Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  “Fine.” But she knew at once that they were lying to each other. “I’ve been hoping I might get over to see you, but Gough seems to be the one who’s doing all the travelling these days. No chance of you coming home?”

  “Not yet awhile.” She was homesick but going home would be no cure.

  “Well, good luck for 1974, sweetheart. Who knows, we may both be on top at the end of the year.”

  Another six months went by. Her bank account grew, but she seemed to be standing still; she might finish up a rich fossil. She had moments of panic when it seemed that the years, her best years, were going down the drain like water. Then one hot steamy day in mid-summer Stewart Norway called her into his office.

  “Cleo, I’ve got some bad news. I’m going to have to put you off. Canberra has decided it will spend more money here and they’re sending over another journalist. I recommended they appoint you from here, since you were on the spot, but I’m afraid the job had already been promised to someone back home. You know what politics are like.”

  “That means I lose my visa?” She knew at once what it meant.

  “I’m afraid so. I’ll see what I can do about getting you an extension, but I think it would be for six months at the most.”

  Her first reaction was to call her father and ask him to do something. She knew that he could; he might have lost out on a senior Cabinet post, but he still had clout in the Party. But the word would get out that he had used his influence and once again she would be back where she had started: Senator Spearfield’s daughter, the girl who had to use her father to keep her job.

  “How long before you sack me, Stew?”

  He looked most unhappy. “I wish you could think of a better way of putting it, love. I’m not sacking you. Canberra has put a gun at my head and told me I have to let you go. So don’t say I’m sacking you. I’ll tell them I can’t let you go under a month. You make an application for a change of visa and I’ll see what I can do about backing you up. But it will only be for a limited period and that’s not good enough, right? You’re hoping you can settle here. That’s what you’ve got in mind, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. How would you like to come back in your old age and find I owned New York?”

  He shook his head in mock wonder. “Normally, ambitious women give me a pain in the neck—” He grinned his slightly buck-toothed smile. “I know, I’m a typical Aussie male chauvinist. But you . . . Well, I’d like to see you get to the top. I don’t think you’d stomp over a man to get there.”

  “Don’t flatter me, Stew. There are some men back in Canberra I’d stomp on if I could get to them.”

  But she realized now that this time she had been pushed off the cliff. She had been teetering on the edge for too long, almost as if she had lost her courage or her ambition. She had been shaken, as a stopped watch might be, and got going again.

  She went to see Gus Green and explained her problem. “I’m staying here, Gus, no matter what. I’ll be a wetback if I have to, I’ll swim across the East River and back. I can’t get immigrant status—the Australian quota is filled for the next seven years or something.”

  “I’ve had other clients who have had the same problem. You got to marry a US citizen—you don’t want that, do you? I’d marry you myself, if it wasn’t for the wife—or you got to work for some organization that says it needs you here. Or you can get some Congressman to put through private legislation. You know a Congressman?”

  “No.” She sat for a moment or two in silence, then she said reluctantly, because she did not like the thought that had slipped into her mind, “But I know an organization that I might be able to persuade that it needs me. Or anyway someone in the organization.”

  Gus Green chewed a fat lip. “Cleo, don’t sell yourself. To some guy, I mean. I’ve seen too many dames go the wrong route doing that.”

  I’ve seen this one go the same route. “I’ll be careful, Gus. I’ll be dealing with a gentleman.”

  “Who said you could trust one of them?” said Gus Green, who’d never claimed to be a gentleman.

  She rang Alain at the Courier. She thought he was going to jump through the phone at her. “Cleo! For crying out loud—where the hell are you? Here in New York? How about dinner tonight?”

  Well, at least he was free if he could offer her dinner on the spur of the moment. “Alain, this is business. I’m after a job.”

  He had been laughing at the other end of the phone, but abruptly he sobered. “There’s something wrong?”

  “In a way.”

  “Lord Cruze? I still haven’t forgiven the son-of-a-bitch—”

  “No, Alain, it’s not him. It’s the US government.”

  “Oh them!” He laughed again. “So long as you’re not involved in Watergate, we can help you there. So how about dinner? Oh hell—I’ve just remembered. You see? You’ve made me forget what day of the week it is. I have to go out to the country with my mother.”

  “Well, it can wait till next week—”

  “No, wait a minute. You sound worried. If Uncle Sam is on your back you can’t spend all weekend worrying about him. Come out to the country with me. It’s a house party. I’ll tell Mother you’re my date.”

  She didn’t want to face Claudine Roux, not while she was about to ask Claudine’s son for a job on the Courier. “No, I think it would be better if I waited till you come back to town—”

  But he wouldn’t hear of that. “Cleo, I can’t wait that long to see you! Good Christ—” he suddenly sounded passionate, as if the memory of two years still burned in him “—I haven’t seen you since . . . No, you’re coming out to Souillac.” She didn’t catch the name properly and she thought it was probably Indian; somehow she could not see Claudine in Indian territory. “Where do I pick you up? There’s no dressing-up—it’s just casual—”

  She gave in. “Alain, your mother hasn’t been casual since she was in diapers and I doubt if she was then.”

  He laughed, sounding like the college boy she had met oh, so many years ago. Time and the world were slipping by: maybe he was right, she couldn’t afford to waste even a weekend.

  He picked her up in an Aston-Martin convertible, one with automatic transmission: a sports car designed not to exclude cripples. He didn’t get out of the car when he drew up outside the delicatessen; she was watching for him and waved to him from her window when she saw him. She went down to him, dumped her case in the back seat and climbed in beside him. She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek, all at once glad to see him. He’d been an old friend, if only for one day.

  “Where’s your mother? You’re not luring me into the country for what you hope will be an illicit weekend, are you?”

  “She went out to the house at lunchtime.” He put a hand on her arm, looked at her carefully. She had dressed casually but with care, not just for him but for his mother. She had always believed that, outside of the bedroom, all women dressed for the approval of other women. “You look great. No visible scars.”

  “No invisible ones, either.” But that wasn’t true: but then he was talking about Jack, not Tom.

  They went through the Lincoln Tunnel into New Jersey and headed north up Route 3. It struck Cleo that this was the first time, in the seventeen months she had been here, she had been into this part of New Jersey; maybe Claudine Roux did live in Indian territory after all. As they drove along through the warm summer’s day they exchanged notes on what each of them had been doing for the past two years. Alain was hurt when he learned that she had been in New York since February of last year.

  “Hell, why didn’t you get in touch with me before this?”

  “Alain, I almost got you into a lot of trouble last time we met. I didn’t know what had happened to you in the meantime. You might have married—”

  He shook his head. “There have been some near-misses, but no missus.”

  “Well, I just stayed away, that’s all. I’ve always been half-afraid that Jack might pop up again.”

  �
��What would you do if he did?”

  “I don’t know.” She changed the subject: “I’m ashamed to say I only called you because I want help. I want to stay in America.”

  He listened while she explained her position. “You want to stay permanently?”

  “That’s a pretty permanent term. Maybe. I don’t know. But probably.” She dared not tell him about ambition. Jack had understood, even if he hadn’t liked it; but Tom never had and probably never would. “I’d like a job on the Courier. If they can give me a job and fix me a visa . . .” Then all at once she wanted to get out of the car, go back to Manhattan, try some other way of sneaking into America. “I’m sorry. I’m bludging on you.”

  “Bludging?”

  If she was going to remain in America she would have to start speaking the language. “Back home it means—well, bumming on someone.”

  He had turned off on to a side road that climbed and dipped through rolling hills. She caught glimpses of small lakes, large houses, woods that looked as if they might have been delivered gift-wrapped. She had seen enough of such areas in England, Germany and France with Jack to know she was entering rich territory. There would be no Indians hereabouts, only Claudine Roux, who might be more warlike than Geronimo, especially when she found out what message had been brought by the Aston-Martin stagecoach.

  “My dear Cleo—” He had never called her that before and it sounded a little affected. She hoped he was not going to grow pompous as he grew older. “I don’t have any official pull at the Courier, any clout. I’ve been promoted since I saw you last, but I’m still only the assistant features editor. But I’m also the son of the chairwoman and publisher and, if Mother dies before me, which I’m beginning to doubt, I’ll some day be the biggest stockholder. I very rarely get the opportunity to do anyone a favour, I mean do something that will mean something to them. So don’t think you’re—bludging? If you are, I couldn’t be more pleased. You’ll get a job on the Courier and you’ll get your visa, I promise.”

  III

  Claudine was not expecting Alain to bring a guest, especially Cleo Spearfield. Her guest list was evenly divided between the sexes and now Alain had upset the balance; what was worse, he had upset her. She greeted Cleo politely, then on a pretext took Alain aside.

  “Alain, you know how I detest unexpected guests—”

  “Mother, please. Just for once let’s have a lopsided table. Cleo is my friend and I asked her.”

  “I didn’t know you knew her well enough to call her a friend.”

  “She is now. You didn’t ask me who I wanted as my weekend partner—whom did you get, anyway?”

  “Polly Jensen, of course. You’ve taken her out—”

  “Twice, that’s all.”

  “How many times have you taken Miss Spearfield out?”

  “Once, in London a couple of years ago.”

  “Was that when she broke up with Lord Cruze and disappeared from London?”

  He looked at her sharply. “You don’t miss much, do you? You’re a gossip-monger, Mother.”

  “No, I take in gossip, I never dispense it. That’s a gossip-monger. What I’ve just said about Miss Spearfield is fact, not gossip. Was that when you took her out? Did you cause the break-up between her and Lord Cruze?”

  He laughed nervously; fortunately it came out as a scoff. “I think you have far too much faith in the Brisson charm. I’m not Uncle Roger.”

  “Thank God for that,” said Claudine and went back to Cleo.

  They studied each other behind the cane-brake of their smiles, each lying in ambush for the other. They had not met in several years, but neither could see much change in the other. Claudine, Cleo noted, was remarkable: some women age suddenly when they move into their sixties, but Claudine seemed to have put a stop to the years. Claudine, on the other hand, noted that Cleo was no longer a girl but a woman and therefore more formidable.

  “Miss Spearfield—”

  “Mrs. Roux, I’d prefer it if you called me Cleo.”

  “Of course. Did you come by barge?”

  I should have stayed in Manhattan, I should never have called Alain. “Only across the Hudson River. Or Nile West, as I like to think of it.”

  Claudine smiled, thinking that perhaps the weekend would not be so bad after all. “Do you breed asps as a hobby?”

  Float the barge, Alexas, we return to the Second Avenue deli palace this night.

  Then Claudine relented, took Cleo’s arm. “Welcome to Souillac. I think you and I, if no one else, may have a splendid weekend.”

  None of the other guests had yet arrived. When Claudine went away to give instructions to the servants, Cleo walked out to stand on the large terrace that fronted the huge house. The sky was still bright and the countryside sloped away below the house in a soft pattern of light and dark green, more restful on the eyes than any darkened room on Second Avenue. She suddenly realized that the angles, the glittering planes and the harsh light of Manhattan had been battering at her for too long. She took off her dark glasses and let the green wash over her.

  “What’s the matter?” Alain had come out to stand beside her.

  “I just remembered a couple of lines of poetry I once used in my column. A Welsh poet named Davies. I stare at dewdrops till they close their eyes/I stare at grass till all the world is green. I hadn’t realized how tired I am, even my eyes.”

  “You don’t want to sleep all weekend?”

  “And miss all this?” She gestured at the house and the acres in which it stood. It was as big as St. Aidan House, but she doubted that it had been built by king-makers.

  “Great-grandfather Brisson built it,” said Alain. “We’re only about fifteen or twenty miles across the State line from Tuxedo Park.”

  “Tuxedo Park?”

  “It’s a social resort, or was.” He wondered how much she knew about the class structure in America. He had always known the upper levels, but had only come to know the many gradations when he had gone to work on the Courier. But now he was talking about one of the top levels: “It was built by Pierre Lorillard—the Fifth, I think. He was one of the tobacco Lorillards. The first Lorillard, Pierre One, was the first man ever to be called a millionaire. Incidentally, we never use that word around the family. Mother thinks it’s vulgar.”

  “Oh, so do I.” He had sounded for a moment as if he, too, thought it was vulgar.

  “No mickey-taking. Anyhow, Pierre Five built Tuxedo Park over there in New York State as a resort for the Four Hundred. You’ve heard of the Four Hundred?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Ninety-five per cent of the world’s population, perhaps: but now was not the time to nit-pick.

  “You could only join the Tuxedo Park Club by invitation. Great-grandfather declined his invitation—he was a bigger snob than Mother. He felt that any society that allowed a figure as high as four hundred to be classed as its elite had no sense of values. So he built Souillac, which is named after the region where the family originally came from in France. That was back in 1895 and he never invited more than twenty or thirty of the Four Hundred here. The standards have gone down since then, of course.”

  “Of course. Or why should I be here?”

  He smiled and took her hand. “Actually, I feel you’ve raised the standards about ten notches.”

  After she had showered and changed Cleo quietly, almost surreptitiously, inspected the mansion. It was too large and forbidding to have any charm. The architect, brought over from France, had been bemused by his assignment. Trying to marry both sides of the Atlantic, he had only succeeded in putting a scaled-down version of Versailles to bed with one of the more formidable New York armouries. Cleo gave up counting the rooms when she reached thirty; to anyone brought up in a four-bedroomed house, anything larger is not a home. She sidled along the panelled corridors, climbed the wide staircases, opened doors on rooms that had more taste and better proportions than the exterior of the house suggested. She was still unconcerned with possessions of her own, but, de
spite the experience of her years in England, she still had some awe of what the rich possessed. As the real estate agents say, you can move people out of the suburbs but you can’t take the suburbs out of the people.

  She opened one wide heavy door and found herself in a billiards room. She supposed Americans would call it a pool room, though that suggested shady characters looking for suckers to be conned into a game where they’d lose their shirts. No shirts would be lost in this room. She could imagine the side bets, maybe a hundred dollars or even a thousand; but the real bets would have been placed on things far beyond this room, on mergers and takeovers and the floating of new ventures. The green baize table would be a substitute board table. She could see Alain’s father or grandfather, cue in hand, as chairman of the board. She remembered the games she had played with her father in the makeshift billiards room on the back verandah in Coogee. There had been no side bets there, only a warm friendly rivalry as she and her brothers tried to beat the self-acknowledged family champion.

  She ran her hand over the cues in the rack, then looked around for some balls but could see none. Perhaps over the weekend she might challenge Alain to a game. All at once she felt a nostalgia for what the family had once had on the back verandah in Coogee. She went out, closing the door on the feeling as well as on the room.

  She finished her inspection of the great house. It had brought home to her the real wealth of the Brissons. They were like all the old rich: they would never show their bank balances, not even under pain of death, but erected their houses like billboards of their position. Immodesty has to break out even amongst the well-bred.

  Friday night had to be swum through; Cleo knew now that she had fallen into a deeper pool than she had anticipated. Alain would not be the only one to have a say in whether she got a job on the Courier and, more importantly, sponsored her for a visa. The final say would be Claudine’s.

  Ten of the weekend guests had arrived by seven o’clock. With Alain and his mother and herself, Cleo could see thirteen sitting down to dinner: the weekend began to look worse and worse. She always told everyone she was not superstitious, but the Celt in her knew better.