So we are back in the spring of the present. Time has moved in its own time. The emotions stretch it and condense it; memory has no hours. History, as Prue once remarked to herself, repeats itself, if only in cracked mirrors. Questions are still asked, answers still have to be given. Perhaps history is no more than that: but with one final question to which history has no answer. In the meantime …
‘Where’s Miss Nina?’ Margaret said.
‘In the drawing-room,’ said George Biff. ‘With Mr – Mr Harvest.’
Margaret paused in front of the hall-mirror to look at herself: not at her hair or her make-up but at her attempt at composure. She was satisfied, but only just. ‘Do you know who he’s claiming to be?’
‘Yes.’
‘How is my sister taking it?’
‘Not so good. You don’t look no better, Miz Meg.’
‘Thank you, George. You’ve always been a comfort.’
She paused with her hand on the closed door to the drawing-room. She had found it difficult to believe Nina when the latter had phoned her ten minutes ago, as she had come into her house on her return from the tennis matches. Nina had sounded almost incoherent: excited, joyful, yet afraid. And Margaret, too, was afraid. The long-ago past threatened to open up like a pit.
She knocked, went into the drawing-room and closed the doors behind her. Nina was seated in a chair by the fireplace. Opposite her sat the Australian tennis player: Something-or-other (Cliff?) Harvest. He stood up and she saw that he was taller than he had appeared on the court earlier this afternoon. He also seemed less graceful, awkward even. Or certainly uncomfortable.
‘This is my sister, Mrs Alburn,’ said Nina. ‘Or your Aunt Margaret.’
‘Not yet, not quite,’ said Margaret; but smiled. ‘Are you really Michael? Is he?’ She looked at Nina, not waiting for him to answer.
‘I don’t know – ’ Nina gestured helplessly. ‘Thank you for coming over, Meg. I’m in shock, I guess – my legs feel like glass – ’
‘It’s natural – after all these years.’ Margaret sat down, feeling her own legs weakening. ‘If you are Michael, Mr Harvest, where is your father?’
‘Dead. Or anyway presumed dead.’ He hesitated, then sat down on the couch opposite the sisters, crossed his long legs awkwardly. ‘He disappeared three years ago in the Middle East.’
Margaret examined him frankly, while she struggled to make her memory, which she had tried to smother for so long, come alive. She looked for Tim in him and, with a pang, saw the resemblance. Not a great one, but it was there: the smile, not quite so ready as Tim’s but faintly familiar, the good-humouredly mocking eyes. His face also had some of the Beaufort bone in it; and his hair was the colour that Nina’s had once been. But physical resemblance meant nothing. Newspapers, when short of news, were always running pictures of look-alikes of the famous. This man Harvest would not be here if he had not thought he could offer at least some resemblance to Tim and Nina. But she did not examine too closely just then why she wanted him to be an impostor.
Harvest looked at Nina. ‘Do you think I’m your son?’
‘I don’t know. This afternoon – ’
‘I know. I saw you looking at me – that was what gave me the confidence to come here.’
‘I could see something of your – of my late husband in you. But not your antics – ’ Margaret remarked Nina’s reserve: she was trying hard not to give too much of herself away too soon. ‘He was always a gentleman.’
Not always, thought Margaret.
‘You sound like a mother.’ Harvest grinned, a little more relaxed. ‘I think you could blame my antics on Dad. In a way. I was a pretty spoiled kid, till I rebelled against him and we had our arguments.’
Nina sat in silence, studying him, her feelings showing in her face. She wants to accept him, Margaret thought. And determined that acceptance must be put off till she had made her own decision.
Then something Harvest had said a moment ago suddenly registered, like a shot from far away. ‘You say Tim is dead?’
‘Tim? Oh, Dad. He called himself James, James Harvest. I didn’t know our name was Davoren till I opened his letter. I have it here.’
Margaret sat as silent as Nina. If Tim was dead, then at last she was free: for she had loved him as much as Nina had. She watched as Harvest handed Nina a letter. Nina read it carefully, then looked blankly at Margaret as the latter held out her hand for it.
‘Let me read it.’
‘But it’s not for you – ’
‘It was not for you, either. It was for Mr Harvest. Let me see it.’
Nina surrendered the letter. It was typewritten and it had all the correct facts: according to it, Clive Harvest was really Michael Davoren. But Tim had made one legal mistake. She re-folded the letter and handed it back to Harvest.
‘You don’t look impressed.’ He sat up, leaning forward.
‘Your father would have made it easier for you if he had signed his name instead of just Dad. That signature means nothing.’
‘The letter’s addressed to me, not to some lawyer. You’re not making it easy for me, are you?’
‘Don’t be sharp with me!’
‘Meg – please – ’ But Nina did not protest too strongly.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Harvest said slowly and sank back into the couch. ‘All right, I apologize. If I’d known it was going to be like this – ’
Margaret glanced at Nina, who was still studying the man opposite her. She wondered what image Nina had built up in her mind of what her son, if he ever returned, would look like. Margaret herself had hardly given a thought to the missing Michael; all her memories, which she thought she had stifled for good and forever, had been of Tim. Perhaps Nina had thought her son would look like this man, but she must be thrown off-balance to find that he was now an Australian. The flat accent, the drawling of one syllable into two (‘know-en’); none of it suggested the almost mellifluous voice that had been Tim’s. If anything it was closer to the flat Midwest twang, which all the Beaufort sisters had been taught to avoid.
‘If your father died three years ago, why did you wait so long?’
‘It was a year before I went back home. I’ve spent most of my time playing tennis in Europe and here in the States. There was nothing to go back to, there’d only been Dad and me. He’d moved twice since I’d left home – so there was no home to go back to. Nothing I could call home. I left everything to the lawyers – they tidied up the estate. They knew nothing about the safe deposit box – that was in a bank in Zurich. I only found out about that by accident. I went back to Sydney eventually and they gave me all Dad’s personal belongings. Including a box of papers, business papers. There was an address of a bank in Switzerland, just a scribbled note tucked away in a book about tennis. It was marking the page where there was a photo of me.’
‘So you decided to play detective?’ Margaret said.
‘No, not right then.’ He bit his lip, stared at her; then recovered and went on, ‘It was only late last year I did anything about it. I was in Zurich for a tournament and I went and looked up the bank. The letter was there in the safe deposit box. There was something else. A quarter of a million dollars’ worth of bonds that Dad had bought back in 1949. The bank manager told me Dad came there every year and drew the interest in cash.’
‘A quarter of a million?’ Nina looked at Margaret. ‘Tim never had that much money in his life.’
‘Your story sounds less and less believable, Mr Harvest,’ said Margaret; then softened her tone as she saw the look on Nina’s face. ‘But that isn’t to say we don’t believe you.’
‘No?’ Again the smile was faintly familiar, a mocking grin in a dusty mirror. ‘I only half-believe it myself. Dad was something of a liar – well, maybe not a liar. But he never told the entire truth. Not to me or anyone else, as far as I could gather.’
‘Tell us what happened. Everything.’
‘My whole life story? I can’t do that.’
‘Just the outline. Where you have been the past twenty-eight years.’
He clasped his big hands together, held them between his knees. He’s ill at ease, Margaret thought: now he has to produce the truth himself. Or what he hopes will sound like the truth.
‘You read in that letter what happened when we left here – when was it?’
It was a date Margaret had forgotten, but Nina remembered it: ‘August 20, 1949.’
Harvest nodded, as if impressed by Nina’s memory. ‘I suppose that was it. Dad doesn’t mention the date, but you can see when he wrote the letter – twenty-eighth September nineteen forty-nine. We must have gone back to England through Canada – ’
‘We traced you that far.’ Nina’s voice was steadier now, she seemed to have regained her composure. Margaret decided to leave the questioning to her. ‘Your grand – my father had private investigators working on it for a year. We never found out how my husband managed to get a child across an international border without a passport. You were entered on my passport.’
‘I guess there are ways and means. Obviously it worried him. The letter says he had to get forged passports when he got back to England and changed our names. He even had a forged birth certificate for me – I saw it years later. I suppose you can get anything if you have the money.’ He looked around the room, but it was evident he was seeing far beyond these walls, right to the very limits of the Beaufort empire. ‘We never seemed to be short. Or not by ordinary standards. But then everything’s relative, isn’t it?’
‘That’s not very profound, Mr Harvest,’ said Margaret.
He gave her a hard stare, recognizing an opponent. Then he looked directly again at Nina. ‘Well, after England we went out to Kenya. I grew up there, or I did till I was, I don’t know, fourteen, I guess. Dad had a partnership with another bloke in a mining survey firm. He would sometimes be gone for weeks on end. Sometimes I used to think he was into something else, but I was never sure. He could be pretty secretive at times.’
‘Why did you leave Africa?’
‘Dad never really explained it to me. He just suddenly decided to go – it was after he came from one of his trips, I remember that – and we went.’ He searched for something in the sisters’ faces, a hint that they were beginning to believe him; but there was nothing. He went on, a listlessness creeping into his voice: ‘Sydney wasn’t bad. We lived pretty comfortably and he sent me to a good school. That was where I found out I could play tennis. Dad was good and he encouraged me. At first.’
‘At first?’
‘When he found out I wanted to make a career of it, that’s when our arguments started. He wanted me to go into the business with him, but I knew I couldn’t face that. I don’t think he liked it himself, sitting there in an office all day trying to act like a businessman. I know how much he used to look forward to his trips to the Middle East.’
‘Why was he so much against your making a career of tennis?’
‘He said I’d never be good enough to get to the top. He was right – ’ Again there was the self-mocking smile that nagged like a nerve-end at the sisters’ memories. ‘I’m number ninety-nine in the world pro listings right now. Next year I could be number one hundred and ninety-nine.
‘How degrading, to be ranked like that. Don’t you feel jealous of the men above you?’
‘Up to a point. That’s what keeps me going, trying to beat them any way I can. The clowning helps put some of them off. Some of them. Most of them are getting used to me now.’
‘Why do you try so hard?’
‘I’ll have to retire in a couple of years, I guess. Top-liners like Rosewall can go on till they’re old men, but promoters don’t give contracts to middle-aged second-raters. I’ve been on the world circuit for twelve years now. I’ve got used to the good life.’
Nina stiffened, as if listening: to an echo perhaps? Then she said, ‘But if your father left you a quarter of a million dollars, you should be able to afford a reasonably good life.’
‘Yes,’ he said carefully, looking directly at her, blinkering himself against the richly good life that surrounded them.
Margaret said, ‘You said your father was presumed dead. Was his body never recovered?’
‘No, he just disappeared. It was three months before I knew of it – we’d often go that long without writing each other. Then one of his friends in Sydney wrote me asking if I knew where Dad was. He had this business, taking rugs and textiles into Australia and taking opals to the Middle East, but as I said, he could have been into something else. I don’t mean drug-smuggling. He was pretty cranky about any sort of drugs. Maybe I was trying to glamorize him, but sometimes I wondered if he was in intelligence work.’
‘You found no trace of him?’
‘None.’ All at once he looked sad, as if he had lost something he hadn’t known he had valued so much till it was too late. ‘I went to Beirut, but I couldn’t stay there – I had tournament commitments. And the police weren’t very helpful. They had a file on him, half a page, but that was all. I just kept hoping he’d turn up.’
‘Beirut?’ said Nina. ‘When was this?’
‘You mean when he disappeared? The end of 1974. Why?’
‘Nothing,’ said Nina and looked at Margaret.
‘There will have to be proper enquiries.’ Margaret decided it was time she took over again. ‘Our attorneys will need to talk to you, Mr Harvest. How long will you be in Kansas City?’
He stood up, leaving before he was dismissed. ‘That depends on how we go in the tournament. If we’re put out tomorrow night, there’s no point in hanging around. We’re due to play in Houston next week.’
‘Our attorneys will need more than an hour or two with you.’
‘Then we’d better win tomorrow night.’
Nina stood up. ‘I’ll come to see you play. Good luck.’
‘Will you be there, Mrs Alburn? There seemed to be a challenge in his voice.
‘We have boxes for every night. If you have time, perhaps you can meet one of our attorneys informally. Mr McKea. My sister’s husband,’ she added, watching him carefully.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s just that the Beaufort name sticks in my mind. Thanks for seeing me.’
The two sisters went with him out of the drawing-room, Margaret riding hard on Nina to see that she did not suddenly break down and claim him as her son. George Biff was standing in the hall.
Nina said, ‘Mr Harvest, this is George Biff. Do you remember him?’
Harvest was either a good actor or his puzzled effort at memory was genuine. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember this house at all.’
‘We didn’t live in this house,’ said Nina.
That seemed to put Harvest off-balance. Then he recovered and put out his hand. ‘Hello, George.’
The old black man was stiff and formal, not the George who had played with a laughing child on the lawns years ago.
‘You don’t recognize him, George?’ Margaret said.
‘No, Miz Meg. I know who he supposed to be, but I don’t recognize him.’
Nina looked disappointed, but said nothing. Harvest said an awkward goodbye and went out to his car. Only then did Nina say, ‘I think I was waiting for you to okay him, George.’
‘Don’t you recognize him, Miz Nina?’ Nina said nothing and after a glance at Margaret, George went on, ‘I watched him playing tennis this afternoon. I was standing down behind your box. Unless I remember wrong, he play right-handed. Michael was left-handed.’
Nina abruptly spun round and went back into the drawing-room. Margaret lowered her voice. ‘I think you did recognize him, George.’
‘No, Miz Meg. We don’t wanna drag all that up again after all them years, do we? She nearly forgotten about him.’
Margaret shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. She’s never forgotten him.’
‘Still think it ain’t gonna do her no good. Or any of us. I think you thinking like me. Ain’t that so?’
But she, too, did not answer, afraid of giving herself away. She went back into the drawing-room, closing the doors. Nina stood at a window gazing out at the house that had once been hers. It was Margaret’s now, but it was the one from which Tim and Michael had disappeared all those years ago.
‘Do you think we should have taken him over to your place? Just in case he remembered something of it.’
‘He wouldn’t remember anything – there’s nothing in it now that was there when you lived in it. He never once glanced up at that picture.’ She nodded at the painting above the fireplace. ‘That’s all you have left of what you had in those days.’
Nina did not appear to be listening, as if thoughts were tumbling through her mind too fast for her to dwell on them. ‘Did you hear what he said about Beirut? Tim could have been there when Daddy was kidnapped. I wonder – no, it’s too bizarre.’
‘You wonder what?’
‘If the man who took the money to try and ransom Daddy and Roger was – no, it couldn’t have been.’
It could have been, Margaret thought. But her mind was already hardening towards a decision. It ain’t gonna do her no good. Or any of us. ‘That could be part of his story. It was in all the newspapers that Daddy was kidnapped and killed in Beirut. Mr Harvest is shrewd. He hasn’t spent all this time making up his mind whether to come to us, without also making up a good story.’
‘You played very well tonight,’ said Magnus. ‘Considering.’
‘Considering I had something on my mind? The questions you asked me this afternoon – ’
‘I’m sorry about that. It would have been better if we could have left it till after the tournament – or till you were knocked out. But now you’re in the quarter-finals. Have you always been a right-handed player?’
‘Is that a trick question, Mr McKea? You’re not doing a Perry Mason on me, are you?’
‘If ever we get to court, which I hope we shan’t, they’ll throw questions like that at you. Were you always right-handed?’
‘No, I wasn’t. I was left-handed till I was thirteen. I broke my left elbow and it was left a bit weak. I learned to do everything right-hand then. How will that stand up in court?’
‘Plausible, Mr Harvest. You seem to have most of the answers.’
They were at the party being given by Beaufort Oil, part-sponsors of the tennis tournament, at the Mission Hills country club. The Beauforts belonged to both the Kansas City country club and Mission Hills. Both clubs had limited membership and a long waiting list, but no club ever refused a Beaufort who wanted to become a member; to have refused would have been like a temple barring its senior vestal virgins, though one would have had to allow for a certain degree of defloration.
Talk bounced lightly, like amateurs’ balls; a lob here, a gentle volley there, always waiting to be put away by the professionals’ cynical experience. Girls left themselves open to love games; mothers fluttered around like nervous line umpires. Fathers, brothers and boy-friends nodded knowingly at the professionals’ talk, held their glasses in the John Newcombe grip and were careful of their drinker’s elbow, which they had just discovered was similar to tennis elbow. The pros succeeded in hiding their boredom, because this was the affluent life to which they all aspired, for which they were wearing themselves out night after night and day after day on tennis courts across the world. Footballers and ice hockey players and baseballers were never asked to mingle with the rich country club set; that was just for tennis players and golfers and the better class of card sharp. The pros smiled covertly at each other, God’s Chosen Jocks.
‘I could tell you all to get stuffed, Mr McKea,’ Harvest said, looking pleasant and affable to anyone passing by. ‘I don’t really know if I want to be as rich as all of you. From what I’ve read, it has its handicaps. There have been two kidnappings in the Beaufort family. That was only because they were rich. Nobody’s going to kidnap a retired tennis player who doesn’t throw his money around. I could live pretty comfortably if I turned round and walked out of Kansas City. Maybe I’d be more comfortable. I’m not here for the money, Mr McKea. I’m here because I’d like to know who my mother was. Or is. It’s a human instinct.’
He turned and walked away and Magnus looked down into his empty glass, feeling properly ashamed. The past two days had not been easy for him. Nina had confessed to him that she wanted Clive Harvest to be her son Michael: if only to lay a ghost. But then, almost immediately, she had admitted that the ghost that would be laid would be Tim’s. Or would it? he had asked gently: gendy, because he had been trying to hide his selfishness. With Michael (if he was Michael) constantly there as a reminder, would Tim ever be laid to rest? The debate had gone on between them, never acrimonious, each of them trying to protect the life they shared; but always round and round, neither of them coming up with a resolution. Even his lawyer’s mind had not been able to settle on a judgement. Harvest’s story rang true – up to a point: it was like a carillon in which one bell, struck only occasionally, jarred on the ear. He was worried about the Beirut chapter, though he had not confessed that to Nina. Should he have lifted the bandage from the face of the dead Burgess, made a more determined effort to find out who the man really was? If Burgess had indeed been Tim Davoren, would he have gone back to Beirut and told Nina so? In his heart he could not be sure that he would have done so. He wondered if Lucas, who must have known if it was Tim or not, would have told her.
He crossed the room, looking for a refill of his glass. Bruce, Charlie and Roger were standing in a corner, moored to a floating waiter. Magnus took a fresh drink and joined them; the waiter, set loose, drifted away. The Beaufort men, as some women called them though never to their faces, looked at each other, not at all interested in the party.
‘We saw you talking to him,’ said Charlie. ‘He certainly doesn’t look worried.’
‘What’s he got to lose?’ said Roger. ‘I know the women wish it were over and done with, one way or the other. I’m not speaking for Nina, of course,’ he said to Magnus.
‘I think they’d better stop talking about wanting this over as soon as possible,’ said Bruce. ‘There’s more to this than just whether Nina gets her son back or not.’
‘For instance?’ said Charlie. He was still the same cheerful Charlie Luman, but sometimes now the smile seemed a little vacant, worn like a false moustache. He had begun to put on weight and Pan American’s doctors had warned him at his last physical examination that he might not pass the next one if he did not take care of himself. He had not taken their advice, had begun to think of retirement.
‘For instance, how much control would pass to him in the Trust if he should be Michael Davoren? What would happen if he wanted to draw out his share? No fortune, not even the Beaufort one, is safe if somebody starts to pull a leg out from under it. He’ll get more than any of your or my kids will.’
‘Not mine,’ said Charlie, and smiled behind his upturned glass.
‘Sorry, Charlie. I meant me and Roger.’
Charlie’s secret was still his and Sally’s. Some Pan Am pilots sometimes wondered why he never took advantage of the opportunities that came his way on overseas tours of duty, but always in the end they put it down to the fact that, being married to a Beaufort woman, he knew how his bread was buttered and did not want to exchange it for a little margarine on the side. He looked across the room now and waved to Sally and she raised her silver-topped stick in reply.
‘Margaret and I have talked it over,’ Bruce said. With Lucas’s death he had become president of the Beaufort banks, domestic and foreign. He was no longer the small-city banker he had been when he had met Margaret; he had his own aura of money now. The fact that he talked more easily of money than of anything else kept a glow on the aura. ‘I don’t think we should say yes or no to him till every last detail has been examined.’
‘Prue won’t talk with me at all about it. She says it’s Nina’s decision and hers only.’ Roger was one of the two men, the other being Magnus, who had been absolutely sure of himself, and had remained so, when he had married into the Beaufort family. He still signed himself Roger Devon IV, not with a flourish but with the conviction that he was no one else. His father, Roger III, was still alive; portraits of Roger I and II hung in the Devon house on the Beaufort estate. A month ago Prue had discovered she was pregnant again and if the child should be a boy, it had already been decided that he should be called Roger V. Lucas, if he were still alive, would have been pleased: he at least was part of a dynasty, if only having come in through a side door. ‘How do you feel, Magnus? Not as a lawyer but as a husband.’
Magnus sighed, committed himself. ‘If Nina accepts him, I’ll accept him.’
The four sisters sat round the table in the luncheon room of the main house. They called it Nina’s house, but none of them, not even Nina, really thought of it as hers. They had all been born in it and till it fell down or was demolished they would always have a proprietary interest in it, a substitute for the common womb that had borne them all.
‘He’s through to the final,’ said Nina. ‘He told me last night he’s never played better in his life.’
‘He’s cut out those dreadful antics of his,’ said Margaret. ‘If he stays with us, I shouldn’t want him to be remembered for those.’
‘There are some people who still remember Grandfather’s antics,’ said Sally. ‘We’ve learned to live with them.’
‘They were financial shenanigans.’
‘Which are excusable,’ said Prue. ‘So long as there are no bad manners displayed.’
Four days had passed and in the Beaufort circle, sisters, husbands, lawyers, there had been no other topic but Clive Harvest. There had been argument, rhetoric, pleas, prevarication and plain gossip. He was well-named: the mere mention of him had harvested an abundant crop of talk.
‘I wanted him to come and stay here,’ said Nina. ‘But Magnus vetoed that.’
‘Quite right, too,’ said Margaret. ‘Nina, for God’s sake, don’t make yourself so vulnerable.’
‘I’m beginning to feel that he is Michael. Here in my belly.’
‘Bellies, darling, aren’t recognized in a court of law.’ Prue savoured the quenelles de brochet, nodded approvingly. The sisters still treated themselves well at meals. They all had full figures, but their masseur, a man whose hands were familiar with half the women in the country club set, always took care of that extra pound or two. ‘But I know what you mean. Love, even mother love, starts in the anatomy.’
So far she had managed to dodge a face-to-face meeting with Clive Harvest, though she knew it could not be put off indefinitely. Old lovers had never worried her in the past: it was as if once they put their clothes on, she gave them another identity. She had almost forgotten Clive Harvest and the night in London (six? seven?) years ago; as she had put out of her mind all the other men she had slept with, including Guy. She was totally in love with Roger, physically, emotionally and romantically; sharp-eyed as she had always been, despite her increasing myopia, she had decided that hers was the most complete and secure happiness of all the sisters. Now she was afraid: no woman could feel secure who had slept with a man who now claimed to be her nephew. Even if he was honourable (was an honourable man different from a man of honour? she wondered, memory glinting like a far-off glass) and kept quiet, there would always be the fear that one of them might make a slip of the tongue. She had begun to pray (who hadn’t prayed since she was a child) that Clive Harvest would not be Michael Davoren.
‘Has there been any word from Australia?’ Sally asked.
‘Bruce talked to them this morning,’ said Margaret. ‘It was around midnight their time. They’ve been working really hard, he said. They haven’t been able to come up with much on this James Harvest. But he lived well – by Australian standards, I suppose they mean.’
God, thought Prue, she’s becoming as provincial as Stephane.
‘I think they’re fairly civilized down there,’ said Nina, tongue in cheek seeking a piece of stray quenelle.
‘The point is,’ said Margaret, ‘they haven’t yet come up with any conclusive proof that James Harvest was Tim.’
Sally, only toying with her food, did not care whether the lawyers came up with proof or not. She was convinced that James Harvest and Nigel Burgess and Tim Davoren were one and the same man; but she was still struggling with herself as to how to express that conviction. As she had been struggling with herself ever since the death of her father, when she had learned that the go-between who had been killed with her father had been named Burgess. She had argued with herself that no harm could be done by telling Nina that she had met Tim in the Congo back in 1961; but she had known the argument was weak. Nina would never forgive her for having concealed the information for so long. It no longer mattered why she had been in the Congo: that was a forgotten war and nobody cared any more who had been on whose side. It would be almost impossible to explain to Nina how she had come to make her bargain with Tim there in the Congo bush: she couldn’t expect Nina to understand. It worried her just as much that perhaps Charlie, too, would neither understand nor forgive her.
Prue said, ‘What have the Australians come up with about Clive himself?’
‘Nothing much. He seems to have been a pretty public personality. On the sports pages,’ Margaret added, downgrading him socially.
‘Have you told Martha and Emma yet? They might welcome a male cousin. Even one from the sports pages.’
‘I called them,’ said Margaret and said no more.
Martha, married to a history graduate and living in Paris, and Emma, unmarried and living in a commune in California, had been unexcited, almost uninterested, when Margaret had called them. She, who looked upon herself as the cornerstone of the Beauforts, had brought forth two children who had run away from the Beaufort name. Anyone who wanted to reverse the path, Emma had said on the phone, had only their sympathy. Margaret wondered just how much of their respective fathers sometimes spoke in them.
‘What about your two?’ Sally said to Prue.
‘They’re all for him. Melanie’s thrown out Robert Redford and pinned Clive’s photo up on her wall. Grace has done the same. He’s replaced the picture of her pony.’ Melanie was now fourteen and Grace, Roger’s child, was five, both of them as romantic as their mother had been but not as alert and observant.
George Biff, doubling again as butler, came in with the boeuf en gelée. These weekly luncheons of the four sisters, held regularly when they were all home, delighted him. Each of the sisters took it in turn to have the luncheon in her own house, but it was understood that George was always to be the butler. The servants in the other houses might resent it, but it had become a ritual, with him as much part of it as the sisters themselves.
‘Looks good, Miz Nina. You want me to slice it?’
‘I’ll do it, George. Just bring in the red wine.’
‘No red for me,’ said Margaret. Sally followed her lead, adding, ‘It brings on the hot flushes.’
George said, ‘How about you, Miz Prue? You hot flushed, too?’
‘Only with embarrassment that you should ask such a question. Do you put questions like that to all the women you know?’
‘Not any more,’ he grinned. ‘You stick with the white wine. A little red-eye don’t hurt no man, but it don’t do the ladies no good.’
‘You’d know,’ said Nina. ‘You old reprobate.’
George, on his way out of the room, smiled back at all of them. He knew how concerned they all were with the problem of this feller Harvest; in the past few days he had seen Miz Nina growing older before his eyes. He thought the tennis feller might be Michael, but if it was left to him to decide he’d say no. Let bygones be bygones.
‘I looked after all you ladies pretty good.’
‘Indeed he has,’ said Sally when he had gone. ‘Maybe we all should have married him.’
The four sisters silently debated that option with themselves, but each of them decided that she was happy with the husband she now had. Even allowing for the fantasy of Sally’s suggestion, marrying George, or anyone like him, would have been a problem right from the start. Lucas had never shown any sign of colour prejudice; but then perhaps he had never really been tested. None of his daughters had ever brought home a black lover. Not even Sally.
Then George came back to the door. ‘Mrs Alburn. Mr Alburn is on the phone. He says it’s important.’
Margaret excused herself, went out to what had been her father’s study and was now Magnus’s. Little had been changed in it: Magnus had no desire to exorcize Lucas’s ghost. But it was a long time since Margaret had been in the room and she felt an almost overwhelming flood of emotion as she looked around. She picked up the phone.
‘Meg?’ Bruce occasionally allowed his soft dry voice to get excited; today was one of those occasions. ‘We’ve come up with something that our friend Harvest forgot to mention to us. He was here in Kansas City two months ago, for a couple of days.’
‘He could have been on his way to some tournament.’ She wondered why she was defending Clive Harvest. She looked around the room again, saw her mother’s photo smiling at her from the mantel over the fireplace. Why did Magnus still keep that photo here in the study? Had he ever told Nina that he had once been in love with Edith? Oh God, she thought, the secrets …
‘Meg? Did you hear what I said? Listen to me. He was here to see a private investigator. He engaged him to draw up a dossier on the Beaufort family.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The investigator came to Magnus and me this morning. He’s double-crossing Harvest, but that doesn’t matter. He’s shown us the list of questions Harvest wanted covered in the dossier. One of them was to find out how much the family is worth and what was in your father’s will. The investigator couldn’t answer that last question and that was when he decided to come to us.’
‘What’s the investigator’s name?’
‘Pedemont. Dave Pedemont. There’s no reason you should ever have heard of him.’
It was match point in the final set, Harvest serving for the championship. The auditorium was full tonight; the match and the atmosphere had complemented each other. Up in the press boxes the sports writers were honing their clichés; in the television commentary box the clichés had been worn tissue-thin. For the spectators it was simply the best doubles match they had ever seen.
Harvest threw the ball high, called on an overdraft of strength and served as hard as at any time during the match. ‘Fault!’ cried a line umpire; but the call was so close that the spectators on that side of the court booed. Harvest took his time, bouncing the ball several times before steadying himself for the second serve. He threw the ball high, higher, it seemed, than on the first serve; again he called on that reserve of strength that seemed to have deserted the other three players. The racquet hit the ball at an exact point in the air where everything met: power, followthrough, direction. There probably had not been a faster serve all night: the ball was just a flash across the eyes. It clipped the backhand corner, kept going away, and the receiver had no chance to return it. He flung a despairing racquet at it, got only the rim to it and the ball went ricocheting off into the crowd. The auditorium rose up, looked like lava ready to spew down into the court. The match was over and the Australians, Harvest and Gissing, were the World Professional Doubles champions. And, since money was what they were playing for, each of them was $25,000 richer.
Charlie Luman let out his breath in a long whistle. ‘If you’re going to win, that’s the way to do it. Everybody gets their money’s worth.’
‘I think I’d rather win six-love,’ said Bruce.
Magnus looked at Nina, pressed her hand. ‘Well, he’s won something.’
‘Do we have to have this meeting tonight?’ she said. ‘It’s a shame to spoil all his good feeling over that win. It’s the biggest win he’s ever had.’
‘He’s leaving for Houston in the morning.’
‘I know. But – ’ She looked over her shoulder at him as he helped her into her coat. ‘Is that man – the private investigator – do we have to have him there tonight?’
Margaret, beside her, pulled her own coat about her. ‘I don’t think this is a meeting where outsiders should be present.’
‘I’m sorry, girls,’ said Magnus. ‘But you left it to us men to try and get all this sorted out. We’ve decided this man Pedemont could be our trump card – if one is needed. Harvest has always had a plausible answer when we’ve caught him out on a few things. That point about changing over from being left-handed to right-handed when he was a kid. Not being able to produce a photo of his father because his father was camera-shy. We just want to see how he reacts when we bring Pedemont into the room.’
Going back home in the Rolls-Royce Nina said, ‘I’m beginning to wonder how I would have handled this if I’d been alone. An only daughter and still not married again.’
His face closed up, but in the darkness of the car she did not see it. ‘Do you resent all our – help?’ He wondered if help was the right word.
‘No, no.’ She felt for his hand, held it reassuringly. ‘But everyone is – I don’t know. So protective. You all seem more concerned that I should not be – hurt. More than that I should possibly be happy.’
It took him a moment or two to say, ‘You sound as if you would rather take a chance. I mean, on his being Michael.’
‘He is Michael,’ she said. ‘I don’t need any proof.’
Magnus said nothing. In front of them George Biff sat stiffly behind the wheel. He, too, had decided that the Australian was Michael. But he could understand how Mr Magnus and the others must be feeling. Let bygones be bygones …
Dave Pedemont, the private investigator, was waiting in the drawing-room when Magnus and Nina arrived home. ‘I came early, like you said, Mr McKea. Evening, Mrs McKea.’
Nina nodded, not at all interested in the man, not wanting him here.
‘I think it best if you wait in the study,’ Magnus said. ‘We’ll bring you in after Mr Harvest has arrived. You’re sure you don’t mind doing this for us?’
‘Like I explained, I felt you had a prior right. I once worked for Mr Beaufort, Mrs McKea’s father – ’
Nina showed interest in him for the first time. ‘What did you do for my father?’
Pedemont knew he had made a slip. He had to keep a tight rein on his memory. He had been trailing this woman’s husband, the guy Davoren, before he had left her: he had to keep that straight in his mind. ‘I – it was when your husband first disappeared, Mrs McKea. Your first husband, I mean. I – your father didn’t think I was big enough, I mean had a big enough organization, to go through with the whole investigation. I’m bigger now, of course. Four men working for me. Associates in every State.’
Magnus said, ‘Would you come through to the study?’
Five minutes later the others arrived: the Alburns, the Lu mans, the Devons. Nina, looking around, once again felt the pang that had become increasingly frequent in the years since her father’s death. The Beaufort name was no more. There would still be all the enterprises bearing the name, the empire was still there; but all those brass plates, billboards, letterheads, were now just echoes of Lucas and Thaddeus. For a cold moment she felt she was standing by open graves, the headstones for which had already been erected.
‘Do you think he’ll put in an appearance?’ Margaret said.
‘He’s here,’ said Magnus. ‘You mean Pedemont?’
‘No, I meant Clive Harvest. Or Michael. Whatever we’re going to call him from now on.’
‘He’ll be here,’ said Bruce. ‘He’s on a winning streak.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Charlie looked around him. ‘No booze, Nina?’
‘Over there,’ said Nina. ‘I think I’d better say it now. If you are all going to do a hatchet job on him, I’m leaving the room.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Charlie.
‘I don’t think that’s our intention,’ said Roger. ‘In the end it’s going to be your decision, Nina. If this family were in different circumstances – I mean if we were all no more than blue-collar workers out in the suburbs – ’
‘Don’t let’s stretch our imagination too far,’ said Prue. ‘We’re us and there’s no getting away from it.’
‘That’s my point. We’re us. And us has money. That complicates things. Out on Wornall Road or wherever, in Little Italy, if a missing son came home the decision would be much simpler.’
‘You think so?’ said Nina. ‘You don’t know much about women, Roger.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Sally, not looking at Charlie or indeed at any of the men. She sat down, laid her stick beside her crooked leg. ‘I’m beginning to think we women should have kept this to ourselves.’
‘There’s some acrimony creeping in here,’ said Magnus. ‘I don’t think our quarrel should be between ourselves. I hope we have no quarrel at all.’
Nina passed by the back of his chair, touched the top of his head. ‘Thank you, darling.’
Then they heard the front door being opened. It seemed to Nina that everyone, herself included, froze for a moment, like second-rate actors in a poorly directed play. Or perhaps it was only her imagination. Tonight, everything she saw, heard, thought, felt, came to her through a prism.
It was George Biff who brought Clive Harvest into the drawing-room. The other servants had been told they were no longer needed. Nina knew there was already gossip in the servants’ quarters; she did not feel it should be added to by anything that might filter out from this meeting tonight; George would keep his mouth shut. He went out, closing the doors, and Clive Harvest stood there with his back to them, facing the family he hoped to join but which could have been mistaken for a firing squad.
Then Nina went forward. ‘Please come in, Clive. Congratulations on your victory tonight. We’re all very pleased for you.’
‘Thank you.’ But he sounded as if he doubted their pleasure.
‘I think you’ve met everyone, haven’t you?’
‘No. I still haven’t met Mrs Luman and Mrs Devon.’
‘Oh?’ Nina was surprised. She had assumed that everything had been taken out of her hands by everyone. But somehow Sally and Prue had been overlooked. Or had wanted to be overlooked. She smiled at them warmly, recognizing now that they, at least, were on her side. ‘I’m not sure how to introduce them. I mean, if they are your aunts – ’
Harvest shook hands with Sally first, then with Prue. There was no recognition in his eyes: he looked at Prue as at a stranger. ‘I can see you’re all sisters – ’
‘Families do tend to resemble each other,’ said Prue. Looking at him carefully, but for another reason than the one she stated: ‘I’m looking for the resemblance in you. You do look familiar.’
‘It’s there,’ said Sally. ‘A bit of both Tim and Nina. Does that make you feel better, Mr Harvest?’
‘A little.’
But he seemed unworried by their scrutiny. He was less awkward, more at ease than the first time he had been in this room. He’s still deaf from the applause at the finals tonight, Margaret thought, he’s a champion. I wonder if he is going to turn round and walk out on us all?
‘Mr Harvest – ’ Magnus came forward with a drink. ‘Beer is your favourite, isn’t it? Well, do we get down to business or do we prolong this meeting?’
‘Magnus,’ said Nina warningly. She too, thought Margaret, looks much more confident than that first afternoon in here. The champion’s mother. Or her son’s champion.
‘Sorry. All right, Mr Harvest. I think if we had more time this matter could be settled, I mean without any doubts on our side – ’
‘I’m not the one in a hurry. I’ve wondered for twenty-eight years who my mother was. A few more months won’t matter. You’re the ones in a hurry, Mr McKea. Because you’re afraid I’ll go to court, get the family a lot of publicity it doesn’t want.’
Oh, he’s so confident tonight, Margaret thought. And felt the trembling unease weakening her. Because the only way they were going to puncture that confidence would be to bring in Dave Pedemont.
‘He’s right,’ said Nina.
Magnus spread a surrendering hand, as if a judge in court had upheld an objection by defending counsel. ‘Were you expecting to go into court, Mr Harvest?’
‘Why?’ For just a moment the confidence wavered.
‘Excuse me.’ Magnus went out of the room, returned with Dave Pedemont. ‘Mr Harvest, I believe you know this gentleman.’
Harvest looked as if he had been aced. He stared at Pedemont, then slowly looked around the room at the others. ‘Money buys everything, doesn’t it?’
‘We didn’t buy Mr Pedemont, as you put it,’ said Magnus. ‘You made a mistake, Mr Harvest. There aren’t very many private investigators in this town. You went to the one who worked for Mr Beaufort years ago, who actually was engaged to look for Tim Davoren.’
Margaret was studying Pedemont, waiting for some glance of recognition towards her; but there was none. She doubted if she would have recognized him if she had passed him in the street. He was bald now, had put on a lot of weight, wore square-framed, gold-rimmed glasses; he looked prosperous, more like a businessman than the struggling private detective who had come to see her (here in this very room, she remembered with a start) all those years ago. But then, she bitterly remarked, prying into people’s private lives had become a business, a very successful one, in the past few years. Or had he become a successful blackmailer, found other women with secrets that had to be kept?
‘Do you want to repeat to us, Mr Pedemont, what Mr Harvest asked you to find out?’
‘There’s no need for him to do that,’ Harvest said slowly. ‘I’m sure he’s given you a full report. Do you double-cross all your clients like this?’
‘No,’ said Pedemont.
Liar, thought Margaret. For a moment their glances met. He knows I remember whom he double-crossed.
‘Like Mr McKea has said, my first duty was to my original client, Mr Beaufort.’
‘You could have told me that when I first came to see you. You took my retainer.’
‘You’d have been suspicious if I hadn’t. Here it is, in full.’ Pedemont took a cheque from his pocket. ‘I’ve made it out to cash.’
Harvest hesitated, then reached out and took the cheque. Then he looked at Nina, ignoring everyone else. ‘I’ll admit to all the questions I put to him. I just wanted to find out what sort of family I might be coming into.’
‘Including how much it was worth,’ said Bruce.
Nina, without looking at Bruce, held up a silencing hand. ‘Go on, Clive.’
‘All that you people seem able to think about is money. I think about it, I like having it – but it’s not the be-all and end-all of everything. I don’t pick my friends or the girls I fall in love with – ’ His glance fell on Prue for just a moment, passed on. ‘I don’t pick them by how much money they have in the bank.’
‘We’re not talking in the same money terms,’ said Magnus, but said it almost kindly. He was watching Nina, knowing what he had to accept for the future. ‘The Beaufort money has power. A lot of it.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to tell me that. I’ve worried about it ever since I learned of it. I don’t know that I want to inherit any power, it means too much responsibility. The life I’ve led since I left school, all I’ve been responsible for is myself. That was why I put all those questions to Mr Pedemont here. I just wanted to find out how much responsibility I was going to inherit with the money.’
‘Plausible again,’ said Bruce.
‘Lay off him, Bruce,’ said Charlie, on his second drink.
‘It doesn’t worry me, Mr Luman,’ said Harvest. ‘I couldn’t care a damn now. I’m Michael Davoren, I’m sure of it. There were times when I had my own doubts – but not any more. My father was Tim Davoren and my mother is Mrs McKea. But I don’t care any more. Bugger the lot of you!’
He put down his half-empty glass of beer, turned and had opened the doors of the drawing-room before Nina said, ‘Wait!’ He looked back at her without turning round. ‘I’d like a moment alone with you.’
He stood very stiff and silent, then he nodded. ‘Okay. I didn’t mean to include you in that last remark.’
Nina went out of the room, closing the doors after them. Those that were left looked around at each other.
‘Well,’ said Roger. ‘I said it was going to be her decision in the end.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Charlie. ‘Or am I repeating myself?’
‘You are, darling.’ Sally stood up, began to walk around the room, as if to relieve an old pain in her leg. But she was feeling no pain at all, only relief. Perhaps, after all, she was not going to have to tell Nina about the Congo and the meeting with Tim. ‘But I think we’d better start accepting him. He’s our nephew.’
Margaret looked at Pedemont, wanting him out of the way. ‘I think that will be all, Mr Pedemont. Thank you for coming to us. You were very helpful.’
‘That’s a private investigator’s job, Mrs Alburn. To be helpful.’ There was still no sign from him that he had ever met her before. But perhaps he had become successful in more ways than one: at hiding his intentions, for instance. ‘Maybe I can be of help some other time. You have my card, Mr McKea.’
‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘Send us your bill.’
‘No bill, Mr McKea. I got well paid a long time ago. Goodnight, all.’
Magnus took him out to the front door and Roger said, ‘Well, he’s more honest than I expected. Giving Harvest back his retainer, not billing us – ’
‘He’ll be looking for business in the future,’ said Bruce. ‘It might be good policy to use him now and again. Just in case – ’
‘Don’t you ever trust anyone?’ said Prue. And wondered how much, in the future, she could trust the lover who had turned out to be her nephew, who had told her a moment ago that he had loved her, if only for one night. ‘Let’s go home, Roger.’
‘We can’t go yet. Not till Nina comes back.’
In the study Nina stood in front of the fireplace, before the photos of her father and mother, looking at her son, trying to climb over the long blank years that had made him a stranger. It suddenly struck her that she had not even touched him since they had met. She closed her eyes, remembering the weight of the baby against her breast, the energetic life in the three-year-old boy in her arms. She opened her eyes and said, ‘I wonder what your father would say if he could see us together?’
‘I think he’d be pleased. It took me a long time to wake up to it, but he was always lonely. Even when we were together.’
‘I might come to envy you, you know. You had more of him than I did.’
‘Well – ’ He put out a tentative hand, touched one of hers but did not take it in his own. ‘I can tell you about him. The things we did – ’
‘No.’ She wanted to touch him, hold him to her. But he was too tall, too big, to hold him to her as the child she had lost all those years ago. She had lost the experience of being a mother. ‘There’s Magnus. I shouldn’t want him hurt – ’
He nodded. ‘I like him. I think he was on my side. But the others – ’
‘You’ll learn to live with them. They are all nice people – really. They were just trying to protect me, there was no other reason. In case – ’ She smiled a little weakly. ‘At the start even I wasn’t sure.’
He smiled in reply. ‘Neither was I. But now – ‘
Then he took both her hands in his, leaned forward and kissed her softly on the cheek.
There was a knock on the door. It opened and Magnus stood there. ‘Well?’
‘He is Michael,’ said Nina.
Walking back across the lawns towards their own house, Margaret took Bruce’s hand. ‘Cold?’ he said.
‘A little.’ With ghosts from the past.
A security guard, doing his rounds of the estate, passed them. ‘Night, Mr and Mrs Alburn. Beautiful weather.’
‘Everything all right, Walt?’
‘Yes, sir. Everything’s secure.’
No, thought Margaret, her grip on Bruce’s hand tightening. Nothing is secure. Not while there are secrets to be kept.