by Anna Porter
“Excuse me,” Marsha said impatiently, bending over the pony’s white mane, “but could we not start at the beginning—with who the hell are you and why are we all here?”
“The manuscript,” the woman said. “That’s why we are all here, Miss Hillier. That, and perhaps a dash of natural curiosity on your part.”
The woman turned to Judith again.
“You haven’t answered me.”
“I don’t have all the facts yet,” Judith said, groping for an answer that would keep the woman talking.
“At least you’re not inclined to Satyagraha, that’s a good beginning. You must know that they will try to prevent you from publishing. Nor can you find the whole truth without our help. Though it is there to be dug up, there are too many protective barricades. But we have all the proof. Naturally. That’s why we must trust one another.”
“What about George Harris?”
“The mistake Mr. Harris made was not to. Trust us, that is. He didn’t even trust the evidence of his own eyes. He wanted to hedge his bets. He lacked patience. Perhaps we should stroll along again…” When they reached the Fisher-Price area, she stooped over a model of the Castle—extra-large—and examined the ramparts.
“And there isn’t any point in your trying to get it from Axel,” she added, looking at Marsha. “Did you really imagine they wouldn’t have found it?”
“You have this manuscript with you?” Marsha cut in. There was a chance the woman was mad, but there was at least this consistent thread of the manuscript.
“That would have been foolish under the circumstances.”
“You picked the circumstances.”
“What I meant is, first we have to establish the terms. You must ensure simultaneous publication in the English language world-wide. We will want maximum publicity, and you are well placed to do that. And we must have guarantees… Then we will have to ensure your continued well-being.”
“Guarantees?” Judith asked. She didn’t want to jeopardize the unfolding of the story, but she had to ask.
“The financial guarantees,” the woman said.
“How much did George Harris offer?” Marsha asked.
“He didn’t tell you?” The woman looked at Judith.
“Not exactly,” Judith said.
“One point two million. That figure is acceptable.”
“Oh.” Judith sighed.
Marsha cut in, her heart beating faster, her hand shaking over the battlements: “We could try for that, though it is a very large sum of money.”
“When you have the manuscript you will have no doubts.” The woman picked up a winged dragon and placed it in Judith’s hand. She was smiling. “And you will have done the world a service.”
“We have no trouble with the publication conditions, if it’s the right property. When do we get to read it?”
“We will contact you,” the woman said, and she picked up a tiny figure of a plastic knight, smiled at both Marsha and Judith and, before either of them could say anything, left to join the line-up at the checkout counter.
Marsha considered following her, but didn’t.
They both stared at the dragon in Judith’s hand.
“What is Satyagraha?” Judith asked.
“It was Gandhi’s policy of nonviolent resistance to British rule in India,” Marsha replied. “Do you think she’s crazy?”
“No. She thinks George confided in me about all this, whatever it is, but he didn’t. What do you think she meant about my attitude to bread?”
“Maybe the story has something to do with India? I’ll buy you the dragon if you like… One point two million dollars would have to be a big story.”
“I’d prefer a Simon, if they still have them.”
Marsha grabbed Judith’s arm.
“Don’t turn to look, but there’s a man behind those shelves on the right. I think he’s been watching us for a while.”
“Let’s go downstairs where the Simons used to be. See if he follows.”
“I desperately need a drink,” Marsha said, glancing over her shoulder. She took the dragon for herself.
Judith asked for a Simon to be gift-wrapped. For the kids.
From behind the glass pillar at 58th Street, Judith and Marsha stopped for a last look at the window display and caught a glimpse of the man Marsha had seen earlier. He was just over six feet tall, gray-haired, thinning at the temples, around fifty. He was dressed for Fifth Avenue: a three-quarter-length camel-hair coat, maroon silk cravat, charcoal-gray soft wool trousers, expensive. His hands in his pockets, he browsed with exaggerated interest, half-turned again, glanced through the glass pillar, though not directly at the two women, checked his watch, waited.
“What now?” Marsha asked. “Shall we see if he makes the first move?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for another encounter today,” Judith said. “This was going to be a holiday, remember? You were going to treat me to a strawberry daiquiri at the St. Regis. He can buy his own.”
But he didn’t follow them into the hotel. He waited a few minutes outside on the red carpet, hesitated, turned and strode off.
“Oh hell,” Marsha said. “Come on.” She held Judith by the arm, through the revolving doors, down the stairs, out onto the sidewalk as their distinguished follower rounded the corner of Fifth Avenue and disappeared.
He walked fast, with long strides, easy gait, his old-fashioned brown suede shoes hugging the asphalt.
“Some men improve with age,” Judith said. “This one’s lovely to watch. Exhausting though. If I’d known we’d be running around like this, I’d have kept up my exercise routine. And worn my Adidas. You don’t suppose you might have made a mistake?”
“No,” Marsha said. “He watched us through our chat with the strange old bird. Hasn’t had much practice—he was knocking stuff off the shelves as he peered over them. The woman knew.”
To Judith’s great relief, they didn’t have far to go. His destination was the Upper East Side, the half-million-a-year sector, East 61st. The doorman opened the door for him with a small, significant bow. Strictly in the big-tip bracket.
“Why anyone living on the Upper East Side would want to follow us around beats me,” Judith said.
“Let’s find out,” Marsha said and ran directly to the doorman. She put her hand over her heart and panted hard.
“Damn,” she said. “I’m too late.”
He stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“He’s gone in already, and I haven’t given him the message.” Her voice caught in agitation. “He’s gone up, hasn’t he?”
The doorman surveyed Marsha for a second, glanced at Judith, who tried an encouraging smile, and looked back at Marsha who had started to dig frantically in her purse.
“Mr. MacMurty?” he asked finally.
“Yes, yes,” Marsha said, digging urgently, “of course. Dammit all, where is it?”
“I should announce you, then?” The doorman shifted toward the phone.
“Wouldn’t dream of disturbing him now,” Marsha said, extracting a crumpled sheet of blank paper from her purse. She folded it in two. “Just put it in his mailbox.” She handed him a twenty-dollar bill and smiled a little, though still obviously upset by her own forgetfulness. She took out her pen.
“I do have trouble with the spelling…”
“Ethan? or MacMurty?” the doorman asked.
“MacMurty.”
He spelled it as she wrote the name on the piece of paper. Ethan MacMurty.
***
They went back for the strawberry daiquiris.
“What if there is a manuscript full of state secrets worth $1,200,000 and they think we know a lot about it from George? Wouldn’t someone…?”
Marsha shook her head. “That’s a story by Robert Ludlum,” she said. “In real life, there has to be a simpler explanation.”
They made a fast visit to the Frick, almost a pilgrimage for Judith since it was the home of her favorite Rembrandt, “T
he Polish Rider,” and one of the best Titians in the world.
For dinner they went to Le Trou Normand and afterward Marsha had tickets to the revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, starring, as before, Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst. Tickets were harder to come by than they had been for the Picasso exhibition.
***
On Sunday morning Jerry arrived with a large Sam’s Deli bag full of fresh coffee, lox and cream cheese, warm bagels, Danishes, a chocolate bombe for himself, and a biographical note for them.
“He is Ethan George MacMurty, Doctor of Law, Harvard Business School, previously Harvard graduate in philosophy and history. Director of twelve companies, including two in book publishing, chairman of CFT, the Boston communications giant, three TV stations, the Chicago all-news channel, USA Now, Women’s Voice, Galloway and Brooks, LaPresse in Paris…etc.”
“Ridiculous,” Judith said, chewing on her bagel.
“Maybe he’s after the same story we are?” Marsha conjectured.
***
At M & A on Monday morning, Marsha was putting final touches to her appointments for London when Gordon Fields called.
“It’s been simply dreadful around here,” he whispered in exhaustion. “Police swarming all over the building. Max’s funeral, and I now hear there’s going to be a takeover.”
Marsha made appropriate sympathetic sounds.
“There’s something strange about that manuscript you’re hunting for…”
“Oh?”
“Francis Harris has been yelling at me to find it. He came down for the funeral. Seems they’ve lost the original. And it’s worth a packet of money. Did you know it was that valuable?”
“I knew it was special…”
“And did you know George Harris died last Monday?”
“Yes,” Marsha said, and listened to the silence on the line.
“You should have told me when you came looking for the thing.” Gordon was offended.
“Why, for chrissakes? I didn’t think you knew him.”
“I didn’t. But I sure know his successor now. He’s hopping mad. He thinks we’re trying to cheat them. Did you know they were looking for the manuscript?”
“It’s odd they wouldn’t have a copy. Surely Harris can get another from the author?”
“There’s no record of his name. And that’s not all. What’s even weirder is that Max had requisitioned a check for $250,000, payable to Fitzgibbon & Harris against a contract that agreed to pay a further $750,000 thirty days after publication,” he squawked. “Did you know that too?”
“Then you have the manuscript?”
“No. There is no manuscript. Nothing. The contract’s with Fitz & Harris. The manuscript is down as Untitled. And there are no readers’ reports, nothing to identify it. It’s going to be hell trying to find it. So don’t expect to hear from me for a while.”
“Has Max ever done anything like this before?”
“Probably. But he always stuck around to explain later.”
PART THREE Toronto
Fifteen
THE CHILDREN HAD, after all, survived the weekend at their grandmother’s. Anne had developed an itchy throat with sporadic attacks of deep-down cough and had been spared the command performance of after-dinner singing. Better still, although Granny had assembled a small group of close friends for Saturday evening, Anne had been urged to slip upstairs to bed early. She was allowed to read until midnight, as long as she downed some old-fashioned brew of honey, cinnamon and herb tea. It didn’t taste like much, but her throat was better.
Jimmy had been less fortunate, having had to cancel roller skating because Granny’s regular canasta partner back-ended her own refrigerator on Sunday morning and couldn’t straighten up for the drive over. It was too late to call off the game, even if anyone had wanted to, and they knew Jimmy had learned to play canasta at gym camp in Temagami during two weeks of the last slushy summer.
That bored a hole in Jimmy’s afternoon. All the more gaping because he made mistakes, just enough of them to keep Granny going with snappy remarks about lack of concentration lurking at the root of all Jimmy’s problems in geography, history, sometimes English and definitely canasta. Luckily, she had forgotten his recent performance in math.
“A boy needs a firm hand. Discipline.”
She had not been indelicate enough to sneak in the subject of “poor James,” as she had recently taken to calling their father, though she did cast some meaningful glances at her friends and they nodded in common understanding, all the more sincere because they were winning.
It was about then that Judith had called from the airport. Jimmy abandoned the game down 600 points and bolted for the subway. Anne caught up with him at Rosedale. They were home a few minutes before Judith.
The living room looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. There were records and bent record covers all over the floor, dishes on the table, half a pizza, socks, shoes, bottles of Coke, empty beer bottles (she counted them, twenty), glasses—one broken—potato chips and lumps of soil from an overturned plant ground into the carpet. Anne was stacking the dishes, Jimmy had hauled down the vacuum cleaner, his face flushed with the unusual exercise, and, Judith hoped, some embarrassment. Anne, conveniently, had her back turned toward the door where her mother stood transfixed.
“Why don’t you go on upstairs, Mum; we’ll clean this up in a minute,” Jimmy huffed cheerily.
“As the prime minister said after the garbage strike,” Judith muttered.
“There wasn’t time to clean up before we had to leave for your mother’s,” Anne explained truculently, over her shoulder. Judith liked the way Anne defined the relationship with her grandmother, as if it were something uniquely Judith’s.
The situation demanded a show of strength, some firm words, maybe a series of prohibitions, but she was too preoccupied with the events of the past weekend. And still feeling guilty. She had never been able to shake that. Not since the first time she left them at home with a sitter while she went out to work. Jimmy had clung to her knees all the way to the door, shrieking “Mummy.” She could hear his wails all the way down the street and, in her mind, still.
Anne was four then. She had started nursery school. The bus used to pick her up shortly after Judith left. She would stand in the hallway in her small blue coat and knitted mittens, her red toque pulled down over her ears, eyes clear and steady as Judith put on her own coat. Only the slight downward turn at the corners of her mouth showed her resentment that Judith wouldn’t be there when she came home, and that, hard as she tried not to show it, she felt betrayed.
They had come through OK, Judith thought. Discipline be damned. She would wait and see. She cleared herself a spot in the clutter on the couch and put on her favorite Frank Sinatra record which she found in its usual place. Luckily, both the kids thought it was sentimental sop. She rested her head on the back of the couch, lit a cigarette, closed her eyes and relaxed. She stayed there until the vacuum drowned out “Send in the Clowns,” finished the cigarette and went up to bed. She would unpack tomorrow.
Anne and Jimmy came into her room about an hour later. They were cleaned and in pajamas. They sat on the edge of her bed. At least Anne did. Jimmy sort of leaned, and slouched over Judith’s feet.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said. “It’s all fixed now.”
“We had some friends over. For pizza and that, you know. Janet and Marci and Hugh…”
“And Jimmy called the kid with the frizzies…”
“Jack.”
“Yeah, and Jessie who’s two feet taller than him. You should’ve seen them dance. Yech. A riot! He was sneaking around her armpits!”
“You should’ve seen Hugh. Has a face like a pin cushion, more zits than skin. Hey, Anne, you oughta tell him about that new stuff you’ve got in the bathroom for yours…”
“Shut up. We had a fight over the records so it all broke up about 11:00 and we weren’t talking by then so nobody cleaned up the mess.”
There had been better explanations, but this would do. Later she would raise the question of who was drinking the beer.
“How did it go in New York?” Jimmy asked.
Judith told them of the places she’d been, and unveiled Simon. Anne fitted in the batteries and they all had a try at following it through once. Nobody made it.
Anne bent over her mother and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“We missed you,” she said. Jimmy jiggled out the door looking busy all over, which meant that he was feeling emotional. Judith was glad she had foregone the lecture.
***
Judith was still asleep when the phone rang at nine on Monday morning, the sound so rude, sharp and persistent she almost succeeded in overcoming the Pavlovian reach for the receiver. When she heard David Parr’s voice she was glad she had not defeated her reflex.
“Did I wake you?” Parr asked, recognizing the fuzziness of her hello.
“What do you think? It’s only…” searching for the numbers on her watch, eyes still half-closed.
“Almost mid-morning,” Parr said in his professorial tone. “I’ve been at my desk for over two hours and before that I was over at Union Station checking out an assault with a deadly weapon.”
“Good to know you’re on your toes protecting us unsuspecting slumbering innocents.”
“Would you rather I called back?”
“No. Really. I have a lot to tell you.” The sleep was slowly wearing off and his voice was warming, starting from somewhere near her stomach and spreading over her thighs.
A pause. “Well? What?”
Damn. “I’d rather not on the phone.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too public. Phones…”
He laughed so hard she had to wrench the receiver from her ear. When he stopped spluttering, he said: “You figure someone would actually waste a thousand dollars to put a bug on your phone?”
