Above the Fold

by Peter Yeldham

  Australian journalist Luke Elliott is expected to marry Hannah Johnson, the recent press attaché to General Douglas MacArthur, and now back in America working for the ‘Washington Post’. Elliott, who met her while with the ‘Forces’ newspaper in Tokyo has flown to Washington, and wedding bells are expected shortly. He is the only son of Louisa Elliott, formerly of Collaroy in New South Wales and now living in her native England.

  Claudia tried to tell herself this was something she should’ve expected, but she felt heartsick and shocked at the depth of her unhappiness. She tried to conceal it from Steven, and had disposed of the newspaper and taken a different route home from the real estate agency to avoid the placard, but he knew something had made her sad.

  “You look down in the dumps,” he said.

  “Just tired,” she answered.

  “Like orphan Annie on Father’s Day,” he persisted, and she tried not to be annoyed.

  “Give it a rest, Steven.”

  Later, when they went to bed he felt amorous, so she helped him to achieve an orgasm, then lay awake feeling a lack of any satisfaction while he slept peacefully. Our so-called lovemaking has never been for me, she thought. It helps him, but leaves me flat and frustrated.

  She was taciturn and moody the next day. Julie, a nurse at the hospital brought her an unexpected coffee as it was a quiet afternoon.

  “Cheer you up,” she said.

  “Thanks, but who says I need cheering up?” Claudia replied.

  “Plain as day, darl. You’re not getting enough. I haven’t met your hubby, but I don’t think his performance is putting a smile on your face.” Claudia was about to protest, but Julie was irrepressible. “Shouldn’t say it, I suppose, but maybe you need mother’s little helper.”

  Claudia looked baffled, she’d never heard the phrase. “What’s that?”

  There were no patients and the Matron was busy in her office with the accounts, so Julie had time to explain. She had a husband who was often absent, and knew of a strictly illegal shop that provided what she described to Claudia as her private comforter. “It’s electric. Various sizes. I can truly recommend it, darl. I promise it’ll take that frown off your face.”

  So Claudia listened, and the following week, on one of the afternoons when Steven worked, she drove to Brisbane to buy herself a vibrator. The shop, according to Julie, was quite safe to visit, as it was under police protection. Claudia parked in an adjacent street and walked around the squalid district until she found it. There was a narrow doorway with a beaded curtain, a sleazy place that gave her a guilty feeling, and she almost turned away. But having come this far she made herself enter. There were no other customers. Just a shabby room where she was confronted by displays of pornographic magazines. Women performing with women, men with men, and mixed multiple orgies.

  A middle-aged man wearing an eyeshade sat behind the counter reading a book. The eyeshade looked ludicrous, making him look like a tennis player. He nodded a welcome, and asked if he could help. It was as if she was shopping for a pair of shoes. Or tennis balls, she thought might be more apt. She had an absurd desire to either laugh or flee.

  “No, thanks,” she replied to his offer, having seen a row of various coloured vibrators displayed on a shelf. She pretended to study them.

  “We do have better quality ones,” the man advised, but she selected one of the smaller devices and took it to the counter. “Ten pounds for this one today,” he said, “but I could show you a much more advanced aid, with far better and deeper penetration.”

  “No,” she repressed a shudder. “Just this.” She forced herself to remain, avoiding his gaze while he wrapped it and put it in a plain paper carrier bag. He offered her a colour catalogue of their goods, which she quickly declined and hurriedly left.

  She walked to her parked car in the adjoining street, feeling exposed and guilty, almost certain that everyone she passed would know what she was carrying. She reached the car with relief, and drove home carefully; an accident would be too dreadfully embarrassing. At home she found a hiding place on the top shelf in a cupboard, where it would be impossible for Steven to see it, but the next day she nervously changed it to an even higher shelf in the laundry. She studied it curiously, but felt no need to try it. Not yet. Perhaps in a day or two. For the rest of the week that was where it remained, the possession of it giving her a feeling of release. The knowledge that she’d braved the adult shop and it was available for her at any time, made her relax and begin to feel uncertain if she really needed it.

  After another week it started to become a guilty secret. She had stupid thoughts. Suppose they had a fire? What if she was taken ill and someone, perhaps Steven’s mother, had to look after him? The prospect of his mother was not a stupid thought, it was an alarming one. Although the woman was civil, compared to his father, what would happen if she found the V-thing.

  She hated the sound of the word vibrator, and in her mind V-thing was how she referred to it. A few days later, not having used it yet, she’d had enough. Its presence in the flat was preying on her. She chose an afternoon when Steven was working, put on her modest bathing costume — she had never used the one she’d brought back from France, not here in Noosa — then carefully wrapped the V-thing in her towel and went onto the beach in front of their flat. It was almost deserted, so she dropped her towel on the sand, hid the vibrator as best she could by folding her arms across her breasts to conceal it until she was waist-high in the sea. Then she carefully placed it deep in the water and let go. It immediately rose to the surface and started to float.

  God Almighty, she thought.

  “Claudia!’ a cheerful voice called from nearby, and she grabbed at it frantically and held it beneath the surface again. But she was only waist-deep in the sea so it was barely hidden. Two neighbours, an elderly man and his slightly younger wife who lived in the flat above them, were approaching. They waved, and Claudia was about to wave in return, when she realised she was about to automatically raise her right hand, the one that was holding it. So she hurriedly raised her left hand instead to reply, which she knew felt awkward and might look suspiciously odd to the neighbours.

  “Bit cool in, is it?” the man called to her.

  “No, lovely,” she called back, feeling relieved they were fully dressed and not intending to swim.

  “Why don’t you come and join us in a walk?” the woman suggested. “We’ll wait if you want to have a quick swim first.”

  Oh, please go away, she thought. I can’t go on holding my right hand under water like this. They must suspect I’m trying to conceal something. “Can’t today,” she answered. “Have to go and pick up my husband early.”

  “How is Steven?”

  Please, for God’s sake, this thing will slip out of my hand and float towards you like a toy canoe any minute. The thought of it being a toy canoe made her want to laugh, but still they lingered. Go on, be nice and go away. You don’t want a neighbour who uses a bloody vibrator. “He’s improving,” she managed to reply, sinking down in the water and clinging to it.

  “That’s good,” the man called. “Give him our best,” the woman waved again, and they finally walked away.

  She gratefully watched them, pretending to wade out and give an impression of swimming, but realised she couldn’t swim with only one arm, so she just sat there clinging to the V-thing, although she thought of it now as the toy canoe. She wondered, if she broke it, would it float? But then someone would tread on it, and she imagined headlines in the Sunshine Gazette. LOCAL SWIMMER WOUNDED BY DEEP-SEA VIBRATOR.

  Finally the neighbours were far enough away for her to risk it, and, after checking there was no-one else in the close vicinity, she ran to pick up her towel on the sand, and shivered while she wrapped it around the vibrator. Then she hurried to the flat, had a hot shower and dressed. Ten minutes later she was in the car and driving towards the mangroves and camping site, where she found a public bin and threw the V-thing into it. For a moment she worried that it
looked conspicuous, but she found some newspapers in the boot and threw them in to cover it.

  Then she drove slowly home, surprised at the feeling of relief that the disposal of the bloody Little Helper had given her. But there was still Julie at the hospital to fend off. “How was it, darl?” she asked the next day.

  “It put a smile on my face,” Claudia told her.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Harry and most of their friends were expecting Luke and Hannah to marry. Luke even heard there were newspaper reports, although he never saw one. The reason he knew was a cable sent to him from Barry Silvester.

  CONGRATULATIONS ON IMPENDING MARRIAGE. YOUR PHOTO AND THIS NEWS WAS IN OUR LOCAL PAPER. HOPE THIS REACHES YOU AT THE NEWSPAPER AS I DO NOT HAVE ANY OTHER ADDRESS, AND HOPE ALSO YOU RECEIVED MY NEW ADDRESS AT POTTS POINT SO YOU CAN STARTLE ME WITH A LETTER. CHEERS, BARRY.

  Dear Baz,

  Your change of address card must have been left behind in my travels, so I got the new apartment details by writing to Rachel in London. She’s well, and reports that she is in a new stage play at present and a film later in the year, and sends her love. Her decision to go to England seems to have paid off. So, you’re in Macleay Street, Potts Point. Very salubrious address and one befitting an up-and-coming political figure. Are you in parliament yet? How about a letter with news in it. And no, I’m not married or about to be — your local publication got that wrong. But I am in Washington, working for the ‘Post’, and not sure when I’ll be back home. Not this year, I imagine, but now I have your address I can keep in touch and await your letter. I presume you are going to surprise me with one.

  As ever, Luke.

  Hannah was attractive, she was bright, and funny and clever, and back on her own turf she rejoined The Washington Post as one of their top journalists. When Luke arrived there they lived together in her apartment on the top floor of a walk-up brownstone in Georgetown, with a distant view of the river, and he wrote some articles for the Post. Having returned to her own country, Hannah was adamant she wanted to spend the rest of her life there, and nowhere else. That in time became a problem. Luke was not sure he cared for America in those early years of the nineteen-fifties, and that became increasingly obvious the second year he spent there.

  A cancer was festering in Washington, not far from where they lived. People were being hauled before Congress and Senate committees enquiring into un-American activities. Senator Joseph McCarthy, until then an obscure politician from Wisconsin, had produced a list of people working for the State Department, whom he claimed were active members of the Communist party. He was never able to prove it, but many of them were dismissed from their jobs, simply assumed to be guilty by being named in public. Communism was a growing concern. Russia and China, allies in the war against Germany and Japan, had now become the enemies of the United States.

  McCarthy worked assiduously, supported by J Edgar Hoover of the FBI and Richard Nixon, while President Eisenhower chose not to intervene. The House and Senate continued a relentless witch-hunt. Soon the accusations widened, spreading to the army, to industry and to Hollywood.

  McCarthy had a list of actors, directors and screenwriters who were summoned to appear before his enquiry, and ordered to name names. Those who refused faced prison for contempt of Congress. The heads of the studios began to keep their own black lists; Charlie Chaplin, Leonard Bernstein, Orson Welles, Burl Ives, Paul Robeson and three hundred actors, producers and directors were all prevented from working in the film industry. Writers included Oscar winners Dalton Trumbo and Carl Foreman, the playwright Lillian Hellman and her lover, the novelist Dashiell Hammet.

  Prominent figures everywhere were at the mercy of denouncement. Advertisements in daily newspapers requested the public to protect America by anonymously naming anyone whom they considered might be suspect. No-one appeared safe. Innocence became difficult to prove. The columnist Walter Winchell and Hollywood gossip writer Hedda Hopper gathered names and forwarded these to McCarthy. It was open season, for people to victimise those they disliked.

  Disturbed by this relentless attack and deprivation of moral rights, Luke wrote an article about the junior Senator for Wisconsin and offered it to The Washington Post. In it he pointed out McCarthy’s disparities. His original speech asserted there were 206 communists in the State Department, the following week it was reduced to 85. A month later it was 46. Innuendo was destroying many innocent people’s lives. Luke gathered statements by both democrats and republicans, that McCarthy was a reckless and unreliable alcoholic, whose bullying tactics towards witnesses was bringing the United States into worldwide condemnation.

  When he offered his article to The Post, the editor promptly rejected it. “We’d be slaughtered,” he said. “We’re a newspaper prepared to take risks, but this bastard would have me up before the Un-American Committee, and the Proprietor would decide it’d be safer to have a new editor. I’m sorry, Luke. It’s written with a lot of conviction, but …” he paused and then uncomfortably asked Luke, “you’re not one, are you?”

  “Not what?”

  “Not a red?”

  Luke assured him he wasn’t. But that was when he started to feel uneasy in America. It was also when he realised that his and Hannah’s career paths were heading in different directions. He was twenty-eight that year. It wasn’t only the McCarthyism; he didn’t want to settle in one place, or work for one newspaper. He wanted to roam the world and write books.

  Sometimes moments from the past recurred to make him restless. Claudia, long ago in Manly, when a magpie crapped on his sandwich, and she’d laughed and said, “Poor little Maggie. Day-dreaming of how to find a boy or girl Maggie and you frightened the shit out of it. Literally.” Then dissolved into more laughter. He remembered the laughter and those expressive blue eyes, and how she’d leaned forward and kissed him on the tip of his nose, and he’d said she was a softie, and he loved her.

  It was the second of their problems. Being unable to forget Claudia, recalling so much they’d done or said. Hannah could tell, although he never spoke of it, that ‘someone’ was still there in his heart. So it was a combination of these two problems, the political mayhem and the echoes from the past, that that made them both realise it wouldn’t last a lifetime.

  After Luke had spent eighteen months with her in Washington, he had to make an urgent personal trip to London, so they came to an agreement that this was the opportune time to end it. The civilised and sensible moment. They found all the right and logical arguments;

  it was better to separate before they started to quarrel. It was prudent to call it a day while still on such good terms. Her future was here in America, his was … well, he wasn’t sure exactly where, but it was somewhere else. They kept finding rational reasons for an amicable parting, before there were any regrets.

  When the day came Luke begged her not to drive him to the airport, but she insisted. The actual moment of leave-taking was sheer hell; he knew it was going to be. It was the era when it was possible to wave to passengers from the upper deck of airport terminals; Hannah could see Luke in the plane and he could see her standing there, a hand raised in farewell while he felt sure her eyes were filling with tears. The plane was a de Havilland Heron that took forever to leave — there was an unexplained delay, and still she stayed there. Still waving, but with an arm that seemed weary now. Luke wished she’d go, not torment herself by remaining, but she was still there until the pilot apologised and the engines finally started.

  He even regretted having a window seat, because he could see her figure becoming smaller on the viewing deck as the plane took off, and visualised her lonely drive home to the empty apartment. He felt like a selfish insensitive bastard, and was close to shedding tears himself; instead, he asked the air hostess for the largest possible scotch. He even contemplated phoning her the moment he landed in New York, to say he’d come back after his time in England.

  But they’d done too good a job convincing each other that this was the sensible
way. And by the time the plane reached LaGuardia, Luke was running late to catch his connecting flight to London, having to race from one terminal to another and just making it on board the BOAC Lockheed Constellation with minutes to spare.

  He was coming to England for his mother’s wedding. It was a twelve-hour flight across the Atlantic. He tried to doze, but was unable to escape the distressing images of Hannah’s solitary figure at the Washington terminal. Instead, he tried thinking of what lay ahead. Louisa had met an Englishman and was getting married. The first he knew of it was when a card arrived inviting his presence at St. Marks Church in Epsom, Surrey, to attend the wedding of Louisa Sherman to Charles Watterson, and afterwards at The Grange. With it had come a personal note asking if he would do his mum the favour of escorting her into the church and giving her away. Luke felt pleased she’d be married under her maiden name. And the notion of a son giving away his mother in marriage was a thrill, so he’d sent a letter of acceptance with a message, “You could always surprise me. Delighted to have the pleasure of launching you into wedlock.”

  In London there was still a hangover atmosphere from the war years, and surprising amounts of bomb damage remained visible in parts of the city and the East End. Luke stayed at the Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly for the few days before the wedding, needing time to hire a suitable outfit for the occasion at Moss Bros., and taking the opportunity to meet with a literary agent. His room looked out over a plethora of advertising signs that engulfed Piccadilly Circus, the largest of them with a slogan that promised smokers: Capstan cigarettes: truly beneficial for your throat.

  Everyone but him seemed to be smoking, hopefully not the beneficial Capstans, during the wedding reception held at The Grange. It was a picturesque Edwardian house that faced Epsom Downs, with several acres of land and neat rows of stables — the home of Louisa’s new husband. Luke couldn’t help thinking his mother had married well.