Tell the Girl

by Sandra Howard

  Joe on a high the last few days had been infectious in his enthusiasm. Could Alicia be a little less central to his life? Or was it just Washington, lifting his mood, the lure of the velvet coat-tails of power? I thought of the missing weeks when I was pregnant, my suspicion that he’d been in a house party with Jackie Kennedy. I didn’t really imagine an involvement, but sensed they’d found a rapport. Still, we were staying at the Embassy, not the White House, and I could hardly see the President and First Lady popping in for tea.

  The Ferrones were as welcoming as ever. ‘Gee, aren’t you blooming on motherhood!’ Joan gave me a big fond hug. ‘I hope you’ve brought a bunch of photographs. How was the flight? Are you done in?’

  ‘Let the poor girl get a word in edgeways, dear,’ Walter said, coming forward to give me a kiss on both cheeks.

  I said how terrific it was to see them, how incredibly kind they were, but Joan was off again. ‘We’ve a couple of friends calling by, but you crash on out just whenever. You must be whacked. And I guess Eileen has you working right off, first thing?’

  ‘She’s given me a real lie-in, an eleven o’clock start!’

  I changed and unpacked my very small thank-you gifts – Bendicks mints, Gentleman’s Relish, Fortnum’s teas, a couple of handcrafted pewter tankards and a paisley silk shirt that I thought might suit Joan.

  I gave them to her in the wide hall and she was in raptures over the shirt when the doorbell rang. The maid, Mary-Lou, hurried out, but Joan rested the gifts on a chair and sprang to answer it. I’d expected fur-clad elderly friends of the Ferrones, not the two interesting-looking men at the door. ‘Pierre!’ Joan exclaimed. ‘Come in, come have a drink – how are you? Mad busy, holding the line as usual? And it’s Matt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Ferrone, Matt Seeley.’

  ‘I’ll go find Walter,’ Joan said busily, as the maid took their briefcases and the coats over their arms, ‘but first you must meet my dear sweet English friend, Susannah Forbes, who’s just off a plane from London, though you’d never think it. She has assignments with Eileen Ford, is in hot demand. This is Pierre Salinger, Susannah, the President’s Press Secretary. There’s nobody more important than Pierre. He keeps all the balls in the air.’

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ Pierre grinned. He had an attractively masculine, hands-on sort of look, and a stocky, sturdy build. His face was stocky too, with a broad forehead and forthright jaw, and he had thick eyebrows, black hair slicked straight and neatly parted.

  ‘And I’m Matt Seeley, Pierre’s assistant,’ the younger man said, stepping forward to shake my hand, which he hung onto for quite a while.

  Walter came out into the hall, remonstrating with us for standing there. ‘I’ve made martinis, nicely shaken,’ he said. ‘But there’s anything, just name your choice.’

  We followed him into the sitting room with its glorious Impressionist paintings, and it was martinis all round, except that I asked for Campari and soda. We stood chatting. Matt asked me how long I was over for. His eyes were whisky-coloured and seemed to catch the light.

  ‘Sit, sit!’ Joan implored us all, as though we were her puppies.

  ‘So, Pierre,’ Walter said, easing his ample body into a chair facing his guest, ‘Jackie has a new task for me, I gather?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked a little sheepish. ‘I believe you’ve seen another still life by William Chase, one to pair with his vegetable painting in the White House family dining room. Jackie’s very excited to acquire it and wondered if you’d be able to find a donor – the Annenbergs or Henry Ford possibly, who’ve donated before, or that lady from Chicago.’

  ‘People prefer their donated items to hang in the State Rooms, but I’m sure we can sort something out.’ Walter beamed. ‘As long as it’s still available.’

  Pierre turned to me. ‘No English donors around, I suppose?’ he enquired wryly.

  ‘Sorry, they’re in short supply and badly needed for our crumbling old stately homes.’

  ‘Oh, those beautiful buildings of yours,’ Joan sighed. ‘Now I know you boys said no to food, but it’s all ready. Don’t hurry away, stay for a quick bite.’

  ‘We have to meet a couple of journalists, I’m afraid.’ Pierre looked politely rueful.

  ‘But not till ten,’ Matt countered, ‘and in a bar. It would be very welcome . . .’

  ‘I can see I’m being overruled.’ Pierre smiled, conceding the fact, yet slipping his junior a covertly raised-eyebrow look as if to say, ‘I’ll indulge you this once.’

  Over a supper of shrimps and salmon, while Pierre and Walter discussed Jackie’s keenness to acquire more paintings and Joan hung on their words, I talked to Matt.

  He was a Bostonian, I discovered, and as well as his passion for politics had a love of the South of France. He urged me to visit Washington. ‘I’m there in ten days,’ I said, ‘staying with the Ormsby-Gores.’ They’d insisted I still come, despite Joe, to his fury, being unable to arrive till Sunday afternoon. He’d told me in triumph as I left, though, that Sylvia Ormsby-Gore had pressed him to stay on a couple of days, since there was a dance at the White House on Tuesday for the Maharajah and Maharanee of Jaipur. I felt very cheesed off, but with bookings all week I had to be back in New York.

  ‘That’s terrific news!’ Matt exclaimed, ‘I’ll have to talk to the Embassy and try to wangle an invitation. What shuttle are you looking to get? You need to be in good time to avoid being shoved onto the next one, as it’s murder on a Friday evening. It’s a mixed blessing, the no booking policy.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s timely advice. I was hoping to get the five o’clock.’

  ‘I’m in and out of New York. I might even be on that flight myself.’

  Mary-Lou brought the dessert, sliced strawberries in Cointreau, while Pierre cast a glance at his watch. ‘Time’s up, Matt, we should push on.’ He sounded brisk and businesslike while Matt seemed to take that as first bell. He carried on talking, extolling the medieval charms of Saint Paul de Vence and its views, before stopping mid-flow, distracted, listening keenly to a question Walter was asking Pierre.

  ‘That report in today’s Times, about the Texan far right exploiting fears over Cold War setbacks and especially, hard as it is to believe, a Communist military build-up in Cuba. Is that really happening?’

  ‘Rumour and speculation. We’re playing it down.’ Pierre held Walter’s eye.

  ‘Understood,’ he said, but I sensed an undercurrent, something serious going on.

  Pierre was on his feet now, anxious to make a move. Matt promised to do his best to make Friday’s five o’clock shuttle and travel together. He fastened his gaze. ‘I very much hope we can meet up in Washington.’

  ‘Be nice,’ I said neutrally, going with him into the hall while they said goodbye. He was tall, well built, with fine straight hair, sandy to mouse, and a scattering of freckles. I’d liked him, and the Washington trip, exciting enough, had gained a little extra frisson. He couldn’t be under any illusions. I’d mentioned Joe more than once.

  I had a quiet first weekend. Janet, my American model girlfriend, came round. I saw Eileen and Jerry Ford on Sunday and spoke to Miss Hadley that morning, as well as Joe. Bella was doing fine, skipping the 2 a.m. feed. I’d had four days in the city and had yet to see Gil. I was working with him on Monday, at two o’clock. Would I stay on afterwards? Should I? Could I really cut myself adrift as I was determined to do?

  Gil was my immoral compass, setting me on a dubious course in his own unconventional way. He propped me up. I could battle on, navigate Joe, and I knew more about how the world worked now, which was badly, from Jack Kennedy to John Profumo – if you believed the rumours about him sharing a girl called Christine Keeler with a Russian defence attaché and risking national security. I could manage life’s knocks, huddled under Gil’s wing, but chicks had to learn to fly.

  Monday morning was taken up with a stressful shoot for Glamour magazine. It was on location, outside Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue, and a cro
wd had gathered. I was shivering with cold, hyper-tense, and the booking overran, which left only time for a snatched bite or being early at Gil’s studio. I couldn’t think of food and was at the studio by twenty to two.

  He was still photographing, his morning session running late as well. I crept to the dressing room anxious not to distract him, stupidly hurt when he didn’t see me. I gradually understood why. The girl in front of the camera, a model called Lynn, was perched on a stool, legs crossed, one loosely dangling; Gil was arranging the dress. He whispered something, leaning in against her thigh. The intimacy was clear, though only to me. I knew his style of flirting in front of clients, ad executives, his way of relaxing models, yet this was different. He and Lynn were on a private wavelength, the way she was touching him with her swinging calf. Her eyes on him were hard to bear.

  I turned from the dressing-room door with an aching wound where my guts used to be. What had I expected? Gil was only doing what he said he did. I’d known he wasn’t languishing for months at a time, keeping himself pure. He’d been honest and open about that.

  ‘You’re looking sad.’ I started and looked up. ‘Come here, lover, give us a kiss.’ Gil was at the dressing-room door; he was staring, compelling me to meet his eyes. Lynn pushed past him into the dressing room, saying with a playful nudge that he’d made her late. She eyed me briefly with mild hatred – the sort that was merely instinctive feline suspicion – threw on her clothes, a tight red sweater and navy skirt, and flung the dress she’d been wearing at Dee, Gil’s secretary, who’d come in after her. Lynn pushed past Gil again then with a lot of body contact while Dee hung up the dress and hurried on out – to see to Lynn’s release form, I assumed.

  Gil hadn’t moved from the doorway. ‘I meant it about the kiss.’ His eyes were on me, liquid, loving, caring, ‘It does for me, seeing you,’ he said, coming close and touching lips. ‘Hits hard.’

  Dee was soon back with clothes for me and the session was underway.

  ‘Seven o’clock at the Kettle of Fish,’ Gil said, as we worked. ‘Where we went before?’

  ‘I’ll meet you there.’

  We had to see each other. The connection was so strong. I had to explain. It wasn’t Lynn and others before her or to come, though her leering eyes haunted me. I felt cold and alone, a ring of ice forming round my heart; it wasn’t Lynn, it was my resolve, the wrench of a final parting. Gil was a secret loving sex-master, protection, survival, but a block on rational thought.

  The Kettle of Fish, smoky and fuggy, wafting with weed, felt a good place to meet, a comfort-blanket cocoon and neutral ground. Gil was there ahead of me, up at the bar alongside a few layabouts with stringy beards. I slid onto the stool next to his. He was smoking a fat cigar. He put it in my mouth, told me to puff and I spluttered.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, in a way that hacked through the ice. I felt wobbly, glad to be sitting down, especially when he brushed lips. ‘You’re going to tell me we’re in another place?’

  ‘Yes, kind of.’

  ‘You’re mad at me? Sore about Lynn?’

  ‘Jealous!’

  ‘Don’t be. She’s pretty, pert, but hasn’t got your delicacy – she’s two-dimensional.’

  ‘I need to be in the sort of place where I don’t lean on you so much,’ I said, pausing as he ordered me a Coke, realizing how hard it was to explain. ‘I cling, Gil, I can’t help it, and that’s no good, in reality, for you or for me. I was going to say it anyway,’ I added miserably. ‘It’s not to do with Lynn.’

  He studied me. He held my jaw in his big hand, his thumb rubbing my lower lip, peeling it down, feeling the wetness inside. Oh God, don’t make it so hard. I watched his watching eyes. Struggling.

  ‘I have a solution,’ Gil said, reaching for my hand. ‘I’ll tell it to you in a last lesson.’

  ‘Subject? Area?’ My insides were alive with butterflies.

  ‘Casual sex.’

  ‘That sounds vile – and the opposite of a solution.’

  ‘It’s not, it’s the least worst way. Hear me out? Open mind? We have no painful bust-up, but no regular calls either, no clinging. We just hook up once in a while, see? Like, suppose I come to London – because I have needs too, as it happens – and say you hadn’t found the man of your life, The One, we just get it together casually. Happy memories. Refresher course. Same if you were here. I’d book you anyway, for sure.’

  ‘But that’s not much different, no solution. It doesn’t square with my resolve.’

  ‘It squares fine, if you’re being fair-minded. Think of it from my side: you’re not leaning on me, I’m leaning on you.’

  ‘Got an answer for everything, haven’t you?’

  We went back to the studio and made love feverishly. I felt sustained, whole again, and awash with an unbelievable sense of release. We’d have no more comings together this time, I knew that. It was a non-farewell, a tapering off – an un-final goodbye. ‘One last coda to this lesson,’ Gil said, as I dressed to go, heavy-hearted. ‘I want you to make it with other men. It’ll help me fit into your life. And don’t worry, you’ll know when you find the one you want to stick with. Just don’t find the creep too soon! It’ll give me a kinda backhanded high too, thinking how well you’d learned at my knee.’

  ‘What kind of teaching is that? There’ll be no blow-by-blow reports, I can assure you.’

  Joan was immensely excited about my weekend in Washington. She monitored my clothes, insisted on loaning me accessories. ‘There’s a dinner on Saturday night,’ I said, ‘twenty-two on the guest list. Another lot coming for Sunday lunch . . .’

  ‘You need a glamorous cocktail gown for the dinner, a “smart day” outfit for Sunday, and two other pretty outfits. You never know in Washington – things crop up.’

  Joe was due to arrive around five on Sunday. He was staying on, though, of course. He’d had his way, after all – solo in Washington, hobnobbing with the Kennedys.

  At La Guardia airport I paid off the yellow cab, marvelling at the driver’s multitude of gold-filled teeth, and humped my bag to join the shuttle check-in queue. Progress was slow and I rested my suitcase between shuffles forward.

  Bending to pick it up again, I felt a hand on mine. ‘I have it,’ Matt said, coming up beside me, panting. He caught his breath and grinned. ‘Whew, I’d have hated to miss this flight! I’d even told your Embassy that I’d drop you off, save them sending a car.’

  ‘Goodness, that’s surely beyond the call of duty? You must want to get home.’

  ‘It’ll be a real pleasure and I’ll sit with you too, if that’s all right?’ He turned then, to make a winsome apology to the middle-aged businessman behind me. ‘Really sorry, nipping in like this. I hope you can understand why!’

  ‘Sure, be my guest, buddy,’ the man said, giving me an appraising look and a wink.

  ‘Pity it’s only an hour’s flight,’ Matt muttered, as we slowly edged up the queue.

  On the plane I learned about his Harvard credentials and a spell on the Washington Post. ‘But politics,’ he said, ‘is the red corpuscles for me, working for Pierre, being right at the hub.’ He laid his hand on my arm. ‘I did wangle an invitation to the Residence by the way, for Sunday lunch. Perhaps I can take you to a gallery afterwards? I’d really love to get to know you better,’ he added more honestly.

  Matt whipped me through the airport faff with practised speed; I’d have floundered on my own. ‘Wait here, don’t go away,’ he said, ‘I’ll just bring up the car.’

  It was a silver-blue, two-seater coupé, tapering at the rear and as low to the ground as a racing car. It was a wow. He looked enormously proud when I said so. ‘It’s a Chevrolet Corvette, the new Stingray – next year’s model, but available now if you’re in the know – and exactly one week old! Come for a spin?’ I climbed in, feeling flighty and having fun.

  He revved up, whizzing me round the sights of Washington in a speeding silver-blue flash. The Monument, Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol in the distanc
e across the National Mall . . . ‘The British Residence is on Massachusetts Avenue, which we call Embassy Row,’ he said. ‘It’s an Edwin Lutyens building – the only one in the States, I believe.’

  I loved the symmetry when we arrived, its redbrick Britishness and distinctively Lutyens tall chimneys. Matt rumbled in through a square arch, into a courtyard and up to the main steps. ‘Masses of thanks,’ I said genuinely, ‘for that exhilarating spin, seeing the sights, all the looking after. I hardly know where to begin.’

  ‘By not minding if I give you a parting kiss?’ He leaned over the steering shaft and turned my face. ‘It’s hard not to, you’re very beautiful.’

  ‘I’m far from that – and a married woman,’ I laughed, accepting a light press of his lips all the same, drawing back smartly as one of the staff came out for my luggage.

  Matt escorted me into the main hall where Sylvia came to greet us with a vague smile. ‘Here’s Susannah, safely delivered,’ Matt said, ‘and thanks again, Lady Ormbsy-Gore. I greatly look forward to Sunday’s lunch.’

  The two eldest Ormsby-Gore children were in England; I now met the younger pair, Alice and Francis, who were in jeans with hair overflowing their hanging-out shirts. They had thin fine features and complete disinterest in a naff unknown visitor. Sylvia personally took me up to my room, which was comparatively small but charming, light with yellow and white fabrics, a bowl of roses and a dish of fruit. ‘I like this room,’ she said. ‘The main guest rooms are so dull. I put Hugh Gaitskell in here recently and he called it his favourite room of all the Residences he’d stayed in.’

  Friday night and Saturday were free of formalities, although Embassy people and local diplomats joined us for meals. Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a close family friend of the Ormsby-Gores, was also staying and she drew me into conversations, making me feel completely at home. She told me about the grimy paintings she’d discovered in the basement at Chatsworth whose real worth had passed the death-duty assessors by. They’d served to save that great house from ruin.