by Jon Cleary
‘I could tell you all to get stuffed, Mr McKea,’ Harvest said, looking pleasant and affable to anyone passing by. ‘I don’t really know if I want to be as rich as all of you. From what I’ve read, it has its handicaps. There have been two kidnappings in the Beaufort family. That was only because they were rich. Nobody’s going to kidnap a retired tennis player who doesn’t throw his money around. I could live pretty comfortably if I turned round and walked out of Kansas City. Maybe I’d be more comfortable. I’m not here for the money, Mr McKea. I’m here because I’d like to know who my mother was. Or is. It’s a human instinct.’
He turned and walked away and Magnus looked down into his empty glass, feeling properly ashamed. The past two days had not been easy for him. Nina had confessed to him that she wanted Clive Harvest to be her son Michael: if only to lay a ghost. But then, almost immediately, she had admitted that the ghost that would be laid would be Tim’s. Or would it? he had asked gently: gendy, because he had been trying to hide his selfishness. With Michael (if he was Michael) constantly there as a reminder, would Tim ever be laid to rest? The debate had gone on between them, never acrimonious, each of them trying to protect the life they shared; but always round and round, neither of them coming up with a resolution. Even his lawyer’s mind had not been able to settle on a judgement. Harvest’s story rang true – up to a point: it was like a carillon in which one bell, struck only occasionally, jarred on the ear. He was worried about the Beirut chapter, though he had not confessed that to Nina. Should he have lifted the bandage from the face of the dead Burgess, made a more determined effort to find out who the man really was? If Burgess had indeed been Tim Davoren, would he have gone back to Beirut and told Nina so? In his heart he could not be sure that he would have done so. He wondered if Lucas, who must have known if it was Tim or not, would have told her.
He crossed the room, looking for a refill of his glass. Bruce, Charlie and Roger were standing in a corner, moored to a floating waiter. Magnus took a fresh drink and joined them; the waiter, set loose, drifted away. The Beaufort men, as some women called them though never to their faces, looked at each other, not at all interested in the party.
‘We saw you talking to him,’ said Charlie. ‘He certainly doesn’t look worried.’
‘What’s he got to lose?’ said Roger. ‘I know the women wish it were over and done with, one way or the other. I’m not speaking for Nina, of course,’ he said to Magnus.
‘I think they’d better stop talking about wanting this over as soon as possible,’ said Bruce. ‘There’s more to this than just whether Nina gets her son back or not.’
‘For instance?’ said Charlie. He was still the same cheerful Charlie Luman, but sometimes now the smile seemed a little vacant, worn like a false moustache. He had begun to put on weight and Pan American’s doctors had warned him at his last physical examination that he might not pass the next one if he did not take care of himself. He had not taken their advice, had begun to think of retirement.
‘For instance, how much control would pass to him in the Trust if he should be Michael Davoren? What would happen if he wanted to draw out his share? No fortune, not even the Beaufort one, is safe if somebody starts to pull a leg out from under it. He’ll get more than any of your or my kids will.’
‘Not mine,’ said Charlie, and smiled behind his upturned glass.
‘Sorry, Charlie. I meant me and Roger.’
Charlie’s secret was still his and Sally’s. Some Pan Am pilots sometimes wondered why he never took advantage of the opportunities that came his way on overseas tours of duty, but always in the end they put it down to the fact that, being married to a Beaufort woman, he knew how his bread was buttered and did not want to exchange it for a little margarine on the side. He looked across the room now and waved to Sally and she raised her silver-topped stick in reply.
‘Margaret and I have talked it over,’ Bruce said. With Lucas’s death he had become president of the Beaufort banks, domestic and foreign. He was no longer the small-city banker he had been when he had met Margaret; he had his own aura of money now. The fact that he talked more easily of money than of anything else kept a glow on the aura. ‘I don’t think we should say yes or no to him till every last detail has been examined.’
‘Prue won’t talk with me at all about it. She says it’s Nina’s decision and hers only.’ Roger was one of the two men, the other being Magnus, who had been absolutely sure of himself, and had remained so, when he had married into the Beaufort family. He still signed himself Roger Devon IV, not with a flourish but with the conviction that he was no one else. His father, Roger III, was still alive; portraits of Roger I and II hung in the Devon house on the Beaufort estate. A month ago Prue had discovered she was pregnant again and if the child should be a boy, it had already been decided that he should be called Roger V. Lucas, if he were still alive, would have been pleased: he at least was part of a dynasty, if only having come in through a side door. ‘How do you feel, Magnus? Not as a lawyer but as a husband.’
Magnus sighed, committed himself. ‘If Nina accepts him, I’ll accept him.’
3
The four sisters sat round the table in the luncheon room of the main house. They called it Nina’s house, but none of them, not even Nina, really thought of it as hers. They had all been born in it and till it fell down or was demolished they would always have a proprietary interest in it, a substitute for the common womb that had borne them all.
‘He’s through to the final,’ said Nina. ‘He told me last night he’s never played better in his life.’
‘He’s cut out those dreadful antics of his,’ said Margaret. ‘If he stays with us, I shouldn’t want him to be remembered for those.’
‘There are some people who still remember Grandfather’s antics,’ said Sally. ‘We’ve learned to live with them.’
‘They were financial shenanigans.’
‘Which are excusable,’ said Prue. ‘So long as there are no bad manners displayed.’
Four days had passed and in the Beaufort circle, sisters, husbands, lawyers, there had been no other topic but Clive Harvest. There had been argument, rhetoric, pleas, prevarication and plain gossip. He was well-named: the mere mention of him had harvested an abundant crop of talk.
‘I wanted him to come and stay here,’ said Nina. ‘But Magnus vetoed that.’
‘Quite right, too,’ said Margaret. ‘Nina, for God’s sake, don’t make yourself so vulnerable.’
‘I’m beginning to feel that he is Michael. Here in my belly.’
‘Bellies, darling, aren’t recognized in a court of law.’ Prue savoured the quenelles de brochet, nodded approvingly. The sisters still treated themselves well at meals. They all had full figures, but their masseur, a man whose hands were familiar with half the women in the country club set, always took care of that extra pound or two. ‘But I know what you mean. Love, even mother love, starts in the anatomy.’
So far she had managed to dodge a face-to-face meeting with Clive Harvest, though she knew it could not be put off indefinitely. Old lovers had never worried her in the past: it was as if once they put their clothes on, she gave them another identity. She had almost forgotten Clive Harvest and the night in London (six? seven?) years ago; as she had put out of her mind all the other men she had slept with, including Guy. She was totally in love with Roger, physically, emotionally and romantically; sharp-eyed as she had always been, despite her increasing myopia, she had decided that hers was the most complete and secure happiness of all the sisters. Now she was afraid: no woman could feel secure who had slept with a man who now claimed to be her nephew. Even if he was honourable (was an honourable man different from a man of honour? she wondered, memory glinting like a far-off glass) and kept quiet, there would always be the fear that one of them might make a slip of the tongue. She had begun to pray (who hadn’t prayed since she was a child) that Clive Harvest would not be Michael Davoren.
‘Has there been any word from Australia?’ Sally
asked.
‘Bruce talked to them this morning,’ said Margaret. ‘It was around midnight their time. They’ve been working really hard, he said. They haven’t been able to come up with much on this James Harvest. But he lived well – by Australian standards, I suppose they mean.’
God, thought Prue, she’s becoming as provincial as Stephane.
‘I think they’re fairly civilized down there,’ said Nina, tongue in cheek seeking a piece of stray quenelle.
‘The point is,’ said Margaret, ‘they haven’t yet come up with any conclusive proof that James Harvest was Tim.’
Sally, only toying with her food, did not care whether the lawyers came up with proof or not. She was convinced that James Harvest and Nigel Burgess and Tim Davoren were one and the same man; but she was still struggling with herself as to how to express that conviction. As she had been struggling with herself ever since the death of her father, when she had learned that the go-between who had been killed with her father had been named Burgess. She had argued with herself that no harm could be done by telling Nina that she had met Tim in the Congo back in 1961; but she had known the argument was weak. Nina would never forgive her for having concealed the information for so long. It no longer mattered why she had been in the Congo: that was a forgotten war and nobody cared any more who had been on whose side. It would be almost impossible to explain to Nina how she had come to make her bargain with Tim there in the Congo bush: she couldn’t expect Nina to understand. It worried her just as much that perhaps Charlie, too, would neither understand nor forgive her.
Prue said, ‘What have the Australians come up with about Clive himself?’
‘Nothing much. He seems to have been a pretty public personality. On the sports pages,’ Margaret added, downgrading him socially.
‘Have you told Martha and Emma yet? They might welcome a male cousin. Even one from the sports pages.’
‘I called them,’ said Margaret and said no more.
Martha, married to a history graduate and living in Paris, and Emma, unmarried and living in a commune in California, had been unexcited, almost uninterested, when Margaret had called them. She, who looked upon herself as the cornerstone of the Beauforts, had brought forth two children who had run away from the Beaufort name. Anyone who wanted to reverse the path, Emma had said on the phone, had only their sympathy. Margaret wondered just how much of their respective fathers sometimes spoke in them.
‘What about your two?’ Sally said to Prue.
‘They’re all for him. Melanie’s thrown out Robert Redford and pinned Clive’s photo up on her wall. Grace has done the same. He’s replaced the picture of her pony.’ Melanie was now fourteen and Grace, Roger’s child, was five, both of them as romantic as their mother had been but not as alert and observant.
George Biff, doubling again as butler, came in with the boeuf en gelée. These weekly luncheons of the four sisters, held regularly when they were all home, delighted him. Each of the sisters took it in turn to have the luncheon in her own house, but it was understood that George was always to be the butler. The servants in the other houses might resent it, but it had become a ritual, with him as much part of it as the sisters themselves.
‘Looks good, Miz Nina. You want me to slice it?’
‘I’ll do it, George. Just bring in the red wine.’
‘No red for me,’ said Margaret. Sally followed her lead, adding, ‘It brings on the hot flushes.’
George said, ‘How about you, Miz Prue? You hot flushed, too?’
‘Only with embarrassment that you should ask such a question. Do you put questions like that to all the women you know?’
‘Not any more,’ he grinned. ‘You stick with the white wine. A little red-eye don’t hurt no man, but it don’t do the ladies no good.’
‘You’d know,’ said Nina. ‘You old reprobate.’
George, on his way out of the room, smiled back at all of them. He knew how concerned they all were with the problem of this feller Harvest; in the past few days he had seen Miz Nina growing older before his eyes. He thought the tennis feller might be Michael, but if it was left to him to decide he’d say no. Let bygones be bygones.
‘I looked after all you ladies pretty good.’
‘Indeed he has,’ said Sally when he had gone. ‘Maybe we all should have married him.’
The four sisters silently debated that option with themselves, but each of them decided that she was happy with the husband she now had. Even allowing for the fantasy of Sally’s suggestion, marrying George, or anyone like him, would have been a problem right from the start. Lucas had never shown any sign of colour prejudice; but then perhaps he had never really been tested. None of his daughters had ever brought home a black lover. Not even Sally.
Then George came back to the door. ‘Mrs Alburn. Mr Alburn is on the phone. He says it’s important.’
Margaret excused herself, went out to what had been her father’s study and was now Magnus’s. Little had been changed in it: Magnus had no desire to exorcize Lucas’s ghost. But it was a long time since Margaret had been in the room and she felt an almost overwhelming flood of emotion as she looked around. She picked up the phone.
‘Meg?’ Bruce occasionally allowed his soft dry voice to get excited; today was one of those occasions. ‘We’ve come up with something that our friend Harvest forgot to mention to us. He was here in Kansas City two months ago, for a couple of days.’
‘He could have been on his way to some tournament.’ She wondered why she was defending Clive Harvest. She looked around the room again, saw her mother’s photo smiling at her from the mantel over the fireplace. Why did Magnus still keep that photo here in the study? Had he ever told Nina that he had once been in love with Edith? Oh God, she thought, the secrets …
‘Meg? Did you hear what I said? Listen to me. He was here to see a private investigator. He engaged him to draw up a dossier on the Beaufort family.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The investigator came to Magnus and me this morning. He’s double-crossing Harvest, but that doesn’t matter. He’s shown us the list of questions Harvest wanted covered in the dossier. One of them was to find out how much the family is worth and what was in your father’s will. The investigator couldn’t answer that last question and that was when he decided to come to us.’
‘What’s the investigator’s name?’
‘Pedemont. Dave Pedemont. There’s no reason you should ever have heard of him.’
4
It was match point in the final set, Harvest serving for the championship. The auditorium was full tonight; the match and the atmosphere had complemented each other. Up in the press boxes the sports writers were honing their clichés; in the television commentary box the clichés had been worn tissue-thin. For the spectators it was simply the best doubles match they had ever seen.
Harvest threw the ball high, called on an overdraft of strength and served as hard as at any time during the match. ‘Fault!’ cried a line umpire; but the call was so close that the spectators on that side of the court booed. Harvest took his time, bouncing the ball several times before steadying himself for the second serve. He threw the ball high, higher, it seemed, than on the first serve; again he called on that reserve of strength that seemed to have deserted the other three players. The racquet hit the ball at an exact point in the air where everything met: power, followthrough, direction. There probably had not been a faster serve all night: the ball was just a flash across the eyes. It clipped the backhand corner, kept going away, and the receiver had no chance to return it. He flung a despairing racquet at it, got only the rim to it and the ball went ricocheting off into the crowd. The auditorium rose up, looked like lava ready to spew down into the court. The match was over and the Australians, Harvest and Gissing, were the World Professional Doubles champions. And, since money was what they were playing for, each of them was $25,000 richer.
Charlie Luman let out his breath in a long whistle. ‘If you’re going to win
, that’s the way to do it. Everybody gets their money’s worth.’
‘I think I’d rather win six-love,’ said Bruce.
Magnus looked at Nina, pressed her hand. ‘Well, he’s won something.’
‘Do we have to have this meeting tonight?’ she said. ‘It’s a shame to spoil all his good feeling over that win. It’s the biggest win he’s ever had.’
‘He’s leaving for Houston in the morning.’
‘I know. But – ’ She looked over her shoulder at him as he helped her into her coat. ‘Is that man – the private investigator – do we have to have him there tonight?’
Margaret, beside her, pulled her own coat about her. ‘I don’t think this is a meeting where outsiders should be present.’
‘I’m sorry, girls,’ said Magnus. ‘But you left it to us men to try and get all this sorted out. We’ve decided this man Pedemont could be our trump card – if one is needed. Harvest has always had a plausible answer when we’ve caught him out on a few things. That point about changing over from being left-handed to right-handed when he was a kid. Not being able to produce a photo of his father because his father was camera-shy. We just want to see how he reacts when we bring Pedemont into the room.’
Going back home in the Rolls-Royce Nina said, ‘I’m beginning to wonder how I would have handled this if I’d been alone. An only daughter and still not married again.’