Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  “Of course not!” She had never snapped at him before; now she gave him a verbal whack. “What gave you that idea?”

  “You’ve got the mopes. You’ve hardly looked at me in the office.”

  She took his hand, kissed it: the old affectionate gestures that betrayed her. It wasn’t his fault she didn’t love him. “I’m just a bit homesick, that’s all. I’ll be all right in a day or two.”

  “No, something else is worrying you.” Alain had come to know her better than she knew.

  Something else besides her lost love was worrying her: “Yes, it’s my visa. It’s up in a couple of weeks. I’ve asked Jake Lintas if the paper is going to renew my contract, but he just keeps hedging. The old bastard would like to see me deported.”

  “They can’t do that! Look, don’t worry—I’ll get Mother to fix Jake. Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? It just never crossed my mind—I don’t know, I just sort of take it for granted that you belong here—”

  “The US government doesn’t.” Then she realized he had mentioned Claudine. “No, don’t go to your mother.”

  “Why not? She can have it all fixed without any trouble—”

  I don’t want to owe her any favours. “No, leave it for a day or two. I’ll bail up Jake.”

  But Jake Lintas chose to go on vacation before she could confront him. She went to Carl Fishburg, to the personnel manager; but neither of them felt he could do anything, sympathetic though they tried to sound. She was not the only woman on the staff, but she began to feel that she might as well be. It was as if, with the increasing strength of the women’s liberation movement, the male citadel of the Courier had raised the drawbridge. They were not going to leave themselves open to attack by a Trojan mare.

  “I wouldn’t worry, honey,” said Annie Rivkin from the typing pool. “In another year or two the paper’s going to be dead and buried. They’ll bury all these guys with them and good riddance . . . I already got my eye on a job over at CBS. You oughta get into TV, honey, that’s where the money is.”

  Alain went to his mother. “Cleo needs that visa. The paper can’t let her go—there isn’t a better writer working for us—”

  “You know I never interfere with the running of the paper. Mr. Lintas will attend to it.”

  “Jake Lintas is the last guy who’ll attend to it!”

  “I am not going to interfere.”

  Alain knew when his mother was in an obdurate mood; one might as well talk to the faces on Mount Rushmore. “I’m bringing her out to Souillac on Sunday—”

  “If you wish. I take it you’d prefer I didn’t ask Polly Jensen.”

  “Doesn’t make any difference. I think Polly has got the message. I don’t know why you still keep trying. You’re like one of those 18th century European Queen Mothers, always match-making!”

  He went back downstairs to his own apartment, slamming the front door of the penthouse as he went out. She sat very still for a while, debating to what lengths she would go to discourage her son from marrying the Spearfield girl. Then she picked up the phone and called the Pierre.

  “Jack? Ah, I wondered if you were back from Charleston. I feared you might have decided to go straight back to London. Can you come to luncheon Sunday at my place in the country?”

  “Well . . . To tell you the truth, Claudine, I’m hoping to see Cleo tomorrow, Saturday. I haven’t spoken to her yet, I want to talk to her away from the Courier—”

  “I think she is out of town on an assignment, Jack. I heard my son mention it.” She wondered if Queen Mothers had lied and intrigued like this. It seemed so much more suburban than being an Empress. “I’ll send a car to pick you up on Sunday.”

  There was silence for a moment, then he chuckled. “How come a woman has never been elected President of this country?”

  “We women know that men make better figureheads.”

  II

  “I am now at the Pentagon,” said Roger Brisson. He and Louise had driven up from Washington on Friday evening and yesterday they had had Souillac to themselves but for the servants. Strolling round the grounds he had, for the first time, begun to see himself as the lord of the manor. Or as Claudine would have put it, the seigneur. “It is just the civil service in uniform, a division of bureaucrats, but it is a change after a lifetime of army posts.”

  “We have an apartment in Watergate,” said Louise, “but I dare not have address cards printed. We have our mail delivered to a box number. I feel like one of those mail order confidence men.”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” said Claudine. “The scandal and Richard Nixon are well behind us. Watergate is a perfectly respectable address again, though I shouldn’t want to live there myself. It looks like an annexe to the Pentagon.”

  “Then it’s appropriate for us,” said Roger, tolerant of his sister this weekend. She had invited some very pretty women to Sunday lunch, or luncheon, including the very attractive Miss Spearfield. “Cleo, why don’t you get them to transfer you to the Courier’s Washington bureau?”

  Cleo saw Louise, ten feet away and in another group, raise her head like a US cavalryman riding point. “There’s too much to write about in New York.”

  “All that crime? Don’t you tire of it? There’s probably as much skulduggery in Washington, but it’s much more civilized.”

  “I thought President Ford had raised the moral tone down there,” said Stephen Jensen. With his daughter not present to curb him, he was enjoying himself immensely with the women, old and young.

  “He seems to be falling over himself to be honest,” said Claudine, “but hardly upright.”

  Everyone laughed at the President who had had a couple of unfortunate stumbles, both of them photographed and widely distributed. What snobs they are, thought Cleo, they are just like the English Establishment. At dinner parties in St. James’s Place and at St. Aidan’s House she had heard the same sort of laughter at the expense of certain lower middle class politicians who had risen to power in the Tory Party; they tolerated gaucheries and even indiscretions in the Labour Party, but suspected Tory ministers who showed too much of the common touch. These Americans are just the same, Cleo thought, still voting for the ghosts of George Washington and John Adams.

  “I’ve been reading about your Prime Minister, Mr. Whitlam,” said Roger. “He sounds rather patrician.”

  “Thank you,” said Cleo, resenting the patronizing tone in his voice. “Maybe I should suggest he move to Washington. He’d raise the level of debate there.”

  “When Australia becomes the fifty-first State, we’ll nominate him,” said Alain, then saw the look on Cleo’s face. “Sorry, I was only joking. You’re still a true-blue Aussie, aren’t you?”

  “A dinky-di Aussi is the phrase. Yes, I am, especially when I hear suggestions like that. You should hear my father on the subject.”

  “He is anti-American?” said Roger.

  “Yes. But he’s fair-minded. He’s anti-British, too.”

  “Then I’ve chosen the wrong moment to arrive,” said Jack Cruze right behind her. “Hello, Cleo.”

  Later Cleo would believe that she was more shocked at that moment than she had been four years ago when Jack had tried to shoot her. There had been warnings of violence then, if only recognized too late; his appearance today was totally unexpected, there had been no hints at all. She looked first at Alain, because he was closest, but he looked as shocked as she felt. Then she glanced at Claudine and recognized the perpetrator of this cruel joke.

  “Lord Cruze—” She put out her hand and they shook hands like a trade union official and an employer sealing a recent agreement; it would hold good until the next disagreement. “You haven’t changed. Still surprising people.”

  He made an awkward gesture; he knew he had been set up by Claudine. He would bide his time and get even. “You look well.”

  “So do you. You look exactly as you did—when was it? Four years ago?”

  Put the knife in, Cleo. He knew he did not look
exactly as he had four years ago. He saw the evidence in the mirror every morning; on bad days he had taken to shaving without looking in the mirror at all. He was fifty-seven now or, as he thought of it on the really bad days, within three years of sixty. He no longer made love three times a night, the scoring rate had slowed. Yet he knew he wasn’t old. He just sometimes felt that way.

  “Hello, Mr. Roux. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Alain put out a tentative hand, as if he were expecting a gun to be put into it. “Lord Cruze, this is a pleasant surprise. Mother must have forgotten to mention you were coming—”

  “My mind must be wandering,” said Claudine, whose mind had never been on a tighter rein. “I’m just so glad I could get you two old Examiner hands together.”

  I’ll bet, thought Cleo. Two old Examiner hands: she must have lain awake half the night dreaming up that one. “I’m sure Lord Cruze doesn’t want to spend his Sundays talking newspapers, not even his own.”

  “There you go—” said Jack Cruze, then shut up. He didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot, though she was treading on his toes just the way she used to.

  “We’ll leave you to talk over old times,” said Claudine. “And maybe even new ones. Come on, Alain, help me break up some of these gossiping groups.”

  Alain looked at Cleo, asking silently if she needed help. But she was not going to be shot at again, not in New Jersey and with so many witnesses. “I’ll see you at lunch, Alain. I’ll take Lord Cruze for a walk and show him Souillac.”

  Alain left them reluctantly, limping away, and Jack looked after him. “He thinks I’m still carrying that gun.”

  “Did you know I was going to be here?”

  “No.”

  “That bloody Claudine!”

  “Yes.” But now he was grateful for the way Claudine had pitched him into this meeting. If he had called Cleo and she had hung up on him, he was not sure what he would have done next. He felt as uncertain of himself as he had felt seven years ago at their first meeting at the Windsor horse show. “I was going to call you anyway.”

  “Did she know that?”

  “I suppose so.” They were walking down a gravelled path beside a long line of trimmed hedges. This was not a Capability Brown garden; it had the formality of a Le Notre design. The French were always more formal, even in their intriguing. “I’ve bought into the Courier.”

  She walked in silence but for the crunch of gravel; then she looked sideways at him. “So I’m working for you again?”

  “Not quite. I’m only a minority stockholder compared to the Brisson holdings. But I’m entitled to two seats on the board.”

  “So you’ll be coming to New York regularly?”

  “Not necessarily. I can’t sit on the board—officially I have nothing to do with the company that bought the shares. No, Jerry Kibler will be one of the directors.”

  “Who’ll be the other?”

  They stopped beside a row of cumquats in white tubs. He picked one of the small yellow fruits and flicked it away like a large marble. Bugger it, he thought, why can she make me feel like some bloody sixteen-year-old? “I’d like it to be you.”

  She shook her head without thinking. “No, Jack. I don’t want to start anything between us, not again—”

  He hid his disappointment, told himself to be patient. “No strings. I want someone who knows newspapers on the board. It’s just commonsense to ask you.”

  “Jack, the paper is dying on its feet, you must know that.”

  “I think it can be saved.” He wasn’t sure that it could be; but he hadn’t bought into the paper to save it. He had spent the money in the hope of saving himself from loneliness. “I want to change the editorial side, too.”

  “How?”

  “I think there should be a managing editor. That chap who’s editor, Lintas, has too much say. It’s his paper, or so he seems to think.”

  “That’s true.” All at once she knew what he was leading up to, but she kept hold of the sudden excitement that gripped her.

  “The job’s yours if you want it.”

  “Have you talked to Claudine about it?”

  “No. But I know more about running a newspaper than she does. If I had Jerry Kibler bring it up at an open shareholders’ meeting, I mean about reorganizing the editorial side, I think we’d have the other minority shareholders on our side. Especially if it meant the chance of some dividends. The paper hasn’t paid any for the past two years.”

  “Claudine would never give me that sort of opportunity. She’d like nothing better than for me to go back home to Australia. She thinks I’m trying to marry into the family.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  He picked another cumquat, tossed it high into the air and caught it with his hand twisted round backwards: a sixteen-year-old’s trick. “I think you’re wrong about her. She likes to have people around her she can either put down or fight with, preferably the latter. In a nice civilized way, of course. You’re a bit like her, Cleo, or you will be some day. You’ll die of boredom the day you can’t take the mickey out of someone.”

  Am I really like that? But she didn’t believe him; he had been wrong about her before. “I’m surprised you came back if I’m like that . . . No, Jack. It would be too much of a hassle.” She meant fighting with him as much as fighting with Claudine. The thrill of his offer had already started to fade; she could see the payments he would demand. “No, get someone else.”

  “Your contract with the Courier is almost up. What are you going to do for a work visa?”

  She squinted at him, shook her head. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. How do you know about that?”

  “I have my sources. Cleo—take the jobs, on the board and as managing editor. You’ll have a visa to stay as long as you like in America—that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Where will you be—in London?”

  “I’ll come over regularly—”

  “How regularly?”

  He laid his last card on the table, a blank one. “As often as you want me to.”

  At least he hasn’t pleaded with me: she would have found that humiliating, for both of them. She turned away, walked slowly back along the path. Her legs felt unsteady, she could feel the gravel, like a dump of old discarded teeth, biting into her feet through the thin soles of her shoes. She had faced hard decisions before: to go to London, to become his mistress, to leave him . . . sections of her road had been very smooth and comfortable, but she had always had to make that first step as she had begun each new lap. She was beginning to think that life was made up of laps, that it was a circular road that led to no horizon.

  “How is Emma?”

  He was not prepared for that question. “Emma? She’s all right—I think. She still doesn’t talk to me. If she wasn’t all right, I suppose I’d hear.”

  “So you’re still not divorced?” She didn’t wait for his answer but walked on ahead of him. “Jack, I don’t think you and I could start over again. We couldn’t pick up where things were before . . . You know what I mean. Too much water has flowed under the bridge.”

  “You used to go out of your way not to use clichés.”

  “I’m older now. You come to realize that sometimes they say it better than all the original phrases can.”

  He sighed, another cliché. “All right, as I said, no strings. But take the job. I don’t like to see someone with your talent wasted.”

  “Let me sleep on it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  They walked back up to the house, watched from the terrace by Alain. He was experiencing his own spasm of cliché: he was burning with jealousy. He looked along the terrace and saw his mother watching the couple coming up the path and suddenly he hated her. She was part of the plot if not the originator of it. She had told him that Cruze was now a part-owner of the Courier.

  He limped quickly along the terrace, almost grabbed Cleo’s hand as she came up the steps. “We’re going in for lunc
h.”

  He dragged her across the terrace. “Alain, you’re hurting my hand!”

  He let her go, slowed down. “For Christ’s sake, what have you been talking about? Jesus, he appears out of nowhere, takes you over as if nothing had happened—”

  “Shut up, Alain.”

  “Was he trying to make up for what he tried to do that night in London? Did he say he was sorry for trying to kill you?”

  “He told me that four years ago, that same night.”

  She pulled him into a side room as Claudine and Jack came in off the terrace; it was the billiards room. She saw Claudine glance into the room at them, pause just a moment, then turn back to Jack and walk on. She began to get a glimpse of what would face her if she accepted Jack’s offer on the Courier. The Roux forces were lining up against her, though they would not be on the same side. Dad must feel like this back home in the Party, she thought; and wished he were here to give her advice. Political advice; not parental, at which he would probably be hugely incompetent.

  “Alain, don’t get possessive—”

  “Who said I was?” He was genuinely shocked; he had looked only at her and not at himself. Even conquering armies see themselves as liberators of some sort.

  “Jack was talking to me about business.”

  “Has he offered you a job back in London? Or is he going to give you the Courier?”

  She looked around the billiards room. “I should take one of those cues down off the rack and belt you over the head with it. Let’s go into lunch.”

  Luncheon, as Claudine insisted on calling it, was a sit-down affair, though there were twenty guests. She did not believe in balancing a plate on her lap; that was for jugglers and peasants in refugee camps. Because she and Alain were the last to sit down, Cleo found herself sitting next to Roger and opposite Jack. Feeling Alain still simmering on her right, she turned to Roger, almost glad of him.

  “I wish you’d come down to Washington some time,” he said. “I could show you around. We’re not overworked at the Pentagon.”