The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Original Edition)

by Sixsmith, Martin

  Charles Crane, though, had decided his line and he was sticking to it.

  ‘I’m afraid that is not what I am hearing. What I hear is that you deliberately engineered that meeting to promote your own interests, to promote your own future with the RNC.’

  Mike laughed: the idea was so crazy he couldn’t stop himself.

  ‘But I hate the fucking Republicans! How could I possibly go ass-licking guys I hold in the deepest contempt? The whole idea is ludicrous!’

  At Mike’s words, a look of triumph swept across his interrogator’s face, as if Charles Crane had been waiting from the outset for a cue that could lend some legitimacy to what he had always planned to say.

  ‘Mr Hess, your tone is offensive and your conduct unbecoming. I am afraid I have no option but to inform you that your contract at the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers is being terminated. I would be grateful if you would vacate your desk.’

  Mike stumbled into the main office, called Susan over and slumped into his chair. ‘Susan,’ he said, ‘I just got my pink slip. They fired me!’

  SEVENTEEN

  1980

  Mike was in a foul mood and Mark could not rouse him from it. Losing his job in the depths of an economic downturn was a harsh blow, but Mark sensed there was something deeper. It was as if the NIMLO setback had tipped some sort of balance inside him, as if Mike were giving up on life as a whole: he stayed in bed with the blinds closed when Mark left to go to class and would be lying there still when Mark returned in the evening; he turned down invitations to go out and refused to pick up the phone; even Susan’s messages went unanswered.

  Mark was solicitous. He comforted Mike and fussed over him, put up with his curt, dismissive responses and kept a smile on his face despite the gloom Mike seemed determined to bring down on them. Mark was young and Mike was his first love – their relationship still seemed special to him, still worth fighting for. He reassured him endlessly, willing him not to despair.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mike. The main thing is we love each other. That’s where your happiness lies, yours and mine. You can have happiness if you want it – you know that. It’s here at your fingertips and nothing else matters.’

  Mike knew he was right: he wanted the happiness and love as much as Mark did. But the more Mark was supportive and loving, the more Mike’s anger grew. He didn’t know why but sensed it was something to do with jealousy: he had convinced himself that he could never be happy and something inside him did not want anyone else to be happy. If his own happiness could only exist by Mark being happy, then he would sacrifice both.

  Mark came home from class to find Mike up and dressed.

  ‘Mike!’ he exclaimed. ‘God, it’s great to see you back on your feet again. How are you feeling?’ He made as if to hug him, but when he saw the look on his face took a step back. ‘What’s going on, Mike?’

  ‘I’m dressed because I’m going away for the weekend.’

  His voice was expressionless but his words were bullets.

  Mark pleaded, asked him to stay, but Mike was unmovable. Mark glimpsed the gathering crisis and tried one last time to avert it.

  ‘If you go, you’ll ruin everything we’ve built together. I thought we were over these lost weekends, Mike. Please don’t start it all again; it’ll destroy everything.’

  Mark held his breath, waiting for his lover’s reply, and then heard the note of pleasure and triumph that betrayed how much Mike wanted to hurt him. ‘I’m going, Mark. You can’t stop me. That’s what I want. That’s where I want to be.’

  ‘If you go,’ Mark said, ‘I won’t be here when you get back. I’m serious . . .’

  He saw Mike hesitate for a moment, saw the fleeting frown that darkened his face, then saw him pick up his bag and walk through the door.

  Mike looked in the mirror and was startled to see himself there. The train was reaching top speed, bumping and swaying over the points. Tired and unsteady from the reckless abandon of the weekend, he could barely stand, but as he saw his reflection he paused for a moment, peering into the mirror for a closer look. How strange it was, this need to seek assurance of his own existence. He saw the eyes, the familiar nose and mouth, and told himself, Look! There you are; you are there.

  The weekend in Manhattan – the weekend he had just spent with Harry – had ended a couple of hours ago but already it seemed like a black void. The drink, the pills, the sex – the memories existed somewhere in his brain, but distant now, veiled in the fog of forgetting. He peered again into the rattling, splash-stained mirror of the bathroom, but could not dispel the awful thought that Michael Hess did not exist. He laughed. How people dismiss you – ‘He’s a nobody!’ – and now it was a reality.

  In the lobby at the end of the carriage he stood by the door and pressed his face to the cold window. Outside the tracks were flashing past in the midnight darkness, clattering down below him, illuminated with rhythmic bursts of light in a Morse code he could not decipher. He examined the door handle – one of the old manual locks that could be flicked open with little effort. His hand was on it, beginning to lift, beginning to imagine the cold impact of the unforgiving steel. Then he heard a voice that seemed to echo in his mind – quick, stumbling phrases, a woman’s voice: ‘Don’t let them put him in the ground . . . It’s dark down there . . . It’s cold down there.’

  He gripped the hand on the door lever – his own hand, Mike Hess’s hand. The flesh felt warm and alive.

  ‘Don’t let them bury him . . . They’re burying him in the ground . . .’

  He gave a short, muffled moan and sank to the floor.

  When Mike got to the apartment on E Street, he found a note from Mark scribbled on a page torn from a yellow legal pad. ‘I spoke to the landlord. You need to clear your stuff out by Friday. Leave the key with Spangler.’

  When he looked in the bedroom, Mark’s side of the closet was empty.

  He phoned Susan Kavanagh and she drove over. She said she’d been alarmed when he didn’t answer her phone calls. She had spoken with Mark and heard about them breaking up. A few of the guys at NIMLO had been trying to contact him to say how sorry they were to see him leave. Then she looked at him and sighed, ‘Mike, you look awful. I think you better come stay with me until you get sorted out. My daughter’s at summer camp for another couple of weeks, and after that I think I can find you someplace to go.’

  Susan nursed him and fed him. She cleared away the alcohol from the shelf in the kitchen and made sure he stayed home in the evenings. Mike seemed a little embarrassed – there was enough familiarity between the two of them that he could accept her kindness, but enough distance to keep him polite and grateful, to stop him sinking into the self-pitying depression he had used as a weapon against Mark.

  At the beginning of September, a few days before her daughter was due back, Susan said she had spoken to a friend of hers who was willing to sublet the spare room of his apartment. The guy’s name was Bob McMullen; he was the same age as Susan, a couple of years older than Mike, and he was gay. Susan invited him over to dinner and he explained that he and his partner had taken on the lease of a very grand apartment in the upmarket Wyoming Building on Columbia Road in Adams Morgan, a few blocks north from Dupont, but the two of them had recently split up so there was now a spare bedroom Mike might like to rent. The three of them agreed to meet at Bob’s place the following day.

  The Wyoming had been constructed around the turn of the twentieth century with high ceilings and marble and brass fittings, and its location could hardly have been better: after the rough streets of South-East DC, Mike found Adams Morgan very swanky, with its wide tree-lined avenues and funky restaurants. The apartment itself was spacious and comfortable: Bob had his own bedroom and private bathroom; Mike would have the same, and they would share a large lounge area and dining room. Mike did not warm to Bob McMullen, but the rent was reasonable, Susan knew the guy and Mike was in no position to go elsewhere. He signed a brief, informal document that would ser
ve as a lease and the three of them walked round the corner for a celebratory beer in the Lemon Tree bar.

  EIGHTEEN

  1980–1

  The heat wave of the summer had broken in late September and fall had come swift on its heels. Ronald Reagan had co-opted George Bush as his running mate and the Republican bandwagon was rolling towards inexorable victory in November. Mike had barely kept himself on an even keel, spending his days looking through the legal journals in search of a job but making no headway: every ad he responded to seemed to have been placed too late – he was sick of hearing the voice on the phone offering saccharin commiserations: ‘We’re so sorry, Mr Hess, but that position has now been filled . . .’

  He was getting on OK with Bob McMullen but little more than that. Susan sensed the lack of warmth and told Mike she was worried she had put two of her friends in a situation that wasn’t working out, but Mike said everything was fine – he had far bigger problems to worry about.

  On 4 November Reagan won in a landslide, condemning Jimmy Carter to the worst defeat of an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover. Mike met up with John Clarkson and they drowned their sorrows in the Numbers Bar on the far side of Connecticut Avenue. John was a committed Democrat – he had worked for a Democratic senator and seemed to take the defeat as a personal rebuff – so Mike made it his business to cheer him up with a constant and copious supply of drink. When Susan arrived she said she’d been trying to call Mike all day and gotten no reply.

  ‘I’ve been really wanting to find you, Mike. There’s been a couple of calls for you from Ron Kaufman at the Republican National Committee, and they sound urgent. He says he told his boss about you after that meeting you had. They just discovered you were fired from NIMLO and, well, it sounds like they want to offer you a job.’

  Mike said nothing but John spluttered through a mouthful of beer, ‘What? Mike go work for the Republicans? You cannot be serious!’

  Mike went to the meeting in a panic of indecision. He wanted a job – needed a job – but John Clarkson was right. On the Metro from Dupont to Capitol South he agonized and changed his mind a dozen times. The escalator carried him up from the subway into a wintry sun that wavered uncertainly above the Capitol. The row of low-built white-fronted offices across the street gleamed in the morning light, the headquarters of the Republican high command preening with the assurance of status and power. In the main lobby of 310 First Street Mike came face to face with a life-size image of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, waving and smiling with the Hollywood confidence that had charmed a nation. Mike shivered and asked the receptionist to let Mr Kaufman know he was here.

  Kaufman came down himself, chatted in the elevator as if they we re old buddies and led Mike through plush carpeted corridors where secretaries looked up from their keyboards to wave good morning and brass nameplates adorned oak doors. Mike thought how good it must be to have a brass nameplate . . .

  ‘Welcome to mission control.’ Kaufman laughed as he ushered Mike into a smallish office equipped with expensive-looking furniture and poured them both coffee. ‘I take it you know what we do – coordination for the party across the nation, development and promotion of the party’s political platform, fundraising, election strategy. High-powered and serious. But we also organize the convention every four years and now, praise be, the president’s Inaugural – that’s the fun stuff and that’s what we’d like you to come and help out with. How does that sound?’

  Mike blinked. Kaufman was a fast talker and he felt maybe he hadn’t taken everything in.

  ‘Tell me again – you want me to work on the Inaugural?’ Mike wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but this sounded like a job labelling envelopes for invitations to a presidential party.

  ‘Sure. The Presidential Inaugural Committee’s being constituted this week and it’ll run for a couple of months – Reagan gets sworn in on January twentieth.’

  Kaufman explained that the RNC needed volunteers to help with planning and staffing, arranging transport and staging the inaugural events like the parade and the ball, and marketing the official commemorative book and other souvenirs.

  Mike gave a little laugh. ‘So it’s basically selling hot dogs. Is that what it is?’

  Kaufman smiled.

  ‘That’s about the measure of it. But don’t forget the golden rule of politics: if you want to get on, you need to be in the right place at the right time.’

  Susan Kavanagh and John Clarkson snickered when Mike told them what he had been hired for, but he worked his time, labelled the envelopes and shuffled the papers. His most arduous task was to help draft hire contracts for the eight ballrooms in DC hotels and convention centres where 50,000 Republicans from the nation’s four corners would gather to celebrate the inauguration of their man in the White House. On January twentieth his reward was a seat in the staff bleachers on the West Front of the Capitol. He was there at 11.30 a.m., as Reagan stepped up to be sworn in as fortieth president of the United States; and he was there at 11.35 a.m., the minute a UPI flash confirmed the hostages had taken off from Tehran after 444 days in captivity. Reagan’s triumph was Carter’s humiliation, and Mike felt both; his unease at the advent of the Republican right was attenuated by the exhilaration of the occasion and the sense that he was part of the machine which had put it in place.

  In the evening he took Susan to the Inaugural staff ball at the Washington Sheraton. They floated through waltzes and jumped about to Kool and the Gang’s ‘Celebration’, which had hit number one in the charts. ‘There’s a party going on right here, / a dedication to last throughout the year,’ the young Republicans sang. ‘We gonna have a good time tonight; / let’s celebrate, it’s all right . . .’ Mike and Susan drank in the atmosphere and the free wine till their heads were light, their thoughts raced and their emotions were torn in a thousand directions. Mike smoked a joint in the men’s room, its effect infinitely magnified by the knowledge that he was doing it in the heart of the Republican beast.

  On the stroke of midnight an excited young guy with a West Coast accent got up on stage and asked for silence, the ballroom lights dimmed and suddenly they were there: Nancy, slender and shimmering in her ten-thousand-dollar gown, and the Gipper himself, impossibly tall and erect with his glossy hair swept into its perfect quiff and his perfect teeth smiling from his manly actor’s face. Susan grabbed Mike’s arm and joined in the collective scream of excitement; Mike felt his body quiver with the warm, tingling pleasure of nervy anticipation. As Frank Sinatra sang, the president did his ‘Aw shucks’ routine, thanked his staff and kissed his wife. Mike’s head was spinning. The Reagans were among the crowds on the dance floor now, led this way and that by a beaming Ron Kaufman, who whispered the names of important staffers they needed to greet. Reagan’s head towered above the throng and Mike pictured him as handsome cowboy, a muscular doomed athlete – as his own lover. Kaufman was whispering again and Reagan was right there beside him, taking his hand in his and delivering perfectly the line he had been told to say.

  ‘Well, Mr Michael Hess, I presume. I’ve heard a lot about you and I would be honoured if you would give me your support, as a member of our young generation, in the efforts we’re making to ensure this country’s future. What do you say, young man? We’d sure like to have you with us.’

  LONDON

  Present Day

  Constructing a portrait of an absent person is an exercise in extrapolation and verification. For all the research and detective work, there must be a black hole at the centre – where a man once stood and is no longer. His form can be surmised: the testimony of those who knew him offers a series of spotlights against which his silhouette emerges in dark, fleeting relief. Hundreds of people knew Michael Hess, or Anthony Lee, and I have spoken to dozens of them. But each spotlight focuses on a separate angle – at times, it seems, on an entirely different man – and where some remember a thing one way, others remember it otherwise. Some informants appear under their own names in the text of this book; othe
rs have asked to appear under a pseudonym or not to appear at all. Most have spoken with honesty and goodwill – the exceptions are those in public positions who have something to hide.

  I will describe at the end of the story how we contacted the three or four people who played the most important roles in Michael’s later years and how the arc of his life emerged from the accounts they gave. There are new photographs and documents on my desk now to guide me in the final stages of my search: a group of smiling young men at a West Virginia cottage; official White House portraits from the 1980s Republican heyday; a forty-year-old man in earnest conversation with a fragile elderly nun at the door of a country convent; a brother and sister, older again, sitting huddled on the wooden steps of a back porch in the country with sorrow written in their faces . . .

  PART FOUR

  ONE

  1981

  Michael Hess signed his contract of employment with the Republican National Committee on 27 March 1981. It was a Friday afternoon and the guys at the RNC said that if he didn’t mind hanging around for an hour they would take him for a drink to celebrate. At 6.30 p.m. Ron Kaufman and Tom Hofeller collected him from the bare room with the single window and the thumb-tack-spotted walls that was destined to be his office and the three of them walked the eight blocks up to D Street. As they passed the Dirksen Senate Office Building (renamed for the late senator in 1972), Mike nodded to the nameplate and told his companions about the time he had been Ev Dirksen’s page. Everyone laughed, and Mike was pleased that he had bolstered his threadbare Republican credentials. The Monocle was still pretty empty when they arrived and Nick, the Greek maître d’, greeted Ron and Tom by name.