by James Philip
Marija had questioned her brother about the demonstrations in San Francisco, attempting to discover if he had been one of the organisers. It seemed not. He had withdrawn from the Stop the War Committee at Berkeley just before things turned nasty in May. She guessed he would have been torn when the authorities made the first arrests in July; and he was clearly deeply affected by the news of the shootings in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, where big demonstrations had turned into pitched street battles, like those in which a dozen people had been killed and hundreds injured in Washington in July and August.
Marija was just glad her brother was here, in Australia, safe.
“Her Majesty is accustomed to people being very nervous when they meet her, sister,” Marija said soothingly to Luiza. Joe had told her a little about his wife’s life, and she had put together much else from reading between the lines of her friend, Miranda Sullivan’s letters in the last eighteen months.
Her friend…
How odd that was, given that although she had spoken to Miranda on the telephone several times, they knew each other solely from their correspondence and then, only because they had a mutual connection via Gretchen Betancourt, and the happenstance that Miranda had converted the house on Haight Street in San Francisco, that Marija had inherited from the amazing woman who had been her friend, mentor and in effect, her second mother, the late Doctor Margo Seiffert, into a refuge for women.
Federico, a street-wise, good-looking kid was more like the little brother Joe had never had, although like Julio, Luiza could not put a name to either of her sons’ natural fathers. They had been men who had used and abused her.
Joe had adopted both boys as his own soon after he and Luiza had married, and in the course of things, Margo had come along in due course. Luiza was petite, dark haired and eyed, prettier than she would admit and to Marija’s chagrin, still more than a little in awe of her famous sister-in-law.
Federico had already been enrolled at St Paul's Catholic College in Manly, a boys-only school; the couple planned to stay at least two years in Sydney while Joe completed his post-graduate studies.
Marija could never remember her brother being so…himself. Unworried by how he seemed to others, or so comfortable in his own skin, and the knowledge made her heart swell with pride and fondness, and lessened her nagging guilt that she had been so happy these last few years while, for most of the time, Joe had been a little lost coming to terms with his own, post-Talavera heroics, fame.
“We join the line,” Peter explained. “When we get to the Royal couple, and Prince Charles and Princess Anne, Joe and I will bow respectfully – just from the neck – and stick out our right hands. Each royal person will shake your hand, let them do the reaching out and gripping it and so on, they are better at that sort of thing than we are,” he added, half-expecting his wife to elbow him in the ribs again, “the ladies can bow too if they want, although I think Her Majesty usually expects some kind of curtsy, nothing special, just a bob will do, and then, before you know it the person behind you is stepping up and the ordeal is over.”
Marija sighed.
“Yes, husband,” she said patiently. “After that we all walk into the reception room. It will be informal, well, relatively informal. Lucy will be there with Ambassador McCain and his wife, and we’ll be with you all the time. If in doubt, just smile, that always works.”
Luiza forced a tight-lipped smile.
And glanced to Joe.
“I have not been married to a hero as long as you, sister,” she murmured shyly. “There is a lot to get used to.”
Marija, who was sitting opposite her brother’s wife, leaned towards her, and whispered confidentially.
“The important thing is never to remind them they are heroes; because their heads swell up and then you can’t do anything with them for days!”
Luiza thought about this.
And stifled a nervous giggle.
Marija patted her knee.
“Trust me, you will be fine.”
Chapter 51
Thursday 19th September, 1968
Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington
“What are all these WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN placards one sees all over the place, Nicko?” Peter Christopher inquired as he and Marija settled down for after dinner drinks with their hosts, Sir Nicholas Henderson – the United Kingdom’s Ambassador having been, somewhat belatedly, knighted in the last New Year’s Honours List – and Lady Mary.
The former Governor General of Australia and his wife had been a little surprised not to discover a war zone when they arrived in California, and now, in Washington DC.
‘Things have quietened down a bit,’ they had been assured. ‘A lot of that is to do with the fact that the intensity of the fighting in the Far East has decreased somewhat, or at any rate, there is much less of it on the TV each night, which to most people is the same thing. Oh, that and a depressingly large number of the student leaders of the protest movement are in prison…’
Jack and Mary Griffin had departed for New York with their baby son, Harry that morning; Mary had an uncle and an aunt, practically her only living close family, on Long Island and planned to re-join their friends in the big house the Embassy had rented for them all at Huntingdon, about thirty miles east of Brooklyn. Senior Royal Navy Officers – four rings equalled ‘senior’ – got to bring their own people, within reason, with them to a new command and the Admiralty had wasted no time cutting Jack Griffin’s orders to join HMS Liverpool.
Mary, meanwhile, had become Marija’s Personal Secretary, in confident expectation that whatever happened in the next year or so, her friend was going to be very busy with public appointments, correspondence not to mention, giving birth to her third child. Several wealthy ‘patrons’ had offered to cover the full costs of this but Peter and Marija had turned down these offers, knowing that while they had been in America and later, Australia, the royalties and other income from books about them, articles they had published, and to their astonishment, public donations to a fund set up in honour of his heroism at Malta in 1964, had literally, piled up in untouched bank accounts.
The ‘Malta money’ had now been transferred fifty-fifty to a separate, pre-existing HMS Talavera Benevolent Fund of which he and Marija planned to become full trustees on their return to England, and to support the work of the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women, in Mdina.
It was taken as read by the couple that while Peter picked up the traces of his naval career, that Marija would take a more active – albeit discreet – role behind the scenes in the politics of her native islands.
Nicko and Mary Henderson had been fascinated to hear about these plans, and not surprised in the least by the firestorm of media interest provoked by the couple’s return to America. They had been positively mobbed at the airport in California, and again, here in Washington. People talked about them being treated like movie stars; actually, there were no movie stars with half the charisma of the Christophers; even JFK and Jackie in their heyday could not have competed with them!
Right now, there were still hundreds of people camped out in the rain outside the gates of 3100 Massachusetts Avenue NW, hoping above hope to catch a glimpse of the globe’s most famous husband and wife team. If either Peter or Marija had been old enough – thirty-five – or had been born in the United States, they would have waltzed into the White House on 5th November!
Nicko Henderson had joked, only half in jest that on the day Peter took HMS Liverpool to sea for the first time there would be so many sightseer boats, big and small, in New York’s Upper Bay that one would be able to walk from one side to the other without getting one’s feet wet!
The couple had had an answer for that eventuality; planning to ratchet down the interest before that day arrived. With the Embassy’s assistance they had suggested that the British Council Office in Manhattan might, perhaps, organise a number of appearances where they could be supportive of British cultural or commercial interests in the city, and arrange visits to scho
ols, and factories working on joint Anglo-US projects across the wider State. That ought to dilute a little of the ‘excitement’ their return ‘may have occasioned.’
In fact, Nicko had not dared to hope his friends would still – after their stint in Australia – have the energy, inclination or such obvious enthusiasm for such activities.
Nevertheless, he had offered his friends the opportunity to ‘lie low’.
‘No, no, no, I’m keen to fly the Royal Navy’s flag,’ Peter had remarked, ‘and we both want to acknowledge, and in some small way, repay the help our friends over here are lending the Old Country with the new Lend Lease arrangements.’
Marija was focused on raising the profile of Malta, and trying to promote student exchanges, and the involvement of local communities who prided themselves on their connections with, or Mediterranean heritage, to engage with the ‘Buy A Brick For Reconstruction’ initiative, or to donate directly to Maltese charities, especially those promoting the training of neo-natal and paediatric nurses and doctors, running alongside the archipelago’s traditionally under-resourced, basic free at the point of contact, public health service.
“Oh, yes,” Nicko chuckled, half under his breath, with a rueful shake of the head that set his rebellious hair in motion over his brow, “all those WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN billboards are down to Gretchen Betancourt-Brenckmann, or so they say.”
Marija gave her friend a blank look.
Gretchen had not alluded to the nationwide billboard campaign in any of her recent letters. Of course, she and Gretchen tended not to talk about politics, or the fact that she had recently become one of, if not the richest women in America, and likely, the world but about her bambinos, domestic things, as did Marija. Both women had very busy lives which often led to them feeling guilty for having neglected their spouses and little ones.
That said, Gretchen had advised Marija to steer well clear of ‘Women’s Movement’ issues while she was in the North America. ‘That’s poisonous, what with the election coming down to the wire,’ she had cautioned, knowing that it was not Marija’s way to inadvertently court controversy.
“Apparently,” the British Ambassador went on, pausing to sip coffee, “it costs about four million dollars to ensure that most Americans see at least one, or probably, dozens, of those billboards every day of their lives.”
“Ambassador Brenckmann coined the epithet several months ago,” Mary Henderson interjected. “That was just after the California primaries. Around the time that Senator McGovern stepped aside to give him a free run at the Presidency. WE WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN is also the title of Sam Brenckmann’s and Bob Dylan’s latest single, which everybody says is going to go straight to number one when it is released next week. The radio stations are already playing the song; it is pretty brutal about what President Nixon has been up to the last few years!”
“Although,” her husband groaned, “we couldn’t possibly comment on the verisimilitude of its lyrics, one way or the other.”
Marija frowned, remembering being followed everywhere by men in dark coats and Homburgs when she was carrying Elisabetta. That had been in the months after the Wister Park siege and massacre, horrible times when the constant clicking and hissing of their telephones had told them somebody was always listening in, and neither she, or Peter, or anybody at the new Embassy in Philadelphia had trusted any American in uniform. They had never been safe during their time at the Philadelphia Embassy; it was only by the grace of God, and Jack Griffin’s suicidal bravery, that she and her sister, Rosa Hannay, had not been murdered by a man in a Philadelphia PD uniform one Sunday after attending Mass, or that day when they visited Dermot O’Reilly’s HMS Cavendish at the Navy Dockyard…
It was hard to remember that Jack Kennedy had still been President when they first came to America, although not then the friend he had since become.
Marija thought about that dreadful night she and Peter had gone to Thomas Jefferson Memorial Hospital and sat with Jackie in the hours after a priest had administered the last rites to her stricken husband. Marija would never forget that despite the fact the President’s wife was surrounded by people that night, that she was so alone…
Those had been strange times and later, it seemed, the first thing Richard Nixon had done when he walked into the White House, was to redouble the surveillance of foreign legations, and to institute the blanket spying operation directed against his political opponents in particular and the American public in general.
“Is it true that Ambassador Brenckmann plans to prosecute President Nixon if he wins the election?” She asked. “Nobody is talking about putting JFK or LBJ in jail, and they were the ones, well, I suppose, President Eisenhower, too, if we’re being picky, who were running Operation Chaos long before he won the election in 1964?”
“Yes, apparently he is implacable about it. Unreasoningly so, which is odd for such a profoundly reasonable, rational man,” Nicko Henderson replied.
“We’re a little out of touch with events over here,” Peter confessed. “We’ve relied on official Foreign Office circulars and briefings for the last couple of years…”
“Ah, rather dry reading material,” the other man sympathised.
“It was our job,” his younger friend shrugged, glancing to his wife, “to be non-political, rather one-eyed about everything at Yarralumla. Rightly, the FCO tended to cut us out of the loop; it was our High Commissioner’s job to have the really awkward, international conversations with the Australian Government.”
“Our job was to just keep on smiling,” Marija giggled.
It had been a long day and all the travelling had made her bones ache. She rose to her feet and went across to her husband’s chair to perch on its arm. He patted her knee and this distraction, and the relief that moving gave her stiff legs, took her mind off her complaining bones for a moment.
“The President looked awful when he was on TV the other night,” she murmured, thinking how dreadful it must be for the First Lady and her daughters to constantly have to listen to the calumnies being heaped upon Richard Nixon.
Until she had met Prime Ministers, Presidents and Kings and Queens, princes, princesses and dubious potentates of several murky shades, Marija had never really stopped to contemplate how their spouses, children and friends were impacted by the storms such people constantly navigated. She and Peter had had bad times but nothing in comparison to those Margaret Thatcher, or Jack Kennedy had survived. Richard Nixon and his family had been at the centre of an unrelenting storm for most of the last three years; how could she not feel sorry for them, regardless of the veracity or otherwise of the charges laid against the President?
It must be hard for the President’s daughters, Tricia and Julia. Whatever he had, or had not done, or how wrong-headed what was going on in the Far East was; that was not their fault and they must hate what the media was doing to their father.
“Ever since Senator McGovern dropped out of the race, and he and his wife began campaigning for the Brenckmann ticket, the polls have only been going one way,” Nicko explained. “Presently, Ambassador Brenckmann and the President are neck-and-neck but the arithmetic of the Electoral College remains slightly in the incumbent’s favour because of the George Wallace factor.”
Marija had always thought electing a President by any other means than a direct head count was odd; the notion that it was perfectly possible for a man who had lost the popular vote, possibly by several million votes, to be elected by the votes of the five-hundred-and-thirty-eight members of the Electoral College, themselves elected on a state by state, winner takes all basis, jarred her sense of rightness. It was not even as if an individual state’s number of electoral votes was wholly determined by the population of a given state. No, the formula went something like: however many senators represented the state in the US Senate plus one delegate for every three hundred and thirty, or forty thousand who lived in the state (which in the event, so far away from the last Census, held in 1960, and with all
the post-October War and Civil War exoduses and influxes of people, was only ever going to be a rough and ready estimate) equalled a state’s delegate entitlement.
In 1964, an election conducted on the basis of the 1960 Census which took no account of the October War casualties or the already, self-evident major shifts in population away from the worst-affected cities and regions, the largest state had been New York with a nominal population of 16.8 million and forty-three electoral votes. California had been deemed the second most populous state (15.8 million people and forty electoral college votes). This time around California, with 21.8 million citizens garnered fifty-eight votes, and New York, with 16.3 million people earned forty-five. Some states like Illinois and Wisconsin, respectively the fourth and fifteenth most populous states in the Union in 1960, but cruelly depopulated by the October War and then the war in the Midwest, with prior populations in 1960 of ten million and four million and between them thirty-eight Electoral College votes; now had an estimated combined population of under four million, and retained an allocation of only a dozen electoral college delegates.
In fact, the electoral map had altered so drastically that nobody really understood how the poll numbers assiduously gathered by Gallup and the others, actually equated to electoral college votes. The situation was complicated by belated questions about the legitimacy of the 1964 race; since clearly, the number of electoral votes assigned to at least half of all states, had been a long way off the mark. Many academics posited that had appropriate adjustments been made at the time, that LBJ might have defeated Richard Nixon by as many as thirty ‘college votes’ despite losing the popular vote.
That much, Marija understood.
Nicko Henderson continued her education.
“Lest that seem in any way straightforward, there are a number of states, mainly in the Deep, or ‘Lower’ South, which operate a system of ‘unpledged’ members of the electoral college, and bar out of state candidates from standing in state primaries, and sometimes, in national elections. Thus, although Senator McGovern’s name was barred in Alabama, by some oversight, or due to his poor showing in the New Hampshire primary, Ambassador Brenckmann does actually appear on the ballot in that state, for example. Incredible as it may seem in this day and age, men like George Wallace and like-minded fellows in his part of the continent, regularly fix and gerrymander supposedly open and honest elections. Additionally, if you happen to have black, not white skin, it can be virtually impossible to register to vote in some states. Again, Alabama is a prime offender in this respect. What I am saying, is that nothing is quite what it seems in the South, the playing field is anything but level. After every election, stories are rife about ballot box stuffing, votes going missing and various degrees of ‘tampering’ and ‘mis-counting’, which is why people like Wallace – by no means the most egregious offender and a genuinely fondly regarded and trusted candidate by his own caucus – are so hard to remove once they have burrowed into the fabric of the political system.”