Philip was buried two days later, quietly and without any notice in the newspapers. Lucas went through his papers in the apartment and the office out at EUR and found two passports, one in the name of Philip Gentleman, the other for Philip Mann. He was buried under the latter name and his murder was filed under that name. The police came to see Sally, but Lucas told them she was still in hospital, suffering from the shock of losing both her baby and her husband; but no one at the hospital was told of Philip’s death and Lucas made arrangements to get her out of there as soon as possible. He told the police he could think of no reason for the killing of his son-in-law except that of robbery. His son-in-law had left the apartment with a brief-case and no brief-case had been found at the scene of the crime. He had no idea what might have been in the case, but he presumed it must have interested the murderer or murderers; there had been no witnesses to the crime, the attendant at the garage saying that he had been away delivering a car at the time the murder was assumed to have taken place. Lucas told the police his son-in-law was a quiet-living businessman, happy in his marriage, doing his best, in his own quiet way, to increase American investment in the Italian economy.
The lieutenant in charge of the investigation knew with whom he was dealing. ‘Are you yourself investing in our economy, signore?’
Nina, sitting in on the interview, translated for her father. He shook his head. ‘Not at present. My son-in-law had his own interests, mostly in motion pictures. I never invest in motion pictures.’
‘Forgive my asking, signore, but what were your relations with Signor Mann?’
Lucas took his time about answering that after Nina had translated it. ‘We respected each other. And he was a good husband to my daughter.’
The lieutenant nodded, but it was impossible to tell how he accepted that argument. He was a gaunt untidy man with a face grey from pessimism and bad diet. ‘It may be difficult to keep the matter out of the newspapers – ’
Lucas said, through Nina, ‘I understand that, lieutenant. All I ask is that my daughter be left alone. If her name were not mentioned – ’
Nina said, not bothering to translate her own remarks for her father’s benefit, ‘If our name could be kept out of it, lieutenant, I think a substantial donation could be made to any police charity you care to name.’
‘Are you trying to bribe us, Signorina Beaufort?’ The lieutenant looked sideways at the sergeant who had come with him. They were both middle-aged men who knew they would probably climb no higher up the promotion ladder before retirement.
Nina looked at both of them in turn. ‘Yes, I think I am. There is no scandal involved in this. All I’m asking for is privacy, especially for my sister. Wouldn’t you wish the same for your wife or sister in the same circumstances?’
‘The circumstances could never be the same, signorina,’ said the lieutenant, eye running round the grand apartment, then winking at the sergeant, finally settling back on Nina. ‘But the sergeant and I appreciate your position.’
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Lucas.
‘I’m offering them some inducement to keep our name out of the matter.’
‘No! I’m against any sort of bribery.’ But Lucas did not look squarely at her as he said it. He had bribed her husband, which was worse than bribing any policeman.
Nina turned back to the two policemen. For the first time in God knew how long she had acted positively for someone else’s benefit. What she was suggesting was both immoral and illegal, but ethics did not worry her if it meant Sally could be protected. ‘My father dissociates himself from what I’ve just offered you. He is sometimes more honest than pragmatic.’
The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. He believed that an honest rich man had to be a contradiction in terms, pragmatic or otherwise. ‘We all have our standards, signorina,’ he said tongue in cheek. ‘Will you pay in cash or by cheque?’
‘Cash,’ said Nina. ‘A cheque would have our name on it. Ours and yours.’
The lieutenant did not miss the point: he smiled at the acumen of this beautiful American woman. No wonder the Americans were successful in business, when even their womenfolk knew how to make the dollar work. ‘The sergeant and I will leave the amount to your discretion, signorina. Americans are noted for their generosity.’
The police went away and Lucas made a show of being angry at the bribery. He was surprised that Nina had taken such a course. It would have been more likely coming from Margaret or Prue; or himself. But he was afraid to offer a bribe any more: the last one had bounced back at him too hard.
‘I hope you don’t make a practice of that,’ he said.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing. You were actually asking them to keep our name out of it, yet you wanted them to do it for nothing. I didn’t think you were that mean with money.’
‘I’m not.’ He tried to sound indignant but it came out more like petulance. Which made Nina look at him, for he had never been petulant, either. ‘It was the principle.’
‘Well, it’s money under the bridge now. We’ll bury Philip and leave for home as soon as we can. You’d better leave before the funeral, just in case. If Sally feels up to it, Prue and I will go to the church and cemetery with her.’
‘Is he being buried as a Catholic?’
‘I suppose we’d better. I don’t know what he was, but his father was a Sicilian and I guess all Sicilians are Catholics of some sort.’
‘Did you know who his father was?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you introduced your sister to a man like that? The son of a Mafia gangster.’
‘I only found out when it was too late. We seem to have a talent for that – us girls, I mean. Finding out things too late.’
That hurt him, but she did not know it. ‘Well, while we’re bribing people, there’s the housekeeper and her nephew to be kept quiet. Though I doubt if Italians can keep secrets, they’re so damned talkative.’
‘You haven’t read any Italian history. Lucia and her nephew will be all right, they have a lot of affection for Sally. Italians protect the people they love. Unlike Americans.’
‘Don’t be so touchy, Daddy. It was only a general observation.’
As Lucas had said, Sally was indeed in a state of shock. But she was brought home from the hospital and put to bed in the apartment, where Nina, Prue and Lucia took turns in nursing her. Margaret was telephoned and said she would fly over immediately but was dissuaded from it by Prue, who all at once had the chance to prove she was as adult as she claimed.
‘It won’t help, Meg. The fewer Beauforts around, the better. We’re going to get Daddy out of here as soon as we can. We’ll bring Sally home as soon as she’s fit to put on a plane. We’re chartering a Constellation and we’ll get away quietly. Will you ask Magnus to fly over as soon as possible? Daddy says there is not much of Philip’s estate here in Italy, but some things may need to be cleaned up.’
Lucas left for home on the morning of the funeral. Only Nina went to the funeral, Prue remaining with Sally. The priest looked askance at the small crowd of mourners: Nina, Lucia, Enrico and Philip’s secretary from the EUR office. The secretary had wondered if some of Signor Mann’s business acquaintances should be invited, but Nina had vetoed the idea. Signor Mann’s unexpected heart attack had made Signora Mann very ill and she did not want to have to face the condolences of strangers. Signor Mann had been a quiet man, as the secretary must have noticed, and it would be a mark of respect for him to be buried as he had lived. The secretary, wreathed in black and with a much larger severance cheque than she had expected, had agreed wholeheartedly that Signor Mann deserved what he would have wanted. The news of the manner of his death might eventually leak out, Nina thought, but the Beaufort sisters would be gone by then.
They left Rome in the chartered Constellation two days after the funeral, a nurse, brought in by Magnus from Kansas City, travelling back with them. Magnus himself stayed on in Rome to dispose of the lease on the apartment, all the furnishings, Sally’s plane which she had not flown for six months, their two cars and the odds and ends of Philip’s life. It was Lucia who came to him and told him she had witnessed a will for Signor Mann only the day before he had died.
‘Almost as if he had a premonition, signore.’
‘Where is it, signora?’
Lucia’s English was not good, but it was good enough for Magnus to understand her. She had taken an envelope to Signor Mann’s bank. It would be there in his safe deposit box.
It was, along with other papers. Magnus did not find it easy to get access to the box; he had to bring someone from the US Embassy to confirm that he was acting for the widow of Philip Mann and that, since Mr Mann had been a United States citizen, his papers were the property of his wife, a United States citizen. The bank spread its hands and gave over the contents of the box; it also reluctantly revealed that it held a considerable balance in Signor Mann’s account. Several billion lire, to be inexact. Magnus, accustomed though he was to zero numbers, still blinked. He wondered what astronomical figures Lucas’s wealth would add up to in lire.
Besides Philip’s will, a six-line document that left everything to Sally, there was a letter from a Chicago firm of lawyers and a photostat copy of Antonio Gentleman’s will, leaving everything to Philip. The letter stated that it was understood where certain bequests by the said Mr Gentleman could be found. In the safe deposit box, among the other papers, was the address of a bank in Zurich and the number of an account held there.
Magnus tidied up everything that he could for the moment in Rome, then flew to Zurich. He checked into the Baur au Lac, treating himself to the best at Lucas’s expense. Next morning he went to Tony Gentleman’s bank, introduced himself to the Director. The Director had not heard of Philip’s death, but Magnus produced the death certificate and gave a short verbal account of how Philip had been shot by some unknown robbers.
‘So many of our foreign clients seem to die violently,’ said the Director. ‘We Swiss only die violently by breaking our necks on the ski slopes.’
Magnus sympathized with the risks the Swiss took on their mountains and asked if he might see a statement of Mr Gentleman’s secret account. ‘There will be no withdrawal, of course, until my client has decided what she wants done with it.’
The Director had not missed the significance of the middle name, Sarah Beaufort Gentleman, in the will. Magnus had said he was from Kansas City and the Director had put several facts together in his mind, though he had been surprised that Beaufort money should be linked with Mafia money. The Swiss prided themselves on knowing where all the substantial money in the world was located. It meant that no faux pas as to identity were made when the substantial money came to Switzerland looking for a haven.
‘Mr Gentleman had a substantial amount in his account.’ Substantial was a favourite word with the Director; men of substance were his gods. ‘Shall I quote it to you in Swiss francs or US dollars?’
‘Dollars,’ said Magnus, afraid of more zeros.
‘Seven million three hundred and forty two thousand eight hundred and sixteen dollars. And some cents, which we normally do not bother about in such sums. You look surprised, Herr McKea. I thought you would have been accustomed to such substantial amounts.’
‘I am,’ said Magnus. ‘Only not from those sources.’
‘We make no moral judgements, Herr McKea. All money is clean once it enters our doors.’
Magnus was impressed by such piousness but said nothing. He went back to the Baur au Lac. By chance he met an Englishwoman in the bar, took her to dinner, spent the night with her and caught a plane out next morning for New York and Kansas City. He could not remember having had a more interesting and enjoyable trip since he had entered his father’s firm.
On the way back he debated whom he should see first, Sally or Lucas. It was Lucas who was paying his fee and expenses, but Sally was the beneficiary of the will. In the end he decided he would see them together.
Lucas and Sally waited for him in the drawing-room. Though summer was almost over, the weather was still hot. Lucas wore a seersucker suit and Sally was in a simple black dress that accentuated her thinness and the lack of colour in her face. Her blonde hair, still cut short in the French style, was as lustreless as an elderly woman’s.
‘Your husband has left you – ’ Magnus looked at his notebook and quoted from it. ‘All of it, I’m assured by the Director of the bank, perfectly clean respectable money.’
‘Ridiculous,’ said Lucas.
‘I don’t want the money,’ said Sally.
‘Of course you don’t!’ Lucas was the Lucas of old; he strode about the room stiff with fury and authority. ‘It’s some sort of sick joke! You can’t touch it!’
‘You can’t leave it there,’ said Magnus.
‘Why not?’ said Sally.
But Lucas suddenly looked dubious. ‘It is criminally wasteful. One shouldn’t leave money lying around doing nothing.’
‘Could we give it away to some charity?’ Sally was too wan and listless to care about the money: it was another burden she did not want.
‘We could, I suppose. But it’s an awful lot of money to unload without giving away the source.’ Magnus saw that Sally could dismiss the money, turn her back on it. But Lucas, a money man all his life, could not do the same without a great deal of heartburn. It would be like turning his back on the flag. ‘Unless we spread it over a number of years. You could give it to one of the international charities based in Europe.’
Sally waved an indifferent hand. ‘Do that, then. You choose the charity, Magnus. I really don’t care.’
Magnus looked at Lucas. ‘Well?’
‘It’s her money. But if it ever got out where it came from … That’s what worries me. When you are dealing in sums like that, there is always the possibility of a leak. I – ’ It was almost a physical effort for him to say it: ‘I think it should be left there for a while. A year, maybe two. Until we are sure that Sally’s name won’t be connected with the Gentlemans.’ He frowned, the word not sounding right in his ear. ‘Philip and his father.’
Sally shrugged: we could be talking about some petty cash, Magnus thought. ‘Anything. I said I don’t really care.’
So the money was left in the bank in Zurich on an interest-drawing basis. Lucas could not accept the thought of the money just lying there doing nothing.
Sally did not recover quickly from the events of that late summer of 1958. It was six months before she began to act and sound like the girl her sisters remembered. Then she bought herself another Maserati and another plane, this time a ten-year-old British Tiger Moth, and began to look for freedom on the back roads and in the skies of Missouri and Kansas. She drove fast and flew high, working herself out of her depression as if it were a physical thing that could be blown away by the winds.
It was Prue, the youngest and least experienced in misfortune, who put her on the road to recovery. ‘You’re dosing yourself up with self-pity.’
Sally would not accept that, if only out of pride. ‘You just don’t know what I’ve been through – ’
‘Nuts. You and Nina and Meg have all been through hell – I just hope it never happens to me. But sometimes you sound as if you’re trying to act like a poor little rich girl. Other people go through what you’ve all been through, but they don’t do it in such comfort. You wouldn’t get much sympathy from some poor girl who’s lost her husband and her baby and is living in some slum in New York or Chicago or somewhere.’
‘What are you, a Communist or something?’
‘That would make some of the boys I know laugh. They say I cost them twice as much as any other girl they know. No, I’m a dedicated hedonist and I think our money is lovely. But if anything bad ever happens I’m not going to mope about and think there’s nobody worse off than me.’
‘You just wait till it happens.’
But Sally had to concede to herself that there was a lot of truth in what Prue had said. She liked being back home in Kansas City; there were indeed far worse places to be unhappy. She thought of herself as an uncomplicated girl whose adult life had been a series of bruising complications; she was not aware of the full measure of herself, that within her lay the seeds of the complications that had struck her. It did not occur to her that she might have gone to an analyst for help; that would only have antagonized her father if he learned of it. She had been brought up on the unspoken principle that one did not go to an outsider for help, did not confide in a stranger. Comfort and advice was there in the family for the asking; the very extreme any of them might do would be to consult Magnus. So far no one in the family, for all their sympathy, had helped her understand herself.
So over the next year she went seeking the girl she had been before she had left to go to Vassar. At first she seemed to be succeeding; she began to fit easily into the pattern of the family. Nina and Margaret, she noticed, were no longer girls: Nina was thirty-seven, Margaret thirty-two: they were old enough now for her to see shades of their mother in them. Nina still lived in the main house with their father, engaged herself in a full social life but had no steady man. Margaret lived in the second house with Martha and Emma, was devoted to them but managed to live an even busier social life than Nina. Her constant escort was Bruce Alburn.
‘He’s no Marlon Brando, but he’s steady and reliable. And that’s a change for any of us.’
‘Are you going to marry him?’ Sally asked.
‘He hasn’t asked me yet. Bruce likes to take his time. I don’t think he’d even clean his teeth on the spur of the moment.’
‘God, you make him sound dull!’
‘He has his moments.’ But Margaret did not elaborate and Sally could only surmise that Bruce, having given a great deal of thought to it, had at some time got Meg into bed.
In June of 1960 she read that Belgium was giving the Congo its independence and she wondered if Michele and her husband were still in Leopoldville. The thought of Michele brought back an ache she thought she had cured.
In the late summer of that year Margaret and Bruce began working for Richard Nixon in the coming election against John F. Kennedy. Lucas had seemingly lost all interest in politics, but Margaret was turning into Kansas City’s Perle Mesta. She had to scratch for talent to come even remotely close to a comparison; unlike Perle Mesta she restricted herself to Midwest Republicans and the faithful of that year were not rich in salon wit. But they were shrewd and what they lacked in wit they made up for in common sense. At one of Margaret’s parties Sally met Charlie Luman.
A visiting British professor, on exchange to the University of Missouri, was holding forth on his impressions of America. It was a time when Americans, succumbing to a national streak of masochism, were paying foreign lecturers and writers to come and tell them what was wrong with them.
‘Take American football,’ said the visiting professor, who had not played sport since he had won the egg-and-spoon race at his prep school. ‘It is designed solely for the pleasure and ego-gratification of men who have already stopped playing the game, namely the coaches. There is none of the creative imagination one finds in rugby, where the players are encouraged to have initiative. If any player on the field in the American game had a spontaneous thought, it would be as sinful as sodomy in the huddle.’
‘I think I’ll crash-tackle that English faggot,’ said a tall, heavily-built man standing beside Sally. ‘He’s talking sacrilege.’
‘Do you play football?’ Sally asked.
‘For the Los Angeles Rams,’ he said with some quiet pride.
‘You’re a long way from home.’
‘This is home. KC. My old man is Senator Luman, Walter Luman. I’m Charlie Luman. Hi.’ He put out a hand that looked as if it could have cupped a football lengthways. ‘You’re one of the Beaufort sisters. Which one?’
She told him, after extricating her hand from his paw. ‘Do you live out in California?’
‘Laguna Beach.’ He had one of the friendliest smiles she had seen, simple, innocent and trusting. He had been smiling ever since he had first spoken to her and she wondered if he went into crash-tackles with the same broad flash of teeth. ‘You’re the one who drives and flies, right? I’ve got a licence myself, a commercial one. I’ve been working for two years with Pan Am part-time. I’m retiring from football the end of this season.’
‘I thought all football players wanted to be coaches?’
‘I’m too kind-hearted. I’d pat the guys on the back after losing, instead of kicking them in the ass. Pardon the language.’
He was too clean to be true, like someone out of a comic book. He had that sort of look: crew-cut blond hair, strong jaw, bright blue eyes, a physique like that of Superman. She looked a little closer, wondering if his smile was painted on.
‘Are you always kind-hearted? With girls too?’
‘Always.’ The smile seemed to widen, if that were possible.
Then Jack Minett was beside them, appearing with that sleight-of-hand skill, like a modest genie, of the best behind-the-scenes political worker.
‘Nice to see you again, Sally.’ He had not been on the estate since the death of his son. Once a month Margaret took her and Frank’s children over to the house in Johnson County and he respected her for that; but until tonight neither he nor Francesca had been invited here. And Francesca, not that he could blame her, had pleaded a headache and not come with him. ‘You’ve met our hero.’
‘Hero?’
‘Last year he was voted Most Valuable Player. He’s worth 20,000 votes to his old man in this year’s election.’
‘Not with rugby players,’ said Charlie Luman, but Jack Minett just looked blank.
‘Meg’s the one who should be running for office. It’s time we had some women in it. There aren’t enough of them in Washington.’
‘There are one or two,’ said Sally, ‘and my father thinks that’s one or two too many. He’d never let Meg run for office. You should know that,’ she said, not meaning to be unkind but realizing at once that that was how she sounded.
Jack Minett was used to unkind words, unwitting or otherwise. ‘I once told Frank that your father isn’t immortal. When your father dies I hope I’m still around to see what happens to you girls.’
‘Jack,’ she said, surprised, ‘you sound malicious.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘just expectant.’
He disappeared with the same cloud-of-smoke effect as he had appeared and Charlie Luman said, ‘Who’s he?’
‘A nice man in a dirty game. Are you going to follow your father into politics?’
He shook his head, the smile still there like a pleasant birthmark. ‘I told you, I’m too kind. Who was the last kindly politician you heard of?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Prue, coming up to them. ‘And look what happened to him.’
‘Don’t listen to her profanities,’ said Sally.
‘I’ve had you pointed out to me,’ Prue said to Charlie. ‘They say you’re a killer on the field. You be kind to my sister or I’ll kick you in your protector.’
For a moment Charlie’s smile seemed entirely without humour or kindness. Then he said, ‘I’ve just been telling her, I’m always kind to women.’
‘Then you’ll be a change.’ Then she looked at Magnus as he joined them. ‘Except you, of course, Magnus.’
‘What have I done now?’ he said.
‘Take me out on the terrace for a dance. They’re playing our number.’
Magnus cocked an ear. ‘The Missouri Waltz? How did President Truman get in here?’
The two of them drifted off and Sally said to Charlie, ‘Would you like to go for a flight?’
‘Now?’
‘Why not? There’s a full moon.’
On the way out they passed a painting hanging in the entrance hall. ‘Is that a Titian?’
She stopped in surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘I went to college on a football scholarship – my old man doesn’t have any money despite the fact he’s a senator. I had to study something, so out of the blue I picked art history. And I got interested in it. Where’d you get that? Is it your father’s?’
‘No, it’s mine. It was left to me. I’ve lent it to Meg till I have a place of my own.’
‘Boy, were you in luck! I suppose you’ve got to be someone like you Beauforts to be left something like that.’
She put a firm hand on his arm. looked up at him. ‘Charlie, before we go out that door, let’s get something straight. You make another remark about you Beauforts and I’ll loop the loop and do my best to toss you out of the plane. You understand?’
He had stopped smiling. ‘Sure. You’re just Sally Smith from now on.’
She had not even looked at the Titian. Magnus had been contacted by the Chicago lawyers and he had gone up there and returned with the news that there was much more of value in the Gentleman home than he had expected. Sally had refused to go back with him and in the end Margaret, for a reason she did not name, had said she would go with Magnus. The house had been sold and all its contents but the Titian and a secretaire with Sèvres porcelain plaques. Margaret had brought those two items back with her.
‘The Titian is too valuable to give away to some museum just now,’ Margaret had said. ‘Someone might start trying to track it down and your name could come out.’
Sally was tired of trying to hide; she was beginning to feel like a criminal on the run. Someone from the Mafia … ‘Won’t the dealer who sold it to Philip’s father wonder what’s happened to it? He’ll know that Tony Gentleman is dead.’
‘The lawyers are going to say, if anyone asks, that it has gone back to relatives in Italy who wish to remain anonymous. The funny thing is, the lawyers are not the crooks I expected. They’re every bit as respectable as Magnus, only stuffier. Tony Gentleman was doing his darnedest to look respectable.’
‘What about the secretaire?’
‘I just liked the look of that. It made me think Mother would have liked it.’
‘Not from him, I’ll bet. All right, you can have it. But I wish you hadn’t brought home that painting.’
‘You don’t have to think of its being Philip’s or his father’s – it doesn’t have any sentimental value like that painting of Nina’s. It’s a Titian and the last value you’d put on it would be sentimental.’
‘Oh God, how mercenary can you get!’
‘I said that to you once as a kid, remember? Keep it, Sally – you’ll get used to it. You don’t just go throwing away treasures like that to museums as if it was an old suit of Philip’s. That’s profligacy and Grandfather would spin in his grave if he knew of it. I think even Daddy might go a bit light-headed, too.’
‘He wanted to give away the money in Switzerland.’
‘You can always make more money. You can’t make another Titian. A good fake one, maybe, but not a real one.’
So Sally had kept the painting, but put it out of mind by giving it to Margaret to hang in her home. She went out of the house now without another look at it. Charlie paused a moment to look at it again, then he followed her.
They drove in to the Municipal Airport and he walked around the open two-seater Tiger Moth admiring it as much as he had the Titian.
‘The only way to fly,’ he said, and she warmed to him for that; he was a man after her own heart. ‘Pretty soon flying like this is going to be dead. Another fifteen, twenty years and nobody’s going to know what it’s like to fly with the wind in your face.’
‘Make sure of your seat-belt. I feel like some aerobatics tonight.’
She was pleased that he accepted without question that she could fly well enough to indulge in some stunt flying. They took off and climbed straight into the face of a full moon that threw the countryside below into bright relief. She always felt a sense of escape, of freedom, as soon as her plane was airborne. She wore no helmet and she let the wind tear at her hair. She turned west and flew out over Kansas. The farmlands stretched away beneath the moon like a vast quilt: America was in bed. She picked up the Union Pacific railroad tracks heading for Topeka: steel lightning frozen and laid on the countryside. A freight train crawled west: she could imagine the hoarse cry of its whistle; the sound of the heart of America at night. What sounds had Du Tisne, Bourgmond, Pike heard in the night as they had headed out across the plains? All at once she wished for the long ago; but she knew at the same time that nostalgia was only another form of escape. She pulled the Tiger Moth up into a loop, spun out of it and went down in a series of long fluttering sweeps, waltzing the plane down till she was only 1000 feet above the ground. Then she turned east and headed back towards Kansas City. She flew over the city, swung back along the river and at last touched down at the airport.
Charlie was out of his cockpit at once, stood beside the plane waiting to lift her down. But she sat for a few moments, feeling like a prisoner who had been recaptured. Then, reluctantly, she clambered out of the cockpit and let Charlie lift her down.
They drove back home. The party was still going on in Margaret’s house, but she had lost the mood for any sort of gathering. She got out of the car, waited till Charlie came round and stood beside her.
‘Goodnight, Charlie. Don’t get hurt in any tackles.’
She put her face up for the expected goodnight kiss, but he just squeezed her arm. ‘I’m going to be busy huckstering for Dad, but I’ll be back here the end of the week, before I go back to California. How about dinner Saturday night?’
She went inside to bed. She thought about him for a few minutes, without excitement or much interest. Then she fell asleep and dreamed of Michele and woke in the morning depressed and inexplicably, terribly lonely.
To throw off her depression she went flying again that day, taking George Biff with her. But storm clouds came up out of the south; far away to the south-west she saw the dark cone of a tornado. For one awful moment, that brought a shiver to her immediately afterwards, she wanted to fly towards the storm, right into the heart of the twister, to have the plane and herself disintegrate into pieces too small ever to be found. Then she thought of George and she turned the plane round and sped back towards the airport.
Driving home in the Maserati George said, ‘You ain’t happy. You still miserable about your lost baby?’
‘That’s part of it, George. But don’t go playing the wise old black retainer with me. Sometimes you sound like Uncle Tom.’
‘I wasn’t black, sometimes I’d whip the ass off of the lot of you.’
She jerked her head in surprise. He had often chastised her and her sisters when they were young, but she had never heard him as angry as he sounded now.
‘That was your daddy’s biggest fault – he never carried a whip with him.’ She had allowed him to take the wheel of the car and he was staring straight ahead, concentrating on the road. ‘He give you all a belt or two once in a while, you’d of bounced back quicker from all the things’ve happened to you. My sister, the second one, she just lost her third baby. She ain’t sitting around waiting for Judgement Day.’
‘George, what’s got into you? And slow down. You don’t usually drive as fast as his. You want to get us a ticket?’
He eased his foot off the pedal, sat further back in his seat, continued to stare straight ahead. ‘Sorry, Miz Sally.’
‘All right, don’t start sounding like Uncle Tom again. Sound like George Biff. What’s the matter?’
He took the car along the Ward Parkway at a sedate pace, past the mansions that looked as impregnable as castles. But he was indifferent to them: after all he lived in the grandest castle of them all. But he knew that stone walls could be conquered from the inside. ‘I been to a coupla meetings with my brother, the youngest one. Things is changing for us blacks. I’m too old to care, but I guess the meeting last night infected me. Affected?’
‘Either way, I know what you mean.’
‘You better get used to it. Us folk ain’t gonna be the same from now on. Not the young ’uns.’
‘Have you let Daddy know how you feel?’
‘It ain’t the way I feel. Not all the time, that is. You just got me worked up back there, was all. But your daddy knows what’s happening. He’s knowed it ever since Little Rock three years ago. Him and me, we talk about it. Miz Meg, she knows what’s happening. But you and Miz Nina and Prue, you never give a mind to it. All you mind is yourself. That was what got me spitting a while ago.’ He turned the car in through the gates, drove it down to the stables, pulled up and got out. ‘Thanks for the ride.’
‘Don’t you dismiss me like that, George. I do mind what happens to other people. I know someone in Europe who’s mulatto, and she’s told me what it’s like to be snubbed because she’s not all-white.’
He grinned, shook his head. ‘Miz Sal, you trying to tell me some coloured friend of yours in Europe, she gets snubbed in one of them fancy places you always going to, you think that’s the same as Jim Crow back here in Mississippi or Alabama, someplace like that? You ain’t that dumb. You just ain’t thinking right.’
He turned and walked away to his quarters above the stables, not hurrying, back straight, unafraid of anything she might say or do. She was furious with him; at the same time she wished she had his dignity. She was almost back to the main house before she realized she was half-running. She slowed down. Suddenly she wanted to write to Michele, but had no idea where to address the letter. She remembered with bitterness that Michele had not written to offer condolences on the death of Philip.
Saturday night Charlie took her to dinner in a restaurant in Country Club Plaza. It was a modest restaurant and it occurred to Sally that, though she had eaten in such places in Rome, Paris, Nice, she had never done so in Kansas City. Occasionally, in such small inconsequential revelations, she realized how rigidly protected she had been in her home town.
‘You hungry?’ Charlie picked up the menu.
‘You order for me.’ Food had never concerned her; she had a goat’s palate. ‘Do you have a girl out in Los Angeles?’
‘I play the field.’ For a moment he was sober as he looked at her over the top of the big menu card; then there was that wide bright smile again. ‘That sounds big-headed. I just don’t want to get tied down, that’s all. Not yet anyway. How about a nice juicy sirloin?’
‘Great,’ she said, comparing him with Philip who had said no to steak every time it had been presented to him. Charlie Luman, she decided, was a nice uncomplicated man with simple tastes, someone restful and nice to have around. She wished he was not going back to California tomorrow.
He told her about himself, a simple uncomplicated biography; she supposed it was the life of thousands of boys, though not all of them finished up playing for the Los Angeles Rams. He did not ask her about herself and she proffered nothing; he would never understand about Cindy and Michele and nothing must be revealed about Philip. People stopped by the table and patted him on the back, proud of him and proud to be seen talking to him; he accepted all the compliments with a modesty that she saw was as natural as his smile. All the passers-by asked was that he stay whole until Old KC had a football team of its own and he could come home so that they could cheer him every week of the fall. He smiled and promised to try and do that.
He introduced Sally and everyone smiled politely and their pride in Charlie increased: he was in the right company, sure enough. When they left the restaurant everyone nodded and waved and smiled again: they went out on a surf of goodwill.
‘They love you!’
‘They liked you, too.’
‘Only because I was with you.’
He took her to a night-club downtown, where again everyone seemed to recognize him; his size, if nothing else, made people look at him twice. At, she guessed, six feet four and 230 pounds, he was not inconspicuous. They listened to jazz that was her father’s sort of music; she was tone deaf but she enjoyed looking at Charlie’s obvious enjoyment of the band. Idly, almost with detachment, she thought he would be the sort of beau for her whom her father would approve.
‘Charlie Parker, Bird, used to play here,’ he said. ‘I was too young to have heard him. Do you ever regret you came too late to meet some of your heroes?’
Though romantic, she could not remember ever having had any heroes. And it was too late now. ‘Sometimes,’ she said.
He drove her home through the soft summer night. She had expected him to ask her to go somewhere with him and she had been undecided whether she would say yes or no. But the question did not come up, they drove straight home. He pulled in before the main house, but made no attempt to get out of the car.
‘Would you like to come in for a while?’
He had been quiet and sober all the way home, no hint of a smile. ‘I think we better call it quits.’
‘Quits?’ She had enough sensitivity to see that something was worrying him; she did not attempt any sarcasm when she said, ‘Have we started anything?’
‘Maybe not you. But me – ’ He put his huge hand gently on the back of her neck, stroked the short hair there. ‘I like you more than any girl I’ve met. But you’re – sad. What makes you that way, I don’t know. But you are. And I wouldn’t want to add to that sadness.’
Some day, she knew, the whole story of Philip and her marriage to him would come out. Lucas had seen that no announcement had ever been made, but it had been known in their own circle in Kansas City that Sally Beaufort had been Mrs Philip Mann. When she had come home the word had quietly been put out that her husband had died of a heart attack and that at the same time she had lost her baby; the double tragedy had seemed to silence any gossip that anyone might have wanted to voice. The two policemen in Rome had done their job well, better than any police could have done in the same circumstances in an American city; nothing had appeared in any newspapers and the Manns had quietly disappeared from the scene. The American correspondents in Rome had been more concerned with more important things; by the time the Manns were missed, Pope John had just been elected and everyone was busy thrusting their heads into the windows in the Vatican that he had thrown open. The Beauforts, none of them believers, should have been properly grateful to the Catholic Church. But Sally, pessimistically, was convinced that some day, somehow, the fact of her marriage to Philip and the circumstances of his death would emerge.
So Charlie knew nothing of what made her sad; but it had been perceptive of him to notice it. More perceptive of him than she had expected: she thought she had at last managed to hide her depression from outsiders.
‘You knew I’d lost my husband?’ She did not want to pile it on by mentioning the baby.
‘Sure. But it’s more than that makes you sad.’
Indeed it is. ‘Why do you think you would make me unhappy?’
‘I’ll tell you some other time.’
He leaned across and kissed her; not roughly or passionately but almost like a brother. God, she suddenly thought, he’s queer! Then was both amused and angry at herself: why shouldn’t he be a homosexual? It was just that he was so different from the ones she had known in Europe. After all, wasn’t she one herself?
‘Are you homosexual, Charlie?’ Maybe he would understand about Michele after all.
He leaned away from her, started to laugh. But she noticed that he laughed silently; then the laughter subsided into great sighs. She leaned forward and saw that he was crying. She reached for his hand, held it.
‘Charlie – I understand. I know what it’s like – ’
He shook his head, took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘You don’t understand! Jesus, I’m not a faggot. I just can’t get it up, that’s all. I’m impotent!’
She had not expected that he had anger like this in him. She let go his hand, suddenly afraid of the physical force throbbing in him; he seemed to fill the front seat of the car, threatening to explode.
‘It happened my first year in pro football. I got kicked in the balls. I was wearing a faulty protector and it just cracked and sliced into me like it was glass. At school I read that book of Hemingway’s, The Sun Also Rises, and I used to think about that guy, Jake whatever-his-name-was, and how terrible it would be to be like him. I was a stud at school. I’m not boasting. You played football, the girls were always available. And then?’ He put his hand down to his crotch, let it lie there a moment. ‘The doctors did everything they could, but the damage was too great. It was just one of those once-in-a-lifetime things, one of ’em said. Who’d want it to happen to him twice? How could it happen more than once?’
‘Who else knows?’
‘My mother and dad. And the head coach of the Rams.’
‘No girl knows?’
‘Only one, a girl out in California. The first one I went to bed with after I got out of hospital. I wouldn’t believe what the doctors had told me. Maybe she’s told other people about it. Girls talk about things like that, I guess.’
‘Not all of them. This one wouldn’t.’
He reached for the back of her neck again, gently stroked her hair. ‘Come out to LA some time, see me play. I’m still 100 per cent out there on the field.’
‘No, Charlie. I think I prefer the man you are here. Out there on the football field I think you might be another man altogether.’
‘You’re right,’ he said slowly. ‘I hate every son-of-a-bitch who pulls on a helmet. I’m better now than when they first signed me on. They had to ruin my balls to make me Most Valuable Player.’
‘Don’t be so bitter.’
His hand stopped: for one awful moment she thought he was going to snap her neck. ‘Don’t be stupid, Sally. What do you expect me to be?’
‘I’m sorry. It slipped out.’ And it should not have: if anyone should have understood his feelings, it should have been her.
His hand resumed its stroking. ‘Okay, you’re forgiven. The funny thing is, if anyone could make me forget being bitter I think it’d be you. There’s something between you and me that clicks. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. For me, anyway.’
‘For me, too,’ she said and tried for his and her own sake to be truthful; but couldn’t be certain. She leaned across and kissed him on the lips. It was not a passionate open-mouth kiss; but it had love in it. ‘Write me occasionally, Charlie. When you’re feeling bitter.’
So Charlie Luman went back to California and she did not see him again till November, when John F. Kennedy was elected President; a political disaster that convinced Lucas that God was not only a Roman Catholic Democrat but un-American as well. But he had not made the mistake this time of throwing an Election Night party to honour Richard Nixon as the new President. Remembering a previous lost wager, he had not been game enough to bet against his worst fears.
‘Money has always run this country, there’s nothing wrong with that,’ he said. ‘But it should not be used to buy the White House.’
‘Well,’ said Prue, home from Vassar for a few days, ‘I voted for Jack Kennedy and I think he’s the best thing that could have happened to the country. At least you should be happy we have a politician as President instead of a golfing general.’
‘Richard Nixon is a politician. And if he’d been elected he’d have got in on his merits, not his father’s money. And I’ll thank you not to go around boasting that you voted for Kennedy. I was sorry, Charlie, that your father lost out. I thought he was bound to be returned. The country’s going to the dogs.’
‘Dad’s philosophical,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s always said you shouldn’t go in for politics unless you expect to lose.’
‘How are you taking your retirement? I understand you had to give up football before you intended.’
‘It was going to be my last season anyway. But my knee has gone, so they let me go early. I’m full-time now with Pan Am. I do a couple of years on piston-engined aircraft, then I start a training course for jets. We’re getting into a whole new era.’
‘The prospect doesn’t excite me,’ said Lucas.
As if to forget the defeat of their Republican candidate, Margaret and Bruce Alburn announced that they were to be married. Lucas suggested that Inauguration Day might be a suitable date; all their friends, being Republicans, would not be interested in what was going on on that day in Washington. But Margaret, who had a sense of occasion and an eye to the future, vetoed that.
‘No. Some of our friends may turn out to be Kennedy-lovers. Even some of our business friends.’
‘God forbid,’ said Lucas, but he had no real faith in the Almighty any more.
Margaret and Bruce were married a week after Inauguration Day and went off to Rio de Janeiro for their honeymoon. Lucas had formed a new bank, Missouri International, and several branches had been set up in South American countries. Bruce thought the honeymoon trip would be a good opportunity to look in on the Brazilian office.
‘I swear that their foreplay consists of profit and loss figures,’ said Prue. ‘Meg’s getting as bad as Bruce. I’ll bet right now on their wedding night she’s sitting up in bed checking the cost of the reception.’
‘Did you hear what the city government gave her for a wedding present?’ Nina said. ‘Not that they meant it as a present. They have re-zoned that land up in Platte County, the land she got from Frank. Magnus tells me it’s now worth about five million dollars.’
‘Poor Frank,’ said Sally.
The three sisters, still in their wedding reception gowns, shoes off, were lolling about in Nina’s bedroom. It had been a long happy day and Sally was once again aware of how content she could be in her sisters’ company. But she had begun to grow restless again, though she had not yet said anything.
‘You were marvellous, Prue, with Martha and Emma,’ she said. ‘You’re the last one I’d expect to be a child-lover.’
‘I hope you haven’t turned over your old library to them,’ said Nina.
‘I love their innocence,’ said Prue, smiling warmly at the thought of Margaret’s two children. They were now nine and ten, both pretty, both quiet, sometimes seeming like strangers among the more outgoing Beaufort sisters who were their mother and their aunts. ‘I shouldn’t want to spoil that. It’ll happen, nothing’s more certain, but I shouldn’t want to be the one who does it. It’s hard to believe we were once as innocent as that.’
‘Are you kidding?’ said Nina. ‘You stopped being innocent when Mother took you off her breast.’
‘Was it as late as that?’ said Prue innocently.
‘Let’s hope Bruce proves a good stepfather. How’s Charlie coming along, Sally?’
Sally shrugged, determined to keep Charlie’s secret. ‘I don’t think he’s the settling down kind.’
‘I’d have thought he was just that kind,’ said Prue. ‘I saw him this afternoon, he never took his eyes off you. You haven’t turned him down, have you?’
‘You’re an idiot if you have,’ said Nina.
Over the next few months Charlie stopped in at Kansas City on his way across country and each time Nina and Prue asked Sally what was happening between her and Charlie. The pressure began to tell on her; yet she could not bring herself to tell Charlie that she did not want to see him any more. She liked his company, felt a deep aching sympathy for him. But he never mentioned marriage and she knew as well as he that any sort of permanent relationship between them was hopeless.
The world spun on, seemingly moving a little quicker now. The Russians shot a man into space, which pet-lovers all over the world thought was more humane than the Russians’ previous missile, a dog. Cuban exiles, aided and abetted by Washington, landed at a place called the Bay of Pigs; Lucas suggested it should have been re-named the Bay of Scapegoats, since over the next few weeks everyone but Mary Pickford was blamed for the fiasco. Then the Americans shot a man into space and President Kennedy talked of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Word came out of New Guinea that men there were still killing each other with bows and arrows. Perspective, as Edith would have said, was always there if you looked for it.
At the end of summer Sally announced that she was going back to Europe for an extended stay.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Prue, who had finished at Vassar.
‘Dammit!’ said Lucas. ‘Why can’t you girls stay put?’
Though he had had responsibilities as both a father and a businessman, Lucas had never really been subjected to great personal pressures. He had married a girl who had been his own and his parents’ choice and his marriage had been ideally happy. But sometimes he wondered if he had failed his daughters, though he could not find enough evidence to convict himself. He did not believe in too harsh self-prosecution, except for what he had done to Nina. And time, he sometimes thought, was healing that.
‘We’ll go to London,’ said Prue, ‘and live a quiet simple life.’
‘You can live that here.’ But he knew now that he could never win an argument with any of his daughters. His favourite was turning out to be Margaret, who seemed to think more and more like him as she grew older.
Charlie Luman came by Kansas City a couple of days before Sally and Prue left for England. He came to dinner at the main house and Lucas spent the evening beaming at him as if he were the answer to a father’s prayer. Charlie, bemused by such approval, was not the brightest and wittiest of dinner guests. Afterwards he and Sally went for a walk in the grounds.
‘Why was your father all over me tonight? I was waiting for him to ask me to join the Beaufort Oil football team.’
‘He’s looking for another son-in-law.’ They had reached a level in their relationship where they could talk without embarrassment.
He held her hand as they walked along the path: from a distance they looked in love. Which they were, but not in a way that Lucas wanted. ‘Sally, I’m never going to risk it. Marriage, I mean. If I married you, or anyone else for that matter, and you got tired of never getting any proper sex and you went off and had it with some other guy, I’d go out of my mind. I’m not capable of an erection, but I sure as hell could get jealous.’
‘Maybe in our old age we’ll get together.’
She had not been able to bring herself to tell him about Michele. He was terribly straight about sex; she could not imagine his being tolerant about any deviation. Though they did not preoccupy him, he talked of fags and dykes as if they were the worst result of Original Sin: what they got up to was too original for him. He would probably back off from Michele if he met her with more fear than if he were faced with the entire offensive line-up of the Green Bay Packers.
‘Maybe by then they’ll have solved my problem.’ He kissed her on the lips, holding her to him; his hands never touched her breasts, he was always as chaste in his embrace as a Victorian parson. One of the better ones. ‘Then, as they say, we’ll have a ball.’
‘Two,’ she said, and back in the house Lucas heard their loud laughter and wondered why such a happy pair would not announce their engagement.