Spearfield's Daughter (44 page)

He listened while she explained her position. “You want to stay permanently?”

“That's a pretty permanent term. Maybe. I don't know. But probably.” She dared not tell him about ambition. Jack had understood, even if he hadn't liked it; but Tom never had and probably never would. “I'd like a job on the
Courier.
If they can give me a job and fix me a visa . . .” Then all at once she wanted to get out of the car, go back to Manhattan, try some other way of sneaking into America. “I'm sorry. I'm bludging on you.”

“Bludging?”

If she was going to remain in America she would have to start speaking the language. “Back home it means—well, bumming on someone.”

He
had turned off on to a side road that climbed and dipped through rolling hills. She caught glimpses of small lakes, large houses, woods that looked as if they might have been delivered gift-wrapped. She had seen enough of such areas in England, Germany and France with Jack to know she was entering rich territory. There would be no Indians hereabouts, only Claudine Roux, who might be more warlike than Geronimo, especially when she found out what message had been brought by the Aston-Martin stagecoach.

“My dear Cleo—” He had never called her that before and it sounded a little affected. She hoped he was not going to grow pompous as he grew older. “I don't have any official pull at the
Courier,
any clout. I've been promoted since I saw you last, but I'm still only the assistant features editor. But I'm also the son of the chairwoman and publisher and, if Mother dies before me, which I'm beginning to doubt, I'll some day be the biggest stockholder. I very rarely get the opportunity to do anyone a favour, I mean do something that will mean something to them. So don't think you're—bludging? If you are, I couldn't be more pleased. You'll get a job on the
Courier
and you'll get your visa, I promise.”

III

Claudine was not expecting Alain to bring a guest, especially Cleo Spearfield. Her guest list was evenly divided between the sexes and now Alain had upset the balance; what was worse, he had upset her. She greeted Cleo politely, then on a pretext took Alain aside.

“Alain, you know how I detest unexpected guests—”

“Mother,
please.
Just for once let's have a lopsided table. Cleo is my friend and I asked her.”

“I didn't know you knew her well enough to call her a friend.”

“She is now. You didn't ask me who I wanted as my weekend partner—whom did you get, anyway?”

“Polly Jensen, of course. You've taken her out—”

“Twice, that's all.”

“How many times have you taken Miss Spearfield out?”

“Once, in London a couple of years ago.”

“Was that when she broke up with Lord Cruze and disappeared from London?”

He looked at her sharply. “You don't miss much, do you? You're a gossip-monger, Mother.”

“
No, I take in gossip, I never dispense it.
That's
a gossip-monger. What I've just said about Miss Spearfield is fact, not gossip. Was that when you took her out? Did you cause the break-up between her and Lord Cruze?”

He laughed nervously; fortunately it came out as a scoff. “I think you have far too much faith in the Brisson charm. I'm not Uncle Roger.”

“Thank God for that,” said Claudine and went back to Cleo.

They studied each other behind the cane-brake of their smiles, each lying in ambush for the other. They had not met in several years, but neither could see much change in the other. Claudine, Cleo noted, was remarkable: some women age suddenly when they move into their sixties, but Claudine seemed to have put a stop to the years. Claudine, on the other hand, noted that Cleo was no longer a girl but a woman and therefore more formidable.

“Miss Spearfield—”

“Mrs. Roux, I'd prefer it if you called me Cleo.”

“Of course. Did you come by barge?”

I should have stayed in Manhattan, I should never have called Alain.
“Only across the Hudson River. Or Nile West, as I like to think of it.”

Claudine smiled, thinking that perhaps the weekend would not be so bad after all. “Do you breed asps as a hobby?”

Float the barge, Alexas, we return to the Second Avenue deli palace this night.

Then Claudine relented, took Cleo's arm. “Welcome to Souillac. I think you and I, if no one else, may have a splendid weekend.”

None of the other guests had yet arrived. When Claudine went away to give instructions to the servants, Cleo walked out to stand on the large terrace that fronted the huge house. The sky was still bright and the countryside sloped away below the house in a soft pattern of light and dark green, more restful on the eyes than any darkened room on Second Avenue. She suddenly realized that the angles, the glittering planes and the harsh light of Manhattan had been battering at her for too long. She took off her dark glasses and let the green wash over her.

“What's the matter?” Alain had come out to stand beside her.

“
I just remembered a couple of lines of poetry I once used in my column. A Welsh poet named Davies.
I stare at dewdrops till they close their eyes/I stare at grass till all the world is green.
I hadn't realized how tired I am, even my eyes.”

“You don't want to sleep all weekend?”

“And miss all this?” She gestured at the house and the acres in which it stood. It was as big as St. Aidan House, but she doubted that it had been built by king-makers.

“Great-grandfather Brisson built it,” said Alain. “We're only about fifteen or twenty miles across the State line from Tuxedo Park.”

“Tuxedo Park?”

“It's a social resort, or was.” He wondered how much she knew about the class structure in America. He had always known the upper levels, but had only come to know the many gradations when he had gone to work on the
Courier.
But now he was talking about one of the top levels: “It was built by Pierre Lorillard—the Fifth, I think. He was one of the tobacco Lorillards. The first Lorillard, Pierre One, was the first man ever to be called a millionaire. Incidentally, we never use that word around the family. Mother thinks it's vulgar.”

“Oh, so do I.” He had sounded for a moment as if he, too, thought it was vulgar.

“No mickey-taking. Anyhow, Pierre Five built Tuxedo Park over there in New York State as a resort for the Four Hundred. You've heard of the Four Hundred?”

“Who hasn't?” Ninety-five per cent of the world's population, perhaps: but now was not the time to nit-pick.

“You could only join the Tuxedo Park Club by invitation. Great-grandfather declined his invitation—he was a bigger snob than Mother. He felt that any society that allowed a figure as high as four hundred to be classed as its elite had no sense of values. So he built Souillac, which is named after the region where the family originally came from in France. That was back in 1895 and he never invited more than twenty or thirty of the Four Hundred here. The standards have gone down since then, of course.”

“Of course. Or why should I be here?”

He smiled and took her hand. “Actually, I feel you've raised the standards about ten notches.”

After she had showered and changed Cleo quietly, almost surreptitiously, inspected the mansion.
It
was too large and forbidding to have any charm. The architect, brought over from France, had been bemused by his assignment. Trying to marry both sides of the Atlantic, he had only succeeded in putting a scaled-down version of Versailles to bed with one of the more formidable New York armouries. Cleo gave up counting the rooms when she reached thirty; to anyone brought up in a four-bedroomed house, anything larger is not a home. She sidled along the panelled corridors, climbed the wide staircases, opened doors on rooms that had more taste and better proportions than the exterior of the house suggested. She was still unconcerned with possessions of her own, but, despite the experience of her years in England, she still had some awe of what the rich possessed. As the real estate agents say, you can move people out of the suburbs but you can't take the suburbs out of the people.

She opened one wide heavy door and found herself in a billiards room. She supposed Americans would call it a pool room, though that suggested shady characters looking for suckers to be conned into a game where they'd lose their shirts. No shirts would be lost in this room. She could imagine the side bets, maybe a hundred dollars or even a thousand; but the real bets would have been placed on things far beyond this room, on mergers and takeovers and the floating of new ventures. The green baize table would be a substitute board table. She could see Alain's father or grandfather, cue in hand, as chairman of the board. She remembered the games she had played with her father in the makeshift billiards room on the back verandah in Coogee. There had been no side bets there, only a warm friendly rivalry as she and her brothers tried to beat the self-acknowledged family champion.

She ran her hand over the cues in the rack, then looked around for some balls but could see none. Perhaps over the weekend she might challenge Alain to a game. All at once she felt a nostalgia for what the family had once had on the back verandah in Coogee. She went out, closing the door on the feeling as well as on the room.

She finished her inspection of the great house. It had brought home to her the real wealth of the Brissons. They were like all the old rich: they would never show their bank balances, not even under pain of death, but erected their houses like billboards of their position. Immodesty has to break out even amongst the well-bred.

Friday night had to be swum through; Cleo knew now that she had fallen into a deeper pool than she had anticipated. Alain would not be the only one to have a say in whether she got a job on the
Courier
and,
more importantly, sponsored her for a visa. The final say would be Claudine's.

Ten of the weekend guests had arrived by seven o'clock. With Alain and his mother and herself, Cleo could see thirteen sitting down to dinner: the weekend began to look worse and worse. She always told everyone she was not superstitious, but the Celt in her knew better.

The guests were a mixed lot, but not too mixed; they all looked as if they came from the same bank. This was not the assortment she had seen at Jack Cruze's weekends or his dinner parties, when ambassadors and Cabinet ministers and trade union officials and film and theatre stars had, if not rubbed shoulders, then rubbed each other up the wrong way. That was not likely to happen with this lot, she thought. There were no outsiders here, except herself, no social climbers: she might be an outsider, but she was not one of
that
sort. The guests, she decided, fitted together like cogs, well oiled by money and the certainty of their own position.

“This is Polly Jensen,” said Claudine and brought forward a slim blonde like a couturière introducing a new creation; Cleo had the feeling it was all so stage-managed that she would not have been surprised if Polly Jensen had pirouetted to show herself off. “An
old
friend of Alain's. They went to nursery school together. This is Cleo Spearfield, a new friend. From Australia.” She made it sound like Darkest Africa before the Empire builders had switched on the lights. “You must play tennis together tomorrow.”

“You play tennis, of course?” said Polly Jensen as Claudine left them to tear each other down. “Australians are such good tennis players. We had John Newcombe staying with us for a weekend early this summer. He worked on my backhand.”

Bully for Newcombe. He'd have to give up his own career if he wanted to work on mine.
“I'm afraid surfing is my sport.” There was no surf within miles, thank God. “But I'll enjoy watching you and your backhand.”

A tall distinguished-looking man interrupted them before carnage could begin. “I'm Polly's father, Stephen. Alain's been telling me about you, Miss Spearfield. I remember reading your column when I was in London. Are you going to join the
Courier?
Between you and me, it could do with a little livening up. I say that as a stockholder.”

The name Jensen clicked. Cleo remembered that this man was one of the top bankers in the United States, one of the movers and shakers whom Washington listened to. She looked at him with interest, since he was looking at her in the same way, and wondered if he could move and shake to get her
an
extended visa; that would relieve her of any obligation to Claudine Roux, if the latter decided to help at all. Then she saw the deeper look in Mr. Jensen's eye and decided against asking even the smallest favour of him. As Gus Green would have said, that was the wrong route, one she had taken before. Stephen Jensen would be almost exactly the same age as Jack Cruze.

“I'm still looking around, Mr. Jensen. I haven't decided yet what I'll do.”

“If I can help, please do call me. I think you should fit very well into the public relations field.”

“And into a bikini,” said Polly Jensen and walked away.

Her father looked after her with benign irritation. “My daughter thinks I should never compliment a woman younger than myself. Have you anything against older men, Miss Spearfield?”

Only their age and their possessiveness and their jealousy . . . “I get on very well with my father, Mr. Jensen.”

“
Touché
,” said Stephen Jensen, who knew a rapier when it nicked him. He flicked his grey moustache with one finger, like a gesture of appreciation. “I've been told by my colleagues who have been Down Under that Australians know how to take care of themselves.”

“It's the aboriginal blood in us,” said Cleo and saw that Jensen was not sure whether she was joking or not. He looked at her almost-black hair before he hesitatingly smiled.