The Beaufort Sisters

by Jon Cleary

  ‘Thank you.’ Cindy looked at Rona, as if to ask if it were all right to accept praise from an old lover.

  ‘Kansas City?’ Rona Freeman relaxed; her territory was safe. ‘Do you have any theatre out there? Or is Buffalo Bill still playing?’

  ‘Only at Christmas for the kids. Good luck, Cindy. Maybe next time I hear of you you’ll be in Hollywood.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ said Rona Freeman.

  Sally looked at the tall thick figure. ‘That should be quite a climb.’

  Next morning she went to Bergdorf-Goodman and Bonwit Teller, splurged on a new spring wardrobe, bought presents for everyone in the family back home in Kansas City, where Buffalo Bill was playing pantomime for the kids, and returned to Beaufort Park happy. The following week Charlie, back from an overseas tour of duty to Europe, proposed to her.

  So now they went off to start their marriage in the accepted way, Charlie’s secret still their own, both of them sure that happiness was going to be theirs. They were relying on more than most couples start out with: knowing their handicap they were determined to make their marriage work. They were not going to rely on just romance and chance.

  Prue’s house was completed in December 1964 and she moved in in time for Christmas. Liking the style, she had been tempted to have the house built as a copy of a small chateau, but decided that would be thumbing her nose at fate. She was also tempted to furnish it in the Empire period style, but resisted that urge too. So the house became an Italian villa and the furnishings American Modern and once she had moved in she felt at home and comfortable. She engaged a staff of three and a nurse for Melanie, bought herself a Jaguar, went through her French wardrobe and decided it was too good to throw out, accepted all invitations that came her way, went to bed with a brewer from St Louis and an oil man from Tulsa, but stayed the night with neither of them, settled back into Kansas City life and, for the time being anyway, wondered why she had fled it.

  Time slipped away into yesterday. Her divorce became final, but she felt no sense of release; she had already experienced that the day she had left St Cast. People began to realize that the Sixties were like no other decade that had gone before. The Beatles released a whole new wave of barbarians on the world, sub-teen Goths who demanded for themselves a whole new territory in market research and were granted it willingly. Permissiveness replaced selection; anything went, so long as you didn’t have to pay for it. Four-letter words became a lingua franca, as if the newly educated of the world felt they might be tongue-tied by polysyllables. Politicians were shocked to find there were more unbelievers than believers, many of them violent. The small war in Vietnam snuck up on the American public, turned into a big war to the delight of the military establishment but no one else, especially the young men who had to go out and fight it.

  Lucas was one of the few among his friends and business acquaintances who saw no future in the war. ‘We’ll never win it, not out there. And why do we always have to prop up corrupt regimes in the name of anti-Communism?’

  ‘Daddy, you’re sounding more socialistic every day.’

  ‘I must be falling under the influence of my granddaughter.’

  Margaret’s daughter, Martha, was now in her first year at the University of Missouri. She was as beautiful as her mother or any of her aunts, but she seemed to be refusing even to accede to nature. She wore granny glasses which she did not need, covered her face with as much hair as possible without blindfolding herself and wore clothes that looked like the cast-offs of a buffalo hunter’s mother. Lucas, looking at her, wondered what the world had come to. But he uttered no word of protest and was more indulgent towards her, her sister Emma and Prue’s child Melanie than he had ever been towards his own four girls.

  Martha came home for the long vacation in the summer of 1969. She had had her own small private war with Margaret and Bruce and won: she had moved out of the estate and was living on campus. Her only good score with her parents was that, majoring in American history, her professor reported that she was the most brilliant student he had ever taught. It was a pity, Bruce commented to Margaret, that she was only learning history so that she would make a better revolutionary.

  She came across to see Prue in the latter’s house on her first day home. ‘Aunt Prue – ’ She was an odd mixture of rebellion and respect; she never attempted to be too familiar with her aunts or her grandfather. ‘I’d like to bring home a man I’m going to work for, but I don’t know if Mother or Grandfather will approve of him.’

  ‘Who is it? Jerry Rubin or some other revolutionary?’

  Martha shook her head, her hair swinging across her face like a wind-blown blind. ‘No, he’s in movies. It’s Fingal O’Farrell.’

  ‘You’re going to work for him?’

  O’Farrell had been in the Kansas City newspapers and on television every day for the past week. He was an Anglo-Irish film director who had made three films that had been hailed for their innovative technique and that had also made money; he was in the Middle West now to make his first American film, one based on the journeys of Lewis and Clark. The newspapers had been full of him and Mr O’Farrell had left no doubt that he was full of himself. Success had gone to his head and anywhere else that it could find space.

  ‘I’m to be a third assistant something-or-other. I’m to help him on research. He said he’d like to meet all of you.’

  ‘You mean he’s a social climber? So many of these movie people are.’

  ‘Don’t be a snob, Aunt Prue. It’s bad enough with Mother.’

  ‘Darling, do something about your hair – it’s like talking to a yak. And do you really need those dreadful glasses? If you’re going to be a rebel, what’s wrong with being a pretty one?’

  ‘You’re as bourgeois as the rest of them, aren’t you?’ But she said it without rancour and somehow managed to make it sound less than insulting. ‘Doesn’t all our money worry you? Didn’t you ever want to rebel against it?’

  ‘No. I don’t think any of us ever has. We all rebelled against Daddy, to a greater or lesser degree, but I don’t suppose you’d call that a revolutionary movement? No, I didn’t think you would. But say no when you disagree with me, darling, don’t shake your head. I’m always expecting your hair to fall off. Would you wear a hairband if I bought you one? How about a tiara?’

  Martha took off her glasses, pushed back her hair and kissed her aunt. ‘I should boycott you, but I can’t. Will you talk to Mother about having Mr O’Farrell here? Say for Sunday lunch. Luncheon. He told me he loves to play tennis.’

  ‘I’ll strike a bargain. Buy yourself a hairband and I’ll see that Mr O’Farrell is invited to luncheon next Sunday.’

  ‘You’re a typical Beaufort. Always screwing the workers.’

  ‘Screwing is a word I keep for the bedroom, darling. I never invite the workers in there.’

  Prue talked to Margaret and the following Sunday Fingal O’Farrell and his associate producer came to luncheon. Lovett, the associate producer, was a pleasant ordinary Englishman who only seemed to accentuate the flamboyance of O’Farrell.

  Lucas was coming across from the main house with Nina when the big limousine drew up in front of the Alburn house. O’Farrell was first out of the car, flinging open the door and bounding out as if about to attack someone. He was six feet tall but looked shorter because of his bulk: he must have weighed at least 220 pounds. He had long thick hair, prematurely streaked with grey, and a Biblical beard, also streaked with grey. He was dressed in a flowing pink kaftan, sandals and pink-and-green argyle socks. His eyes were hidden by huge white-rimmed dark glasses.

  ‘Good God!’ Lucas pulled up, turned on his heel. ‘I’m going back.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Daddy,’ said Nina, although she too was wondering what the luncheon would turn out to be. ‘This may be a whole new experience for you.’

  ‘There’s no doubt of that. What is he – a transvestite Apostle or something? There are none of our friends coming, I hope?’
r />   ‘Only Magnus. He doesn’t shock easily.’

  ‘If he’s not shocked by that apparition, he’s finished as the family lawyer.’

  O’Farrell took off his dark glasses to greet the family. His Irish charm seemed to Prue to be larger than life; he laid it on male and female alike, only confirming Lucas’s view that the man was a transvestite. He seemed never to stop talking, words tumbling out of the Biblical beard as if St Paul were trying to get all his sermons done in one day. Only Martha and Emma seemed impressed.

  ‘Moving pictures were invented by an Irishman, fella named Gilhoole, from County Cork. He did it at the instigation of the Holy Roman Church. We’ve got to have somewhere to send ’em between Saturday confession and Sunday communion, said the priests. Get ’em out of the dance halls and the pubs, they said, there’s too much sin in them places. So Gilhooley was put to work and he invented motion pictures. That was back in 1888 – 12 March 1888, to be exact. He photographed the Cork-Dunmanway hurling final. Dunmanway won. They’re still running the film in Dunmanway, every year it’s the biggest boxoffice grosser, takes more money than James Bond. It’s full of blood and violence – Catholics never think of that as sinful. The colour’s fading a bit, but they touch it up every so often by hand. Sometimes fellas come over from Cork and watch the film and afterwards the audience beats the bejasus out of them. But it’s all good Irish fun and nobody gets into trouble between confession and communion the next morning. The Church nominated Gilhooley for sainthood. Once the word comes through from the Vatican I’m going to make a film about him. With Sam Goldwyn as the devil’s advocate. Are we going to play tennis, Mr Beaufort?’

  ‘Whatever you wish,’ said Lucas, glad of anything that would stop the flow of words. ‘Did you bring some tennis clothes with you? I’m afraid we don’t have anything on hand that would fit you.’

  ‘Not to worry.’ O’Farrell hitched up his kaftan. ‘I always play in this. Shades of Suzanne Lenglen, eh?’

  Prue looked at her father, waiting for him to explode or just keel over in a faint. But he rose stiffly, nodded to Magnus and Charlie and they strode off to change. Everyone moved out of the house and down to the small pavilion beside the tennis court. Tennis sneakers were found for O’Farrell and the four men, Lucas still looking half-catatonic, went out on to the court.

  Margaret looked at the associate producer. ‘Is Mr O’Farrell always so overpowering, Mr Lovett?’

  ‘Mother!’ said Martha.

  ‘It’s necessary to ask,’ said Bruce, who, like all the others, had said hardly a word in the past two hours. ‘Just in case he comes here again.’

  ‘Your mother’s right,’ Lovett said to Martha. ‘Fingal is too much – you’ll find that out when you come to work for us. But one has to overlook it because he always produces the goods. Like now.’

  Out on the court O’Farrell was proving easily the best man in the match. He served and smashed with a grace that belied his bulk; his backhand was a joy to watch. On the other side of the net Lucas was reduced to angry impotence. Somehow or other he would have to keep it from the River Club that he and Magnus had been wiped off the court by a bearded Irish windbag in a pink dress.

  ‘I think this may be the day Daddy retires from tennis,’ said Nina.

  At the end of the day O’Farrell had still not won any friends among the older Beauforts; but if he noticed his lack of popularity he gave no sign of it. ‘It’s been a beautiful day and I’ve loved the conversation. Talk was the greatest thing ever invented – after the motion pictures, of course – ’

  ‘Did the Irish invent talk, too, Mr O’Farrell?’

  For the first time it seemed that O’Farrell looked directly at Prue. He laughed, took her hand and buried it in his beard. ‘Miss Beaufort, I think you could hold up your end in any talk.’

  ‘I never hold up my end in public, Mr O’Farrell.’ Prue looked at him and wondered what sort of man was hidden beneath the kaftan, the surfeit of hair and the flood of talk. She had dropped her married name when her divorce had become final and, like Nina, was a Miss Beaufort once again. Every year she took Melanie to France to visit Guy and his mother; the visits were not something she looked forward to but they were not too much of a strain. Any love she had once felt for Guy was now dead and he made no attempt to resurrect it. She had not fallen in love with any other man, though she had had several affairs that had, as it were, kept her in practice. Now she said, ‘I’d like to come and see you at work.’

  ‘Do, dear lady! We move out on Wednesday for Nebraska, a region, I’m told, that has gone backwards since Lewis and Clark passed through it in – when was it, Martha my pet? Never mind. Dates are only spanners in the works of history. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are all the same.’

  ‘Expect me when you see me then,’ said Prue. ‘I’d hate to confuse you with an appointed day.’

  O’Farrell laughed uproariously and Prue flinched, waiting for him to slam her on the back. ‘Oh, you and I will enjoy each other, Miss Beaufort! I’ll have my Indian scouts – at sixty dollars a day, isn’t it, Henry? – I’ll have them out looking for you every day till you arrive. Goodbye, Mr Beaufort. Marvellous day! I’ve learned so much!’

  He and Lovett drove away and Lucas said, ‘If he ever comes here again, let me know. I’ll leave town.’

  ‘Are you really going up to see him on location?’ Sally said.

  ‘Why not?’ said Prue. ‘I can’t believe all that bull he puts out is real. I’d like to see him in his own element.’

  ‘You can keep an eye on Martha,’ said Margaret. ‘I don’t want her raped or scalped by one of his sixty-dollar-a-day Indians.’

  Margaret had lost touch somehow with her elder daughter. She tried to stifle the resentment she felt that Prue seemed to have succeeded where she had failed, but it was not easy. Prue, Nina and Sally had remained uninfected by politics; but she now felt as strongly as her father once had. She and Bruce were as conservative in their political thinking as Lucas had been; they had worked hard to have Richard Nixon elected as President and they fully supported him and his policies. She found it difficult to understand how she could have raised a daughter who was radical in her thinking, unpatriotic in her attitude towards the Vietnam war and, her worst sin, seemingly ashamed of being a Beaufort. It annoyed her intensely that none of these things seemed to perturb Prue who, by ignoring them, had gained the confidence of Martha that she herself had lost.

  ‘Mother,’ said Martha, ‘the Indians are no longer interested in us white women.’

  ‘We’re relieved to hear it, darling,’ said Prue. ‘But your mother was only joking.’

  Margaret did not want Prue to defend her, but said nothing. She looked at Bruce for support, but he just gave a slight shake of his head. He had never attempted to play the heavy stepfather and though neither of the girls loved him they respected him. In a climate of women, especially Beaufort women, he had learned the advantages of compromise.

  ‘I think you are the one who should be careful,’ Sally said to Prue.

  ‘Of Mr O’Farrell? Men like him are no problem. It’s you quiet ones who trouble us.’ She smiled sweetly at Bruce and Charlie.

  A shadow crossed Sally’s face, but no one noticed it, not even the sharp-eyed Prue. None of the family knew of Charlie’s disability. Once or twice there had been casual questions as to whether she and Charlie intended having a family, but she had just as casually brushed them aside and lately no one had raised the matter again. Not even her father, though when she and Charlie had first married he had strongly hinted that he hoped they would present him with another grandson.

  Charlie gave his own sweet, cheerful smile. He was now a co-pilot on Pan American Jumbos and life, as far as it was possible, had been good to him. He loved Sally and they were happy together; as far as he knew, she was no longer interested in other women. They had worked out a sexual arrangement that satisfied her, though it left him frustrated; but he would never let her know and did his best to disguise
it. He would have liked to adopt a child or two, since he loved children, but Sally had been cool to the idea when he had first mentioned it and he had never brought it up again. Sometimes he felt uneasy, wondering if Sally was entirely happy, but he was not a man who met such doubts head-on. He played life differently from the way he had played football.

  ‘Us quiet ones are the ones who stick around, though.’ Then the smile suddenly died and he looked at Nina. ‘Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean that.’

  Nina, sitting beside him, pressed his hand. She had real affection for Charlie and she often wondered what was missing in his and Sally’s life. She was not offended by what he had said. Everyone’s life was like an old battlefield: the odd, forgotten mine lay there to be trodden on by the unwitting foot.

  ‘Charlie, don’t apologize. That was all so long ago.’ But not so long ago that she had forgotten.

  Prue went to Nebraska for two days, not taking Melanie with her. She found movie-making both interesting and boring, the movie-makers the same. They appeared to live in a world even more circumscribed than her own; or perhaps that was just the crew Fingal O’Farrell had gathered about him. The crew knew who she was and treated her with wary respect; the actors couldn’t make up their minds whether to be respectful, contemptuous or indifferent. They all aspired to fame and fortune, but particularly secure fame and fortune. Prue Beaufort had no fame in her own right, but she sure as hell had fortune and security. More so even than the two male stars, who were rumoured to be getting a million dollars each for their work as Lewis and Clark.

  Fingal O’Farrell had discarded his kaftan and wore fringed buckskins. He looked handsomer and huskier; but was still as voluble as ever. On the second night Prue went to bed with him in his trailer on the location site; the crew and the actors were quartered in motels in a nearby town but Fingal preferred, as he said, to commune with nature after a hard day’s work. Going to bed with Prue was evidently part of his communion.

  Stripped, he turned out to be all muscle; he was also a magnificent lover when he stopped talking. Next morning he tried to persuade Prue to remain with him. However, with no intention of a lasting affair, she knew the loving had to stop before the gossip got really started. She kissed him goodbye and went back to Kansas City.