A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

“I don’t want to know the details of any private arrangements you may or may not have with government officials. You should brief them on the situation, not me.”

  “I have attempted to do so. Dr. Bush has not responded to these attempts.”

  “Ah, well. That tells us a good deal, doesn’t it.” He wasn’t asking a question.

  “Mr. Luce—”

  “Not a good time for muckraking, my dear,” he said gently. “The troops need penicillin. I’m in favor of whatever Vannevar Bush needs to do to get it to them as soon as possible. Maybe someday, when the war is over, we’ll have the luxury to debate whether potentially life-saving medications should or shouldn’t be tested on internees without their knowledge and consent.”

  She stared at him. He picked up a pencil and began to work on his page proofs, as if she were no longer there. She stood up and left.

  The Rockefeller Center promenade was crowded in the noontime rush. Usually the opulent gardens and towering skyscrapers glinting in the sunlight invigorated Claire. Today, as she mulled over her options, their glory was a rebuke.

  She made a mental checklist of colleagues at other publications who might be able to take the story, but she didn’t get far. Most likely their editors wouldn’t be interested in muckraking during a war, either.

  Claire looked around. A naval officer squeezed the hand of the young brunette he walked with, and he placed her hand against his heart. She moved against him, and they walked shoulder to shoulder, the woman’s light summer dress pressed against her body by the breeze as they made their way along the Channel Gardens. Claire thought of herself and Jamie. The ache in her chest was staggering.

  A black man pushed a bass in a white case that was taller than he was, no doubt heading to one of the jazz clubs on West Fifty-second Street. An elegant woman in a well-cut suit checked her makeup surreptitiously in her compact mirror before entering the RCA Building to meet her husband or boyfriend or lover. Or to do a job interview. A sailor kissed a girl in a doorway. Would any of these servicemen be alive a year from now?

  Cornstalks filled the Channel Gardens. Rockefeller Center had its own victory garden. Wafting in the breeze in the middle of Manhattan, the thickly planted cornstalks conjured an image of prairies far away.

  Distracted, Claire wasn’t looking where she was going, and she bumped into a bulky figure. “Excuse me,” she said, quickly pulling away. “I’m so sorry.” She looked at him, taking in the stocky frame, bullish demeanor, and thick dark hair. With a shock she realized who it was. “Bill?…Bill Shipley?”

  “Oh.” He stepped back, an expression of unwelcome surprise on his face. “Claire Lukins.” Not a question, nor an especially happy statement. She hadn’t heard her maiden name in a long time. He didn’t make a move to give her a hug or shake her hand. Then Claire noticed the woman standing beside him. She was Claire’s age at least, most likely older, with reddish blond hair and a round face—soft features, soft body, that peachy English look that was so generally praised. Claire was glad to be wearing her Henry Luce outfit, complete with high heels and a new hat. “This is Pamela Thompson. Pammy, this is…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “The first Mrs. Shipley,” Claire said, stepping forward to offer her hand.

  Pammy flushed and glanced at Bill with a wide, wounded expression that told Claire he’d never quite gotten around to telling her about the first Mrs. Shipley. She did not reach out her hand to meet Claire’s.

  “Would you give us a moment, Miss Thompson?” Claire asked.

  Pammy looked at Bill, who nodded without meeting her eye. She went off toward a shop window. As she turned, Claire saw her wedding band. Was she married to Bill, or to someone else? Bill wasn’t wearing a ring, but he hadn’t worn one when he was married to Claire, either. Most men didn’t advertise the fact that they were married by wearing wedding bands. Claire never understood why women didn’t do the same, in protest. Once she’d wondered whether Jamie would wear a wedding band, a ring that she would give him. Well, at least they’d never had to confront that problem.

  “So, Bill.” Where to begin with him? Best to be frank. “What are you doing here?”

  He was watching Pammy as she stood at the windows of the Librairie de France. But he returned his attention to Claire. “Three weeks R and R. First vacation since before the war. Doing some sightseeing. Boston, New York, Washington. Giving some talks on the overseas situation. Taking Pammy to meet my sister in Nebraska. Pammy’s a reporter with the Guardian.” Claire heard the pride in his voice. “She’ll be doing some pieces along the way. Everyday life in wartime America.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” she said, and it came out kindly, like a compliment. Because of Charlie’s worship of him, Bill had grown taller and straighter in her imagination, but here, in the flesh, he was brought down to size. His hair was streaked with gray. He’d put on a good deal of weight. Weren’t there food shortages in Britain? Maybe he was drinking too much. She was astonished that she’d ever loved him, or been intimidated by him. Her life had moved far beyond him, to a place where he was irrelevant. He’d proven himself a coward by not writing, by disappearing after he’d found someone new. Luckily, because of her father, she no longer had to worry about Bill supporting his son. Claire could afford to be generous. “You want to see Charlie while you’re in the States? He’s away at camp, but maybe after your Nebraska visit…”

  She asked without even thinking to mention Charlie’s deafness, a natural part of him now. She expected Bill would say no, anyway.

  “Oh.” Bill looked surprised once more, presented with an option he hadn’t planned for. “You think that’s a good idea? I don’t want to give him any false hopes.”

  “False hopes about what?”

  “That we, well, you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t. What do you mean?” She wasn’t going to help him.

  “That we might be getting back together.”

  “I don’t think he has any false hopes about that. I’m sure he’d enjoy seeing you, though. He reads your dispatches. Religiously, I’d have to say. Clips them and pastes them into a scrapbook.”

  “He does?” This seemed to make Bill happy, although whether for Charlie’s sake or his own, she couldn’t tell. “He reads well enough for that?”

  “He’s older now. You’d be impressed by how mature he is.” That was a gratuitous dig, and she retreated from it. “Yes, he reads well enough.”

  “I remember him, well, younger.”

  “He’s enjoys bird-watching and drawing. He’s learning to play chess. He gets good grades in school.” No, she wouldn’t say that he almost died of pneumonia and was deaf. Bill had relinquished his right to know the whole story. “But it’s true, we don’t want to get his hopes up.”

  “I’m only in New York for, well, less than a week.”

  “And Miss Thompson would be left on her own for a few hours. She might start to wonder. Especially if she wasn’t previously aware of the existence of a son.”

  She expected him to argue with her, or even laugh, but instead he blushed. He was never one to gainsay embarrassing truths. She realized the sad fact: Bill was doing to Charlie exactly what Edward Rutherford had done to her. How much would Bill regret this later? He’d have to find out for himself.

  “I wish I could give you something for him, but I hadn’t thought…” He held out his empty hands, as if to say, with so many burdens he’d been under—the war was the least of his trials—he couldn’t be expected to be carrying a gift right here in the middle of Rockefeller Center on a warm summer’s day.

  “Don’t even think about that. He wants for nothing. I’ve got a much better job than I did the last time I saw you.”

  “I’ve seen your stories. Your covers. Brava! Beautiful work. That Christmas Rockette!”

  The Christmas Rockette would wind up as her epitaph. “Oh, the same for the Herald Tribune, I assure you. Everyone values your analysis.”

  Then Claire knew what she ha
d to do. Time, Inc. wasn’t going to take Dr. Ito’s story. She despised Bill, but he was tenacious. He could push through any muckraking story he got his hands on. If she couldn’t get the information she needed herself, she’d get it indirectly through him. “I’ve got a great story for you, Bill. In case you have the time and inclination. You and Miss Thompson can look into it together.”

  The daily Tribune didn’t compete with the weekly news magazines. Bill really was the best person to take the story. Plus, she didn’t think Bill knew that Edward Rutherford was her father. She hadn’t been in touch with her father during her marriage, and she couldn’t recall giving Bill any details about him. She’d tell Bill about Hanover & Company and her suspicions, while she clung to the idea that maybe, possibly, some other company had found and developed the medication used at Camp Minidoka. Not her father’s company. Not her father.

  “What puts you in the mood for sharing?”

  “Don’t quote me, but my boss doesn’t want the story. You’ll understand why when I tell you what it is. It has to do with a new medication…” She told him what she knew.

  “Ah. I can see why the old man doesn’t want it,” he said when she finished. He licked his lips, as if hungry for it. “Not a particularly uplifting tale.” He pondered the possibilities. “Well, thank you, Claire. I’ll talk to my editor this afternoon. Experimenting on prisoners. The fact that the prisoners are Japs will make it a tougher sell, but I’ll pitch it as a business story. The business of medicine, a great tag. I expect I can get approval.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  When he smiled at her, he almost looked attractive. “Nothing like a little crime and corruption to liven up the day.”

  “Your day, at least. Anyway, I knew you’d like it. There’s something else.” She hesitated. “There might be a murder involved, too.”

  “All the better.”

  “Not in this case. I met the ill-fated woman. Did a story with her. The police said it was an accident, but it hit home, given that we were acquainted.” Choosing her words carefully, she gave him an account of the death of Lucretia Stanton. “Just remember, Bill, you didn’t hear any of this from me.”

  He laughed warmly. “I don’t even know you, Claire Lukins.”

  She joined in his laughter, and yet the wisecrack was true. Her laughter turned cheerless. Years of marriage, two children, and he didn’t even know her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  About a week later, on a Tuesday morning a little after 7:00 AM, Claire answered the phone at home. The long-distance operator put through Andrew Barnett.

  “Mrs. Shipley, at last.”

  “Let’s see, how long has it taken you to return my calls?”

  “Sorry, sorry, couldn’t be helped. One thing after another here.” He didn’t return her calls because she wasn’t important enough to take priority over other matters he had to attend to. Did she think penicillin was Dr. Bush’s only project? Barnett had been in Los Alamos when she left her messages. Penicillin and the atomic bomb: two weapons of war. “How are you?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Barnett sounded falsely exuberant even to himself. A few days before, Barnett had learned that his brother had died in the Pacific. During a strafing, he’d received a shrapnel wound in the right calf. He’d been recovering. Then gangrene set in. The doctors amputated above the knee, but it was too late. Penicillin cured gangrene. But Mark’s ship didn’t have penicillin. No ships had any. Progress was never fast enough.

  “Why are you calling me now?” Claire took a tip from Mr. Luce on handling unwelcome conversations. With Bill helping her, she didn’t need Barnett.

  He was brought up short by her brusqueness. He wouldn’t tell her about Mark. Everybody had family members at risk. He didn’t need sympathy from her. Besides, Claire Shipley’s usefulness was wearing thin. “I’ll get right to the point. Tell me, are you ever in touch with your highly esteemed former husband, William aka Bill Shipley?”

  “As little as possible. He hasn’t had anything to do with me in years. And vice versa. I think he may have remarried, although I’m not positive.”

  “I can confirm the remarriage.”

  “Thank you. That certainly makes me feel better.”

  “He’s been nosing around Washington and through the verdant meadows of New Jersey in a way that certain people are beginning to dislike.”

  “If you had returned my calls in a timely manner, maybe he wouldn’t be.”

  “Let’s deal with facts rather than hypotheticals, shall we?” Barnett turned nasty, and Claire had a sudden vision of him as a viper. “You have any influence over him? If so, perhaps you could do us both a favor and call him off.”

  “I have no influence over him whatsoever. I don’t even like him, truth be told. But I never say anything bad about him, and I never allow anyone else to say anything bad about him, because he’s the father of my children.” She caught herself. “The father of my son. Please remember that.”

  Barnett knew all about the death of Emily Shipley. “Yes, I promise to remember that he’s the father of your children—out of my own self-interest, hoping as I always do to remain in your good graces.” There—his sense of his own charm and competence was safely restored; he could manage to do his job no matter what he faced in his personal life. In fact, doing his job well was the greatest gift he could give Mark’s memory. “The point is,” he said before she could assert, if she were so inclined, that he wasn’t in her good graces, “he’s giving the impression of a bull terrier that never lets go.”

  “A bull terrier?”

  “I thought you’d appreciate a dog metaphor. Don’t you have a dog?”

  “I suppose he is like a bull terrier.” Bill hadn’t changed, and he was doggedly carrying out the job she expected him to do. A job she needed him to do before she could confront her father.

  Barnett went on, “I’m fielding complaints from a variety of places. Why people think they should complain to me, I don’t know.”

  “Just one of the many crosses you have to bear, Mr. Barnett.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Besides, what’s it to you, if he goes about his business?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, he’s a famous reporter for the Herald Tribune.”

  “You manage to find time to read the newspapers in your line of work?”

  “Every now and again. Anyway, when I met Bill Shipley several days ago, I told him to step back, or words to that effect. Alas, I’m learning from subsequent reports that my admonitions served only to make him more determined.”

  That was typical of Bill.

  “He’s getting a little too close to home plate.” Barnett waited for her to grasp what he was trying to tell her. He couldn’t come right out and say, I can’t be held responsible for what happens to him. “Frankly, I can’t say I liked Bill Shipley.”

  “Now, now, didn’t I warn you about speaking against him?”

  “Luckily he won’t be around much longer.” That was saying too much. Barnett backtracked. “He’s due in Nebraska next week to visit family and then he returns to England, if my sources are correct, and they almost always are.”

  “That makes me feel better, too.”

  “Glad to be of service.” Despite their banter, Barnett hoped she understood that nothing about their discussion was comical. Bill Shipley was clearly determined to find and reveal information that could damage the project of supplying penicillin to the troops. He appeared set on revealing the patent compromises regarding the cousins. No doubt he’d talk to Detective Marcus Kreindler, who might reveal to him that Dr. Nicholas Catalano—one of the leaders of the penicillin program, now risking his life to conduct clinical trials under battlefield conditions in the Pacific—had been accused of murdering a colleague.

  In the Solomon Islands, horrific battles were taking place. American boys were fighting and dying each day under the most brutal circumstances. Who was Bill Shipley,
compared to those boys? Barnett didn’t need to secure permission from anyone to do what was necessary; he knew what was expected of him. He tried once more with Claire. The last time. “In a war there’s no morality.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Victories are never morally clean, Barnett thought. No matter who was doing the fighting. He let a long silence fall between them. “Well,” he said finally, “if you don’t know what that means by now, I can’t explain it.”

  That evening, Claire returned home exhausted from a long day’s work, covering a casting call to replace chorines on the hit Broadway musical Oklahoma!. Mack wanted to find one girl—one particular all-American girl, confident yet vulnerable, a kind of Every-girl—to follow from casting call through rehearsals and costume fittings, to her first performance. Claire may have found her in Estella Gant, a twenty-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina, who came onstage for her audition and got the job. Tomorrow Mack would look at the contact sheets and decide if indeed Estella was the one.

  Before Claire could start dinner, the telephone rang. “Hold for long-distance,” the operator said, and put the caller through.

  “Claire.” It was Bill. “Finally. I’ve been trying your number all day.”

  His tone indicated that any reasonable person would have waited at home on the off chance that he would call.

  “You missed the story. Missed the entire thing.” He said this with smug pleasure. “Incredible—you missed it all.”

  She felt tears smarting in her eyes. This was how Bill always spoke to her, whether discussing work or laundry or breakfast oatmeal for Emily. Forever elaborating on her incompetence. It still hurt. After she ran into him at Rockefeller Center, she’d fooled herself into thinking that she’d escaped this power he had over her. Obviously she hadn’t. With Bill, she must never, ever let down her defenses. She struggled now to push those defenses back into place.

  “Okay, this is the real story: patent protection on natural products. The blue medicine is the first one to get it, and now the drug’s going to make a fortune. One rumor I’m hearing is that it was stolen from that poor woman in New York who slipped or jumped or got herself pushed off a cliff. One of the government’s top guys may be involved. The other rumor I’m hearing is that it was found in Syracuse, of all places. That’s something I’ve got to figure out. The clinical testing in Wyoming or Idaho or wherever it was—that just involves a bunch of Japs, let’s face it. They’re irrelevant.”