by Jon Cleary
“His Lordship likes his liver and bacon just so,” Mrs. Cromwell explained to Cleo. “How do you like yours?”
“Just the bacon will do. I’m afraid I don’t like liver.”
“It’s better for you than bacon,” said Mrs. Cromwell, who had no time for food-pickers and fancy diets, and marched back through the swing door to her kitchen,
“Well,” said Cleo, “it seems I’m rubbing everyone up the wrong way today. My father always said I’d never succeed as a politician.”
“Is he in politics in Australia?”
It was like being asked if God was in Heaven. She felt light-headed at being released from her father’s shadow. “He’s a Federal Senator.”
“Spearfield? Oh, that one. The one who wants to do away with the monarchy?”
“Only as far as Australia is concerned.”
“I don’t take much interest in Australian politics.”
“Who does?”
That had been brought home to her in the nine months she had been in London. The British, convinced that all Australians were beer-swilling, loud-mouthed anarchists, evidently believed that the Antipodes took care of themselves without benefit of government or politicians. They had heard of Sir Robert Menzies, but only because he had come to England every year to have tea with the Queen and watch the cricket. They looked upon him as their representative Down Under.
Mrs. Cromwell brought in the main course, one bacon-and-liver with fried potatoes, one bacon-without-liver and a double helping of potatoes. Haute cuisine would never stick its Froggy nose into her kitchen. “Just so’s you won’t go hungry, miss.”
She went out again and Cruze said, “Mrs. Cromwell and her husband, my chauffeur, come from my home village Chalfont St. Aidan. That’s in Bucks.”
“I know. I looked up your obit. It’s already written, but I suppose you know that. They up-date it every six months.”
“I hope they don’t let your poison pen up-date it next time.”
She smiled, feeling more at ease with him than she had expected. She knew his reputation, though that hadn’t been in the obituary: how he could be as ruthless as he could be loyal to his staff. Men such as Quentin Massey-Folkes had worked for him for years; others had worked for him for weeks, even days. She knew, too, how ruthless he could be with his women, though she had heard nothing of his loyalty to them. She had been studying him carefully during their fencing, was a little surprised by her growing interest in him. He was interesting, of course, for what he was: one of the most powerful and influential newspaper barons in Britain, indeed in Europe. But her interest was more in him as a man: she wanted to peel away the public image and look at the Emperor without his clothes.
She was beginning to see what Felicity Kidson (and a score of other women, if the stories were true) had seen in him. Physically he had little to recommend him. He was short, looked as if he might be muscular, had greying curly hair and a face that only escaped homely anonymity because of the thick eyebrows and the military moustache. He appeared to do nothing to try to improve his appearance with tailoring; she would learn that he only dressed well when he was appearing in horse shows. Now he looked like the product of a London laundry catering to the transient tourist trade: shirt ironed by a cold corrugated iron; suit pressed by hand but no iron; a tie so shiny it looked as if it had been polished rather than cleaned. But something (energy? power? She knew enough to know they were not the same thing) gleamed in him.
“Yes, I come from Bucks,” he said. “The way the papers tell it, even my own, you’d think all the self-made men in this country came from the north country or are Jews from the Mile End Road. I’m a grammar school boy from the Home Counties. My father was a solicitor’s clerk and my mother wanted to be a teacher. I got my ambition from her. She had a crippled leg, infantile paralysis as they called it in her day, but she never let it handicap her. She was handicapped enough being a woman. That’s why I always see that women are given an opportunity on my papers.”
“That’s not quite true.” The bacon had been over-cooked, as if Mrs. Cromwell was putting her in her place for refusing the liver; it crackled in her mouth like verbal bullets. “You only give them a go on the women’s pages.”
He looked at her over a forkful of liver; it put more iron into one, so they said. Not that he felt he needed it. “You don’t want to be editor of the women’s page?”
“No.”
“What do you want?” He chewed on the liver: it tasted like iron. This girl was upsetting him again.
“I’d like my own column.” The last of the bacon crackled between this teeth. She noticed that Mrs. Cromwell hadn’t cooked His Lordship’s bacon as crisp as this. “The female answer to Bernard Levin.”
“The Examiner doesn’t have those sort of readers.”
“I know. I just dragged his name out of the air. I don’t want to write about politics or music. But I’d like to go out and find my own stories, instead of being told what to write.”
“You can write what you like as women’s editor. Within reason,” he added, careful of the hatchet.
“No. The women’s page isn’t where I want my stuff to be. I want to be read by men, too.” Especially by men, since they thought they ran the world as well as it could be run.
He swallowed the liver, which had suddenly proved hard to chew. “I never interfere with what Massey-Folkes wants to do.”
That wasn’t what she had heard. Men had been fired on notes that came from this flat or from the country house in Bucks. “I shouldn’t want you to. Actually, I think Quentin would give me my column if he can find someone else to be women’s editor.”
“Quentin?”
She smiled. “It’s all perfectly innocent. He likes my legs, but that’s all there is to it. He likes my copy better.”
“Well, he’s the—” he almost said “the boss” but he knew she wouldn’t believe it. “He runs the paper. There’s just one thing. If he gives you your column, you don’t come to any horse shows and write any more of your guff. Understand? You ready for coffee? I never eat sweets at lunch.”
“Oh. I was looking forward to bread-and-butter pudding or tapioca custard. I’d heard you believe in sensible food.”
“There you go, more guff.” But he smiled and wondered if she liked roses.
4
I
“AS ONE who was there myself for a while, I’d like to know, Mrs. Roux, how an older woman feels being at the top?”
Cleo knew the questioner. She was a red-head, had been Miss Something-or-other and was a movable ornament, like rented plastic flowers, at receptions and parties around town. It was rumoured that she earned extra money as a lay-by for pop stars on the road; to certain golfing show business stars she was known as the British Open. When her legs were together she wrote occasional interviews for one of the celebrity-orientated weeklies.
“Who are you, young lady?” said Claudine Roux.
“Rhonda Buick. I was Miss Galaxy 1963.” She was a fading star now, she knew, but she never used metaphors like that in her stories. She would have been a nice moral girl if she had been plain.
“My belated congratulations. I’m afraid I missed that—would you call it an event?”
“It was for me,” said poor Miss Buick, laying her head on the block.
“I’m sure it was. Anything would be.”
My God, thought Cleo, and they call me the Hatchet Lady. She decided then that she would ask no questions at this press conference. She had only come to it because she had wanted to see what a First Lady of the Press was like. That was how the hand-out had billed her: Mrs. Claudine Roux, First Lady of the New York Press. Mrs. Roux had come to London after buying a British publishing house and the press conference had been called for her to explain why. Americans buying British publishing houses was on a plundering par with their buying British castles or bridges. Or so the man from The Times seemed to think.
“You’re wrong, young man. English literature is part of
the American heritage and I see this as an investment in our common heritage—” It was glib, but Claudine Roux had an imperious dignity about her that would have stopped even a man from The Times from accusing her of such a thing.
Cleo lost interest. She knew as well as anyone that no reporter or columnist ever got a real story out of a press conference; but, when she had called the Connaught Hotel to ask for a private interview, Mrs. Roux’s secretary had said that Mrs. Roux never gave such interviews. So Cleo, wanting a look at a woman who owned one of the most influential newspapers in the United States, had come to the press conference. Cats, she thought, may look at queens as well as kings.
Then, getting up to move quietly out of the room, she saw Tom Border standing by the door. It seemed to her that she caught her breath, but she put it down to indigestion; she had rushed her lunch to get here. There was no reason why she should be surprised or excited to see Tom. He had said he was a drifter and drifters turned up anywhere.
He gave her the old slow smile when she took his arm and pulled her out of the room. “I saw you in there. I was waiting for you to jump up and go for the Old Lady.”
“It was like the Five O’Clock Follies in Saigon. She wasn’t saying anything I wanted to hear. What are you doing here—passing through?”
“I got in yesterday.” He didn’t appear to have changed, he looked as much as ever like bones in a bag. “I’m joining the New York Courier’s bureau here in London.”
“You work for Mrs. Roux? Oh, you’re just the man I want! Come and I’ll buy you a drink.”
The press conference had been held in the publishing house in Bedford Square. Cleo found a nearby pub, almost empty, and they took their drinks to a corner table. She looked at him and felt a complexity of emotions that she hadn’t expected.
“I wrote you a note after I heard you’d been wounded.”
“I got it.” He sipped his beer, tasting it as if he were a connoisseur. “I like English beer, even when it’s warm. I didn’t answer your note, Cleo old girl. There didn’t seem much point.”
“How’s your wound? Where were you hit?”
“In the ass.” He grinned. “I was running away. It left a nice scar, but not one I can show off. You’re showing no scars.” He looked at her sideways, as if she might contradict him.
“No visible ones.” She had none at all, or none that she was aware of. But women like to hold an ace, or a scar, up their sleeve; it comes in handy during their martyrdom season. Or so she had heard her father, a self-proclaimed expert on women, say. “But this is a tough town. The English aren’t as civilized as they like to think.”
“You’ve done all right. Your own column—we all dream about that. Are you married or anything?”
“No. You?”
He shook his head, gave the same slow smile. “When I went back to Friendship to convalesce, my mother had the girls lined up. But I heard the clack of faraway typewriters—”
“You always had a flair for the lousy poetic phrase.”
They both smiled, all at once comfortable again with each other. “I went to New York and got a job on the Courier. Two weeks ago they offered me the job in the London bureau. They’re cutting down on staff and they wanted a single man, one they could push around Europe at a moment’s notice. The Courier isn’t making the money it used to.”
“I thought Mrs. Roux was one of the richest women in New York?”
“She is. But her money doesn’t come from the Courier. It’s a sort of family hobby. Her great-grandfather bought it a hundred years ago for a song.”
She wondered what a song had been worth a hundred years ago, but didn’t ask. Though ambitious, she had no real interest in money in actual cash terms; a million or two either way, in today’s terms, meant nothing to her. Which showed that, though not rich, she could think rich.
“Some hobby, to be able to have all that influence.”
“It doesn’t have as much as it used to. Tell you the truth, it’s a bit fuddy duddy. It’s rather like working for the Yale Club’s house magazine. But don’t quote me.”
“I shan’t, if you’ll get me an interview with Mrs. Roux.”
He looked at his empty glass. “I knew you weren’t plying me with beer for nothing. I’ll try, but I have no influence with the Old Lady. I’ve never actually had a word with her. The Empress never gets down as far as the kitchen staff. They call her The Empress back in the New York office.”
They talked for another half hour, then he said, “How about dinner tonight?”
“I’m sorry, Tom. I already have a date. But some other time.”
If he was disappointed, he hid it well; he still had the same withdrawn look. “I’ll see what I can do for you with the Old Lady.”
“The Old Lady—I got the impression that phrase doesn’t fit her.”
“It’s a generic term for all bosses. Don’t you call Lord Cruze the Old Man?”
II
“Jack—” At their first dinner together, their second meal, he had told her to drop the m’Lord. “I’m going to Northern Ireland at the weekend. I want to interview Bernadette Devlin.”
“She’ll be coming to London, interview her here. There’s a chance you’ll get hurt over there in Ulster.” He let his steak and kidney pie get cold; he was truly concerned for her. “I’ll tell Quentin not to let you go.”
They were having dinner, their second, in the flat. So far he had not gone out in public with her; in private his behaviour had been impeccable. She felt safe, felt she was not being tested for the role of mistress. It was an employer-employee relationship; she knew that Massey-Folkes and some of the other senior executives came here occasionally for lunch or dinner. She did wonder, however, if Felicity Kidson had come here originally on the same basis.
She pushed a piece of kidney aside and looked for some steak in the pie. Mrs. Cromwell was still defending the barricades of English cooking; all over Britain another French revolution was taking place but Mrs. Cromwell was standing fast. All them trendies could cook what they liked, but she knew what was best.
“Jack, please don’t interfere. I know whom I want to interview and where. I don’t want to talk to Miss Devlin in the security of Westminster. I want to see what she’s like back in her own bailiwick.”
“You take a lot for granted, talking to me like that. Eat your dinner.”
She resented his abrupt tone. “ Am I keeping Mrs. Cromwell waiting again?”
He glowered at her from under the hairy brows. “Dammit, you do everything you can to rub me up the wrong way. Why can’t you get the chip off your shoulder? I don’t care a damn where you interview the Devlin woman, so long as it’s safe. I don’t think you’ll be safe in Ulster, not if the IRA knows you’re working for me.”
She softened, apologized. “I appreciate your concern for me. Nevertheless, I’m going to Ulster.”
“Dammit, you’re stubborn!”
Later, after Mrs. Cromwell had joined her husband in bed in the servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen, he led Cleo upstairs to his library. “I’ll show you some films. Did you ever see Rudolph Valentino?”
“He was a little before my time.” She was amused. Did he see himself as the Sheik of Green Park?
The library was a big room, two of the walls lined to the ceiling with books. A small projection box was built into the third wall and a cinema screen came down out of the ceiling to cover the drapes on the fourth wall. She looked at the books while he loaded the projector. If he had read only half of what was on the shelves, he was well-read. The social as well as the political philosophers were there; there was history, biography and travel. There was no fiction, none at all: evidently he got all that from his silent films.
They watched Monsieur Beaucaire. She wanted to laugh at the flaring nostrils and the flashing eyes, but a glance at Cruze in the darkened room told her it would be the wrong thing to do. It was as if he were looking at home movies, a fantasy of his childhood. He lived in a past that was not h
is own, an escapism that had been created for his parents’ generation. The film finished and he sat for a while, neither looking at her nor saying anything. Then he got up and went into the projection box. She sat in the darkness, wondering why he was taking so long to turn on the lights. Surely he wasn’t going to run another Valentino film?
Then a single light came on and she turned round. He stood by a door that she hadn’t noticed before, a section of the bookshelves that opened into his bedroom. He wore only his socks and suspenders.
“Great balls—” she said, and for a split second His Lordship was flattered, “—of fire! What are you doing?”
“Getting ready for bed.” He stood on one leg while he wrestled to undo a suspender.
She played dumb, a lady of the silent screen. “If you wanted me to leave, why didn’t you just wind the clock and put the cat out?”
“All the clocks are electric and I don’t have a cat. Take your clothes off.”
Oh my God, he does think he’s the Sheik! “Jack, put your clothes back on. You’re old enough to be my father.”
“Let me give you some fatherly advice—don’t ever say that to a man!” He stood there in fury and one sock. “Dammit, who do you think you are?”
She was glad his eyes weren’t flashing and his nostrils flaring; she didn’t want to laugh if she could avoid it. “I know who I’m not. I’m not someone who goes to bed with the Boss—it’s not in my contract.”
“You don’t have a contract!”
“I do, you know. I got Quentin to give me one, just to cover any syndication rights. I never dreamed syndication would be something like this.”
His member quivered with fury, like an irate conductor’s baton; she would have been happier with the flaring nostrils and flashing eyes. Then he turned and went into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Books tumbled out of the shelves: The Wisdom of Confucius lay at her feet. Confucius he say . . . she couldn’t remember what Confucius had said, but guessed he would never have allowed himself to be rejected in just his socks and nothing else. She knew Jack Cruze would never forgive her for that. But it had been his own fault.
