by Jon Cleary
“We see each other at least three nights a week.”
“It’s not enough!” His temper was rising.
“Well, that’s too bloody bad!” She lost her own temper, something she had rarely done with him in the past. “My life’s my own—I don’t belong to you—not yet.”
Then he hit her. She had seen the suppressed violence in him before, something he seemed to keep under control as if he were afraid of what it would do to him as much as to someone else. She had seen it break out of him only once, when he thrashed at a fractious horse with his whip. There had been only the two furious lashes, then he had stopped, trembling as much as the whipped horse. Now he hit her across the face, jerking her head sideways with the force of his open hand.
She staggered back, blinded by shock more than by the sudden sting across her cheek. Then she picked up the small battery-run carriage clock on a table against one wall and hurled it at him. Fortunately she was still stunned and her aim was not good; otherwise she might have killed him. It struck him a glancing blow on top of the head and crashed to the floor on the far side of the room. He staggered back, one hand clutching his head, as taken aback by her violence as she had been by his.
She left him then, sailing out of his flat in full fury, all swagger gone, an Amazon who had given more than she had got. She slammed the front door and, to add to his own fury, the security alarm was somehow triggered and bells began ringing. Sid and Mrs. Cromwell came running from the kitchen and the hall porter burst out of the lift and banged on the front door. Jack Cruze, blood running from the cut on his head but soaking into his thick hair, told them to get the bloody bells fixed, then stamped upstairs to his study. Sid Cromwell picked up the smashed clock and nodded appreciatively; Miss Spearfield had given the Boss the time of day in a way he probably had not expected but had certainly deserved. Sid knew his boss’s failings better than Jack did himself.
Upstairs in the library Jack got out a print of Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil, and lost himself in a fantasy of the woman who had been the dream goddess of his youth. The cut on his head had stopped bleeding, but there was a bump under the grey curls and he had a slight headache. When he went to bed he fell into another dream; Cleo was both flesh and the devil. He woke in the morning gritty-eyed, his headache worse. Erotic dreams are too exotic a course for a man in his fifties.
He sent her a dozen red roses and she called him at lunch-time, making him wait and suffer. “All right, Jack, I forgive you. But don’t ever hit me again or that’s the end between us.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that. It won’t happen again.”
That night she slept with him in the penthouse flat and he woke next morning with fresh eyes and a clear head. Which proved to him that the actual exercise was far better than the fantasy, if only to induce sleep. But you never tell your loved one she is as good as Valium.
A week later she played hostess at a dinner in the flat. There were sixteen guests, which virtually split the dinner into two parties. Jack sat at one end of the long table and she at the other. The guest of honour was a Sheik from one of the Trucial States; his wife was safely back home in the harem, so he brought Rhonda Buick, the ex-beauty queen. She was introduced as his public relations adviser, but it was obvious there were also private relations between them. The Sheik sat on Cleo’s right and was polite, but his eyes kept straying down the table to where Miss Buick sat with Jack Cruze.
“I hope Miss Buick has made things smooth for you here in London,” said Cleo.
“Oh yes, yes. Very smooth. English women have many talents.”
“Thank you,” said Cleo being English for the evening. She supposed that, in a way, she was no better than Rhonda Buick. She looked down the table at Jack, who employed her, though he didn’t think she made things smooth for him. Then she turned to the man on her left. “What about the talents of American women, Mr. Kibler?”
Jerome Kibler was a New York banker, small, dapper and burdened with a giggle which made a low joke of high finance. But since he had got out of the army twenty-six years ago, coming out as a paymaster sergeant who had spent the war studying the stock market, confident that God, the Allies and Wall Street would win, he had piled dollar upon dollar and now sat on a heap where virtually everyone but the men at the very top in Wall Street, men on old heaps of money, looked up at him. He was Jewish and a friend of the Sheik, whose investments he supervised in the United States.
“American men are frightened of their women’s talents.” His laugh turned into a giggle, as it always did.
“Are you all afraid of the Women’s Liberation movement? What do you think of all this bra-burning?”
“We’re advising our clients to sell their stock in Maiden-form.” Again the giggle. It was a pity he couldn’t control it, because he was a nice, intelligent man and Cleo liked him at once. “No, seriously, we think it’s a good thing. Or anyway I do. The Women’s Lib thing, I mean, not the bra-burning. In my own bank we’re promoting women to top positions. I think we’re ahead of most banks in that respect.”
The Sheik shook his head. “You are buying trouble, Jerry. I hope I shan’t have to deal with a woman when I come to New York next time.”
“Oh, I’m sure Mr. Kibler will protect you against that danger,” said Cleo.
The Sheik was not dense, just bigoted. He smiled, light winking on the gold at each corner of his mouth. “I come from an old-fashioned society, Miss Spearfield. If I were younger and not the ruler of my country, perhaps I could be more liberal.”
“What about the Sheik at the other end of the table?” said Kibler and didn’t giggle. “What does he think about liberated women?”
Impulsively Cleo put a hand on his and laughed. “Mr. Kibler, Lord Cruze could take over from Sheik Abdullah tomorrow and the women in that man’s country would never know the difference.”
The Sheik and Kibler laughed and all three looked down the table at Jack. His stare was frozen, and Cleo frowned, wondering what was on his mind; then she realized her hand was still on Jerry Kibler’s. Oh God, she thought, this is ridiculous. He was now even jealous of their dinner guests.
Perversely she looked directly at Kibler, widened her smile as if she were trying to wrap him in it and said, “Mr. Kibler, would you have lunch with me tomorrow? I’d like to do a column on the place of women in the world of banking.”
“I’d be delighted. But let me take you. I like to keep a few of the old conventions.”
She didn’t argue. She had only suggested having lunch with him to annoy Jack, another old convention.
Afterwards, over coffee in the drawing-room, Cleo said to Rhonda Buick, “Business seems to be improving. The PR business, I mean.”
Miss Buick, wide-eyed and innocent of all but major crimes said, “I know what you mean, Cleo. We’re both getting on, you know. You just woke up earlier than I did to the fact that older men are more reliable than young guys with their payments.”
“What is the going rate at the harem?”
“I’ll let you know,” said Miss Buick, spooning sugar into her coffee and her smile. “You may be out of a job some day.”
They parted the best of enemies. Miss Buick left early with the Sheik, warning him of the heavy day he had tomorrow. He went eagerly, as if looking forward to a heavy night.
Later, when the last guests had gone out of the door, Jack said at once, “What was going on between you and Jerry Kibler?”
“He’s taking me to lunch tomorrow. We’re going to talk about women in banking.”
“Is that all you’re going to talk about?”
“Goodnight, Jack.” She went out of the flat, slamming the door behind her but this time not setting off any alarm.
Except in him. He opened the door to call her back, but the landing outside was already empty; she must have gone down the stairs without waiting for the lift. He closed the door and went into his bedroom, undressed and got into bed. Billie Dove, Lilian Tashman, eve
n Garbo could not comfort him tonight. He knew that at times lately he had been acting like a jealous youth, someone with no experience of women, but he could not help himself. He had learned to live with the absence of Emma, but she had been gone more than twenty years now; in less time one learns to live without a leg or both legs. Even an hour’s absence by Cleo was like trying to live without his head. He used that analogy rather than without his heart. He was head over heels in love but still not romantic.
In the morning he called Emma, but Emma’s housekeeper answered the phone, went away and came back to say that Lady Cruze could not come to the phone; she was otherwise engaged. He slammed the phone down as if it were a bludgeon across the back of Emma’s neck.
He and Cleo made up again. She did her column on women in banking and Jerry Kibler read it, rang her to say he liked it, giggled at some of her remarks and went back to New York, asking her to look him up if ever she came to America again. She said she would and forgot him.
Then Quentin Massey-Folkes resigned. Cleo was in the Examiner’s news-room on his last day there. She could have written her column at home, but she went into the office on the three days when her column appeared and wrote it there; sitting at a small desk in a far corner of the big room. It was her way of showing that she still considered herself part of the paper’s staff. Whether the rest of the staff appreciated her presence, she did not know, but no one sneered at her and she thought, or hoped, she had not lost her early popularity. She had swagger and confidence, but, as far as she knew, no one had ever accused her of having a big head.
She finished her column, handed it to a boy to take to the features editor, who was still Joe Brearly, the man who had given her her first job on the paper. Then she walked down the long room and into Quentin’s office.
He looked like a dim reproduction of himself; thin, grey, all life gone from his eyes. She wanted to cry, but knew he would be angry if she did.
“I’m going down to the West Country, to a cottage I always meant to retire to. I’ll be out of the way there.”
“Jack’s going to miss you. We all are. The paper won’t be the same without you, Quent.”
“I should hope not.” He had never been burdened with false modesty. “I’ve been here more years than anyone else, except some of the chaps in printing. I made it what it is. I hope you’ve learned a thing or two from me.”
“I have. Who’s taking over from you?”
He shrugged; it seemed a major effort, he looked so weak. “I’ve talked to half a dozen chaps for Jack. I don’t think any of them is right. Well, maybe they’re right for the paper—I don’t know whether they’re right for the Boss. He’s not the easiest man to work for.”
They exchanged smiles. “What about Joe Brearly?”
“He doesn’t want the job. He says he could never handle Jack.”
“What about me?” She had been thinking about it for the past twenty-four hours. It would bind her even more closely to Jack, but that couldn’t be helped; she had come to Fleet Street to get to the top and this was the opportunity. “I can handle him.”
For a moment there was a spark of the old Quentin in the thin grey face. “Do you think you could do it? Ah, but why am I asking? If the Queen asked you to take over from her, you’d be up there on the throne like a shot.” Then he shook his head and subsided. “No, it wouldn’t work, Cleo. There are too many men on the staff who think they’ve paid their dues and could do a better job than any woman. There’s never been a woman editor of a newspaper in Britain and those chaps wouldn’t stand by and let you, an Aussie to boot, be the first.”
“You’re wrong in saying there’s never been a woman editor. The first editor of the first daily paper in England, the Courant, was a woman. That was in 1700. She didn’t last long, but she was the editor. It’s time there was another one.”
He smiled shrewdly. “I knew about that woman, but I didn’t think you would. You’d really like the job, wouldn’t you? Well, try your luck with Jack. I can’t back you, Cleo. It wouldn’t be fair to some of the chaps I’ve worked with all these years. Between you and me, I don’t think any one of them would be any better than you. But you’re untried, Cleo. You’ve never even sat on a subs’ desk, you’ve never made up a page—”
She looked out through the big glass wall at the newsroom. She could see the reporters at their desks getting into gear to report tomorrow’s news. Some of them were typing, with their backs hunched, necks craned, in the posture of those who had never learned to touch-type; others sprawled in their chairs reading notes or other newspapers, the younger ones being studiously casual as if they had not yet quite fitted into their roles. On the sub-editors’ desk older men were sharpening their blue pencils, sharpening their teeth as they prepared to teach the young reporters how to write terse, readable prose. Two or three men were grouped around the various editors’ desks: the metropolitan desk, the provincial, the foreign. Copy boys sat at the far end of the room like cattle dogs waiting to be whistled up. Though the evening rush had yet to start, the huge room already had its own vibrancy, the sort of atmosphere that almost no other industry had. Because it was an industry: the production of news. And there were few products that had to be produced and sold so quickly.
The newsroom was only part of it. There were the circulation department, the advertising department, finance, personnel; and there was the printing department, the engine-room of the whole paper, where the printers, a race apart, grouped in the quaintly named union chapel, ruled as in another country. Journalists have the conceit that they are the paper, but without the other departments their typewriters would be just a battery of unheeded clacking.
She looked back at Quentin. “I think I’ll ask Jack to try me.”
She did, that evening. She would have done better, perhaps, if she had asked him to marry her, though she would have got the same answer.
“No! Every bloody paper in the country, even The Times, would run something snide about Cruze making a present of the Examiner to his girl-friend—”
“Is that all you’re afraid of?”
“No!” He was spearing her with exclamation marks. “I’m more afraid you’d make a mess of the paper! You know nothing about editing—”
“Men have been promoted to editor without editing experience. Or is it that you don’t trust a woman?”
“You’re too young. If you were ten years older, maybe—”
“Hugh Cudlipp was only twenty-four when he was made editor of the Sunday Pictorial.”
“He’d had years of experience.” He made it sound as if Cudlipp had started editing letter-blocks in his cradle. “No, I’m not giving you the job. The subject’s closed.”
She did not lose her temper this time; she had half-expected the refusal. She had asked him down to her flat for dinner; she felt safer on her own ground. She had had dinner sent across from the Stafford Hotel opposite; she knew she was a poor cook, though Jack, with his palate, would not have been too critical. She had not wanted to do battle with him on a stomach fortified only by Mrs. Cromwell’s cooking. Mrs. C. served Brussels sprouts and peas with everything, which would have made for windy argument.
“Does that mean I’ve gone as far as I can on the Examiner?”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“Has someone else offered you a job? Murdoch or Max Aitken?”
She put down her spoon and sat back in her chair, giving her exasperation full rein. “Why do you always look for a rival? No, no one has offered me a job—though I’m sure I could get one if I wanted it. All I asked is, have I gone as far as I can go on the Examiner?”
“For a few years, yes.”
“Well then, maybe I will look around to see what else is on offer.” The threat came off the top of her head, taking flight of its own accord.
He pushed his plate away from him: there was nothing as good as bread-and-butter pudding, not even chocolate velvet. “What do you want me to offer
you? Maybe you can have one of the magazines.”
“I don’t want to go onto a magazine. Every second week another story on the Royals. Or How to Bring Up Baby in the Seventies. Or Forty-seven Ways to Cook a Brussels Sprout.” Forty-six ways of which would be thrown out by Mrs. Cromwell. “Jack, I’m at a dead end. Oh, a very comfortable dead end, I’ll admit that—a lot of women would give their eye-teeth and a lot more to be where I am. But I’m going to become very stale if I have to go on doing the same thing for the next ten years, till you think I’m old and experienced enough to edit the Examiner.”
“You could give up newspaper work altogether. And television, too.”
“And do what?” But she knew.
“I could take more time off and we could travel. I’d like to compete in more horse shows, some of the big ones in America, for instance. I could buy a yacht and we could spend more time cruising. There’s a lot of the world I’ve only lately realized I’ve never seen. The out-of-the-way places. Machu Pichu, for instance. The Himalayas—”
“Woy Woy.”
“Of course.” Then he said, “Where’s that?”
It was a village back home in Australia, north of Sydney and still clouded by the joke it had been in her father’s youth when everyone had thought of it as a weekend retreat for drunken fishermen. It was now a respectable retirement retreat, but it was not Machu Pichu. She ignored his question and said, “Jack, you’re talking about what you want to do for the next ten years. You’d better get some extra stickers for me, because you make me sound like baggage.”
He threw up his hands: for a moment she saw her father. “There you go! Always trying to put me in the wrong. We’d share all I’ve been talking about.”
“Who would I be? Your travelling companion? Your very good friend?”
He kept his hands on the table this time, did not say There you go again. Instead he said very quietly, “What would you like to be?”
Then she found she couldn’t say “Your wife.” Instead she said, “Jack, what I want is not to be taken for granted. I’ve got no hold on you at all. If I gave up everything to be whatever I’d be, your travelling companion or your good friend or whatever other people would call me, and then in two or three years’ time, or five or ten, if we fell out—where would I be? In my thirties, starting all over again. I have no idea what the competition will be like in two or three years, let alone ten. I might find it very hard to make it.”
