Despite their bitter quarrel, George fully intended to man up and go to his brother’s wedding that August. By then he was living in Paris, a Yale grad with a job doing exactly what he loved—writing. He covered stories and events that mattered to the world—armed conflicts in Egypt and the Suez, earthquakes and the Olympics.
He lived in a flat with a balcony overlooking the Place de la Concorde and kept company with literary friends. He visited the haunts of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and J.P. Donleavy. He read banned books, drank absinthe and even seduced two women.
One of the women he seduced claimed she was falling in love with him, and he let her, because she was exciting. She was Jacqueline duPont, heiress to a champagne-exportation fortune. She was fiercely beautiful, sexually sophisticated and fashionable enough to have her photograph in Women’s Wear Daily.
For about two seconds he considered inviting Jackie to attend his brother’s wedding as his date. But George rejected the notion. It was out of the question. He could not imagine Jackie, in her Chanel suit with her heirloom pearls, witnessing Charles marry a chambermaid.
George buried himself in work and in a matter of weeks won the attention of a key editor at the paper—the Trib as it was called by insiders. He worked in a cramped and cluttered office alongside journalistic giants—the ascerbic Art Buchwald, the relentless Desmond Burke, and other revered veterans of journalism. From early on, George’s career was guided by the same demanding editor who had overseen the Pulitzer prizewinning coverage of the Blitzkrieg.
Two days before George was due to fly to New York for the wedding, he was presented with a career-making opportunity. He would be given exclusive access to a high-level meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. General de Gaulle would be there.
George accepted without hesitation. This event was important to the world. He told himself he would do the job and catch a transatlantic flight in time to get there for the wedding. Sure, he was cutting it close, but that was the nature of modern journalism. You followed a story moment by moment, provided up-to-the-minute report-age. There was even a new term for it—breaking news.
He filed his story at the eleventh hour, sending it clacking over the Telex machine to be published not just in the Trib, but in the New York Times. Once this was accomplished, he discovered there was only one flight that would get him to the wedding on time.
Events conspired to delay him. That was what he knew he would tell himself later. The train out to Orly Airport ran behind. At the airport, he found himself crushed in a busy, jostling crowd. There was a line at the ticket counter. When he got to the desk, he discovered his pocket had been picked. He had no ticket, no passport, no cash. He talked the clerk into selling him a ticket with a promissory note, and hoped the border authorities would accept his story of the theft. The clerk told him he would have to run in order to catch the New York flight before it closed its hatch and taxied down the runway.
Running was not George’s strong suit. He was in a leg brace, which he still had to wear on occasion, and the hinges and mechanisms simply did not allow him to move at a speed faster than a brisk walk.
He was a hundred meters or so from the departure doors when he saw the Pan American airplane pulling up its boarding stairs.
Did he shout loudly enough to be heard, or just loudly enough to say he tried?
In the end it didn’t matter. A missed flight was a missed flight. He’d left himself one chance to make his brother’s wedding and he’d missed it.
Thank God.
George plunged into work with a passion. He lived and breathed the news of the day. He produced story after story, covering topics as diverse as the opening of a new museum to state visits to violent uprisings.
He lobbied hard for the chance to interview Jonas Salk. He sat in the Prince de Galles hotel with the scientist and spoke with him about developing the live-virus polio vaccine.
He didn’t tell Dr. Salk he’d had polio, for he wanted to keep the interview professional, not personal. But at the end of the conversation, as they shook hands and the staff photographer moved in to take a photo, Dr. Salk kept hold of George’s hand, turning it palm up.
There was a telltale sign, so subtle no one ever noticed it—no one but experts. In an unaffected hand, the muscle at the base of the thumb was thick and healthy. In George’s hand, the muscle was almost nonexistent.
Dr. Salk asked simply, “When?”
“The summer of ’44,” George said. He was surprised to feel a jolt of leftover emotion from that time—terror, rage and grief, knowing he’d contracted a disease from which he would never fully recover.
“I’m very sorry,” said Dr. Salk.
George’s mind flashed on Ward 8 at the polio clinic where he’d been sent in an attempt to save his life. Clear as yesterday he could hear the screams of other boys brought back from surgery, the wrenching sobs of parents being told their babies had died in the night. And always, like a nightmare, he couldn’t escape, he heard the rhythmic suck and shush of the iron lung.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” he said.
In December, George received a letter on his mother’s personal letter-pressed stationery. Calls home via telephone were rare because the connection was usually quite poor, so he looked forward to his parents’ letters. From Charles, he’d heard not a word; clearly his brother was sticking to his vow not to forgive George until he apologized.
For all that he was a prolific and tireless journalist, George was not much for writing letters. He didn’t enjoy writing about himself. He’d sent Charles a telegraph the day of the wedding: “Missed flight. Nuptials must go on without me. Best wishes.”
That had been their last communication.
George found it remarkably easy to avoid dealing with his brother and apparently it was the same for Charles. All George knew about Charles came via his mother’s weekly letter. And Theodosia Bellamy had little enough to say about her younger son, only that he seemed to be doing well and intended to get his law degree.
Charles. A lawyer.
George wondered what kind of litigator he would be. He might sue his brother for breach of…what? Of brotherhood?
Then in December came unexpected news. Charles and his wife had a baby boy. His name was Philip Angus Bellamy, in honor of both his grandfathers.
At first George felt nothing but a small twinge of curiosity. No envy, of course; he was no fan of babies. They seemed to be noisy, puking, snotty things that disrupted people’s sleep. No, thank you.
Later, sitting at an outdoor table at his favorite zinc bar in Montmartre, sipping cold, acrid pastis and reading Le Monde, a belated notion struck him. He drummed his four fingers on the enameled surface of the table.
Charles and Jane had been married in August.
They’d had a son in December.
His fingers tapped on the table: tap tap tap tap…tap.
August, September, October, November…December.
Five months was not the correct gestation time, was it?
Not unless you were a Nubian goat.
AugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember—
It was not uncommon for babies to be born prematurely. But not by four months. That was simply impossible. Especially since George’s mother reported that Philip was a healthy eight-pound baby boy.
It was of course considered impolite to count, but George counted. He checked the date mentioned in his mother’s letter. He opened his small leather-bound pocket calendar, the one he’d been given as a graduation gift. He took out a pencil.
Counted back nine months from the date the baby was born.
The point of his pencil broke as it landed on the day in late March. George tried every way he could think of to avoid seeing the truth. But there it was, staring him in the face.
That was the day—the night—he’d been with Jane. And nine months from that night, an ocean away, Jane had given birth to a baby.
George went a little crazy after that. He got roaring drunk and stormed the citadel that was Jacqueline duPont’s flat on Avenue Marechal Foch, the one she shared with three other young women of privilege. He made love to her with a harsh insistence that surprised and delighted her, and she told him so.
“I’m glad you liked it,” he said. “Let’s get married.”
She laughed and touched him in a way that was probably illegal in some parts of the world. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said to him.
They eloped on New Year’s Eve, taking a private jet to Monte Carlo, courtesy of the duPont family. Jackie was more adventurous than sentimental, and she regarded elopement as the ultimate adventure.
Amid the glittering lights of the French Riviera, they found a civil judge who was happy to take their money and officiate the union. There was no fanfare, just a hasty signing of documents and, at the Hotel Villa Mondial, a room service order that cost a fortune—champagne, oysters, caviar, chocolates decorated with gold leaf.
Although George’s family was well off, Jackie’s money made their lives worry free. It made them fun and exciting. George could have retired from the paper, but he insisted on staying and working harder than ever.
Jackie was prolific in her own way, giving him four sons in the first ten years of their marriage. He discovered that he loved babies after all, and lavished his adoration upon Pierce, Louis, Gerard and Trevor.
Their lives were a busy whirlwind. George rarely thought about home—the States, as the ex-pats in Paris referred to the U.S. It took no effort at all to maintain the silence with his brother.
It was through their parents that George learned Charles had volunteered to serve in Vietnam, and was now a JAG officer in some jungle outpost.
When their parents were killed in a cable car mishap in Switzerland, Charles was incommunicado, still serving overseas, and George took care of the arrangements. The estate was divided evenly down the middle. Within a matter of years, the brothers were living lives so separate they might as well have been strangers.
INVITATION
THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE
IS REQUESTED
BY GEORGE AND CHARLES BELLAMY
ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIRST OFFICIAL
BELLAMY FAMILY REUNION.
SATURDAY THE 21ST OF AUGUST, 2010.
CAMP KIOGA, RR #47, AVALON,
ULSTER COUNTY, NEW YORK.
RUSTIC ACCOMMODATIONS PROVIDED.