The Beaufort Sisters

by Jon Cleary

  Lucas just nodded and went out of the room, walking stiff-legged as if willing his legs not to collapse beneath him. Margaret called Nina and Sally, only to find that neither phone answered; she felt the unreasonable annoyance the distraught feel, as if everyone should be on call at all times for bad news. She hung up and went back into her father’s study where Magnus sat in one of the big leather chairs weeping quietly.

  ‘Magnus – ’ She went down on her knees in front of him. ‘What’s the matter?’

  He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief, blew his nose, leant his head back against the chair and drew a deep sigh. He stared at the opposite wall, composing himself, then he looked down at her still kneeling in front of him.

  ‘That’s the secret. I’ve been in love with your mother.’

  She at once hated herself for the stupid remark:

  ‘But she’s so much older than you!’

  ‘Nine years, that’s all. There’s much more difference between you and me and we might have married in other circumstances.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. How long has it been?’

  ‘Years. I was sixteen when I first fell in love with her. She was already married and she’d already had you and Nina. But it made no difference.’

  ‘Does she know?’

  ‘No. I’ve never given so much as a hint. And you must never mention it to anyone, promise? You owe me that.’

  ‘Whether I owed it to you or not, Magnus, I’d never tell anyone.’ She got to her feet, leaned down and kissed his cheek. ‘How did you stand it all these years? Why didn’t you move away?’

  ‘I thought of that while I was in Germany. But in the end I knew I had to be near her. So I settled for being her friend and legal adviser.’

  Could I have settled for something like that if Tim had not gone away? But she knew that she could not have. ‘Do you want to come up with me to see her?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll go home. I’ll see her tomorrow.’

  He seemed to move as stiffly and slowly as her father when he got up to leave. Margaret went with him to the door, then went up to Prue’s room. Prue, her radio playing softly, was preparing work for tomorrow’s classes at Barstow.

  ‘It’s a real drag, all this study. I’ve been reading about a school in England where they let the kids do what they like – ’ Then, sharp-eyed as ever, she stopped. ‘What’s the matter, Meg?’

  ‘It’s Mother.’ She sat down on the bed, determined to remain dry-eyed. She realized even then that she was going to have to take her mother’s place, not only with Prue but with Nina and Sally. She turned down the radio: Lena Horne faded away into silence. ‘She has leukemia. The doctors say she has only a couple of months to live at the most.’

  Prue blinked and for several moments remained expressionless, as if she were thinking about what she had been told. Then she slowly bent forward, laid her head in Margaret’s lap and began to cry silently but with her shoulders shuddering as if she were in some dreadful fever. Later Margaret would recall that it was not a child’s weeping but a terrible adult grief. She held Prue to her, saying nothing, her mind utterly empty of words.

  At last she lifted Prue, wiped her eyes and cheeks with the edge of a bed-sheet. ‘Go and wash your face. Then we’ll go in and see Mother.’

  They went along the hall and into their parents’ huge bedroom. Edith sat propped up in the big four-poster bed and Lucas sat in a chair beside it. Margaret and Prue kissed their mother without saying anything. Edith looked at each of them, bit her lip, then smiled weakly.

  ‘Well, it’s disappointing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Edith – ’ Lucas’s protest was weak, hoarse.

  ‘No, sweetheart, I’m not going to use stronger words. I was looking forward to so many things and now I’m not going to be able to do them. So I’m disappointed. My biggest disappointment will be if I don’t see Nina and Sally.’

  ‘They’ll be here,’ said Margaret. ‘I tried to call them, but I’ll also send off cables.’

  ‘If they reach them,’ said Lucas. ‘You can never be sure where they are. Always gallivanting – ’

  ‘Sweetheart – don’t. They’ll be here.’

  Nina and Sally, reached at last by phone, arrived within forty-eight hours. They were shocked by the change in their mother since they had seen her in January; to Margaret she seemed to be dying by the hour. Lucas never left the house, was just a silent grey man already hollowed out by grief. Magnus came by the house every day, but never stayed longer than five minutes. The four girls took it in turns to be always with their mother, aided by Miss Stafford, who moved into the house to stay till the vigil was over.

  Late one afternoon, a week after Nina and Sally had come home, Margaret was sitting with Edith. Fall dusk had darkened the room, but so far Margaret had put on no lights. A wind blew from the north-east out of Kansas and Nebraska, bringing the bitter promises of winter; leaves flattened themselves against the windows like the dismembered wings of dead birds. It was weather for secrets, for confidences.

  ‘Meg – ’

  ‘I’ll put on a light.’

  ‘No.’ Edith’s voice was little more than a whisper, a sighing of soft words in the darkness. ‘Meg, take care of them all – ’

  ‘Of course. Don’t tire yourself – ’

  A fragile claw found her hand, rested on it rather than held it. ‘Don’t leave your father alone again …’

  ‘No, Mother. But please rest – ’

  ‘Is Magnus coming by this evening?’ The shrunken skeletal face turned on the pillow. ‘Give him my love, Meg …’

  The voice died away suddenly, was no longer even a whisper. Margaret reached behind her, fumbled for a switch, turned on a lamp. When she looked back Edith was at the last threshold, at the moment when secrets no longer have any meaning. Margaret looked into her mother’s eyes, saw that Magnus’s love had never been as secret as he had thought. Then the eyes were just marbles, reflecting the light without recognition. The lids slipped down over them, sealing Edith Beaufort’s life.

  Chapter Seven

  Margaret

  1

  Edith’s burial brought together all the people she would have loved to see at the wedding of any of her daughters. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends came from all over the United States; ex-President and Mrs Truman attended, the Governors of Missouri and Kansas and a dozen Senators and Congressmen.

  When her will was read Miss Stafford, faithful secretary of twenty-five years, was given a pension that made her more than comfortable for the rest of her life. George Biff was remembered with a lump sum that brought a lump to his throat; and the cook and the maids and the gardeners and the security guards were also remembered. Edith had forgotten no one and she was shrewd though not cynical: she knew that the poor remember better if their memories are not diverted by money worries. To each of her daughters, whose memories would never be diverted from her, she left five million dollars; twenty million dollars went to a trust fund for her grandchildren, born and still-to-be-born. The residue of her personal estate, some ten million dollars, went to various charities and institutions, all of them based in Kansas City. Her perspective had narrowed, she knew where her money belonged.

  Nina and Sally stayed for a month after their mother’s death, then they went back to Europe. Nina took Lucas with her and he went without protest, as if now one place was no different from another. He did not like the expatriates, American and British, living in Torremolinos and Nina took him back to London and booked passage for herself and him on a Union Castle liner going to Capetown. The sea cruise seemed to do him some good and at Capetown he suggested they should book on a P & O liner and go on to Australia, then back across the Pacific from Sydney by a Matson ship. Nina, who had grown bored of shipboard life on the Union Castle liner before they were half-way to Capetown, agreed that it was a good idea and made the onward bookings. By the time they got to Sydney Lucas, too, was bored, but he was touched by and appreciative
of Nina’s care for him and he did not like to suggest they find a quicker way than by sea of getting back to America. So they crossed the Pacific in twin boredom that they both managed to hide. On arrival back in Kansas City Nina said she would stay on for a while.

  ‘I think you need some help with Daddy.’

  Sally had gone back to France, this time to Paris, where she continued to live with Michele in an on-and-off relationship at which she only hinted in her letters to Margaret. She gave up car racing and bought herself a light plane, getting her pilot’s licence with a minimum of effort; she was as natural-born a flier as she had been a driver. The plane revived Michele’s interest and the two of them flew about Europe, causing comment and admiration wherever they landed. I’m happy, Meg, she wrote in May 1956, so don’t worry about me. We flew down to Rome to spend a weekend with Philip. His father wants him to go back to Chicago, but Philip is doing everything he can to stay over here. Michele sends her love … Which Margaret knew had to be a lie.

  Eisenhower had been re-elected, a result only accepted by Lucas because the alternative, the election of Adlai Stevenson, would have been in his eyes far, far worse. He resigned from the Missouri Republican committee, giving no reasons and being asked for none; but everyone knew he did not like Ike. For months he had been unable to maintain any continuous enthusiasm for anything; he would go to his office for a week, then stay at home for two weeks. He would potter around in the garden with the gardeners, take his two granddaughters for walks round the park, play listless tennis with his daughters or even George Biff. Once on the spur of the moment he flew with Nina to Paris to see Sally, but they were back two weeks later. He complained that the French were no better than they had ever been and he could not see why Sally was wasting her time there. He made no mention of Michele, but he said he’d met a nice young feller, Philip Someone-or-Other, who had taken him and Nina and Sally to dinner at La Tour d’Argent, where, if nothing else, the food was good.

  ‘Mother would have liked it.’ Only occasionally did he mention Edith; though he was not entirely successful, he tried not to wear his grief as a badge. But each night he went to bed with her ghost and, still, sometimes cried himself to sleep. ‘She always said the French could cook.’

  ‘You should write General de Gaulle,’ said Margaret.

  ‘A fine leader. Just what the French need. They should ask him to take over France again.’

  ‘Another general,’ said Magnus. ‘There must be some similarity between running a country and an army, after all.’

  ‘It’s escaped our feller,’ said Lucas sourly.

  Then he started going to his office again regularly, began to pick up and look and sound more like the old Lucas. As if to prove to his executives that he had not lost his old touch, he drove down one day with George Biff to Springfield and came back the next day with the news that he had bought the city’s largest bank to add to the Beaufort empire. It was not a large purchase in terms of the empire’s wealth and holdings. It was just a rich man’s way of slapping his desk to let everyone know that he was back in business and running the show again.

  The purchase of the bank brought Bruce Alburn to Kansas City. Margaret’s first impression of him was that he was a dull man: in looks, demeanour and intellect. With the exception of a week’s vacation to Mexico City and a week at a banker’s conference in Montreal, he had never been out of the United States. His only other language besides English was Osage, a linguistic achievement that failed to impress Margaret.

  ‘It was a hobby of mine,’ he said in his soft dry voice. ‘But now it’s an asset.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said politely, wondering what sort of skirmishes with the Indians still went on down in Springfield.

  ‘I also have a bank over in Oklahoma. When they discovered oil on the Osage reservation over there, the Indians were happy to talk to a banker who spoke to them in their own language.’

  ‘You’re not a banker who speaks with forked tongue, I take it.’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg, Mrs Minett. People have been doing that all my life. Somehow I’ve managed not to become lop-sided.’

  She looked at him again, though still not with a great deal of interest. She was playing hostess for her father, who had arranged this dinner party to introduce Bruce Alburn to the Beaufort executives and their wives. Alburn was unmarried and Margaret had asked Nina to be his dinner partner.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nina had said. ‘I’m Magnus’s girl for the evening. Try Prue.’

  ‘You don’t get sixteen-year-old dinner partners for bankers, not in this country.’

  ‘He comes originally from Arkansas, doesn’t he? Down there the age of consent is seven or eight. On second thoughts, Prue would probably be a bit advanced for him.’

  In the end Margaret nominated herself as Alburn’s dinner partner and invited a widow friend of Lucas’s to make up the even number. Now she was beginning to wish she had pushed the widow on to Mr Alburn.

  ‘Are you moving up here to Kansas City permanently?’ she asked, hoping she would not have to include him too often on their guest list.

  ‘Not till I see how things work out. I’ve managed a short-term lease of an apartment in The Chestnuts and I’ll use that as a pied-à-terre.’ He pronounced it as pyed-a-ter; he paused and looked at her. ‘My French isn’t very good, is it?’

  ‘I don’t think they go in very much for French at The Chestnuts.’

  ‘I’d heard you were a cold bitch, Mrs Minett.’ His voice was still soft and dry, his smile polite and attentive. ‘What have you got against me? Or are you just against everyone who isn’t a Beaufort?’

  She was surprised that someone should think she was cold. Rude, she admitted to; but not cold. ‘Is that really my reputation, Mr Alburn? That I’m cold?’

  ‘Snooty was the actual word I think I heard. But down south where us peasants hang out, it means the same thing.’

  ‘What do they think of my father down there among the peasants?’

  ‘He’s respected. That’s the most anyone from KC or St Louis can expect.’

  ‘Will they respect you now you’ve joined the major leaguers?’

  ‘Oh, they’re rooting for me. I’m their fifth column.’

  ‘Does my father know?’

  ‘I told him as soon as we’d signed the deal. He’s delighted. He said something about the satisfaction of a challenge. How do you get your satisfaction, Mrs Minett? Cutting people down to your estimate of their proper size?’

  ‘Mr Alburn,’ she said on the spur of the moment; she was bored, had been for months, and looked for her own challenge, ‘would you care to take me out to dinner tomorrow night?’

  She had surprised him, as she had hoped; but he recovered. ‘My pleasure, Mrs Minett. What will it be? Pistols or daggers?’

  She gave him her first genuine smile of the evening. ‘Pick me up at eight-thirty, Mr Alburn. I like to dine a little later than the locals. It’s a habit I picked up living in Rome.’

  ‘I’m a six-thirty man myself, but I’ll try and hold out.’

  Then George Biff came to the table, leaned close to Margaret. ‘Miz Sally on the phone. She calling from Paris.’

  Margaret excused herself, got up and went out to her father’s study. The trans-Atlantic phone cable had been put in last year and normally the connections now were good. But not tonight: Sally’s voice came and went as in the old days, as if a wind were blowing across the line.

  ‘Meg – I’m – ’ Her voice faded and there was nothing for a moment. ‘Michele has left me.’

  ‘Sally, this isn’t the first time – ’

  ‘No, it’s for good this time. She’s married – she’s been seeing him all this time and she didn’t tell me – ’ ‘Who? Philip?’

  ‘Philip?’ Again her voice faded; then came back in what sounded like a laugh. ‘No, of course not. Not Philip. A man named Onza, Gaston Onza. He’s an African politician or something. Meg, I don’t know what I’m going to do – ’


  ‘Come home. Get on a plane right now and come home.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t want to do that. Daddy might start asking me questions – I don’t think I could lie well enough to cover up. Meg – what am I going to do? We were breaking up, but I didn’t think it would happen like this …’

  ‘Would it help if Nina or I came over?’

  ‘Oh, would you? Could you come? I can talk to you better than I can to Nina – ’

  ‘I’ll come as soon as I can. I’ll phone again as soon as I know what plane I’m on. And Sally – please don’t do anything foolish.’

  ‘I shan’t, I promise. Philip is here for the week – he’ll keep an eye on me.’

  It was Philip who had introduced Sally to Michele: but this was not the moment for bringing that up. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  She went back to the dinner, sat down beside Bruce Alburn. ‘I’ll have to postpone our date. I have to go to Paris.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I’m comparing you with my sister, my only close relative. If she has to leave Springfield to go to Joplin to visit my cousins, that’s only an hour’s drive, you’d think she was setting out on the Santa Fé Trail. But just like that, you’re going to Paris. I’m certainly in another league, Mrs Minett.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think you’ll survive, Mr Alburn.’

  2

  It was another three days before, for various reasons mainly connected with the children, she could get away. Lucas wanted to go with her, but she told him she was going with the object of bringing Sally back with her – ‘She wants a girls’ talk with me, Daddy. She has a problem.’

  ‘With some feller? Not a Frenchman, I hope.’

  ‘I shan’t know till I get there.’

  Nina had not volunteered to go with her. ‘I’ll stay with Ruth and help her look after the children. The trouble’s with Michele, isn’t it? I never did like that bitch. I’m afraid if I came with you I’d upset Sally by saying too much. Try and bring her home, if only for a while. Anything to get her away from Michele.’