by Jon Cleary
“Stay out of the way, you mean? Keep the family name in the background? Don’t worry, Mother—no one is going to pick me out of the thousands who’ll be there on Saturday. It will be the size of the crowd that will count, not the names amongst it.”
Though handsome, he might be overlooked in a crowd, she thought. He was slim and only medium height and could be overshadowed by bigger, burlier men; but she knew he would not allow that. His vitality would draw attention to him; there was a restlessness about him that attracted the eye. He got up now and began to pace about the apartment.
“The war’s over, Mother. Or it should be. Nixon and Kissinger are trying to find a way out—we’re going to push them. America’s lost its first war and we’re prepared to admit it.”
“I’m glad your uncle isn’t here to hear you say that.” Not that she really cared two hoots for Roger’s feelings.
“Uncle Roger is intelligent. He knows what’s what. But of course he’s like all the intelligent generals—there are a few of them—he can’t admit the truth. Not if he wants to stay in the army.”
“I don’t think we should discuss it. I just wish you had stayed in Montana, that’s all.”
He came over and kissed her. “Mother, you’re getting old.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are. You’re shutting your mind to everything you disagree with. That’s a sign of getting old.”
“You young are so free with all your wisdom.” She smiled and kissed him in return. But he had wounded her.
An hour later, bathed and changed and (thank God, she thought) looking more presentable, he went out to visit friends. After he had gone she went out on to the terrace of the penthouse. This apartment building was one of the older ones on Fifth Avenue, built long before they had been called condominiums. The Brisson family had owned the penthouse ever since the building had been put up in l910 and Claudine had always loved it; just as she loved New York, or anyway, Manhattan. She looked down the Avenue towards the lights coming on in the buildings along Central Park South; sometimes, she thought, they looked like electric gulls nesting on a long cliff-face. Further downtown, in a narrow gap between the skyscrapers (she still used the term; which, perhaps, did make her old), she could see the floodlit radio tower on top of the Courier building. The Courier owned a radio station which, unlike the newspaper in the building beneath it, continually returned a substantial profit. From this terrace she could also see several of the office buildings that belonged to the holding company. Her father and her husband, for all their faults, had left her an empire worthy of her.
She went back into the apartment, paused in front of one of the mirrors in the huge living-room. It was called the living-room by the maids, but it was too big for mere living in, unless it was meant to accommodate a ballet troupe or a commune of interior decorators. It was a transplanted Paris salon of the Empire period; it had been her mother’s choice and Claudine had not changed it. She had never been one to assert her personality with possessions; she had been born to the best and she was content with it. Particularly with the mirrors, of which there were four in the room: she thought of them as truly French, designed to compliment any woman who looked into them. She looked into one of them now, deciding that Alain, like so many of the young, did not know what age really was.
But all at once she felt lonely.
III
“The Americans always do things so much bigger, if not always better. Even their demonstrations.” Roy Holden looked out on the huge crowd in Central Park with smiling approval, as if the Sermon on the Mount was being re-staged for television. “I was here to cover the civil rights marches and demonstrations. Tremendous! They made the Aldermaston marches and the Tariq Ali demos look like bus queues.”
New York, without the demonstration, had already thrilled Cleo; it was everything she had expected it to be. As the BOAC plane had come in over Manhattan she had pressed her face against the window like a child window-shopping at Christmas. In the shining October air the city did actually seem to glitter, as she had read so many times that it did; almost as if the city council sent helicopters out each morning to spray the buildings with decorative sparkle. She felt a certain excitement, was tempted to become an instant immigrant. But Tom Border had told her it was a tough town, far tougher than London. She was doing well enough where she was and she should settle for what she had.
She had been surprised when Holden, who produced her segment of Scope, had come to her and told her they were going to New York. “The other two units are already committed. So it’s us, love. I told Simon you could do it—” Simon Pally was the executive producer. “You can, can’t you?”
“Of course.” She had done three shows and already she felt a veteran.
He hugged her with a fat arm. “Cleo, I love your confidence. In anyone else I’d think it was conceit, but with you it’s not. You really don’t let anything faze you, do you?”
Ah Roy, if you only knew. There had been a mild argument with Jack. He had complained that since she had been a television reporter as well as a newspaper columnist, he was seeing too little of her. She had been surprised at how possessive he had sounded, as if she had been his mistress for years instead of weeks. She had been fazed then, by his jealousy,
“Jack, what about you? Your time-table is just as busy as mine. More. If you’re not in your office you’re in the House of Lords or you’re somewhere on the Continent—”
“I’m back here in the flat most nights. Every night, almost. That’s when I want to see you. But you’re gallivanting all over the place with these young chaps—”
“Is that what’s worrying you? That I’m with young chaps? God, you’re so unsure of yourself—” That sounded funny even in her own ears.
He had looked at her in genuine astonishment. Then he had burst out laughing and she had taken advantage of the moment to end the argument. She laughed, too, then kissed him and pressed herself against him. She was learning what a mistress could use.
“Relax. The young chaps never get any of that.”
He had held her to him: possessively? No, lovingly. But she did not expect love from him, at least not a declaration of it. “Cleo, I miss you when you’re away. I wouldn’t have spoken to them at United if I’d known you were going to be gallivanting—”
She kissed him again. “I’ll be all yours for thirteen weeks in summer. We can gallivant anywhere you like then.”
“Summer? Another nine bloody months. I’m not going to put up with it for that long—”
She gently got out of his arms. “Jack, we can always call it off—”
That frightened him, but he was experienced enough not to show it. He had been frightened before, once or twice in business, once with a woman. He kept his voice steady: “No, we shouldn’t want to do that. We enjoy each other too much to break it off—you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in ages—” There: she couldn’t expect more of a declaration than that. “No, we’ll work it out.”
She felt suddenly suspicious. “Jack, you won’t go to United and interfere, will you? That would finish it for us.”
He had had that in mind; but he saw the fierce, if controlled, antagonism in her. “Of course not. We’ll just—we’ll see each other every moment you’re free. Spend all our time together.”
“I’m not going to move in with you, Jack.”
That was something he had not had in mind. But for a moment he considered it, then discarded the temptation. None of the others had ever been invited to live with him: you could take commitment just so far. “All right, I know how independent you are. We’ll work it out. Take care in New York. The place is full of muggers, they tell me.”
“I’ll have all the young chaps to look after me. They’re very protective of me.” It was the wrong thing to say. You could joke with young lovers about other young men, but not with an older lover. She had to go back into his arms, kiss him again. She suddenly felt very protective of him, or anyway of his
ego. “Let’s go to bed.”
Now she was in Central Park, being protected by the young chaps in the crew as the vast crowd milled about them. There was much noise and movement, but so far no violence; the police, on foot and on horseback, had kept to the very fringes of the crowd. Banners waved in the air; they reminded Cleo of battle flags she had seen in medieval tapestries. But these were not battle flags, unless this was a war against war. Girls and boys, often looking like sisters in their identical dress and long hair and granny glasses, presented single flowers to the young policemen, who smiled and took them but watched warily, made cautious by the very size of the crowd. The older policemen, who had seen a war or two, did their best to look patient and understanding; but some of them wondered whatever had happened to patriotism, what was happening to America. A small group of middle-aged men, wearing Legionnaire caps, stood under a big American flag; they looked out of place, pathetically brave, like Indians in a July the Fourth carnival. Young blacks wandered amongst the crowd, skirting the policemen with cold suspicion whenever they happened upon them. But that was another war, one already won on paper if not in fact.
“I thought there’d be more Negroes,” said Cleo.
“Negro is a taboo word, love. Blacks is what they are. They’ve stayed away because they think they’re cannon fodder anyway, no matter what war is being fought. I shouldn’t mention them, Cleo. That’s an American family argument, not ours. I don’t think we should look like holier-than-thou Limeys. Stick to the theme, that these kids are against the war in Vietnam. You’ll find plenty of articulate talking heads.”
Cleo recognized many of the articulate talking heads, the hippy radicals who had been featured so much even on British television. She looked for someone new, looked again and again at the dark-haired young man weaving, side-stepping, like a rugby fly-half, in and out of a group whose banner said, in neat Baskerville lettering, that it was from Yale. He seemed to be keeping everyone laughing, had enough energy to win a war on his own. Or stop one.
She pushed her way towards the Yale group, spoke to a girl who looked the archetypal American college girl, like someone held over from the Fifties: short blonde hair, sweater, skirt, long socks and saddle shoes, Sandra Dee outfitted for battle.
“Who is that chap, the one in the yellow sweater?”
In the noise of the crowd Cleo thought the girl said Al Roo. The girl shouted, “You’re English, right? You want to interview him? Hey, Al!”
Alain Roux danced rather than pushed his way through the crush, put his arm round the girl, kissed her on the cheek and laughed at Cleo. “A convert to the cause? Where you from?”
“London,” she shouted; then gave up, backed out of the crowd, beckoning to him as she went. He looked at the blonde, laughed again and followed Cleo. When he caught up with her they were on the outskirts of the crowd and the noise. She said, “I’m from United Television in London—a programme called Scope. I’d like to interview you.”
“Why me? All the names are here—” But he took her arm, helped her up a slope and found a spot where they could imagine the illusion that they had some privacy. He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Alain Roux. R-o-u-x.”
“Cleo Spearfield.” Then his name penetrated, as if the sound of it had been delayed by the noise below them. “Roux? Would you be any relation to Mrs. Claudine Roux of the New York Courier?”
He sighed, though she didn’t hear it, and looked away from her. He had never felt burdened by his name till the last two years at Yale. Then the strident support of the Courier for the war in Vietnam had been embarrassing amongst the men who were his friends; having an uncle who was a gung-ho general had not helped either. He had always been proud of his Brisson heritage; he had majored in History and developed a sense of it. The Roux heritage was respectable but only middle class: he would never admit it to anyone, but like his mother he was a snob. But since nobody, not even his mother, had yet discovered the fact, he was liked by everyone, even inferiors.
He looked back at Cleo. “Does that make any difference?”
“No. Well, yes, I suppose it does. I know your uncle, General Brisson . . . May I interview you or not?”
“If I say no, will you mention that I was here?” He gestured at the crowd, a hundred thousand or more.
“I think in that crowd you can be as anonymous as you wish.” In her column she might state that amongst those present were . . . but on television you never mentioned just names, you had to show faces. To be amongst those present in front of a television camera was to be on the cutting-room floor.
Suddenly he laughed: he had a full-bellied laugh. It reminded her of her father’s, though it was not as practised. “Okay, get your camera up here. Ask me anything you want.”
She asked him all the usual questions: why are you against the war, what do you hope to achieve with this demonstration, what is your solution to the problem of the war? She got the usual answers: there was nothing new to be said. The slogans at home were as war-torn as the soldiers abroad.
Then she said, “Your uncle, General Brisson, has been quoted as saying that the only acceptable end to the war is an American victory.”
Alain winced only slightly. “My uncle is a professional soldier, doing his duty. But this is a political war, not a military one.”
“Some people would say that all wars are political.”
“Or religious. But they still have to be fought by ordinary men who have to be led by professionals.” He knew he must sound as if he did not totally condemn the Pentagon and he wondered what his friends would say if they came up the slope to hear him. He was ambivalent in his feelings towards his uncle, but he was not going to attack him in public. Brissons just did not do that to each other.
“The Courier, of which your family is the biggest stockholder, is very much for the war.”
“I don’t write the editorials for the Courier. I wish I could, but that’s not the way it works on newspapers. I’m sure you don’t write the commercials that pay for this programme, right? But you’d like to, right?”
She would ban all pet food commercials, all close-ups of dogs golloping their chunky meals, of cats licking their lips like Chinese emperors who had just executed another hundred enemies. But United Television’s programme directors would tell her to mind her own business. “I take it you haven’t been drafted, Mr. Roux?”
“I got a deferment to finish my course. I got this yesterday.” He reached into his pocket, took out an envelope; it was so perfect it looked staged: “It’s my draft notice. I have to report next week.”
“Will you report? Or will you dodge the draft?”
“I think that’s between me and the draft board.” He laughed, not at her but straight into the camera, as if his only audience were the youth of the world.
“Cut!” said Roy Holden. “Marvellous, Mr. Roux! We’ll use all of that. Maybe we’ll come and do an epilogue when you’re in the stockade or wherever they’ll put you.”
Alain laughed again, but Cleo watching him, saw that this time the laugh was a little forced. “I’ll send you a postcard.”
As he turned to go back down the slope to rejoin the Yale group Cleo said, “Would you have dinner with me tonight if you’re free?”
He looked at her, eyebrows raised. “That’s a switch.”
“I don’t have any designs on you. I’d just like to talk to you.”
“Sure, I’ll be glad to. Will you call for me?”
She smiled, liking him, a young chap. “I’ll do that. Whereabouts? I don’t know New York at all.”
He gave her the address on Fifth Avenue. “I’ll be waiting for you downstairs. I don’t think you should meet my mother until I know what your intentions are.”
Cleo, for reasons she didn’t bother to examine right then, did not mention she had already met Claudine Roux. “Eight o’clock. I’ll let you choose the restaurant. Scope will be paying, so no expense spared.”
“Oh, to have an expense account,” said
he, too rich to have one.
He was waiting under the canopy outside the apartment building when she drew up in the cab. He suggested a restaurant on Lexington Avenue. “It’s one of the few truly French places in New York. The food’s so good the proprietor won’t serve you any drinks that deaden the taste buds. Only aperitifs, nothing else. My mother goes there when she wants a quiet meal alone.”
“Will she be there this evening?”
“She’s at the Met. She appears there regularly. She’s one of their non-singing prima donnas.”
The restaurant was intimate, a bijou establishment where Cleo could see Claudine Roux coming in alone and yet not seeming alone: the staff would pay court to her all evening. The food was as good as Alain had promised, a change from Mrs. Cromwell’s sensible dinners. Cleo had had far too many of them in the past few months and had begun to wonder if her taste buds had been deadened.
“Do you get on well with your mother?”
“Well enough. We have the usual thing between the generations these days. I mean we argue about the war, things like that. What about you and your mother?”
“My mother’s dead.”
“Oh. Your father?”
“We never argue. Dad’s always right, so my brothers and I just agree with him. It’s easier.”
“What does he do? Is he in newspapers or TV?”
“He’s a politician.”
“Oh God.” She noticed that he didn’t swear, or at least hadn’t done so in front of her. She wondered if that was the influence of Yale or his mother. “They’re the worst sort, aren’t they?”
“Not necessarily.” She had to defend the absent Sylvester. She knew that, for all his faults and egotism, he would defend her to strangers. “There are worse.”
“For instance?”
She had to think. “Self-made men, the achievers. The ones who can’t understand why their kids don’t want all the material things. My father isn’t like that.”
“Do you want all the material things?” He seemed unaware of his smug position, the heir to the throne.
“Yes, a few of them. I’m no idealist, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
