couple of months back, so he can take over in the fall.’

  ‘I see . . . and what’ll become of Mr Seat-Warmer then?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about him. The Kennedys don’t forget their friends.’

  Stella took a thoughtful sip of the peach-coloured cocktail a waiter had handed to her when they arrived.

  ‘They’re a bit like a royal family, aren’t they?’ she said at last.

  Dorothy laughed. ‘Exactly! Why do you think we call it Camelot?’

  Stella was about to ask more when the tall man in trunks turned around and immediately made eye contact with her. He gave a casual wave and raised his glass, bowing theatrically from a trim, muscled waist.

  She offered a slightly flustered wave back, turning to Dorothy as she did so. ‘Good heavens, you were right, he’s gorgeous,’ she muttered. ‘If he wasn’t a politician he could be a film star.’

  ‘He certainly behaves like one, in certain departments,’ the older woman said drily. ‘Total womaniser. See that girl over there in the green headscarf and matching sunglasses? That’s his wife, Virginia. He’s steadily driving her to drink, poor kid.’

  Stella turned away as casually as she could from Teddy Kennedy’s unwavering, knowing gaze. ‘So it’s true then, what I’ve heard? About the Kennedy brothers?’

  ‘You mean that they all fool around? Sure. It’s just that the papers have made a collective decision not to report it. They love the Camelot image and the happy all-American family thing, beautiful wives and golden children. Why spoil it for everyone? Anyway, Jeb says most editors honestly believe it’s better to keep the whole Kennedy cheating story under wraps; they think it’d be unpatriotic to blow the lid on it. Bad for Uncle Sam’s image. Besides – they’re such impressive, upstanding guys in most other ways. Terrific at running the country, and all that. Taking us into a shining future. Really. Wait ’til you meet Jack and Bobby. Jeb says—’

  On cue, Jeb materialised beside them. ‘Dottie, Ethel wants to say hi and she and the guys would like to meet our English rose, too. Come on, girls. Where’s Sylvia?’

  Dorothy nodded towards a riotous group of mostly very young men further down the sands. ‘Playing beach baseball with the boys.’

  ‘Oh . . . OK, we’ll leave her to it then. C’mon.’

  But Stella was rooted to the spot. ‘Jeb . . .’ she said hesitantly. ‘By the guys, you don’t mean . . .’

  He grinned and took her arm. ‘I most certainly do. Stella, come and have a drink with the two most powerful men on the planet.’

  Jeb and Dorothy led her through a light screen of Secret Service men, incongruous on the beach in their dark suits and neckties, forming a loose circle at a respectful distance around the largest of the charcoal grills.

  As they got closer, Stella could hear the President and his brother quarrelling over how much longer the T-bones needed on the giant griddle. There were at least twenty enormous steaks smoking and spitting furiously over the coals.

  ‘Take ’em off now, Jack – we’ve turned them twice and they’re done already. Jackie, tell him!’

  ‘Don’t drag me into this, Bobby,’ the First Lady said over her shoulder, breaking off from conversation with her sister-in-law. ‘It’s not even your barbecue. You two put yourselves on cookhouse fatigue, nobody asked you, so just see it through and stop squabbling like babies.’ She turned back to Ethel. ‘Sorry, Eth. As I was saying, I felt the only way I could possibly deal with it was to— oh my word, Dorothy!’

  Dorothy stepped forward across the sand, smiling broadly. ‘Hi Jackie – Ethel. We thought now might be a good moment to call time on the grand chefs so we can all actually get something to eat.’

  Jeb peered over his wife’s shoulder at the griddle behind the three women. ‘Those steaks look done to me, guys. I’m pretty sure the cow’s dead.’

  Bobby turned round gratefully. ‘Now that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say, Jeb. Hear that, Jack? You’ve been outvoted and you’ve chargrill-filibustered yourself into the bargain.’ He clapped his hands and called out to the nearest partygoers. ‘Chow down, everyone! We’re serving up here! Get in line, folks! And Jack, take that ridiculous chef’s hat off. It does nothing for you. You look like Macy’s Chubby Christmas Cook.’

  11

  The brothers had been busy for twenty minutes now, serving undeniably blackened T-bone steaks to a line of people clasping paper plates and plastic cutlery. Stella had not been properly introduced to them yet, other than Jeb’s ‘this is our English rose I was telling you about, guys’, which had elicited friendly waves from both men before they were swamped by hungry guests.

  She watched them covertly as Jeb stood patiently in the queue for food, clutching plates for himself, Dorothy and Stella.

  She tried and failed to picture the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, standing on a beach in bare feet and shorts, laughing and trading friendly insults with a gaggle of barbecue guests as he served them their lunch.

  In fact, she couldn’t imagine the patrician Macmillan going within a hundred miles of a barbecue. At this very moment, five hours ahead of US Eastern Time, the Prime Minister was probably in his Pall Mall club, or Downing Street, or perhaps his weekend grace-and-favour country home, Chequers. He’d be comfortable in Sunday tweeds, puffing on his briar pipe, and nursing a pre-dinner brandy and soda while perusing The Sunday Times over half-moon reading glasses.

  Hardly Camelot.


  The President was barely twenty years younger than Macmillan, Stella calculated, yet the American and British leaders belonged to completely different periods. Macmillan still had one foot in a vanished age. JFK stood squarely in the present, and was stepping confidently into the future.

  He had, as did his brother, what looked to Stella like an all-over tan, a flat stomach and even now, in his mid-forties, a boyish face. He could be, she thought, a sports hero, even a film star. No wonder women adored him. In fact, if she was honest, she herself could imagine –

  A voice jolted her out of the beginnings of a rather pleasant day-dream.

  ‘Would you just look at those two! For heaven’s sakes, this isn’t even their barbecue!’

  Stella turned to find a pretty, petite woman in jeans and pale blue sweatshirt standing next to her, extending a slim hand.

  ‘Ethel Kennedy,’ she said. ‘I’m Bobby’s wife. You’re Stella, the Rockfairs’ English rose, right?’

  Stella laughed, offering her own hand. ‘Are all English girls described as roses here in America?’

  ‘Hey, don’t go complaining about it. We can call you stinkwort if you’d prefer.’

  Stella laughed again. ‘No, rose is fine with me, Mrs Kennedy.’

  ‘I just told you, it’s Ethel. Dorothy said you were the formal type.’

  The older woman nodded back towards her husband and brother-in-law, who were now arguing about how many fresh steaks should go on the griddle.

  ‘I swear, plant those boys anywhere and they just can’t help themselves trying to take everything over and run it all. But you’ll meet with them later. In the meantime, tell me about yourself. Jeb says you’re here to study for your Master’s at Smith. What subject?’

  Stella described the specialised research she had been conducting into psychopathy.

  Ethel was intrigued. ‘You mean people like that nutcase in the Alfred Hitchcock movie? What is it about you Brits and psychos?’

  Stella laughed. ‘Actually, some of the most interesting front-line research into psychopathic behaviour is being conducted on your side of the Atlantic, Mrs Kennedy. I was only reading yesterday that at Berkeley—’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake! It’s Ethel! Anyway, go on.’

  ‘Sorry . . . um . . . Ethel . . .’ Stella stammered, ‘there are some new ideas floating around now about how to diagnose psychopaths and in particular how to identify them when they’re involved in criminal behaviour. Although of course most psychopathic personalities aren’t criminal at all.’

  But Ethel wasn’t interested in the qualification. ‘What kind of criminal behaviour?’

  ‘Well,’ Stella said carefully, ‘at the extreme end of the scale we’re talking about repeat killers, like Jack the Ripper, at large in the last century when psychiatry was in its infancy. In fact, it hadn’t really been conceived as a science at all, not until Freud and Jung. Even today, people who should know better think it’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo.’

  ‘You mean, if folks like you had been around back then we would have nailed creeps like the Ripper, right?’ Ethel smiled to show she wasn’t trying to patronise.

  But Stella considered the question seriously. ‘Well . . . perhaps we would, actually. It’s about method. I read a wonderful paragraph on the subject just the other day, written by a German psychiatrist attached to the faculty at Harvard. Let me see . . .’ Stella placed her hands behind her back like a schoolgirl, planted her feet in the sand, closed her eyes, and recited:

  ‘A young woman’s body is found lying on a lonely beach. She has been stabbed to death there. A single set of footprints in the sand leads away from the bloody scene; they are identical to the ones leading to it, which are mingled with those of the victim. Which set of prints is it more important to follow?’

  Stella opened her eyes. ‘Well, Ethel. What do you think?’

  Ethel’s own eyes flashed. She enjoyed a challenge.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ she said confidently. ‘You follow the tracks leading away from the body.’

  Stella shook her head. ‘No. Not according to this professor you don’t. You take the back-bearings. If you follow the signs into the past, you have a chance of understanding who the killer is, where he’s been, where he comes from. Then you might be able to predict his next move and frustrate it, even intercept him and catch him.’

  Ethel snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous! You have to chase the killer down!’

  Stella raised her hands in mock defence. ‘Up to a point, of course,’ she said, ‘but that German professor was really constructing a simple model designed to make us stop and think. If you keep racing blindly towards an unknown, empty horizon, you’re never going to give yourself time to assess the larger picture that lies behind, are you? You’re always running to catch up.’

  A waiter in plastic sandals, Bermuda shorts and a violently pink short-sleeved shirt materialised next to them.

  ‘Drinks, ladies?’ He proffered a tray crowded with brimming blue plastic beakers.

  ‘What’s in ’em?’ Ethel demanded.

  ‘I have no idea, ma’am.’

  She pointed to his footprints trailing behind him in the sand.

  ‘Then follow those back to wherever you got them from and find out. OK?’

  The waiter nodded uncertainly and retreated.

  ‘See, Stella?’ Ethel said. ‘I can take new ideas on board as well as anyone.’

  Stella clapped her hands delightedly. ‘That was a very practical application of a psychiatric theorem, Ethel. I’m most impressed.’

  Ethel grinned back at her. ‘Yeah, but we didn’t get our drinks, did we?’

  ‘No, but we will eventually, and we’ll find out exactly what they are.’

  ‘If the guy ever comes back.’ They both laughed.

  After a moment Ethel spoke again, her face now serious. ‘So how much do you know about psychopaths, dear? Truly? Are you, for want of a better word, what one might describe as an expert?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stella without hesitation. ‘I am. I’ve been reading all the latest studies and theories for at least the last two years, material from both sides of the Atlantic and the little that’s coming out of Australia, too. I’ve been asked to contribute to several papers myself. I don’t think I would have achieved my double-first from Cambridge if it hadn’t been for my dissertation on psychopathy. Although to be honest – and I promise I’m not being conceited here – I probably know more about psychopathy than anyone on the examination board that marked my paper.’

  Ethel regarded her coolly. ‘You’re quite the confident one, aren’t you?’

  ‘In my chosen field, yes, I am. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t think. Like your husband and his brother—’ Stella gestured to the pair, still bickering at the griddle – ‘it’s important to know your value; what you’re good at. And anyway . . .’ Stella paused, feeling awkward for the first time since the conversation had begun.

  ‘Go on.’ Ethel cocked her head to one side and considered the young woman opposite her. She reminded Stella of an inquisitive bird.

  ‘It’s just that . . . well, I don’t want to go into detail here, if you don’t mind, but I do have personal experience of psychopaths. One, at least.’

  A few hours earlier while the Kennedys were sailing across to Martha’s Vineyard, a troubled Bobby had confided in his wife, telling her about the crisis down in the Keys.

  Now, Ethel came to a decision.

  ‘Wait here, dear.’

  She went to fetch her husband.

  12

  He’d ended up staying put at the diner’s window table right through the morning, following waffles and coffee with an early lunch of cracked conch with rice and beans. The waitress had cleared his plates but now he was on his second Bud. This show was just too good to miss.

  It had started with a single highway patrol car barrelling down the Overseas Highway from the direction of Tavernier, siren blaring and roof lights flashing. The turn-of
f to the dirt road that led down to the water was marked by a straggle of Florida Pines and, sure enough, he saw the sedan’s brake lights glow just before it reached them. A swirl of dust enveloped it as it swung a crazy left off the blacktop.

  A minute or two later the buzzards were rising into the air in a cluster of dark specks, but they didn’t go far. They settled into a patrol of their own, cruising in slow, lazy circles a few hundred feet above the spot where, he decided, the cops were now busy throwing up.

  An hour later Route 1 looked like the Miami-Dade Police section of the Mayor’s annual parade – only going a lot faster. Cruisers, black-and-whites, emergency wagons, and three ambulances. Why three? he wondered. There was only one body. Perhaps a bunch of people had found her – a canoeing party, maybe – and they were getting the dizzy-giddies, as his mom would have said.

  ‘What d’you think is going on out there, hon?’

  His waitress, with coffee he hadn’t ordered. For an insane second he felt like telling the old woman the truth.

  ‘Well, ma’am, I reckon they’ve found the little girl I cut to death out there last night. She must be a sight for sore eyes after those buzzards got to work on her.’

  But instead he pointed to the clock-calendar above the diner’s entrance.

  ‘It’s the day of rest, ma’am. I do believe those fine officers are out there taking their ease and having themselves a cook-what-you-can-catch Sunday barbecue.’

  She looked at him in a puzzled kind of way but her reply, when it came, was drowned out by the thunder of the police helicopter that suddenly clattered overhead.

  He nodded to himself in calm self-congratulation.

  They were taking him seriously now.

  Finally. It was about time.

  13