by Jon Cleary
Sally waved an indifferent hand. ‘Do that, then. You choose the charity, Magnus. I really don’t care.’
Magnus looked at Lucas. ‘Well?’
‘It’s her money. But if it ever got out where it came from … That’s what worries me. When you are dealing in sums like that, there is always the possibility of a leak. I – ’ It was almost a physical effort for him to say it: ‘I think it should be left there for a while. A year, maybe two. Until we are sure that Sally’s name won’t be connected with the Gentlemans.’ He frowned, the word not sounding right in his ear. ‘Philip and his father.’
Sally shrugged: we could be talking about some petty cash, Magnus thought. ‘Anything. I said I don’t really care.’
So the money was left in the bank in Zurich on an interest-drawing basis. Lucas could not accept the thought of the money just lying there doing nothing.
2
Sally did not recover quickly from the events of that late summer of 1958. It was six months before she began to act and sound like the girl her sisters remembered. Then she bought herself another Maserati and another plane, this time a ten-year-old British Tiger Moth, and began to look for freedom on the back roads and in the skies of Missouri and Kansas. She drove fast and flew high, working herself out of her depression as if it were a physical thing that could be blown away by the winds.
It was Prue, the youngest and least experienced in misfortune, who put her on the road to recovery. ‘You’re dosing yourself up with self-pity.’
Sally would not accept that, if only out of pride. ‘You just don’t know what I’ve been through – ’
‘Nuts. You and Nina and Meg have all been through hell – I just hope it never happens to me. But sometimes you sound as if you’re trying to act like a poor little rich girl. Other people go through what you’ve all been through, but they don’t do it in such comfort. You wouldn’t get much sympathy from some poor girl who’s lost her husband and her baby and is living in some slum in New York or Chicago or somewhere.’
‘What are you, a Communist or something?’
‘That would make some of the boys I know laugh. They say I cost them twice as much as any other girl they know. No, I’m a dedicated hedonist and I think our money is lovely. But if anything bad ever happens I’m not going to mope about and think there’s nobody worse off than me.’
‘You just wait till it happens.’
But Sally had to concede to herself that there was a lot of truth in what Prue had said. She liked being back home in Kansas City; there were indeed far worse places to be unhappy. She thought of herself as an uncomplicated girl whose adult life had been a series of bruising complications; she was not aware of the full measure of herself, that within her lay the seeds of the complications that had struck her. It did not occur to her that she might have gone to an analyst for help; that would only have antagonized her father if he learned of it. She had been brought up on the unspoken principle that one did not go to an outsider for help, did not confide in a stranger. Comfort and advice was there in the family for the asking; the very extreme any of them might do would be to consult Magnus. So far no one in the family, for all their sympathy, had helped her understand herself.
So over the next year she went seeking the girl she had been before she had left to go to Vassar. At first she seemed to be succeeding; she began to fit easily into the pattern of the family. Nina and Margaret, she noticed, were no longer girls: Nina was thirty-seven, Margaret thirty-two: they were old enough now for her to see shades of their mother in them. Nina still lived in the main house with their father, engaged herself in a full social life but had no steady man. Margaret lived in the second house with Martha and Emma, was devoted to them but managed to live an even busier social life than Nina. Her constant escort was Bruce Alburn.
‘He’s no Marlon Brando, but he’s steady and reliable. And that’s a change for any of us.’
‘Are you going to marry him?’ Sally asked.
‘He hasn’t asked me yet. Bruce likes to take his time. I don’t think he’d even clean his teeth on the spur of the moment.’
‘God, you make him sound dull!’
‘He has his moments.’ But Margaret did not elaborate and Sally could only surmise that Bruce, having given a great deal of thought to it, had at some time got Meg into bed.
In June of 1960 she read that Belgium was giving the Congo its independence and she wondered if Michele and her husband were still in Leopoldville. The thought of Michele brought back an ache she thought she had cured.
In the late summer of that year Margaret and Bruce began working for Richard Nixon in the coming election against John F. Kennedy. Lucas had seemingly lost all interest in politics, but Margaret was turning into Kansas City’s Perle Mesta. She had to scratch for talent to come even remotely close to a comparison; unlike Perle Mesta she restricted herself to Midwest Republicans and the faithful of that year were not rich in salon wit. But they were shrewd and what they lacked in wit they made up for in common sense. At one of Margaret’s parties Sally met Charlie Luman.
A visiting British professor, on exchange to the University of Missouri, was holding forth on his impressions of America. It was a time when Americans, succumbing to a national streak of masochism, were paying foreign lecturers and writers to come and tell them what was wrong with them.
‘Take American football,’ said the visiting professor, who had not played sport since he had won the egg-and-spoon race at his prep school. ‘It is designed solely for the pleasure and ego-gratification of men who have already stopped playing the game, namely the coaches. There is none of the creative imagination one finds in rugby, where the players are encouraged to have initiative. If any player on the field in the American game had a spontaneous thought, it would be as sinful as sodomy in the huddle.’
‘I think I’ll crash-tackle that English faggot,’ said a tall, heavily-built man standing beside Sally. ‘He’s talking sacrilege.’
‘Do you play football?’ Sally asked.
‘For the Los Angeles Rams,’ he said with some quiet pride.
‘You’re a long way from home.’
‘This is home. KC. My old man is Senator Luman, Walter Luman. I’m Charlie Luman. Hi.’ He put out a hand that looked as if it could have cupped a football lengthways. ‘You’re one of the Beaufort sisters. Which one?’
She told him, after extricating her hand from his paw. ‘Do you live out in California?’
‘Laguna Beach.’ He had one of the friendliest smiles she had seen, simple, innocent and trusting. He had been smiling ever since he had first spoken to her and she wondered if he went into crash-tackles with the same broad flash of teeth. ‘You’re the one who drives and flies, right? I’ve got a licence myself, a commercial one. I’ve been working for two years with Pan Am part-time. I’m retiring from football the end of this season.’
‘I thought all football players wanted to be coaches?’
‘I’m too kind-hearted. I’d pat the guys on the back after losing, instead of kicking them in the ass. Pardon the language.’
He was too clean to be true, like someone out of a comic book. He had that sort of look: crew-cut blond hair, strong jaw, bright blue eyes, a physique like that of Superman. She looked a little closer, wondering if his smile was painted on.
‘Are you always kind-hearted? With girls too?’
‘Always.’ The smile seemed to widen, if that were possible.
Then Jack Minett was beside them, appearing with that sleight-of-hand skill, like a modest genie, of the best behind-the-scenes political worker.
‘Nice to see you again, Sally.’ He had not been on the estate since the death of his son. Once a month Margaret took her and Frank’s children over to the house in Johnson County and he respected her for that; but until tonight neither he nor Francesca had been invited here. And Francesca, not that he could blame her, had pleaded a headache and not come with him. ‘You’ve met our hero.’
‘Hero?’
‘Last year he was voted Most Valuable Player. He’s worth 20,000 votes to his old man in this year’s election.’
‘Not with rugby players,’ said Charlie Luman, but Jack Minett just looked blank.
‘Meg’s the one who should be running for office. It’s time we had some women in it. There aren’t enough of them in Washington.’
‘There are one or two,’ said Sally, ‘and my father thinks that’s one or two too many. He’d never let Meg run for office. You should know that,’ she said, not meaning to be unkind but realizing at once that that was how she sounded.
Jack Minett was used to unkind words, unwitting or otherwise. ‘I once told Frank that your father isn’t immortal. When your father dies I hope I’m still around to see what happens to you girls.’
‘Jack,’ she said, surprised, ‘you sound malicious.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘just expectant.’
He disappeared with the same cloud-of-smoke effect as he had appeared and Charlie Luman said, ‘Who’s he?’
‘A nice man in a dirty game. Are you going to follow your father into politics?’
He shook his head, the smile still there like a pleasant birthmark. ‘I told you, I’m too kind. Who was the last kindly politician you heard of?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Prue, coming up to them. ‘And look what happened to him.’
‘Don’t listen to her profanities,’ said Sally.
‘I’ve had you pointed out to me,’ Prue said to Charlie. ‘They say you’re a killer on the field. You be kind to my sister or I’ll kick you in your protector.’
For a moment Charlie’s smile seemed entirely without humour or kindness. Then he said, ‘I’ve just been telling her, I’m always kind to women.’
‘Then you’ll be a change.’ Then she looked at Magnus as he joined them. ‘Except you, of course, Magnus.’
‘What have I done now?’ he said.
‘Take me out on the terrace for a dance. They’re playing our number.’
Magnus cocked an ear. ‘The Missouri Waltz? How did President Truman get in here?’
The two of them drifted off and Sally said to Charlie, ‘Would you like to go for a flight?’
‘Now?’
‘Why not? There’s a full moon.’
On the way out they passed a painting hanging in the entrance hall. ‘Is that a Titian?’
She stopped in surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘I went to college on a football scholarship – my old man doesn’t have any money despite the fact he’s a senator. I had to study something, so out of the blue I picked art history. And I got interested in it. Where’d you get that? Is it your father’s?’
‘No, it’s mine. It was left to me. I’ve lent it to Meg till I have a place of my own.’
‘Boy, were you in luck! I suppose you’ve got to be someone like you Beauforts to be left something like that.’
She put a firm hand on his arm. looked up at him. ‘Charlie, before we go out that door, let’s get something straight. You make another remark about you Beauforts and I’ll loop the loop and do my best to toss you out of the plane. You understand?’
He had stopped smiling. ‘Sure. You’re just Sally Smith from now on.’
‘It’s as good a name as any.’
She had not even looked at the Titian. Magnus had been contacted by the Chicago lawyers and he had gone up there and returned with the news that there was much more of value in the Gentleman home than he had expected. Sally had refused to go back with him and in the end Margaret, for a reason she did not name, had said she would go with Magnus. The house had been sold and all its contents but the Titian and a secretaire with Sèvres porcelain plaques. Margaret had brought those two items back with her.
‘The Titian is too valuable to give away to some museum just now,’ Margaret had said. ‘Someone might start trying to track it down and your name could come out.’
Sally was tired of trying to hide; she was beginning to feel like a criminal on the run. Someone from the Mafia … ‘Won’t the dealer who sold it to Philip’s father wonder what’s happened to it? He’ll know that Tony Gentleman is dead.’
‘The lawyers are going to say, if anyone asks, that it has gone back to relatives in Italy who wish to remain anonymous. The funny thing is, the lawyers are not the crooks I expected. They’re every bit as respectable as Magnus, only stuffier. Tony Gentleman was doing his darnedest to look respectable.’
‘What about the secretaire?’
‘I just liked the look of that. It made me think Mother would have liked it.’
‘Not from him, I’ll bet. All right, you can have it. But I wish you hadn’t brought home that painting.’
‘You don’t have to think of its being Philip’s or his father’s – it doesn’t have any sentimental value like that painting of Nina’s. It’s a Titian and the last value you’d put on it would be sentimental.’
‘Oh God, how mercenary can you get!’
‘I said that to you once as a kid, remember? Keep it, Sally – you’ll get used to it. You don’t just go throwing away treasures like that to museums as if it was an old suit of Philip’s. That’s profligacy and Grandfather would spin in his grave if he knew of it. I think even Daddy might go a bit light-headed, too.’
‘He wanted to give away the money in Switzerland.’
‘You can always make more money. You can’t make another Titian. A good fake one, maybe, but not a real one.’
So Sally had kept the painting, but put it out of mind by giving it to Margaret to hang in her home. She went out of the house now without another look at it. Charlie paused a moment to look at it again, then he followed her.
They drove in to the Municipal Airport and he walked around the open two-seater Tiger Moth admiring it as much as he had the Titian.
‘The only way to fly,’ he said, and she warmed to him for that; he was a man after her own heart. ‘Pretty soon flying like this is going to be dead. Another fifteen, twenty years and nobody’s going to know what it’s like to fly with the wind in your face.’
‘Make sure of your seat-belt. I feel like some aerobatics tonight.’
She was pleased that he accepted without question that she could fly well enough to indulge in some stunt flying. They took off and climbed straight into the face of a full moon that threw the countryside below into bright relief. She always felt a sense of escape, of freedom, as soon as her plane was airborne. She wore no helmet and she let the wind tear at her hair. She turned west and flew out over Kansas. The farmlands stretched away beneath the moon like a vast quilt: America was in bed. She picked up the Union Pacific railroad tracks heading for Topeka: steel lightning frozen and laid on the countryside. A freight train crawled west: she could imagine the hoarse cry of its whistle; the sound of the heart of America at night. What sounds had Du Tisne, Bourgmond, Pike heard in the night as they had headed out across the plains? All at once she wished for the long ago; but she knew at the same time that nostalgia was only another form of escape. She pulled the Tiger Moth up into a loop, spun out of it and went down in a series of long fluttering sweeps, waltzing the plane down till she was only 1000 feet above the ground. Then she turned east and headed back towards Kansas City. She flew over the city, swung back along the river and at last touched down at the airport.
Charlie was out of his cockpit at once, stood beside the plane waiting to lift her down. But she sat for a few moments, feeling like a prisoner who had been recaptured. Then, reluctantly, she clambered out of the cockpit and let Charlie lift her down.
They drove back home. The party was still going on in Margaret’s house, but she had lost the mood for any sort of gathering. She got out of the car, waited till Charlie came round and stood beside her.
‘Goodnight, Charlie. Don’t get hurt in any tackles.’
She put her face up for the expected goodnight kiss, but he just squeezed her arm. ‘I’m going to be busy huckstering for Dad, but I’ll be back here the end of the week, b
efore I go back to California. How about dinner Saturday night?’
She went inside to bed. She thought about him for a few minutes, without excitement or much interest. Then she fell asleep and dreamed of Michele and woke in the morning depressed and inexplicably, terribly lonely.
To throw off her depression she went flying again that day, taking George Biff with her. But storm clouds came up out of the south; far away to the south-west she saw the dark cone of a tornado. For one awful moment, that brought a shiver to her immediately afterwards, she wanted to fly towards the storm, right into the heart of the twister, to have the plane and herself disintegrate into pieces too small ever to be found. Then she thought of George and she turned the plane round and sped back towards the airport.
Driving home in the Maserati George said, ‘You ain’t happy. You still miserable about your lost baby?’
‘That’s part of it, George. But don’t go playing the wise old black retainer with me. Sometimes you sound like Uncle Tom.’
‘I wasn’t black, sometimes I’d whip the ass off of the lot of you.’
She jerked her head in surprise. He had often chastised her and her sisters when they were young, but she had never heard him as angry as he sounded now.
‘That was your daddy’s biggest fault – he never carried a whip with him.’ She had allowed him to take the wheel of the car and he was staring straight ahead, concentrating on the road. ‘He give you all a belt or two once in a while, you’d of bounced back quicker from all the things’ve happened to you. My sister, the second one, she just lost her third baby. She ain’t sitting around waiting for Judgement Day.’
‘George, what’s got into you? And slow down. You don’t usually drive as fast as his. You want to get us a ticket?’
He eased his foot off the pedal, sat further back in his seat, continued to stare straight ahead. ‘Sorry, Miz Sally.’
‘All right, don’t start sounding like Uncle Tom again. Sound like George Biff. What’s the matter?’