Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  Cleo and Tom left him, went out into the street and walked down past the narrow houses, grey and drab even in the August sunshine. They were aware of people watching them; lace curtains moved like white eyelids. On a street corner a group of youths stood still as Cleo and Tom came up to them; the intruders, for that was what they knew they were, had to step into the gutter to get by. They had come to the wrong address, in more ways than one.

  “That guy was one of the Old Guard,” said Tom. “We should have gone looking for the young ones. Who gave you his name?”

  “He rang me himself at the hotel, told me to come and see him first. I suppose someone at the hotel told him I was there but forgot to say what paper I was from.”

  “Why didn’t you get in touch with Bernadette Devlin direct?”

  “I tried that, but she’s not in Belfast this weekend, she’s somewhere out in the country, they said.”

  They came out of the side street, turned down the Falls Road, and were looking vainly for a taxi when they heard shouting and banging of drums. Coming up the road, spread right across it like a slow dark tide, was a procession; at its head marched two drummers and behind them, banging away to the same rhythm, was a line of youths with dustbin lids. A banner waved above the crowd, but the two young men holding the poles were marching too close together and the message on the banner sagged in on itself like a strangled shout.

  “Here come the Young Turks,” said Cleo.

  “Oh Jesus,” said Tom, looking the other way.

  At the end of the block on which they stood a barricade was hastily being dragged into place. Police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary in glistening helmets and with plastic shields held up like a loose wall, were lining up behind the barricade. Behind them were the B-Specials, the civilian militia, their stiff-peaked caps held hard down on their heads by chin-straps, their pick-handle batons held at the ready. The silence at that end of the road was an eerie contrast to the shouting and banging of drums and lids, now louder still, from the other end.

  Cleo suddenly realized they were in the middle of a rapidly diminishing no-man’s land. She looked wildly around for escape; then banged on the front door immediately behind her. But she could have been thumping on the door of an empty house: the door remained shut, the lace curtains at the windows didn’t move. The crowd, turning now into a mob as its anger and noise grew, was less than fifty yards away.

  Two youths suddenly appeared on the roof of a house across the street. One of them swung his arm and a bottle, trailing a tiny wisp of smoke, flew through the air towards the barricades. The distance was too great; the Molotov cocktail hit one of several cars parked along the road. Instantly flames spread around the car; it seemed only a moment before it blew up with a roar. The car behind it caught fire, then the one in front of it. Then the air was full of smoke and stones and bottles and single spiked railings hurled as spears.

  Tom dragged Cleo back into the shallow doorway and stood in front of her; the door knocker, a clenched fist, was hard against the back of her head. The mob swept past, its faces all one face, distorted by hate and fury and the pent-up frustration of generations. None of the men seemed to see Cleo and Tom; the mob pressed them against the door like a surging river. Tom turned his back on it, held Cleo tightly in his arms, his legs braced so that they would not be forced to their knees by the raging crowd.

  He twisted his head, saw the armoured car with its water-cannon come through a gap in the barricade. The jets of water sprayed the burning cars, then turned on the mob as the first line of youths swept on it.

  Another Molotov cocktail hurtled through the air, hit the armoured car and burst; there was a scream as one of the youths was splashed and he flung up his hands to his face. Then the first shot was fired and the mob’s yelling suddenly stopped; bullets were not part of the game. For a moment Cleo and Tom had the feeling that they had all at once gone deaf; there seemed to be no sound in the packed, smoking street. Then there was a sudden single roar, a horrible sound coming out of a wounded bull’s throat; Tom saw a big youth break from the front of the crowd and run towards the barricade. He drew back his arm and hurled a spiked railing with all his strength; the RUC policeman on the other side of the barricade could not have seen it coming. His shield was too low; the spear went into his throat. Then there were two more shots; the big youth suddenly stopped and sat down, then fell over and lay still. Another volley of shots, and the RUC came out from behind the barricade and began to move down the road, their shields now glinting in the sun like unbreakable windows. Behind them the B-Specials, some wielding their pick-handles, modern-day shillelaghs, others brandishing pistols, crowded in support.

  The noise was deafening, the air thick with acrid smoke from the burning cars, the roadway strewn with men wounded by bricks or bullets. The mob retreated, still throwing anything that came to hand; a large stone hit the wall just beside Tom and Cleo, missing them by inches. The police and the militia pressed forward slowly and relentlessly. They went past Cleo and Tom and a policeman turned his face behind his shield and looked at them, unsurprised and without curiosity.

  “I’d get out of here if I was you,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone and went on, raising his shield deftly to fend off a flying stone. He was embarking on a long war, but he didn’t know it.

  Behind the RUC and the B-Specials Cleo saw the armoured car still trying to put out the burning vehicles with its water-cannon. A truck came round its side and moved slowly down the street behind the police and militia. Crouched on the platform on its roof was a cameraman. The truck went by and Cleo saw the BBC insignia on its side.

  “Oh God,” she said, “not them again!”

  No matter what she and Tom wrote, and they had been in the thick of today’s story, nothing would compare with the colour and immediacy of the television coverage. It had been the same in Vietnam. War had become a home movie.

  II

  Cleo wrote her story and phoned it to London. She wrote it well and she knew it would be on Page One as the main news story and not as her column. But she also knew that when it appeared tomorrow morning it would be stale news.

  “Everyone will have seen it all this evening. Who’ll read my stuff?”

  “Cleo old girl, TV is only illustrated headlines. There is still a majority of people who want background, some real depth to their news. You can give them that when you do your column.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not enough. For me, I mean.”

  They were having a late dinner in the dining-room of their hotel. Most of the other diners had gone and the staff hovered in the background, wanting to go home or to the pubs; anywhere where they could discuss this afternoon’s riot. Six men had been killed and at least twenty badly hurt. The staff was a mixture of Protestant and Catholic, so there was no discussion within the hotel. Jobs, for the moment, were more important than sympathies.

  Something in her voice made Tom look hard at her. Stirring her coffee, intent on her own disappointment and chagrin, it was a moment or two before she looked up and saw him staring at her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You said that as if what happened this afternoon wasn’t so important.”

  “Of course it was. And tragic, too. But I’m talking about me—about you, too. If TV is going to take our stories away from us, who’s going to read us? We’ll just be reduced to comment for people who have more time than they know what to do with. Retired people, people out of work, academics.”

  “Cleo, academics don’t read the Examiner unless they’re doing a paper on the tastes of the lower orders. But the other ones you mentioned—don’t you think they need to be informed? And the politicians read the columns, even those in the Examiner, I guess.”

  “You’re a journalist snob. You keep talking about the Examiner as if it were a paper for morons. It has the second largest daily circulation in this country. No matter what you Americans may think, there aren’t four million morons in this country.”

&
nbsp; Tom didn’t debate that point. At times, when depressed, he felt the world was populated entirely by morons, including himself. There had been no intelligence in the Falls Road this afternoon, only emotion.

  “Is that all you’re concerned with? How many people read your stuff?”

  She put her spoon carefully back in the saucer and returned his stare. Without knowing it, he was asking her why she had come all this way from Australia. She had not been untouched by what had happened this afternoon; she saw the tragedy beginning to stretch down the years ahead; she could understand the grief in the homes of the men who had been killed. But there was more: her own life was not going to be spent in the streets of Belfast. All the reasons for her seeming selfishness were too complex to explain to him now, though.

  “Yes.” She knew she sounded too blunt.

  He leaned back in his chair, threw up a hand, looked from side to side as if hoping someone might interrupt them. The head waiter started forward hopefully, but Tom looked right through him, then back at Cleo.

  “You are too much, Cleo, too much for me. I hadn’t realized it before—all that sparks you is ambition. The news, any goddam thing at all that happens, is just a stepping-stone for you.”

  “I’m a newspaperwoman.”

  “Yes. But you’re an awful lot more than that. I think in a way you’re a lot like Claudine Roux.”

  The comparison hadn’t occurred to her. “I’m flattered.”

  “lt wasn’t meant to be flattery. I told you we call her The Empress. Empresses chop heads off. Or they did.”

  She laughed, but felt uncomfortable. Women like to look into mirrors, but not when held up by men, particularly men they like. “Whose head is in danger? Yours?”

  He shook his head, as if to prove how securely it was attached to the rest of him. “I’m not important enough. No, you’ll go for heads bigger than mine.”

  “Lord Cruze’s?” She was still laughing, but it was becoming harder.

  “Who knows? You have plenty of time.”

  She stopped laughing. “You should take a look at yourself some time. You accuse me of being self-centred. What about you? What’s a drifter but a self-centred bum, someone who moves on every time he looks as if he might have to become involved in something. How long are you going to remember those dead boys in the street this afternoon?”

  He stared at her: she had held a mirror up to him. It was cracked, but he recognized enough of himself. Abruptly he signalled for the head waiter. The latter dived forward like a magpie, stiff white breast buckling as he bent over with the bill.

  “Separate bills, please,” said Cleo.

  “No,” said Tom. “It’s my treat, while I can afford to do it.”

  She had been idly thinking that if he asked her to bed tonight, she would have gone with him. She stood up, angry and hurt, and walked out while he was still signing the bill. He caught up with her out in the lobby.

  “You’re angry,” he said. “Well, goddam it, so am I!”

  “What the hell have you got to be angry about?”

  “Because you’ve let me down. I once said you were female, sentimental and compassionate. All you are now is female.”

  She was surprised at his bitterness even while she was angry with him. She wondered how the relationship between them had suddenly gone sour; she might have explained herself better to him had he been a stranger. She admitted the truth of what he had said, or part of it: she was ambitious. But lovers, or people on the verge of love, have no time for immediate explanations. The sad fact was that neither she nor Tom realized they were on the verge of love. They thought it was a quarrel between journalists, who prefer facts to rumours of feeling.

  “Oh my God, you really are a male chauvinist, aren’t you?”

  “It’s no worse than an ambitious women’s libber.”

  They were arguing in jargon and she knew it. She spun round and went quickly towards the lifts at the end of the lobby. But the lifts were on some upper floor and tantalizingly kept her waiting: the lift attendants were all men. She was still furious, but while she waited impatiently reason crept back, prodding her. She had been foolish; but so had he. She would hold out a friendly hand, try to explain herself to him. She turned round, all at once reasonable and forgiving.

  But he had gone. The revolving front door spun like a runaway wheel.

  III

  She went back to London next day after the reception clerk had told her that Mr. Border had left on the early morning plane. Bernadette Devlin came in from wherever she had been in the country and gave a press conference on yesterday’s riot; but Cleo did not go to it, left it to the Examiner’s local stringer. The conference was held in the hotel and when she saw the television cameras going into the big public room set aside for the mass interview, she lost interest. One couldn’t blame Miss Devlin, she would get better exposure on television than in all the newspapers combined. Sincere anger always looks more convincing on a screen than on the printed page.

  When she got back to London she went to her flat before going to the office. The porter met her at the lobby door. “There was more flowers for you this morning, Miss Spear-field. I give ‘em to your cleaning lady to put in water. Roses need lots of water.”

  He was no gardening expert, he was just wondering who owned the Rolls-Royce that had brought the roses. He had noted the number plate, JC-l. It wasn’t the Archbishop of Westminster’s number plate though he wouldn’t be surprised if the Archbishop did ride around in a Rolls; he was firmly convinced that the Catholic Church had more money than it knew what to do with. JC-1 . . . then suddenly it clicked: Jesus Christ, John Cruze! Lord Cruze, Miss Spearfield’s boss! He beamed at her with new respect.

  Cleo saw the recognition in his eye. “I won them at bingo, Mr. Wood. A year’s supply, once a week.”

  There had been six boxes of roses in two weeks, but he made no mention of that. “Pity you didn’t win the money, miss.”

  “Mr. Wood, do you watch television very much?”

  “Every chance I get, miss.” He looked puzzled. “The news, documentaries, fillums, Coronation Street, Benny Hill. The missus often says she doesn’t know what we did before the telly came.”

  She knew he read the Examiner; she had seen it in his tiny office. “Do you read the papers?”

  “Only the sports pages, miss.” And the gossip columns, to see if any of his people were mentioned. But he was diplomatic, if a little late: “Oh, your column, too. Never miss that.”

  He must have missed her by-line on the Page One story this morning. Or he hadn’t read it, had got all he wanted to know from last night’s telly.

  “You going to be on the telly, miss?”

  “I might, Mr. Wood. You never know.”

  Once in her flat she took her time over a bath, read her mail as if looking for secret messages between the lines, changed the fresh water of the bunch of roses for more fresh water, inspected the flat to see how the cleaning lady had rearranged the dust this time, did everything she could to put off what she knew she was going to do anyway. Then at last she picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Fleet Street bureau of the New York Courier.

  “Mr. Border? I’m sorry. You’ve just missed him. He’s going to the Continent . . . No, he’ll be away some weeks, I understand. You may be able to reach him at our Paris bureau . . .”

  She hung up. She wasn’t going to chase him to Paris, not even by phone. She felt a certain relief at the same time as she felt let down. No, more than let down: empty. As if she had thrown away—what? A chance of happiness? But wasn’t she happy enough as she was? She hadn’t come all this way, had she, to have her happiness depend on a man who hadn’t even told her he loved her? Was she in love with him or did she just want to convince him that she wasn’t all ambition? She asked herself questions, being her own devil’s advocate, which meant she didn’t want any honest answers.

  She went to the office, early enough to catch Massey-Folkes before he started the af
ternoon editorial conference. He was in his glass-walled office; he believed every editor should be a goldfish in a bowl. Or anyway, a shark. He was tall, bald and when he stood up always hunched over; fifteen years of working for a short boss had taught him physical diplomacy. When he straightened up in the presence of those under him they knew they were in for a blast. He didn’t rise at all when Cleo came into his office, but gave her his big buck-toothed smile.

  “Good story, Cleo my love. It had a nice feel to it.” Feel was something he always looked for in a story, though he had never defined what he felt.

  “Quentin—” She sat down, looked at him across his meticulously neat desk. It struck her that he could have been a Civil Service Permanent Secretary had he not been such an anarchist. “The Cruze Organization owns some television shares, doesn’t it?”

  “Fifteen per cent of United TV.” United held the Monday to Friday franchise for the London area. “Before you go any further, love—there are never any stories, except favourable ones, on United. Those are orders from His Nibs.”

  “I thought he was supposed never to interfere with what you ran?”

  “Don’t be naïve, Cleo. He’s not going to have one of his employees writing crap about the golden goose, not when he owns fifteen per cent of the goose. Forget it. Much as my secret Marxist heart would love it, I’m not running any of your hatchet work on the ill-gotten, print-your-own-money returns from commercial television!”

  “Quentin, I don’t want to write—I want to appear. On TV, preferably on United.”

  “You’d have to talk to the United people about that—I can ring up someone there and put in a word for you. Their women’s hour is pretty bloody, so my wife tells me—”

  “I’m not interested in the women’s hour. I’m after my own spot on Scope.” Scope was a hard-hitting, big-budget weekly news magazine that had a top rating. It had made stars of two of its reporters; the third spot was usually reserved for a guest reporter. “I could handle it. Even with my Australian accent.”