Spearfield's Daughter (40 page)

When the couples, bruised, moved on, Sylvester said, “That was a bit rugged, wasn't it?”

“They thought I was your girl friend.”

“What's wrong with that? I'm not
that
old.”

“Don't start sounding like Jack Cruze.”

He let out the belly-laugh and those other diners who had recognized him said, “There's old Sylvester, happy as Larry as usual.”

A week later he came home and said to Cleo, “There's a vacancy in the office in New York, but it's what they call a locally-engaged post. You'll have to pay your own way to New York and all it pays is the minimum New York union rates. But it will give you an American C-l visa, which means you can stay in the States for as long as you work for a foreign government. It's not much, sweetheart, but it was the best I could do. Everybody and his cousin are down in Canberra looking for a job. It's not only jobs for the boys, but for the girls and hermaphrodites.”

“I'll take it. If I pay my own way to New York, no one can say there was any nepotism.”

A month later she left Sydney, stepping off another cliff but knowing this time she could glide. As she went through Passport Control she was swaggering, but it was unintentional. Life, as they say, is but a dream. She was out of practice, but she had not forgotten how to dream.

Sylvester had come to the airport to say goodbye. He watched her go, tears in his eyes, his own dreams now ashes in his skull.

II

Half a world away Jack Cruze had given up dreaming. For weeks he had nourished the hope that Cleo would come to her senses, which meant she would come back to him. He complained about the stubbornness of women, but was always surprised and annoyed by it. When Christmas came he looked
hopefully
for a card from her; the Queen sent him one, and the Prime Minister and the presidents of half a dozen countries; even the Governor-General of Australia, whom he had never met, sent him one. But not Cleo. He gave up then and looked around for another woman, this time one who had no career or ambition. He chose a divorced countess, closer to his own age, passionate but too indolent to be trendy or ambitious, the failings of his last two mistresses. But often during the night, after he had made love to the countess, he thought of Cleo. In the morning the countess would receive a dozen red roses. She thought they meant he loved her, something that meant nothing to her. She was not to know he sent them as a penance.

He was as engrossed in his business affairs as he had ever been. He continued with his show driving, winning more competitions than he lost. The countess, who, she had told him, had lost her virginity falling off a point-to-point rider and had never since liked the horse scene, never attended the shows with him. Which didn't displease him, since she would have spoiled one of the few pleasures he had left.

He was still troubled by the memory of the attempted murder and suicide. After the shock of finding out that Cleo had disappeared, there had been the equally devastating, if delayed, shock at what he had tried to do. He had gone down to Cleo's flat and searched for the gun but had not found it; that had troubled him, then he had credited Cleo with the good sense to get rid of it. He had rung the Stafford and, using his old Buckinghamshire accent, posed as a taxi driver: he had picked up a young American at the hotel, a man with a limp and a walking stick who had left a parcel in his taxi. Oh yes, that would be Mr. Roux, who had left that morning for the Continent. He had asked them to spell the name and they had: R-o-u-x, Mr. Alain Roux. He had thanked them, said he would bring the parcel to the hotel and hung up. Alain Roux, Claudine's son, the young chap Cleo had had dinner with in New York—how long ago? It didn't matter. Obviously they had kept in touch with each other, though reason told him they could not have met often, if at all.

Alain Roux would have to be watched, listened for. He knew too much, he had been a witness to attempted murder and suicide. The young could not be expected to keep their mouths shut: Jack was convinced of that, it was against the nature of the young. In his own youth he had been as close-mouthed as a lockjawed ant-eater, but one was always different from today's generation; it was necessary to believe that, otherwise one lost confidence in oneself. But how was he to check that Alain Roux did not talk? All he could do was watch for the more obvious hints, such as gossip in American papers, where the law of libel
was
so much looser than here in Britain. Or for subtler hints, such as how Claudine treated him when next he saw her; but perhaps the wisest course there was to stay out of her way. For the next three months he waited for the bomb to go off (or the gun to be fired again, from across the Atlantic); but no sound was heard, no libel published. Yet he knew he would always have Alain Roux to fear.

On the other side of the Atlantic Alain kept his secret. He had had a father who never listened to him and he had a mother who preferred not to discuss awkward questions. He had grown up in an atmosphere where he learned to keep things to himself: he had a treasure-box of small secrets, like a hobby of which he was secretly ashamed. It was no effort to keep to himself what had happened in London. Besides, he was half in love with Cleo; he did not want to endanger his chances with her, in case he fell the other half. He was both honourable and selfish: he wanted to protect Cleo for himself. He was no different from other men in love, or halfway there.

So he said nothing to anyone, and guessed that Lord Cruze probably hated him more than he hated Cleo.

III

“I used to read your stuff in the
Examiner,
when I worked in London.” Stewart Norway was thin and wiry, had black curly hair, glasses and a shy friendly smile that hid one of the sharpest minds in Australian journalism. He was no government hack but, when asked, had taken this job as bureau chief because, if only for a time, he wanted to sell his country instead of newspapers. He would have laughed if anyone had called him a patriot, but that was what he was. It was becoming fashionable back home now to be patriotic and nationalistic, but he had been that way all his life. “Unfortunately, you won't be able to write like that in this job. Frankly, Cleo, I was surprised when you wrote and said you wanted to come here.”

“I'll be frank, too. It was the only way I could get a long-term visa. But I'll give you my best, I promise. There's just one thing—I'd like to write outside stuff, in my own time. The cost of living here in New York isn't cheap.”

“I wish I could pay you more, but Canberra doesn't believe the natives should be spoiled. Because you're locally engaged, even though you've come all the way from Australia, you're looked upon as a native. Okay, you can write outside stuff, just so long as you don't get the bureau into bother. Where are
you
living?”

“For the time being, at a women's hotel downtown. They don't allow men above the ground floor. Lesbians are okay, but not men.”

Though he had been in newspapers all his life, Stew Norway was a little strait-laced. He was uncomfortable with talk about lesbians, even from such an obviously heterosexual girl as Cleo. At least he hoped she was heterosexual. You never knew these days, not with so many closet doors flying open like trapdoors.

The bureau was small, part of the Australian government offices in Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue. The rest of the staff were friendly but wary of Cleo; they knew who she had been in London and, like Stew Norway, they could not understand why she had taken the job. But within a week they found that she was friendly to them, had no airs and worked hard. Only the latter made her suspect: why work so hard for so little pay? They were all Americans, but they had learned the Australian suspicion of someone who appeared to like work.

She waited till she had been in New York two weeks, till she had got her bearings on herself as well as the city, before she called the
Courier.
Or rather, called the
Courier
to ask for Tom Border.

“Tom? This is Cleo.”

There was a noise at the other end of the phone as if he had sat down suddenly on an air cushion; or on his own lungs. “Cleo! Are you in New York? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Working.” She explained where she was, but not why.

But he asked, “Why, for God's sake? A government job?” He was not old, but he had an old newspaperman's suspicion of working for a government. “Your father's not the Consul-General, is he?”

She laughed at the idea. “Dad—
here?
He'd set Australian-American relations back two hundred years. Can we have dinner or something?”

There was a slight hesitation, then he said, “Are you free now? Where are you—in Rockefeller Center? There's a café downstairs, looks out on to the ice rink. We'll have tea, be English.”

That was the last thing she wanted to be: afternoon tea had been a ritual with Jack. “Lovely. Half an hour?”

She told Stew Norway that she had an old friend on the
Courier
who might be a good contact for
placement
of pieces on Australia. It was strange, after all this time, to have to account to someone for her absence from the office, but she played the game strictly according to the rules. She didn't want anyone in the office thinking that she thought herself above them. Privately she thought she was, but she was a modest egotist.

She was waiting in the café by the ice rink when Tom arrived. If that made her seem eager to see him, she didn't care. He squeezed her hand, bent down and kissed her cheek, then sat down opposite her. They ordered tea and English muffins and strawberry jam and when it was brought England was as far away as ever; Europeans can imitate English habits, but Americans, more closely related, just fail. The tea was brewed from tea bags, the muffins tasted like doughnuts and the strawberry jam was a jelly. Mrs. Cromwell would have declared war.

They skated round themselves as delicately as the skaters outside were going round the rink. “What did you think of Rosa Fuchs's sentence?”

That had been months ago, before she had left London to go home. “In a way I was glad they didn't sentence her to death. That would have worried me.”

“Yes,” he said, but didn't sound convinced. “Life imprisonment—I think I'd rather they hanged me. I sometimes think the anti-capital punishment people are more concerned with their own feelings than they are for the prisoners'.”

“I couldn't care less about Rosa Fuchs,” she said emphatically, meaning
let's talk about us.

“Well, fancy you being here! Are you liking it?”

“Very much.” Especially right now.

He waited for her to go on, but she didn't. He looked out at the rink, at a girl in a bright red costume who floated like a firebird about the ice. He had never skated, the ice on the ponds down home had rarely been thick enough, and he envied the grace and sense of freedom that skaters could suggest. He looked back at Cleo

“Can you skate?”

“No. The only sport I was any good at was surfing. I did a lot of that while I was home this summer.” They were like strangers on a train, sharing a meal in the restaurant car. At last she said, “I hear you've written a novel.”

He
nodded. “It's based pretty loosely on a kidnapping in Germany some time ago.”

“Am I in it?” Hoping she was.

Some authors delight in talking about their books, written or unwritten: the Irish are masters at the latter. Others are secretive or just embarrassed, as if they were being asked to write their own reviews. Which all writers, shy or otherwise, would love to do.

“I'm not sure. I guess there are bits and pieces of you in it.”

“Physical bits and pieces? Or something else of me?” Then she smiled and put her hand on his and some of the constraint between them fell away. “No, don't tell me. I'll read it. When does it come out?”

“Two weeks' time.”

“How do they think it will go?” She said nothing about Alain and what he had told her about the book.

His grin was almost an
aw shucks
one: he couldn't boast, not to her. “I can't quite believe it. It—” he said
it,—
not
I
, “it's got both a Literary Guild and a Readers Digest Condensed Books choice. Exeter House, they're my publishers, are doing a first printing of 100,000. We've sold the paperback rights—He paused.

“Well, go on. I never get embarrassed when money's mentioned.”

“Half a million dollars, of which I get half. Exeter gets the other half, as the hardback publisher.” He sounded as if he were trying to excuse himself having so much money.

“Movies?”

“It's been bought by an independent producer who's going to make it for Universal.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand. Plus what I'll get for doing the screenplay. That's what I wanted to tell you . . .”

But she had sat back, at last letting all her surprise and pleasure for him come out of her in a wide gasping smile. “Tom—I'm thrilled for you! God, how successful can you be? And you're sitting there like nothing's happened to you, still trying to sound like the Budweiser boy from the bush . . . Look at you, still in your Harrods' sale suit! And that same old topcoat! Couldn't you have even tried to look successful, just for my sake? No, you come here in disguise, trying to make me feel sorry for you—”

“
Cleo, shut up, please.” He was smiling, pleased that she was so obviously pleased for him. Then the smile died: “I have to tell you something—”

“No, tell me over dinner tonight. I have to get back to the office—no, really. I'm a
worker.
This isn't like working on a newspaper—”

“Cleo old girl—” He held her by the wrist. “I can't take you to dinner tonight—I have a date. And I'm leaving for California in the morning. You were lucky to catch me at the
Courier.
I was there cleaning out my desk.”