Spearfield's Daughter (63 page)

“Oh Roger—!” Men, even the most intelligent of them, could be so bloody dumb. “Call her later this morning. I don't know if you want to get back together—I don't even know if she wants to. That's between the two of you. But call her and ask her how she is. And don't bugger up things by trying to put yourself in the right. She's been through far more than you have.”

“Jesus—” He was silent for a moment, then he said, “I'll recommend to the President that he make you Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“Just so long as he doesn't give the job to you. Goodbye, Roger. Be kind to her when you call. That won't cost you any pride.”

She hung up before he could reply, then called Carl Fishburg at his home. “Any problems at the office last night?”

“No more than usual. There's some male chauvinism in the editorials, but we had to grab our opportunity while you were away. How was Washington?” He was the only one in New York who knew why she had gone to see Roger, though he didn't know all the story.

“Amenable.”

“A pity. It would have made a great story.”

You don't know, mate, the story you might have had.
“I'll see you this afternoon.”

She had breakfast, glanced through the
Courier
that had been delivered to the front porch, then went up to see Louise. She was sitting up in bed, her hair done, a breakfast tray across her lap. She looked pale, almost gaunt, but she managed a smile.

“I was pleased when Lena said you were still downstairs. I'll never be able to thank you, Cleo.”

“I've talked to Roger. If he calls you, don't apologize or say you're sorry for what you tried to do. I'm glad it didn't happen, but he had it coming to him.”

Louise
shook her head. “Not murder! I just don't know how I could have—”

“Don't get yourself upset again. It'll take time, but eventually you'll put it behind you. I once covered a story like this,” she lied. “It all worked out okay in the end.”

“I get so depressed—”

She guessed Louise was going through the menopause: at least Jack hadn't been going through
that.
“Call me any time you feel depressed. Any time.”

“You're busy. I envy you. Perhaps if I were busy I wouldn't have time to feel the way I do.”

There's always time to feel low.
“I'll call you this evening from the office. And remember—don't apologize to Roger. He's a general. They never apologize for starting wars. And he started this one.”

Louise smiled, the gauntness slipping out of her face. “I'm glad I didn't shoot you.”

“So am I. Incidentally, this is between you, me and Roger. Claudine is never to know.”

17

I

CLAUDINE DID
ask Roger why he had been passed over as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I thought you were favourite for it.”

“You better ask the President.”

There were levels to which decent Republicans did not descend. She let the matter drop; she had other things on her mind. Alain was still in Europe, still at what seemed to her a loose end: she liked people to be tied up, preferably to herself. She had gone across twice to see him, travelling once by TWA and once by Air France to show what she liked to think of as her dual nationality. Neither airline quite met her standards, but one couldn't ask for the QE2 to be airborne.

Alain told her he would come home when he had his personal affairs sorted out. It was on her second visit that she discovered his personal affairs were in the singular: he was having an affair with the wife of Tom Border. He had tried to explain to her that he was not breaking up a marriage; Tom and Simone had been separated for six months and originally, as a family friend, he had been interested only in consoling Simone. Tom, who did not need consoling, was wandering around Europe and the Middle East writing freelance pieces for the
Courier
and several magazines.

“If Simone divorces Tom, I want to marry her.”

“If? That sounds as if she's hoping he will come back to her.”

“He won't do that. I've talked to him about it.”

“He doesn't resent you, a family friend, having an affair with his wife?”

“You make it sound so sordid, Mother.”

A year or so ago she would have put him in his place for that remark. But she was losing her touch, her tongue had slowed down. She never read the sports pages in any newspaper, but she had heard
some
of her men friends talking about how their reflexes had slowed down on the tennis court. They now called themselves veterans, a word she would never, no matter what the condition of her tongue, apply to herself.

“What will you do if you and what's-her-name—”

“Simone, Mother,” he said patiently.

The slip had been deliberate, a testing of
his
reflexes. “What will you do if she does marry you? Stay on here?”

He had rented an apartment just off the Avenue Montaigne; she was glad he still had a sense of place if not of behaviour. Weekends and for a month in summer he went down to the chateau at Souillac; she was pleased that he lived as a Brisson should. She did not, however, want to keep crossing the Atlantic to visit him. She wanted a more comfortable umbilical cord than TWA or Air France.

“No, we'll come back to New York. I've had enough of doing nothing. I'd have been home before this if I hadn't been waiting on Simone to make up her mind. I want to go back to the
Courier.”

“Won't that be awkward for you? Cleo now runs the paper.”

He smiled at her. “You mean you let her?”

“Between you and me, she is doing a far better job than I expected. We are now making a little money instead of losing a lot. I don't like some of her innovations, but I just ignore them if they disturb me too much. That girl cartoonist Milford, for instance—she goes too far sometimes.”

“Not with Carter. As far as I'm concerned, no one can go too far with him.” His conservatism was growing, like an early case of hardening of the arteries. He had been pleased and relieved when Simone had told him she was an admirer of Giscard d'Estaing. She could be radical in bed, but that was a different matter. “But I agree with you—Cleo has improved the paper. What we have to watch is that it doesn't become
her
paper.”

We:
she did not miss that. “She may not have a place for you. Have you thought of that?”

“I think we could arrange that between us, couldn't we?”

He's still my son, she thought; collusion helped make blood thicker than water. Her French blood began to course, she hadn't indulged in any intrigue for God knew how long. She had far too little to occupy her these days. “In what way?”

“
The paper could do with an associate publisher. Someone there to handle the day to day stuff.”

“Cleo appears to do that.”

“It's too much for her, especially if she's editor.”

“You won't come back now?”

“No, not till things are settled between me and Simone.”

Then Simone arrived at the apartment. Claudine had not met her before and she treated the girl to wary inspection. Simone, with a thrifty woman's respect for money and position, was on her best behaviour. After an hour Claudine told herself that the girl, though a little rough round the edges, which was probably due to her experiences as an airline stewardess, had potential. She had no family, which was a plus: families, unless one was marrying into the best of them, were often the biggest handicap to a successful marriage. She took them to dinner at Lassere and was further pleased to see that Simone knew her food and wine. That meant she had at least worked in first class on Air France.

She delicately raised the subject of Simone's husband; that is, she waited till they were having coffee: “I understand you and Mr. Border are contemplating divorce?”

They were speaking French, which has the proper formality for delicate subjects. “One has to think seriously about such a matter. I have explained to Alain that I do not treat marriage, or divorce, lightly.”

“A proper attitude. One wishes all young people thought that way.”

“It's why I've never rushed into marriage,” said Alain.

What a pious hypocrite, thought Claudine; and loved him for his good sense. “Well, we shall just have to wait and see what happens. Will you take care of the bill, Alain?”

The girl had to be taught early that, if she married into the family, her mother-in-law was not going to be Madame Cornucopia. The look in Simone's eyes told her that the girl had got the message. The women smiled at each other, halfway to being friends.

Claudine had returned to New York and kept in touch with both Alain and Simone by a weekly phone call. She never talked for long on the phone: the instrument, she had always said, was meant for communication not conversation. The Bell Telephone Company, aware of profits, might have disagreed with her, but she knew that the best conversation only came when the speakers were face to face. She was
not
going to converse with her probable daughter-in-law and not be able to read the girl's face.

Now, talking with Roger, she read his face and pondered on how much he was keeping from her. He appeared to have quietened down over the past couple of months; not in his appearance, which seemed as confident and arrogant as ever, but in an inner atmosphere which he seemed to carry with him. As if, at the age of fifty-six, he had decided to be responsible and middle-aged. She began to think, perversely, that she had preferred him when he had been irresponsible and dashingly young.

“What is happening between you and Louise?”

“We are friends again.”

“A husband and wife who are friends? Ridiculous!”

“I'm on trial. She may take me back.”

This humility was sickening; what's more, she didn't believe it. He had been too long in Washington with that born-again Christian who thought prayer might help save the nation. A regular churchgoer, she believed prayer should be kept in its proper place, in church.

“What's come over you, Roger? You sound as if you couldn't lead in a waltz, let alone a cavalry charge.”

“I was never in the cavalry. I've always been what the British call the Poor Bloody Infantry. Claudine, I'm retiring from the Army. Unless a war breaks out, I've gone about as far as I can.”

“War can break out at any time.” She did not mean to sound encouraging but did.

“Not with this man in the White House.” He did not mean to be critical of President Carter. Though he would not have confessed it to anyone at the Pentagon, nor even to Claudine, he was no longer interested in war either as a profession or a sport. He had always, even when he had been enjoying battles in Korea and Vietnam, looked upon the Army as his self-imposed discipline; it had worked when he was young and it had worked up till a few years ago. Then he had come home to the Pentagon, risen to the rank of lieutenant-general: it had been left to himself to discipline himself and he had failed. He could not court-martial himself, so he would retire and aim higher.

“I am going to study foreign affairs.”

“You want to be an ambassador? You would be ideal for the Paris embassy.”

“No. I should like to be Secretary of State.”

She
was not surprised by the extent of his ambition. She had never had any ambition of her own. If one was at the top, even only in one's own estimation, what was there to aspire to? As a girl she had dreamed of being royal; but look at what had happened to Wallis Simpson. She looked at Roger shrewdly, assessing him. They loved each other, but there had always been restraint; ego got in the way of total unselfishness. Each wanted the best for the other, but only if it did not mean too much sacrifice on his or her part. Their trouble was (though the thought did not occur to her) that neither of them had ever been bruised by real suffering; true sorrow might have bound them closer, pushed the egos aside. She tried now to be objective about him and decided he had the material to be a good Secretary of State. Lately, with the exception of Henry Kissinger, she found it difficult to remember who the Secretaries of State were or had been.

“I could help there. With the
Courier,
I mean.”

He shook his head: the last thing he wanted at the moment was any further help from Cleo. “All in good time. First, I have to get out of the Army.”

“Is Louise necessary for your plans?” That might account for his humility in his marriage.

“Not necessary, but helpful.”

“I suppose so. But one never knows in this day and age . . . I hope I'm dead before we have a married homosexual couple in the White House. I can't see myself paying my respects to a First Lady named Fred.”

“I'll stay on in Washington after I leave the Army. It will be the best base of operations.” He still thought militarily: the politics would come later.

“You're looking a long way ahead, are you not? There may not be a Republican President next time around. They are talking about that actor as the candidate.” An actor to follow a peanut farmer: she wondered what the acid-penned Miss Milford would make of that in her cartoon.

“He won't be the only candidate. I shall just have to be careful how I play my cards.”

“If I can be of any help . . .” She would be, of course: she would see to that. In the meantime Alain was coming home with his new bride. Well, Simone might not be
new,
but so much these days was discounted.

II

Tom Border, divorced but not really feeling free, still shackled by guilt, came home a month ahead of Alain and Simone. Plucking up courage and dampening his love, he went to see Cleo. He walked into the newsroom, which looked much brighter than he remembered it. Video display terminals seemed to have taken the character out of the people who sat in front of them; or was it that they seemed hidden behind the machines? The old copy editors' horseshoe desk had gone and with it the men who had manned it; then Tom saw one or two of the old hands behind VDTs, pecking away at the keys like prisoners tapping out a message for help. He slowly made his way down the long room; despite the new atmosphere, the old feeling began to flow through him. He was like a gardener, banished for years to a hothouse, who had come back to a beloved garden that he had expected to find neglected and overgrown, only to see it blooming. The blooms might be force-fed with all the new equipment, but they were recognizable. He wanted to be part of the staff again.