The Beaufort Sisters

by Jon Cleary

  A storm delayed the take-off of her plane from Kansas City and she arrived in New York too late to make her connection for Paris. She stayed the night in New York and caught a plane out of Idlewild next day. Crossing Ireland the plane developed engine trouble and the pilot changed course and headed for London instead of Paris. They landed there without mishap, but there were no seats on any planes for Paris leaving that evening. She finally got away next day at noon and landed in Paris exactly a day later than she had planned.

  Sally and Philip were waiting for her at the airport. She only recognized Sally because of Philip. Sally, the girl with the long untidy blonde hair and the utter disregard for clothes, looked like another person. Her hair was cut short, exposing the back of her neck; she was wearing a tailored suit that Margaret knew at once had come from one of the best houses; she was even wearing a string of small pearls. She looked so elegant, so French. And she certainly did not look heart-broken.

  ‘Congratulate us,’ Sally said, her arm linked with Philip’s. ‘We were married this morning.’

  Chapter Eight

  Sally

  1

  Sally would often wonder in later years what would have happened if Margaret’s plane had not been delayed. Did airlines know or care what they did to people’s lives when their aircraft did not run to schedule? All the tragedies were not caused by crashes.

  There had been time for Sally to change her mind about marrying Philip. Michele had been gone for a week with her new husband before Sally had called Margaret. In that time Philip had arrived unexpectedly from Rome. Michele had called him to ask him to wish her luck and would he please go up to Paris and console poor darling Sally who must be desolate. Sally had fallen into his arms because they were the only ones available; and too, she did love him, in a kind of way. He did not ask her to go to bed with him, but he did ask her to marry him. Impetuous as ever, as desolate as Michele had said she would be, loving Philip for just being there, she had said yes. He had gone out at once and got a licence; only to come back and say they would have to wait ten days before they could be married. He still did not ask her to go to bed with him and she had appreciated that; it showed how considerate he was and properly loving. In the intervening days she had had time to consider if she was doing the right thing; but she had not been able to bring herself to discuss it with Margaret over the phone. In the end, when the arranged date for the wedding arrived and Margaret had not, she went ahead and married Philip. And, as always when she had committed herself, was happy, as if the decision itself and not the consequences was the most difficult to bear.

  ‘But don’t you know who he is?’ Margaret said.

  ‘I know his real name is Philip Gentleman, not Mann. I’m going to have to get used to that, being called Mrs Gentleman. It’s kind of funny.’

  ‘It’s not funny at all, it’s the unfunniest part of all.’

  They were alone together in Sally’s apartment just off the Avenue Matignon. Philip had gone out on business, but promised he would be back to take them to dinner. Sally was closing up the apartment and she and Philip were going back to Rome at the end of the week. She had been aware of Margaret’s agitation ever since they had met at the airport, but she had put it down to travel exhaustion and the delays en route. But now she saw that something deeper was worrying her sister. ‘What are you trying to say, Meg?’

  ‘His father is Tony Gentleman. He’s a Mafia don, a gangster. Philip is the one who invests their money, all that they make out of their rackets. He launders it, as they call it. Making dirty money clean, putting it into legitimate businesses.’

  Sally sat very still. ‘I won’t say I don’t believe you. You haven’t come all the way over here to lie to me. But how do you know what you’re saying is true?’

  Margaret leaned back in the couch where she sat. The room was ultra-modern in its furnishings, a contrast to the building that housed it. White walls were enlivened by paintings splashed with vivid colours; black leather-and-chrome chairs and glass-and-chrome tables looked like artefacts sent back from the future; bright rugs, matching the colours in the paintings, were strewn on the thick white carpet. Sally had no interest in furnishings and she had allowed Michele to do the apartment to her own taste. She had never felt comfortable in it; it was an edgy room, one that rubbed against her nerve ends. Margaret looked around it now and looked just as nervous and edgy. Then Sally realized that the room had nothing to do with Meg’s nervousness.

  ‘I thought I’d never have to tell this to anyone …’

  Sally listened, feeling herself going blind while her hearing increased to an acuteness where every word was like a sharp pain. She did not know that Margaret was not telling her everything about Frank and herself; but what she was told was more than she really wanted to hear. She was a turmoil of feeling: anger, shame, pity. Anger at how fate had treated her; shame at some of the things she had thought about Meg in the past; pity for all Meg had had to go through. At last her senses reversed themselves: she no longer heard what Meg was saying, her eyes cleared and took in the pain in her sister’s face. Abruptly she stood up, no longer able to sit still.

  ‘God, we get ourselves into messes, don’t we? What are we going to do?’

  Margaret looked at her; she smiled wryly, but she was not really amused. ‘I’m not married to him. I’ll help you, but I really can’t interfere. I’ve interfered enough – Oh God, why weren’t those damned planes on time!’ She looked for something in her handbag, couldn’t find it, snapped the bag shut angrily. ‘Would you have still married him? I mean if I’d got here in time. On time.’

  Sally stood at the window. Down in the street a man and a girl met, kissed as if they were alone in a room, went off hand-in-hand. She had always loved the lovers of Paris; they were probably no different from lovers anywhere else, but Paris itself had always had its romance for her. But no longer.

  ‘I don’t know … God, listen to me! I’ve been married exactly – ’ she looked at her watch – ‘Exactly seven hours. I haven’t even had my wedding night yet. And now I’m saying I don’t know if …’ Her voice trailed off in a dry, stifled sob.

  Margaret got up, put her arms round her. ‘Perhaps Philip will never go back to Chicago. Things may work out – ’

  ‘You don’t really believe that. I should have come home when things started to break up with Michele – ’

  ‘What made her marry? An African, too, isn’t he? I thought she was running away from the black side of her.’

  ‘He’s like her, he has white blood in him, Belgian. He’s also like her in that he’s ambitious – though I don’t know what hopes there are for ambitious politicians in Africa. Especially in the Congo. But he has money and he’s charming and she went and married him and that’s that.’ She couldn’t help the bitterness in her voice; self-pity swamped her like a fever.

  Margaret began to gather up her things. ‘I’d better go. I can’t stay here. I’ll call the Crillon.’

  ‘Can’t you wait till Philip gets back? No. No, I suppose not. I don’t know how I’m going to face him. I mean, ask him those questions – ’

  ‘You’ve never been lacking in courage before.’

  ‘Racing cars, flying a plane – that’s different. I enjoy that – I don’t think of those sort of things needing courage. But I’ve always been a moral coward. If I hadn’t been I’d never have got myself into the messes I have. Cindy, Michele, Philip. Yes, even him, I guess. I always took the easy way out.’

  ‘Call me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘How long are you going to stay?’

  ‘Just a few days. I have to go back – I can’t leave the children too long.’

  ‘Are you a good mother? No, I shouldn’t ask that. You are. You’ve been more understanding towards me than I think Mother would have been.’

  ‘You don’t know how Mother would have been. She might have surprised us all.’

  ‘What about Daddy? How is he going to
react when he finds out who his new son-in-law is? He doesn’t even know he has a son-in-law yet.’

  ‘I think you’d better have your talk with Philip first.’ Margaret kissed her. ‘Nina and I have survived our troubles. I don’t think we’re any stronger than you are.’

  Sally did not know how strong she was, but she knew how weak she could be. ‘I’ll call you tonight. Will you have dinner with us?’

  ‘See how it works out with Philip first.’

  Sally felt that the next hour was the most agonizing she had ever spent. She waited for Philip’s key in the front door; it seemed that she walked miles and miles round the apartment. When he eventually opened the door and came in he was smiling, the happy bridegroom.

  ‘Where’s Meg – lying down?’

  He kissed her before she could stop him; but she wondered even as he did so why she should not want him to kiss her. ‘Philip – she’s gone to stay at the Crillon. She told me something about you – ’

  He took off his topcoat, put it on a hanger and hung it in the closet. She had noticed before that he had a habit of deliberately pacing himself when he was careful about what he was going to say next: he had proposed to her in the same careful way.

  ‘I know what she’s told you. I knew it was going to happen – I could see it in her face at the airport when you told her we were married.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She tried to keep her voice level; but she wanted to cry out. ‘Good Christ – the Mafia!’

  ‘Sit down, darling. Sit down!’

  She had taken a step away from him, turning to keep moving about the room. But the tone of his voice cut the legs from under her; she sat down with a thud in the nearest chair. He drew up another chair, sat down with his knees almost touching hers.

  ‘Mafia is a word we don’t use back home. My father, if he ever calls our organization anything and he rarely does, calls it The Honoured Society. Which is what it was called in Sicily when he left there. So don’t use that word again.’

  ‘All right. But semantics aren’t going to change what you represent.’

  ‘I don’t represent anything. Not the way you mean it. Everything I do is legitimate, as perfectly legal and decent as anything your father does. You may think the money I handle isn’t as clean as your father’s, but it all only comes out of providing something that people want.’

  She couldn’t argue with him: he seemed so cool and – self-righteous? ‘Philip, please don’t talk to me as if I’m a child. Your – Honoured Society makes its money out of crime. I don’t know what sort of crime – ’

  ‘Prostitution. Betting – the numbers game. And back in Prohibition days, before I was born, my father made a living bootlegging.’

  ‘I suppose he worked for Al Capone?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He worked in New York in those days. All those things I mentioned are, or were, against the law. But the man who bought a bottle of bootleg whisky or the one who pays a girl to go to bed with him – you ask him, he doesn’t think of himself as a criminal.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop it! You’re gangsters – that’s the only word to describe you! You kill people – you’re all covered with blood-’

  He reached across deliberately, almost slowly, and slapped her across the face. ‘I’m sorry to do that. But you’re getting hysterical. I’m not trying to excuse anything the Society – even my father – has done. We have our own way of doing things. By and large, we kill only our own. And I’ve never been even remotely connected with a killing. I don’t own a gun and I don’t intend to. I’m the respectable son of my father and my father wants me to be nothing else. That’s why they chose me to handle their investments.’

  ‘They? You see – you belong to the – the Society!’

  He was silent for a moment, as if she had just pointed something out to him that he had not wanted to admit to himself. ‘Okay, I belong to it. But it is never going to ask me to do any more than I’m doing now – it’s in its own interests for me to stay the way I am. As for you and me – there’s no reason in the world why you should be involved in the Society. It is always only the men who are involved.’

  She shook her head dumbly, pulled herself back as he reached out a hand for her.

  ‘Sally – I didn’t marry you out of pity. I married you because I love you.’

  That was a lie, but, said in his quiet voice, it had the ring of truth. He had married her because he liked her and because she was a Beaufort: principally for the latter reason. He had not married her for her money but for the respectability of her name. Some day soon he would retire from what he was doing now, would turn his back on the Society, be Philip Mann, gentleman.

  ‘I should have been honest with you – I would have been if there’d been more time. But I was afraid you’d say no – You would have, wouldn’t you?’

  She nodded, looking at him cautiously, afraid of his sincerity.

  ‘I’ve been worried by it. I knew I’d have to tell you – sooner rather than later. I think I was relieved in a way when Meg turned up today.’

  ‘Why can’t you just turn your back on – on the whole thing? Tell your father you want nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I’m my father’s only child.’ There was a certain formality to the way he said it. ‘I love him – as much as I love you, I suppose, but in a different way. I mentioned your father’s money a while ago. It wasn’t all that clean to begin with. Not the way your grandfather made it. But it doesn’t seem to worry you.’

  At least her grandfather had never killed: not even his own. Or had he? Heads had been busted by strike-breakers in plants owned by her grandfather; maybe men had died. She had just never wanted to know: a moral coward again.

  ‘What makes you run away from your father?’ he said.

  It was an unfair question in the context; but she had no answer to it. She got up from her chair, waiting for him to tell her to sit down again; but he said nothing, just watched her as she moved aimlessly about the room. She passed the windows, looked out into the dark night, then drew the drapes.

  At last she said, ‘What are we going to do, then?’

  ‘I think we should give our marriage a chance. We’ll go back to Rome and settle there. It’s a good city and it’s getting better all the time. I think I can persuade my father that I should stay in Europe – it’s a good area for investment now. There’s no reason why we should ever have to go back to Chicago, except on business.’

  ‘I’d never go.’

  She couldn’t see his face clearly; he was against the light. But he sat very still and she sensed the anger and hurt in him. But he controlled it, said quietly, ‘Then you can’t expect me to go to Kansas City.’

  It took her a few moments to make the concession: she could not put her father on the same level as Tony Gentleman. ‘All right. But it’s not a very good start for us, is it?’

  ‘We’ll work it out somehow. I love you, Sally, and I’m not going to give you up without giving ourselves a chance to make a go of it.’

  So Sally, who was weak and knew it, gave in. They took Margaret to dinner at Le Grand Véfour. It was Sally who suggested the restaurant and Philip wondered aloud if the Beaufort sisters ever dined at small intimate places.

  ‘In small intimate places you can be overheard,’ said Sally. ‘I don’t want strangers listening in to us tonight.’

  So there in the restaurant where Napoleon and Josephine had exchanged confidences, Margaret was told what Sally and Philip decided.

  ‘I’ll give you my blessing, if that’s what you want, but it isn’t easy. You should have told her the truth before you were married, Philip.’

  He nodded, toying with his food. They should not have come to this restaurant; none of them had an appetite. The waiters hovered in the background, contemptuous of the three Americans who obviously did not appreciate good food, who would have been more at home with hamburgers. Philip, his eye sharpened by prejudice against himself all his life, had begun to suspe
ct that the biggest snobs in the world were those who worked in expensive establishments rather than those who paid the bills. He took a mouthful of the entrecôte à la bordelaise, nodded appreciatively just to prove himself to the waiters. One of them nodded in acknowledgement and Philip decided he had done his bit for American taste. Then he thought, the hell with them; and wondered why he had such an inferiority complex. None of these waiters knew he was the son of Tony Gentleman. But even as he wondered, he knew the answer: he would never be truly respectable, no matter how much he wished for it or how much his father encouraged him. He would never be a gentleman with a small g.

  ‘I think you had better call home tonight,’ Margaret said, ‘and break the news. Tell Nina first, so that she can break it gently to Daddy. Though he should be getting used to his daughters springing weddings on him. Well – ’ She raised her glass, looked at the wine in it, then shook her head. ‘No, I’ll be traditional. I’ll drink to you both in champagne.’

  The sommelier was impressed when Margaret named the champagne she wanted: these Americans were not so uncivilized after all. He brought it and Margaret toasted her sister and her new brother-in-law. ‘Be happy, that’s the best I can wish you. It hasn’t been a tradition so far with the Beaufort sisters. You try and break the run of bad luck.’

  ‘We’ll try,’ said Sally, and wanted to weep, wondering how much good luck she had had so far. She and Michale had sometimes come to this restaurant together; she looked about, hoping she might see her now, even if with her husband. She thought of something Lamartine, another diner here, had once written: Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. Guiltily, she pressed Philip’s arm: he, for all his faults, was trying to take Michele’s place, make the world less depopulated.

  2

  Margaret flew back to Kansas City two days later. Sally closed up the apartment and she and Philip flew back to Rome in her own plane. The news of her marriage had surprised Nina, who had called to congratulate her and Philip but had not said much else. Lucas also was surprised, but predictably wondered why all his daughters had to rush their weddings as if their husbands were going off to war.