The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Original Edition)

by Sixsmith, Martin

  Mike arrived at La Colline, a Republican haunt on Capitol Hill, five minutes early, but Pete was already sitting at the table, injured leg outstretched.

  ‘Hi,’ said Mike, smiling. Pete looked up at him and giggled.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Mike.

  ‘Well, I decided not to wear loafers because I figured you’d be so smartly dressed I’d feel embarrassed about them – or about it.’ He lifted the black leather shoe on his unbroken foot. Mike was dressed in a button-down shirt and penny loafers, and he looked down at himself with a deprecating grin.

  ‘Well, I guess we’re Lady and the Tramp, then.’

  There was a sexual pull between them – they both felt it – but neither was sure what the other intended. For long sections of the meal the conversation could have been a business discussion between two straight acquaintances. Mike spoke about the work he was doing for the RNC and the redistricting cases they were trying to tie up before next year’s mid-term elections; Pete talked about his job at the Food Marketing Institute – it paid well, he said, but he regarded it as a temporary stop on a journey to bigger things. Mike told him a little about his family background and his sister in Florida; Pete recounted his own peripatetic youth, dragged all over the world by a father with a successful military career that took him from Hawaii to Japan to Holland and finally to California. His father’s family was Swedish, his mother was French, and he had come to DC to take a degree in international affairs and marketing at GWU. His sister also lived in the District and they were both keen swimmers and horse riders.

  Mike and Pete discovered the coincidences – their close relationships with their sisters, their overlapping year at GWU, their birthdays four months apart (Pete was the younger). By the end of the meal they had drunk a couple of bottles of wine and their inhibitions were evaporating.

  ‘I, uh . . . I only live ten minutes’ walk from here,’ Pete said.

  Mike pointed at his broken foot. ‘Ten minutes for me, maybe, but half an hour for you, Hopalong!’

  They laughed. Mike flagged down a cab and they rode in comfortable silence. Outside a small townhouse ten blocks from the Capitol Pete said, ‘I need to let you know – I share the place with a roommate, and he’s a Democrat, press secretary for Senator Simon, actually, but he’s gay himself and you don’t need to worry about anything. He’s a good guy.’

  Mike squeezed Pete’s hand and helped him up the steps, thinking how excited the guy looked, how different this all seemed from the quick trashy fade-to-lust of his usual dates.

  Pete’s housemate chatted for a couple of minutes before making a show of yawning and excusing himself to go to bed. Left alone, they embraced. Both were experienced lovers and each knew what they wanted from the other.

  In the morning Pete toasted a couple of waffles and they drank coffee until it was time to go to work. Mike said he could walk to the RNC, just a couple of blocks away, but Pete had to take the Metro up to K Street so they parted at the door. As he was leaving, Mike turned to look back.

  ‘Come to my place Saturday night and I’ll cook for you. I live in the Wyoming up on Columbia Avenue. Can you find it?’

  As he strolled to the RNC building, he felt like leaping in the air.

  THREE

  1981

  Mike had become fond of Roger Allan Moore – the guy was one of life’s great characters and brought a touch of intellectual elegance and humour to their work. His professorial manner concealed a warm heart and sharp wit, and staff at the RNC had collected some of his pithiest aphorisms in a pamphlet that circulated like samizdat among the Republican faithful (‘The Conservative’s motto: “Don’t just do something – stand there!”’ ‘Really important people don’t carry walkie-talkies’; ‘Prefer rogues to fools: rogues sometimes take a rest.’) Roger was lovely, but he played his cards close to his chest.

  Mike was nodding off over the morning’s briefing papers, reliving the pleasures of his night with Pete, when the door opened and Roger entered.

  ‘Ahm, Michael,’ he said, ‘I may have mentioned this – then again I may not – but the president is expecting us at 11.30 to run him through what we’re proposing on redistricting. It’s important for him to understand the significance it has for the party, and it’s important for us to get the funding we need to do it. Can you be sure and come along? The car will pick us up around eleven.’

  The Oval Office was busy: White House staffers were milling around two beige sofas on the huge rug in the centre of the room, a uniformed maid was distributing tea and coffee, and a knot of officials were waiting with papers for the president to sign. Reagan himself was reclining in a dark leather captain’s chair behind the massive presidential desk, looking a little drawn but smiling and joking with the doctor who was trying to take his blood pressure. Roger Allan Moore nodded to Mike and Mark Braden to take a seat, and they waited in silence until James Baker, the White House chief of staff, called the meeting to order.

  ‘Mr President, the RNC are here in force to see you. Roger you know of course, and he has the deputy chief counsel Mark Braden with him and also Michael Hess, who is our redistricting attorney. Roger, the floor is yours. We have a quarter-hour and then we need to go see the Teamsters before lunch.’

  Reagan pulled a face about the Teamsters meeting and nodded for Roger to begin.

  ‘Mr President, I’ll, ahm, get straight to the point. Redistricting in the United States never used to be much of a deal. Electoral boundaries rarely ever changed. Then in 1965 we had the one-person, one-vote revolution and by the end of the sixties every state had redrawn its districts. Sadly for us, ’65 happened to be a high-water mark for the Democrats so they were able to draw lines that were substantially to their advantage. And that was pretty much the reason why they remained in total political power through the late sixties and seventies. What we are trying to do is redress that injustice by using the legal process to undo the Democrats’ partisan gerrymandering.’

  Moore stopped and checked the president was following him.

  ‘So, Mr President, we are setting up a redistricting division for which Michael Hess here will act as counsel. I understand the funding is close to being agreed and we are grateful for that. Now I just want to let you know there may be a few . . . surprises in store. For instance, we are planning on supporting a judicial case against our own people in Indiana. Ahm, you may know that we briefly held the balance of power in the state legislature and some of our guys up there took advantage to do a little gerrymandering of their own. The Democrats were furious, of course, and they brought a suit to get our gerrymander overturned. Now we are planning to support the Democrats in this, and you may be puzzled why we’re doing so. Well, the answer is that the suit – it’s known as Davis v. Bandemer, by the way – will, if successful, establish the principle that the courts do have the right to overturn gerrymanders under the Equal Protection Amendment. And once we’ve got that principle established, we know we can use it across the whole of the Democrats’ own gerrymanders in all the other states of the Union! In fact, they did us a favour when they took our guys to court because with both parties supporting the action, the courts are pretty likely to grant it!’

  Moore looked up with a QED sort of smile on his face.

  ‘Now I’m telling you all this, Mr President, because I suspect there’ll be quite a few angry voices in the party when they hear we’re supporting the Democrats and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and, ahm, they may try to get you to stop us doing it. So I just wanted you to know that if we succeed – and Mr Hess is a most competent expert in this field – then we could change the whole face of politics in this country. We could undo the electoral bias that has favoured our opponents and kept us on the sidelines for decades. We haven’t controlled the US Congress, the Senate and the House for so many years that everyone assumes it’s an automatic Democrat privilege to be in charge. But if you give us the go-ahead, Mr President, I believe we can change all th
at and start a revolution they won’t be able to stop!’

  Moore had become unusually animated in the course of his speech, and after he finished he was gripped by a fit of coughing he seemed unable to control.

  The president got up from his seat to pat Roger on the back and offer him a glass of water.

  ‘Well done, Roger. You can be my 007 any day, ’ Reagan joked. ‘And as far as the funding goes, by the way, you got it!’

  In the car on the way back from the White House Moore continued to cough sporadically, and at one point Mike thought he saw flecks of blood spattering his linen handkerchief.

  FOUR

  1981

  Pete Nilsson spent forty-eight hours wondering what to do about the cast on his leg and eventually decided to saw it off. It should have stayed on for two more weeks, but he was impatient to meet Michael on equal terms.

  Mike was in the kitchen when Pete arrived. He kissed Pete, gave him a drink and sat him down with Bob McMullen while he finished cooking the John Dory and roast potatoes. Mike was wearing light-blue jeans, very tight with the cuffs rolled, and a bowling shirt; the combination, Pete thought, gave him a kind of 1950s James Dean look that he found very sexy. The meal was superb and Pete gushed with compliments. Bob laughed as Mike flushed with pleasure.

  ‘You do realize that is the only thing he can cook, don’t you? We can’t go praising Mr Wonderful too much or he’ll think we all have to fall down at his feet!’

  Pete laughed, but he was so in awe of Michael that anything he did seemed just perfect. Mike looked across at Pete and smiled. This could be it, he thought suddenly. I could be happy like this all the time.

  ‘Right,’ announced Bob, rising from his seat, ‘that was delicious, Mike. Thanks. Look, you know I’d stay and help clear and all that . . .’ He walked out, slamming the door.

  Mike eyed Pete. ‘I made dessert, but—’

  ‘It can wait, right?’ Pete whispered. ‘Why don’t you show me the bedroom?’

  They woke late on Sunday morning, and Pete suggested they go round to his friends in Georgetown for brunch. A crowd of guys were already there when they arrived and they walked in to a chorus of wolf whistles. Pete was delighted their partnership was already the talk of the group.

  For Christmas and New Year they rented a cottage outside of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, with snow on the ground and a log fire in the living room. They tramped the hills in the dazzling winter sunshine and skated on the frozen Potomac. In the evenings Mike made mulled wine and chose the music to suit their mood, then they switched off the cassette player and lay in each other’s arms drinking in the silence. On Christmas Eve they went carol singing to their neighbours in the farm up the road and were invited in. At midnight they said they must go, but the invitation to return the following day for Christmas dinner was irresistible.

  Twelve people came to Christmas dinner, among them an elderly couple introduced as Mr and Mrs Shepherd. Henry Shepherd was ruddy-faced and jovial; his wife was a southern belle who had grown up raising orchids in Charleston; and their daughter Sally, who was in her early thirties, was beautiful.

  After a few glasses of wine Mike was feeling festive. ‘So, some coincidence, huh? You guys being Shepherds and this being Shepherdstown. Part of the reason you moved here?’

  To his surprise, the whole table burst into laughter.

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth,’ Sally said with a shy smile, ‘we were here before Shepherdstown was. We’re the eleventh generation of Shepherds – it was my great-great-whatever who founded the place.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ barked Henry Shepherd. ‘Thomas Shepherd arrived here 1734. He built Bellevue, the house our family has lived in for two centuries.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful house,’ Mrs Shepherd said softly, smiling at Mike and Pete. ‘You must come see it sometime.’

  ‘The Shepherds are the heart and soul of Shepherdstown society,’ another neighbour said.

  ‘Oh, come on, George, stop it,’ Sally grinned.

  ‘Quite true, quite true,’ remarked Henry . ‘And while the rest of the world is hell-bent on tearing itself apart, what we have in Shepherdstown is a real community. Neighbourliness,’ he stressed, tapping his fork handle against the table. ‘Loyalty. Courtesy.’

  Pete raised his glass. ‘To Shepherdstown and community spirit! I can’t thank you enough for having us here.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Henry rumbled. ‘Pleasure to have such fine boys in the neighbourhood – eh, Sally?’ He turned to his daughter and gave her a nudge. Sally blushed.

  Mrs Shepherd put a hand on her husband’s arm.

  ‘Now, Henry, ’ she murmured affectionately.

  Mike locked eyes with Sally and both burst into giggles.

  Gerry Hauer had spent his Christmas break with his family, but he was a man who took his work home with him. As soon as he returned to the White House he asked his secretary what she had done with the report from Los Angeles that had come in a while back about the mysterious pneumonia outbreak, but she said it must have been filed away somewhere and she couldn’t find it.

  Hauer shrugged and picked up the phone to his boss, William Bennett.

  ‘Bill,’ he said, ‘have you seen the December issue of the New England Journal of Medicine? No? Well, I read it over Christmas. There’s a study of this new homosexual disease they’ve been reporting in California and now in New York as well. Seems they’ve documented forty-one cases and eight of them have already died. Let’s see . . .’ He flicked through the pages. ‘OK, here we are: “Twenty-six of the cases presented with Kaposi’s sarcoma, an uncommonly reported malignancy in the United States . . . persistent diarrhoea, skin or mucous membrane lesions, often dark blue to violaceous plaques and nodules” – sorry about the yucky details – “necrotizing toxoplasmosis of the central nervous system, candidiasis, cryptococcal meningitis . . .” Ah, yes, here’s the bit: “The reason for the appearance of these unusual illnesses remains unclear. It is likely that sexually active, young homosexual men are frequently reinfected through exposure to semen and faeces of sexual partners. Such reinfection – before recovery from the cellular immune dysfunction induced by previous infection – could conceivably lead to the overwhelming immunodeficiency we are witnessing. All surviving patients have continued to have a severe wasting syndrome . . . ” and blah, blah, blah. Can you imagine, Bill? It sounds like they’re giving each other the plague by sticking their dongs up each other’s you-know-whats . . .’

  At the end of January Mike met up for lunch with Susan Kavanagh, bursting with stories about the two weeks he had spent living with Pete over Christmas. She smiled at the enthusiasm in his voice.

  ‘Michael Hess! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe you might be in love.’

  Mike made a ‘What, me?’ kind of face and pulled out a photo of the two of them together.

  ‘What do you think? He’s cute, isn’t he? Pretty sporty too – plays volleyball, goes swimming, loves horse riding – he’s got a body to die for!’

  Susan grinned and wiggled her eyebrows.

  ‘He’s gorgeous, Mike! But this is more than just a physical attraction, right?’

  ‘Well, he’s head over heels for sure!’ He laughed at his own cockiness. ‘And, you know, I’m feeling good about things too. Living with him out in West Virginia made me think maybe we could be together for the long term. I’m . . . I’m actually thinking of suggesting we move in together.’

  ‘That’s great, Mike. I think that’s great. I guess you just need to be sure it doesn’t get spoiled like it did with Mark. I still see him from time to time, you know.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said shortly. ‘And how is he?’

  ‘Well, he’s about to graduate from law school – got a good job offer in Philadelphia.’ Susan toyed with her food. ‘I think he’s over you now, Mike, but he was cut up at the time. He’s got a new man in his life – Ben Kronfeld. Works for the government; he’s very nice. But what I wanted to say . . . You’re not still seein
g that guy up in Manhattan, are you – the one who caused all the trouble?’

  ‘Harry Chapman? I’m not seeing him, no. But I got a letter from him a couple of weeks back, and . . .’ He hesitated. ‘I think I maybe should write him. He says he’s pretty sick with some crazy thing called Kaposi’s sarcoma.’

  FIVE

  1982

  The funding for the Republican Party’s redistricting division had come through and Michael Hess was named to lead it. He had been working for the RNC for just a year and had risen so quickly he was already considered a veteran. Junior staff were now reporting to him and his opinion on issues of constitutional law was sought and quoted.

  Mike, Roger Allan Moore and Mark Braden were regarded as the Republicans’ swashbuckling musketeers, battling for the party’s interests in courts around the country and constructing increasingly in -genious legal arguments to fight for its electoral rights. They met up each evening for drinks and vied like competitive teenagers, revelling in the intellectual challenge of finding answers to whatever their opponents might throw at them.

  Mike still kept his sexuality a secret. Roger and Mark were family men, with photos of their kids on their desks, but they asked Mike no awkward questions and made no reference to his private life. All Mike’s immediate colleagues were educated, civilized people with no personal sympathy for the homophobic paranoia the party was stirring up in the country at large. At this level in the leadership it was understood that the campaigns against abortion and equal rights for women and homosexuals were simply useful things to do – they kept the religious right happy and they appealed to the redneck bigots.

  Mike saw the hypocrisy and told himself he understood it: the guys making the party platform had only one goal – to get Republicans elected wherever and whenever possible – and if a policy which victimized minority groups brought in majority votes, then it was going to be adopted. Apart from a small clique of extremist true believers and fanatics, the operatives who ran the Republican Party were largely pragmatists concerned with getting re-elected.