by Lewis Orde
“Not me, Raymond. You did it all by yourself.”
“I did?” He sounded surprised, then pleased. “I did, didn’t I? But I’d still hug you if you were here.”
“Save it until you come over at Christmastime. And I expect you to bring whatever you’ve done with you.”
“You won’t have to wait until then. I’ll mail you pages every week.”
*
Barnhill kept his promise. At the end of October, the first seventy-five pages arrived in a large brown envelope, accompanied by a note that read, “Find an apologist — show me someone suffering from angst — anywhere in these pages!”
Katherine could not. Barnhill had invented as wild a group of characters as she had ever seen in a book. The Squad was nowhere near as literate or sensitive as his previous two novels, but its commercial appeal seemed far greater.
Another fifty pages followed quickly, and Katherine could picture Barnhill sitting at his desk, the sheets just flying out of the typewriter. She would bet that he was having far more fun writing this than the other two.
Barnhill arrived in London on the morning of Christmas Eve. As he cleared customs, he saw Katherine leaning over the barrier. Not caring who saw, he rushed over to her and kissed her.
“You look marvelous!” he exclaimed. “Even better than when I last saw you.”
“You as well.” There was a gleam in his eyes. Katherine hoped it was because of her, but she wouldn’t mind if some of it was due to the new book. She was a part of that as well.
“What’s happening with The Squad?” Katherine asked as she drove away from the airport.
“I sent a few chapters and the outline last week to an agent who specializes in suspense and war novels. Now I’ve got to wait and see if he wants to represent me.”
“He will,” Katherine said. She stopped at a traffic light, drumming her fingertips on the steering wheel while she waited for the green. “What do you want to do today?”
“I’d like to go shopping. I’ve been working so hard on The Squad, I didn’t get time to pick up anything for the kids.”
They spent the afternoon battling the crowds of last-minute shoppers in the West End. “My God!” Barnhill exclaimed, as he and Katherine staggered out of Hamleys toy store on Regent Street. “I’d forgotten how rude Londoners can be. They’re even worse than those monsters in New York.”
“Nonsense!” Katherine told him, ready to defend her town. “The British have bonier elbows, that’s all. Comes from having less to eat than New Yorkers.”
They ate dinner at Kate’s Haven. Later, when Henry and Joanne had gone to bed, Katherine and Barnhill set gifts beneath the Christmas tree which Jimmy Phillips had erected in the front room. When they finished, Phillips and Edna added their own gifts to the pile. The housekeeper had expressed pleasure when Katherine had told her that Barnhill would be a guest for the Christmas week. A house the size of Kate’s Haven needed lots of people, otherwise it was in danger of becoming an echo chamber.
At eleven o’clock, after Edna and Phillips had retired to their self-contained flat on the top floor, Katherine saw Barnhill to the door of the guest bedroom. “Should you need anything during the night, Raymond, my room’s there.” She pointed across the wide hall. “Can you remember that?”
“I think so.”
“Good.” She kissed him quickly, then again, more slowly. “Sleep well.”
“I’m three-quarters of the way there already.”
“I should warn you. My children are notoriously early risers, especially on Christmas morning. I hope they don’t disturb you.” She stayed for one more lingering kiss before going to her own room.
The kisses lit a slow fire within her. She lay in bed, anticipating the sound at her door. When half an hour had passed, she grew impatient. Throwing a robe over her satin nightdress, she crossed the hall to the guest bedroom. The door swung back quietly. Moonlight covering the queen-sized bed showed Barnhill to be asleep.
Katherine hesitated. What if one of the children chose this moment to wake up and wander into the hall? She backed away from the guest room, and looked first into Henry’s room, then Joanne’s. Both children slept soundly. She returned to the guest room. This time, she walked straight in, dropped her robe and nightdress onto the carpet, and slid beneath the quilt that covered Barnhill.
He woke up when Katherine’s fingernails teased his flat stomach. “I thought you might be lonely,” she whispered.
“You’re a very considerate hostess.”
“I hope you’re an appreciative guest.”
He laughed. She killed the sound by kissing him. Hungry for each other, they made love quickly. Afterward, Katherine rested her head on Barnhill’s chest, listening to his steady heartbeat.
“Don’t let me fall asleep, Raymond. I have to get back to my own room.”
“There’s time.” He ran fingers through her long blond hair. “Plenty of time.”
Katherine’s eyes began to close. Twice she snapped them open, each time asking, “Are you awake, Raymond?”
“Awake, and alert.”
A third time she let her eyelids drop. When she opened them again, the moonlight had gone. The sky was a dirty gray, and the sharp and happy sound of children’s voices rang throughout the house. Barnhill’s wristwatch, sitting on the edge of the bedside table, read six-forty.
“Damn!” Katherine sat up, throwing back the quilt. Barnhill was still asleep. She slapped his chest. “Wake up!”
“What is it?”
“You let me sleep. Now everyone’s up. How on earth do I get back to my own room?”
“Check that the coast is clear, then make a dash for it.”
After putting on her nightdress and robe, she cracked open the door. “It’s clear.”
“Move out!”
Taking a deep breath, Katherine opened the door wide and stepped out into the hall. As she did so, Joanne came flying up the stairs, chased by Henry. Behind them, trying valiantly to preserve the early-morning peace and quiet, was Edna. Katherine, half in and half out of the guest bedroom, turned to stone.
Seeing their mother, the children stopped. Edna summed up the situation in an instant. “Good morning, Mrs. Kassler. Did you find out if Mr. Barnhill prefers tea or coffee with his breakfast?”
“Coffee,” Katherine answered as she closed the door to the guest room. “Americans don’t drink tea.” She crossed the hall to her own room, closed the door and leaned against it. She could kiss Edna. The housekeeper was worth her considerable weight in gold.
Following tradition, the family traveled to Roland Eagles’s home for Christmas lunch; this year, the group included Barnhill. Sally Roberts was also there, and much of the conversation centered on the work Barnhill had done for the Eagle. As the day drew to a close, Roland extended an invitation to Barnhill.
“Would you and Katherine care to join Sally and me for dinner tomorrow night? A club I belong to in Mount Street. Kendall’s. They have a particularly fine restaurant.”
“Thank you, sir. That sounds very nice.”
“Afterward, perhaps, we’ll have time to play the tables.”
Barnhill made no response to that suggestion.
On the way home, Katherine asked Barnhill if he realized he was being tested. “My father has his own aptitude and character tests. They concern how people gamble.”
“In that case, I’ll be a major disappointment to him.”
Katherine found out what Barnhill meant the following evening at Kendall’s. After dinner, Roland inclined his head toward a blackjack table. “Care to try your luck, Raymond?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“No?” Roland appeared startled. He was unaccustomed to his invitation being rejected. “Why on earth not?”
“I don’t make so much money that I can afford to fritter it away on games of chance. Even if I did, I would rather donate it to charity than risk losing it on the turn of a card.”
Sally, sitting on Barnhill’s ri
ght, clapped her hands loudly, crying, “Well said! Now where does that put all your ridiculous theories about gambling and life, Roland Eagles?”
Roland wasn’t through yet. “Call it a gambler’s silly superstition, Raymond, but I hate to play alone. I’ll stake you. Just play alongside me.”
“No, thank you, sir. I do not play.”
“But you gave Katherine a slot machine as a present once,” Roland protested.
“That was a gag, sir. Your daughter suffered from certain misconceptions about the United States, and I was merely accommodating her.”
“Would you do me one favor?” Roland asked. “Stop calling me ‘sir’. It makes me feel very, very old. You wouldn’t mind, I take it, if I tried my luck?”
“Not at all. Your money is your own, to use wisely or to waste as you wish.”
While Roland played blackjack, Sally said to Barnhill, “You’ve impressed him more by refusing to gamble than you could ever have done by winning.”
Sally was correct. Watching the cards being dealt, Roland felt nothing but admiration for Raymond Barnhill. The American held strong convictions from which he refused to be swayed. Even to humor his employer.
In the days before the new year, Barnhill joined Katherine and the children on visits to circuses and pantomimes, Disney movies and ice spectaculars. Joanne, captivated by the stream of entertainment, was too busy enjoying herself to ask any questions. But Henry, at ten, two years wiser than his sister, needed explanations for the changes he had witnessed in his mother’s life. He wanted to know why Uncle John had not come to the house for so long.
“Aren’t you friends with him anymore?” Henry pressed.
“We’re just interested in different things, darling.”
“What about Raymond?”
“Raymond?” Katherine wished that Barnhill had not been so informal with Henry and Joanne during the previous summer’s vacation. Claiming to dislike honorary titles, he had told the children from the start to call him Raymond. They had been thrilled to do so, even if their mother hadn’t been certain at the time that she liked such familiarity. Now it was too late to change. “Raymond and I are interested in similar things.”
“You mean newspapers and writing?”
“That’s right, Henry.” Katherine hid a smile from her son. “Newspapers and writing.”
Barnhill flew back to New York on New Year’s Day. A week later, he was on the telephone, voice brimming with excitement. “That agent I sent The Squad to . . . he just called me. He read the stuff I sent him and he wants to handle it for me.”
“When will you know anything?”
“He wants a few more chapters before he shows it around. What do you think I should put in the dedication?”
“Never mind the dedication. Write the book.”
“How about ‘For Katherine, the prettiest Kate in Christendom’?”
Katherine laughed.
Barnhill sounded annoyed. “Hey, I think that deserves something better than a hearty guffaw. I was being poetic, showing off my Shakespeare.”
“I know it’s Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew. I’m laughing at the coincidence, that’s all. My mother’s name was Catarina, and the morning after my father met her, he sent her a bunch of roses with those words on the card.”
Knowing the tragic story, Barnhill said, “Perhaps the Bard isn’t so appropriate. I’ll come up with something else.”
“The Bard is very appropriate, and I think it’s a beautiful dedication. Thank you. But remember what I said — get the book written before you worry about anything else.”
Barnhill worked at it. Each week, more pages came through Katherine’s mailbox, and each time she spoke to him, they discussed how the latest scenes could be improved. By the middle of February, Barnhill had written almost half of The Squad, enough for the agent to show around.
“He’s sent it out to nine publishers,” Barnhill told Katherine. “Those who are interested will have the opportunity to bid in an auction on the last day of March.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Petrified. What if no one bids?”
“Don’t be such a pessimist. Do you think the agent would waste his time and effort unless he thought he could make some money out of it?”
“He could be crazy. . . . New York’s full of crazy people.”
Beneath the banter, Katherine could feel Barnhill’s anxiety. The disaster of the last two books was haunting him, and the next six weeks, especially the actual time of the auction, would be pure hell for him. Katherine made up her mind to help.
“Raymond, I can take a few days off at the end of March. Would you like me to come over?”
“Would you?” He sounded like he’d just been offered the keys to Fort Knox.
“Of course.”
*
The auction was set for a Wednesday. Katherine flew out on the Monday, with a homeward reservation for the Thursday evening, April i. She carried an assortment of reading material that included the latest pages of The Squad, which had arrived two days earlier, and a copy of the Eagle. She put the newspaper down within a couple of minutes, depressed by the front-page news of saber-rattling between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. She hoped it was just press talk to sell more papers.
Barnhill met her at the airport and took her to the Carlyle. They went out for dinner that night to the Four Seasons. Barnhill just pecked at his food, and Katherine could see the tension working on him. By Wednesday, the date of the auction, he would be a nervous wreck, either ready to jump clear over the moon, or dig himself a hole into which to crawl.
On Tuesday, Barnhill was even more agitated. Katherine spent the entire day with him, constantly trying to find new things to do. They visited the zoo, and in the evening they saw a movie.
Wednesday, auction day, was pure murder. When Katherine arrived at the apartment at ten o’clock, Barnhill was standing by the telephone, ready to spring the moment it rang.
“As well as driving yourself crazy, Raymond, you’re driving me mad. Will you just relax? The agent will contact you when he has some news.”
Barnhill didn’t move.
Katherine left the apartment. When she returned twenty minutes later, she was carrying a game of Scrabble. “Sit down and play,” she ordered Barnhill.
The game of Scrabble occupied Barnhill’s interest until lunchtime. After turning on the answering machine, they went out for lunch, walking from the apartment to a busy Italian restaurant on Seventh Avenue, close to Central Park. A man at another table was reading a newspaper while he ate. The headline caught Katherine’s eye: “War Imminent over Falklands.”
They returned to the apartment at two-thirty. The light on the answering machine was flashing. Barnhill replayed the tape. There had been two calls: a hangup, and a message from Lawrie Stimkin, of all people, asking for a story on American reaction to the growing tension in the South Atlantic. Barnhill went back to watching the telephone, and Katherine could do nothing but watch Barnhill.
The telephone rang three times during the afternoon. Barnhill got rid of each caller as quickly as possible; he didn’t even bother telling Katherine who it was.
At four-thirty, Katherine suggested he call the agent.
“And show him just how nervous I am?”
“What’s wrong with that? If he knows you’re really anxious, he might work harder and push some of the fence-sitters into action.”
“Katherine, maybe no one’s sitting on the fence.”
She almost told him not to be so bloody pessimistic. Instead, she phrased it differently. “You know, if you ever want to write about a real down-in-the-mouth worry wart, you can base the character on yourself.”
That drew a rare laugh from Barnhill.
At five o’clock, the telephone rang again. By this time, nervous energy had deserted Barnhill. There was fatigue in his voice as he answered. He listened, spoke a few words, then listened again. When he replaced the receiver and turned toward K
atherine, his face was expressionless.
“That was the agent.”
“And . . .?” Katherine feared the worst.
“You’re going to have a dedication in a hundred-thousand-dollar book. That’s what The Squad sold for. One hundred thousand dollars.”
The news took time to sink in. “Raymond, it would mean just as much if you gave me the dedication in a book of stamps.”
“I know,” he said, and reached out his arms to hug her. “That’s one of the things I love about you.”
*
By the following day, as Katherine prepared to return to London, the storm clouds gathering over the South Atlantic had grown blacker. Barnhill used the situation to try to persuade Katherine to stay on in New York.
“Your country’s going to be at war with Argentina in a few days. Why go back to a country at war? Bring Henry and Joanne over here.”
“There won’t be any trouble over the Falklands. It’s just rhetoric. President Galtieri has a mess of trouble at home, so he’s distracting his people by reviving the age-old controversy over ownership of the Falklands. Cooler heads will prevail.”
“The cooler heads will be British, like yours. I’m afraid they won’t be Argentinian.”
Katherine flashed a triumphant smile. “You’re forgetting that my mother came from there. I’m half Argentine.”
“Do you have any family over there?”
“No. My grandfather, the old ambassador, and my grandmother are both dead. My mother had an older brother, but I know nothing about him.”
“So you really won’t feel too upset if the Brits have to kick a few Argentinian butts.”
“I’ll feel very upset. Most wars are senseless, and the Falklands seems a pitiful reason to fight.”
That evening, when Barnhill escorted her to Kennedy Airport, the air of impending trouble was even more apparent. The British Airways terminal, normally a hive of activity, was strangely silent. Katherine found a copy of that morning’s Eagle, which a passenger had brought over on the earlier west-bound flight. The headlines were ominous. Britain was to request action by the United Nations Security Council to restrain Argentina from any aggressive action aimed at the Falkland Islands; simultaneously, Argentina was seeking support from the Organization of American States. Inside, on the Eagle’s opinion page, was a plea for patience and moderation. Katherine saw her father’s hand there.