Spearfield's Daughter (60 page)

“Jack, what would be our future—well, my future—if we start up all over again? I'd walk out
again
if you started trying to
own
me the way you used to in London.”

“I'm not like that any more. I learned my lesson.”

“You'd still be jealous. That isn't something you can educate yourself out of.”

“Probably. But if I didn't love you so much, I shouldn't be so jealous. One comes with the other. You're lonely, Cleo—I can see it plain as day. So am I, perhaps more than you. There's been no one in London to replace you and Quent.”

She lay back against the sofa on which they sat. She was lonely, he was right about that. The note to Tom months ago on the Rosa Fuchs story had been written as much out of personal loneliness as editorial approval; she had felt guilty about it after she had posted it. His reply had been cooler than she had expected, though she did not know why she should have expected more. He was married and happily so, she supposed: why should he care about her any more? Working on a morning newspaper solved the problem of lonely nights; by the time she was finished it was time to come home and fall into bed. But Saturdays had become empty days, holes in her life.

“It's no use saying I'll give it a trial. That sort of thing never works. It's all the way or not at all with me.”

“I shouldn't want it any other way. That's why I've held back. I didn't want to be coming over here for a bit on the side, as they say.”

“How often will you come to New York if—?” It was as if they were working out some business deal, making sure of all the option clauses.

“I shan't move here—I can't afford to do that. I don't mean money-wise, I mean because of all I own in England. I have to live there to keep an eye on it. I have the company in the Bahamas that owns the stock in the
Courier,
but that's nothing, it was just something I set up to buy into the paper.”

“You were taking a long bet on me, weren't you?”

“I had to, Cleo. I needed you. I'll come over more frequently than now, perhaps every weekend.”

“You won't ask me whom I've been out with from Monday to Friday?” She smiled, but it was a serious question.

He smiled, too. “I told you, I've learned my lesson. What I don't know, I shan't grieve about.” And he would do his best not to imagine.

She
stood up, took his hand. “I can't promise you a good sensible breakfast. All I have is croissants and coffee.”

“I'll survive.” He suddenly seemed to have shed years, he looked like the man she had met so long ago in England.

They went to bed like old lovers, with a mixture of caution and skill; love is as much a craft as an art and they were like craftsmen called back after a long lay-off. It wasn't entirely satisfactory, but the pay was good. They woke in the morning and both of them, no matter how temporary the feeling might be, felt it was good to be back in harness. If nothing else, they had both forgotten their loneliness.

II

Roger Brisson rose from the body of the Congresswoman on a point of order. “Do you mind if I do this my way?”

“Get on with it, you waste so much time.” Representative Tripp was crisp and Californian, she liked things, herself included, done with quick efficiency. Foreplay was something only the unemployed could afford.

He sighed and rolled over on his back. He was losing his touch; or his sense of choice. Mary Tripp was not the only woman he had had in this bed since Louise had left him and gone back to Sands Point. So many of his affairs had begun to take on a slightly ludicrous note, as if he had somehow strayed into a French farce. No doors were opening and shutting, with characters popping in and out (though he would not be surprised if some night Louise popped in through a door); but some of the dialogue sounded as if it might have been written by an ultra-frank Neil Simon. It was a pity that heterosexuals like himself needed women to make love to.

“You're starting to lose your muscle definition.” Mary Tripp was sitting up in bed, looking critically at him. She had just come back from California and, he presumed, a day at Muscle Beach or whatever they called it.

“I'm getting old,” he said, not meaning it.

He got up and went into the bathroom. Making love, he had always felt, was like attacking an enemy hill: if you lost the momentum, the best thing was to retreat and wait for a better opportunity. When
he
came back into the bedroom Representative Tripp was getting dressed.

“I better go. I'm late for a reception at the White House.”

“I thought you couldn't stand the Carters? You keep calling him that peanut farmer.”

She was a Santa Barbara Republican, which meant she didn't even eat peanuts; macadamias perhaps, but never peanuts. “It's only in the course of duty. The whole town's gone downhill since he arrived. Appearing on TV in his cardigan, for God's sake!”

He was ambivalent about his feelings towards President Carter. He had admired Gerald Ford for his decency: the man from Michigan had been just the man to succeed Nixon. But decency was not enough: the world beyond Washington and Congress was too big for Ford. It might prove too big for Jimmy Carter; but Carter had talked to Roger about nominating him for the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The man from Georgia might not know what his foreign policy should be, but he knew a good man when he saw one. Or so the good man himself thought.

“Weren't you invited to the reception?”

“I was,” he said, though he hadn't been. He was learning the rules of the game in Washington, that you never allowed anyone to think you had been excluded from anything. “I have to go to the Indian embassy. I was committed to them first.”

They went out of Watergate separately, knowing the value of discretion in a town where gossip was as much a product as paperwork. They had been indiscreet once or twice early in their affair. He dimly remembered an evening at a charity ball, when he had had too much to drink, when he had been blinded by the sudden glare of a photographer's flash; by the time his eyes had cleared of the glare, the photographer had vanished. He wondered if the photo had ever appeared in any scandal sheet, but he had heard nothing of it. Since Louise had left him he had tried to be less public in his affairs.

As soon as he walked into the Indian embassy Joe Hamlyn, from the
Courier
bureau, came up to him. “Hello, General. Is the Pentagon currying favour with India?”

He smiled. “Don't use that, Mr. Hamlyn.”

“Are you going to India with the President in the new year?”

“Why should I be doing that?”

“Latrine rumours, General. They say you've been approached to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

He
would never get over how much classified information was leaked in Washington. The KGB men at the Russian embassy must think theirs the plum posting of any in the world capitals; he wondered why they would bother to buy information when they could get so much free. Unless, of course, they were like all bureaucracies and had to spend this year's budget or they would have next year's reduced.

“There are four or five men senior to me, Mr. Hamlyn.”

“Ah yes, but President Carter seems to delight in making surprise appointments.”

“I believe he's looking around in Georgia to see if he can find a disused Confederate general. But don't quote me,” he added hastily. It did not pay to joke with newspapermen.

Joe Hamlyn grinned. “I'd lose my job if I did. My boss is here this evening.”

“My sister?” said Roger in surprise.

Hamlyn's grin widened. “I never think of Mrs. Roux as the boss—but don't quote me. No, I mean my editor, Miss Spearfield.”

Cleo materialized out of a cluster of saris: the Indian women drifted away like water lilies. “Hello, General. Is Mrs. Brisson here with you?”

He was instantly on guard.
She knows damn well Louise hasn't been in Washington in over a year.
That was classified information he knew would have leaked out. “My wife doesn't particularly like Washington. It is not really a town for army wives.”

“I suppose not,” said Cleo, wondering in what sort of town army wives would feel at home. They were still camp followers, even if the camp was the Pentagon. “I must give Mrs. Brisson a ring when I get back to New York and ask her opinion of Washington.”

“Do that.” But he hoped she would not. He could imagine the flak if Louise gave her true opinion of Washington and the Pentagon; she would make Martha Mitchell sound like a soft-voiced diplomat. She had stopped being a good army wife and now had the potential threat of an enemy missile. “What are you doing here?”

“Just looking over our bureau, checking that Joe doesn't have his hand in the petty cash.”

“Do we have petty cash?” said Hamlyn, happy with Washington and with his boss. “Nobody told me that. I thought we were supposed to pay our own way.”

“Is the
Courier
still strapped for money?” said Roger.

“
Still,” said Cleo, closing the subject.

“How long have you been in town?”

Cleo looked at her watch. “Two hours.”

“Then you must be ready for dinner. Let me take you.”

“I'm sorry, General. I'm having dinner with Joe at his home. Some other time.”

They fell into the torpid talk of cocktail parties and after a while Roger, spotting the Indian military attaché as a good excuse, drifted away. He felt the old uneasiness with Cleo, as if she carried a gun in her handbag, a gun issued in Vietnam. The higher he had climbed in the Pentagon hierarchy, the more the memory of An Bai had come back to trouble him. It was like climbing a mountain and looking back to see the smoke still thick on the far horizon. An Bai might never be mentioned again, at least not publicly, but it was still an echo in his memory. And Cleo Spearfield was a constant reminder.

Driving out to Joe Hamlyn's apartment in Friendship Heights, Cleo said, “Friendship? How did it get the name?”

“I've never bothered to find out. Why?”

“Nothing.” Just that Tom Border came from a town called Friendship; she too had echoes in her memory. “How's the General behaving himself?”

“With the women? He's the greatest ass-chaser since Don Juan Hourigan.”

“I know I shouldn't ask—who was Don Juan Hourigan?”

“An amorous Irishman. He laid girls right across the State of Colorado, north to south, east to west and diagonally—I'm talking about the State, not the position of the girls. The General has covered Washington, DC, with his own grid. He's a damn fool, but who's to tell him?”

“He should pull his head in if he's going to be head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“His trouble is he's over-sexed. I'd like to be the same, but don't mention that to Kitty during dinner—she'd hang me up by them if she thought I was displaying them around town the way he does. I've been talking to some of the guys who were here in Jack Kennedy's day. They knew all about his women, but they kept quiet—you don't print that sort of stuff about the President, not while he's in office. But some of them might be tempted to write about our Roger. Army brass is always fair game.”

“Do you think you should have a word with him? Tell him you've heard some of the other
newspapermen
talking.”

“Are you kidding? Cleo, he's a general. I'm just a working newspaper stiff—what's more, I work for his sister. Begging your pardon on that latter count. He'd turn his howitzer, or whatever it is they use these days, on me. Cleo, I don't think he's a guy who'd take advice even from one of his girl friends. Forget him, let him take care of himself.”

They drew up outside the apartment block in Friendship Heights. They went in and Kitty Hamlyn, twice as wide as her husband, a motherly blonde who, it seemed to Cleo, was never off her feet during the whole evening, welcomed her as if she were a long-lost cousin instead of her husband's editor. Three of the Hamlyn girls, two of college age and the other in high school, were at home for dinner and Cleo felt herself drawn into the warmth of the family circle. It occurred to her that she had not been in this sort of atmosphere since her own days in the house in Coogee when her mother had been alive and Alex and Perry and, occasionally, her father had been at home.

“This has been a year for Australian women,” said Jane, the eldest of the Hamlyn girls. “You taking over the
Courier.
Colleen McCullough. Olivia Newton-John. Helen Reddy.”

“Don't forget Rupert Murdoch,” said Joe Hamlyn.

“How did he get in here?” said Cleo.

Joe, and Rupert Murdoch, were voted out: it was a women's night. When Cleo left two hours later she felt more womanly than if she had just climbed out of bed after sleeping with the man she loved. Then, going back to the Mayflower Hotel in the cab she had insisted Joe call for her, not wanting to take him away from his family even for half an hour, she told herself that she was being sentimental and cockeyed. One did not have to be surrounded by a family to be womanly. But in bed in the hotel room, before she dropped off to sleep, she remembered the look on Kitty Hamlyn's face as she had gazed down the table at her husband and daughters. It had been full of a contentment that she had once seen on Brigid's face at a family Christmas dinner. She had never seen it on her own face, but then how often did one look in a mirror for contentment?

III

Cleo was back in Washington a week later, this time with Jack. He had come over on the
Thursday
night, slept all day to get over jet lag and, though he didn't mention it to her, get himself ready for a weekend of love-making. Then on Friday night, after the paper had been put to bed, he and Cleo had flown down to Washington and checked into a suite in the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel as Mr. and Mrs. John Cruze. They went to bed at once, slept comfortably with each other like an old married couple and woke to make love before breakfast like a newly-married couple. Then they rented a car and, with Cleo at the wheel, drove out into Maryland to a horse show.