Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  “What about the women? Maybe I could influence them.”

  He shook his head. “They like you, I think. But if you and Mrs. Whitehouse ran against each other in a by-election, she’d romp in.” Mrs. Whitehouse had come to prominence in the past couple of years, leading a detergent crusade against smut on television. “She’s married and doesn’t shove her chest out the way you do.”

  “My chest would have nothing to do with it.”

  “Let me tell you about breasts. When I bought the Examiner it was a dull newspaper that backed the Liberal Party and sold about as many copies as the Libs had paid-up members. The English have always loved tits, so I gave ‘em to them. In brassieres, of course—that was 1955, remember. You couldn’t have Anthony Eden and bare tits on the same page. Circulation doubled in a year, trebled within five years. I don’t know whether the Libs continued to buy the paper, but the Labour voters came in from all over the country. The average British working man loves tits and bums more than he does the Welfare State—give him a choice of Raquel Welch for a weekend and a top pension for life and see what he takes. In 1964 we backed Labour to win—I’m a Tory, but I knew who the Examiner’s readers were going to vote for. On election day we featured a girl with the biggest tits in London, a Labour rosette on each nipple and that was all. People laughed and the intellectual Labourites, the dons from the universities, said it was disgusting. But it helped Labour win. In the New Year’s Honours List a little while later Harold Wilson gave me my life peerage. He still calls me Lord Tits when we’re alone.”

  “Well, if I put a Union Jack on each breast—” she hated the word tit, but let him use it, “maybe they’ll vote for me.”

  “You missed my point. They didn’t vote for the girl with the tits. They all knew what she was, a come-on for them to buy the Examiner. She was part of the ballyhoo of the campaign, but it was what we said in the editorial that counted with them. If we’d run a picture of Mary Wilson, as nice a woman as you can find, with rosettes on her tits, Labour would have been swamped. Be satisfied with what you’ve achieved so far, Cleo. You’re the best-looking reporter in this country, but you’re no female messiah.”

  Don’t tell me what I should do! But she didn’t say that, just got up and switched off the television set. “I’m going down to my flat. I have some reading to do.”

  He had bought her a flat in this building and she had moved into it, against her better judgement. It was nowhere near as large as his duplex, but it was bigger than the flat in the mansion block in South Kensington, and it looked out on to Green Park, a view she found both attractive and restful. She knew that he had never bought a flat for any of his previous mistresses, though he had paid the rent for some; he had certainly never brought any of them to live in the same building as himself. It was tantamount to asking her to live with him, a proposal of some sort of marriage, and she had realized that, by her acceptance, it had been a commitment for both of them. Much more, she suspected, than either of them had bargained for when she had first gone to bed with him that weekend at St. Aidan’s House.

  “What sort of reading?” On the nights when they did not sleep together he liked her to stay up here with him until he was ready to say goodnight.

  “I’m going to Hamburg tomorrow. Scope is doing a piece on the NATO exercises.”

  “Dammit, you’re off again! I wanted us to go down to Antibes. I’ve rented a yacht.” He had never bought a yacht because, with their high running costs, he had never been convinced they were a sound capital investment. He still counted the pounds, if not the pennies.

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m telling you now. It was meant as a surprise.”

  “Jack, you should know me by now—I’m not the sort of girl who’s thrilled by surprises.”

  “You’re too bloody phlegmatic.”

  She didn’t think she was, but she let him have that one. “Anyhow, I’m a working girl. I can’t just buzz off whenever I feel like it. Or whenever you feel like it,” she added with some asperity. “I wish you’d get that into your baronial head.”

  “Don’t start calling me my Lord or we’ll have a ding-dong argument.” There hadn’t been any real arguments, just mild rows that left a sour note for no more than an hour or overnight, the sort of aperient that married couples occasionally use to clear the air. “You’re always trying to prove your bloody independence.”

  “You mean I’m not independent?”

  “Of course you bloody well are!” He had to force the words out but he knew he could not argue with her as he had with the others. He had never been afraid of losing any of them. “But sometimes you act as if you have to hit me over the head with it.”

  If she had, she had not done it intentionally; but she realized at once that it did no harm to let him think so. She recognized a worried lover, the best kind for an independent-minded woman to have.

  “Jack—” They never used any terms of endearment, except in the frenzy of sex; it was almost as if they felt that was some sort of public troth. “You know what my work means to me. I’m not giving it up, no matter what.”

  No matter what? But he was afraid to ask. “All right, I’ll phone Antibes and call it off. But I wish you’d let me know what you’re doing. It seems to me that I have to fit into your spare moments.”

  He sounded pathetic, like a neglected wife. Her sense of humour came to the rescue. She laughed, went to him and kissed him. “I’ll be back on Friday afternoon. Take me to Paris for a dirty weekend.”

  “How can I? You have to be here in London for your bloody telecast.” He held her to him, loving her but still unable to tell her. “You bugger up my feelings, Cleo. There’s nothing worse than an ambitious woman.”

  She stayed in his arms, though he didn’t deserve even that much. “What about an ambitious man? Do you think we women can handle them better than the other way round?”

  No: Emma hadn’t been able to handle him. “Maybe you women are more adaptable. I suppose there are faults on both sides—”

  “But women’s are bigger faults? I mean, if they’re ambitious.”

  He kissed her on the cheek; he knew he couldn’t win this argument. Not tonight, anyway. “Have breakfast with me. Better still, stay up here tonight.”

  “I have my period.” She hadn’t; but it was better than saying she had a headache. “I’ll be up here at seven-thirty for breakfast. I have to be at the airport at nine-thirty.”

  She went downstairs to her flat. She felt comfortable in it, if not completely at home. Jack had presented it to her complete and ready, as another surprise; she had had to furnish nothing, indeed had been left no room for any of her larger possessions. The same decorator who had designed the duplex had been engaged for this flat; it had the same anonymous taste, less masculine than Jack’s but not feminine. The decorator, never having met Cleo, had played safe. The flat was sexless; a home, she thought, for a kewpie doll.

  She was reading newspaper clippings that the Scope researchers had collected for her, underlining certain sections with a red pencil when the phone rang. It was Sylvester, at eight-thirty in the morning in Canberra, ready for another day’s fray in Parliament. He had always been more lively, more enthusiastic for the day, in the national capital than at home in Sydney. Brigid, who knew her man better than he realized, had once said that he had his own blood bank down at Canberra, in Parliament House.

  “Sweetheart! I’ve been neglecting you!” She felt like a long-lost voter. “You know how I hate to write letters—”

  Neither of them was a regular letter-writer. “It’s good to hear you, Dad. Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Everything’s great, except we still have those same nongs in government. But we’ll toss them out next time . . . Madge is having another baby. So’s Cheryl. I’ll soon have a team of bloody grandkids—it’s not going to be any good for my image—”

  “What image is that, Dad? Has the Labour Women’s League been courting you with
scones again?”

  He had his women friends, but he had never discussed them with any of his children. “Sweetheart, I’m coming to London! The end of this week—I was going to drop in on you and surprise you. Then I thought I’d better not.” Everyone wanted to surprise her; as if she were a child. “It’s the usual politicians’ junket—it’s my turn this time. Don’t quote me, but what I’m supposed to do I could do with a couple of airmail letters. But what the taxpayer doesn’t know, he won’t vote against . . .”

  “Dad, what’s happened to you? Where’s all that idealism gone?”

  “I wouldn’t have accepted the trip, sweetheart, if it hadn’t meant I could see you for free.” But he laughed when he said it; the belly-laugh boomed down the wire, as if Australia itself had exploded with mirth. “I’ll be in London for a week. I’ve missed you, sweetheart.”

  “I’ve missed you, Dad.” She had, too. She looked forward to their reunion, on equal terms at last. Though she could never tell him so. “Let me know when you’re arriving. I’ll be at Heathrow.”

  Only when she hung up the phone did it occur to her that something she had put out of her mind was now unavoidable. She would have to introduce Jack Cruze to her father. She felt a little like she had done the first time she had gone to Confession at the age of seven. Even then the priest had been surprised at what she had to tell.

  II

  Tom Border had watched Cleo’s rise from far and near; yet never near enough for her to notice him. He had avoided her, not as he would have avoided the plague but with a sense of sweet torture. He had read somewhere (he couldn’t remember where: all the philosophers, like astrologers, were so contradictory) that love was the passion of an idle mind. At times he allowed his mind to idle, just to agonize with his love for Cleo. He found other women to distract him—if not his mind, then his crotch. There was a girl in London, one in Paris, one in Rome, one in Bonn: after all, he was a foreign correspondent, though he engaged in no correspondence with any of them. That, though he did not know it, he had in common with Lord Cruze.

  He knew she was now Cruze’s mistress; Fleet Street gossip penetrated even the foreign news bureaus. Especially the foreign bureaus—foreigners loved the dirt of England. He felt a sharp stab of jealousy every time he thought of her and Cruze together; fortunately, no pictures of them together ever appeared, not even in Private Eye. He could not have stood actually seeing them together: the thought was bad enough.

  He was standing at the reception desk in the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Hamburg when the voice he knew better than his own (for we all have a defensive tin ear to our own voices) said, “If I buy you a drink, can we be friends?”

  She had not changed in looks, except to appear more sophisticated; he had watched her every week he had been in London, so he had not forgotten a single feature or expression. He gave her his slow smile, which was very much out of rhythm with his heart. He felt like a callow schoolboy, but tried not to sound like one.

  “It’s your turn to shout. I’ll have a beer.”

  “Ah, you haven’t changed.” She put her hand in his and led him across the lobby into the lounge. He did not allow himself to read too much into this gesture; he remembered how affectionate she had always been. But he had to force himself to let her hand go when they sat down. “Tom, you look great! You’re so—spruce-looking!”

  If he was spruce-looking it was unintentional. He looked down at the pin-striped navy blue suit he had bought in the middle-class mayhem of a Harrods sale; it did indeed fit him better than anything else he owned. His blue button-down shirt and black knitted tie, having just been put on, had not yet had time to become untidy.

  “I’ll accept that. But you look better than spruce, Cleo old girl.”

  “How’s that? Give me a word.”

  He hesitated, then decided on the truth: “Successful?”

  She ordered a beer for him and white wine for herself; then looked back at him after the waiter had gone away. “I’m successful, yes. I just wish it didn’t show so blatantly. I haven’t forgotten that you said I was blatantly ambitious.”

  She was still ambitious: he could see that. But all he said was, “Let’s just be nice and friendly to each other. What are you doing here?”

  “Covering the NATO exercises.”

  “Me, too. Did you know our friend General Brisson is coming up here for them? I met him last year down at Heidelberg. He’s put Vietnam behind him.”

  “I suppose that’s natural. We are all, all of us, always putting things behind us.”

  “Have you put it behind you? Vietnam, I mean. An Bai.”

  She sipped her wine, wrinkling her nose: it was too sweet for her taste. She signalled the waiter and told him to bring her something drier. Tom noticed how she handled the small situation: quietly, adroitly, not making the waiter feel that he had made the mistake. In Saigon she had always been too solicitous of the waiters, as if she had been a visiting trade union official bent on showing she was no better than the workers; there had been others, some of the army personnel, white Australians through and through, who had known no other way but to shout at and abuse them. Tom had come to know that some men, and women, would never learn how to deal with a waiter: the trouble would always be with themselves. He had learned exactly what the relationship should be, when to be personal, when to be firm, and good waiters appreciated the fine line that was drawn. He was not always successful himself, but Cleo, he saw, knew now how to draw that line.

  “Yes,” she said, “there’s no point in remembering what happened at An Bai. It’s been buried, probably deeper than the people who were massacred. No one in Britain would be remotely interested if I wrote a word about it. No, if I meet General Brisson I’ll be as charming as I can possibly be. I’d like him on Scope if I could get him. He’s so damned handsome and dashing in his uniform, we could re-run the programme on Women’s Hour and the ladies would gush.”

  He drank his beer, liking it: German beer had guts to it. “You haven’t become a women’s libber, thank God. You wouldn’t have said that about Women’s Hour . . . Brisson is staying with the British GOC at a villa down near Luneburg. You want to drive out with me this afternoon and see if we can see him?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure what Roy Holden, my producer, had in mind for me. He and the crew are at another hotel.”

  He smiled. “What are you doing here? Don’t you slum with your producer and his crew?”

  “Normally, yes. But I want a column out of this trip, too. I want to do a piece on how the burghers of Hamburg live, the rich ones. I don’t know whether you’re aware of it, but this was the only city in Germany that gave Hitler the cold shoulder. He came here only once, in 1933, and he never came back. The Allies fire-bombed the city—I’ve seen photos of what it was like. I just want to do a piece on the sort of people who rebuilt it, if they are the real descendants of the Hamburgers who were part of the Hanseatic League. Anyhow,” she said, looking around her, feeling at ease and showing it, “I always treat myself to the best, now that I can afford it. Or when the Examiner pays. In any case, what about you? What are you doing here?”

  “The same. I’m treating myself—or anyway, partly. The Courier is paying about two-thirds of the cheque—they’re still tight with their expenses. But if you come down to Luneburg with me, I’ll even rent a Mercedes, instead of my usual Volkswagen.”

  “I’ll come.” She made up her mind abruptly. She not only put Vietnam out of her mind, but Jack Cruze, too. Which was harder: but she managed it. She had put Tom out of her mind, but now he was back and she was not going to give herself a headache trying to forget him. Not today, anyway.

  III

  In an apartment in Polsdorf, one of the better districts in Hamburg, the guerrillas were going over their plans. Conspiracy, more often than not, is a pursuit of the middle classes; as if the poor had neither the time nor the stamina for it. These four conspirators, two young men and two girls, were all university educated and came
of families which put social standing as necessary for entry into a Hamburger’s heaven. The parents planned dinner parties while their sons and daughters made ready for destruction.

  “Brisson plays golf every chance he gets.” Kurt was the leader of the group. He had long dark hair and thin patrician features; he would not have been out of place in a painting of Florentine conspirators. “He is playing a round this afternoon with the British general.”

  “Kurt—” She was young, nineteen, careless of her looks, dressed like the boys in shirt and jeans; there was an intensity about her that might have worried older, more experienced anarchists. Her Marxist lecturer at the university had tried to tell her that revolutions were better led by middle-aged revolutionaries, but she didn’t believe a word of it; experience only weakened the spirit of anarchy. She believed there had not been enough women revolutionaries: she would join Emma Goldman and La Passionara in legend. “The golf course is too open. We’ll never get away . . .” But she said it without fear, she invited death as another lover. “He’ll have bodyguards.”

  “Of course he will. So will the English general, Thorpe. It would be good if we could kidnap them both, but that may not be possible. All right, we forget the golf course. We attack just after they leave General Thorpe’s villa. Two streets away, out of sight of the guard at the villa. Here.”

  They all looked at the map, then the second young man straightened up. He was short and stocky and had blond hair cut short, almost en brosse; thirty-five years before, he would have been featured on posters for Hitler’s Youth Movement. His father was a colonel in the Wehrmacht and he had inherited his father’s military mind.