by Jon Cleary
“Are you trying to tell me that Roger is—is shacking up with some woman?”
“He might just as well be. He spends every weekend with her. Maybe every night with her, now that I’ve left him. Her name is Mary Tripp. She’s a Congresswoman.”
“Does she have a husband?” As if having a spouse was a necessary qualification for being a Member of Congress. “Where is he?”
Louise shrugged. “Not in Washington, certainly. Ah, here is the tea.”
Claudine smiled at the old black woman who had brought in the tray. “Hello, Lena. You’re looking well.”
“It’s very peaceful out here, Miz Roux.” Lena Jinks had worked for the family since she had come to them as a girl straight out of school. For the past ten years she had been part-caretaker, part-housekeeper here at Sands Point. “I never want to come back to Manhattan to live. I dunno how you still live there, all that noise and stuff.”
“I’m still young, Lena.” The two old ladies smiled at each other. “Take care of yourself.”
Lena shuffled out of the room and Louise said, “She’s a comfort to have around. Not to talk to, just to have her here in the house.”
Claudine all at once felt sorry for her sister-in-law, reduced to needing the presence of an old servant as comfort. “I think you’d do better to get away from here, go somewhere you can have distraction. Paris, for instance.”
Louise had poured tea for Claudine, but was having a gin and tonic herself. “I’ve been thinking of shooting Roger. That would be a distraction.”
“That sort of thing is no solution at all.” Claudine did not take the threat seriously. It was not civilized, shooting was something done by mobsters out in Kansas City.
They sat there in the museum of a room looking out at the autumn light reflected from the waters of the Sound. Gulls glimmered in the air like drifting stars and a sail-boat sliced the breeze with a white scythe. A small dry kernel was forming in Claudine’s breast, as if her life itself was shrinking, putting itself away inside her just as Louise had put away in this room the reminders of the nomadic life she had led.
“Why did Alain go off so suddenly?” said Louise, sipping her gin, forgetting about murder.
“I’m not sure. He never was one to confide in me,” Claudine admitted. She had never exchanged any intimacies with Louise, but today she felt she owed her one or two. Otherwise she was not going to learn enough about the trouble with Roger and thus be able to help. “It has something to do with Cleo Spearfield.”
“He is sweet on her, one could see that. Have they broken up?”
“I never really understood their relationship. But I do believe he wanted to marry her.”
“Would you have accepted that?”
“No.” It was safe to say it, now the danger had passed.
“Did she want to marry him? No, obviously not, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone off to Paris. Perhaps I should go over there and keep an eye on him. Comfort him.”
“I think that would be a very good idea,” said Claudine, though she could not imagine Louise with a watchful eye. She had been blind for so long towards Roger, or at least turned her gaze away. “I’ll have Mr. Nevin at our Paris bureau look for an apartment for you.”
“Perhaps I could move in with Alain.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” What had got into Louise? I’ll see Mr. Nevin gets you a good apartment—”
“Don’t organize me, Claudine. I’ll go in my own good time and in my own way.” She put down her empty glass. “I’m not going to donate Roger to that Congresswoman, like some campaign contribution.”
This Louise was a stranger. Abruptly the talk of shooting looked real. “You’re not going to do something foolish?”
“What’s foolish?” Louise grinned slyly, as a madwoman might; but Claudine had only seen actresses playing madwomen. She was uncertain whether Louise was acting or not. “I think Roger is the one who’s being foolish.”
“Stupid is the word I’d use. I’ll tell him so.”
“No!” Louise stood up quickly and for a moment Claudine thought she was going to throw a fit, she looked so angry and distraught. “For Christ’s sake, Claudine, stay out of our lives! Stop being the fucking Empress!”
The language hit Claudine as hard as the dismissal. She pulled on her gloves, gathered up her handbag and stood up. She knew how to beat a retreat, though she had never had to do it before. “I shall wait for you to call me when your language and your mood are more temperate.”
“Oh shit,” said Louise intemperately. “Why didn’t you say it in French? It would have sounded less pompous.”
Claudine sailed out of the house, looking no less graceful than the yacht out on the Sound, though she felt momentarily rudderless. She was fortunate to have her chauffeur: he pointed the car, if nothing else, in the right direction.
III
Over that winter events brewed across the world; life is a kitchen where something is always simmering, cooking or burning. So said the Courier’s cooking columnist, lost for a recipe and turning philosophical. Cleo, in New York with her own problems, did not know how the widely-spread ingredients were slowly being mixed together.
One day Bill Puskas stopped her as they were coming out of the editorial conference. “That kid Hurlstone is waiting outside to see you.”
“Hurlstone? Who’s he?”
“The spotty-faced kid you used to get those pix of Frank Apollo that day up in Grade Park. He’s been plaguing me ever since with his candid camera stuff—he won’t believe we don’t run that sort of thing. He’s also got no idea what’s news.”
“What’s he want with me?”
“I dunno. Maybe he thinks he can by-pass me.”
“I shan’t do that. Send him in and I’ll get rid of him for good.”
George Hurlstone didn’t appear to have changed; perhaps he was a little plainer, a little thinner, perhaps the acne had bored deeper. He looked both tentative and aggressive, a rabbit that had suddenly found itself with fangs. He stood just inside Cleo’s doorway, hung with cameras like a Kodak porter, a large envelope held in one hand.
“I been getting nowhere with your picture editor, Miss Spearfield, he just keeps giving me the brush-off all the time, everything I bring him—”
“Not just you, Mr. Hurlstone. Mr. Puskas has I don’t know how many pictures submitted to him every day. We have our own photographers, the agencies, freelancers like yourself—”
“I did you a favour once, Miss Spearfield—”
“You were paid for it. You got the going rate, as I remember it.”
“Well, I’m gonna do you another one.”
“Another what?” She was instantly suspicious, she could see the sabre-teeth coming down out of the rabbit’s mouth.
“Another favour.” He took a ten by eight photograph out of the envelope and dropped it on Cleo’s desk. “I been down in Washington. You know who that is? The price this time is gonna be well and truly above the going rate, you know?”
Roger Brisson was sitting at a table with a blonde woman in her mid-thirties; she was wearing a low-cut dress and Roger’s right hand looked as if he were finger-testing the depth of her cleavage. She was leaning forward as if to help him; their smiles were salacious, almost ugly. It was a good photograph, the technical standard excellent. It was news, too. Or would be in certain publications.
Cleo looked up. “What’s the rate?”
“A thousand dollars.” The fangs showed, though Cleo guessed the hindquarters were trembling.
Cleo sat for a moment looking at the photograph. “Who’s the lady?”
“Representative Tripp, from California. She’s a Republican, I think.”
“She would have to be,” said Cleo, but it was really no moment for a joke and Hurlstone missed it anyway. She continued to look at the photo, then she took out her personal cheque book and wrote out a cheque for one thousand dollars. She held out her hand. “Everything, Mr. Hurlstone. The negative, the lot.”
“I haven’t got it with me—there’s other stuff on it I need—”
“Come back when you have it. No negative, no money.”
“I could sell it to another paper. The National Enquirer—”
“Try selling it to anyone else and I’ll see the Guild about you, have you barred from every newspaper, respectable one, that is, in the country.”
Hurlstone hesitated, then reached into his camera-bag and took out a batch of negatives. Cleo checked them, then handed him the cheque.
“Don’t ever try that with me again, Mr. Hurlstone. If you do, I’ll let Frank Apollo’s friends out in Kansas City know who took that picture of him here in New York, the one that set his killers on him.”
“Jesus Christ! You mean you—?”
“Set him up?” She shook her head. “Not me, Mr. Hurlstone. But someone must have seen that picture . . .” It was a bluff, but George Hurlstone was suddenly toothless, was now a frightened rabbit easily cowed. “Don’t splurge that thousand dollars. You may need it some day for an emergency. Goodbye and don’t ever come in here again. And stay away from General Brisson.”
Hurlstone fled, rabbit-quick, and Cleo sat gazing at Roger being middle-aged and stupid. She felt angry at him and sorry for Louise; she had recognized the blind love that Louise had for her husband. But above all she felt a certain disgust with herself. She hadn’t bought the picture and negatives to protect Roger; she could have done that with the Courier’s money, though it would have meant taking Bill Puskas into her confidence. She had paid out her own money for her own ends, though she was not sure what those ends would eventually be.
Conscience pricked her. Should she send the picture, with no covering note, to Roger to warn him of his foolishness? Then she put the thought and her conscience aside; she put the photo and negatives into the envelope Hurlstone had left on her desk. She felt that she had just disarmed Hurlstone only to find that the gun was even more dangerous in her own hands.
When she went home that evening to Second Avenue she put the envelope away beneath her underwear in a drawer. She had once saved her first love letters, from the boy from Riverview, in the same way. She had not, however, been thinking of possible blackmail in those days; there was not much blackmail material in a letter that compared love-making to a two-man rugby scrum. She was not consciously thinking of extortion now, but she had to prepare her defences. She had become aware how vulnerable she was now that she was in the middle of Brisson territory.
A week later there was a board meeting. The board-room was one of two rooms in the Courier building that had not been allowed to deteriorate: the panelled walls were oiled regularly, the long table polished weekly, the upholstery of the heavy chairs never allowed to become shabby. It was Claudine’s throne room and everyone knew better than to allow patches in the seat of power. The other well-preserved room was the publisher’s office, which Claudine rarely used.
At all the board meetings she had attended Cleo had sat at the bottom of the table and kept her ears open and her mouth mostly shut. She was still learning about finance, but she had gained a good knowledge of administration; editorial policy was rarely discussed in this room. She had one friend on the board, Jerry Kibler, and a half-friend, Stephen Jensen, who gave her a warm smile before each meeting opened. But it looked more like a personal approach, the wink of a man suggesting dinner afterwards, and she always gave him a cool, wary smile in return. She had the feeling, however, that he appreciated what influence she had been able to use on the paper.
She had seen Claudine only at these meetings since she had become associate editor. Claudine had been cool and distant, an elegant iceberg on the horizon; she had somehow managed to convey the impression that the board table was the size of a county. Cleo had sat quietly, prepared to let the older woman make the first move.
The meeting was about to close. “Any further business?” said Claudine.
“Yes,” said Jerry Kibler. He had established his place halfway up the table, opposite Stephen Jensen; new money looking directly at old money, as Cleo had remarked to herself. He, like Cleo, had played the game softly so far, but now he looked as if he was about to bang a drum. “We think it is time the paper itself underwent some refurbishing.”
Cleo had come to note that Jerry occasionally used such phrases; to her it always sounded like the vocabulary of someone whose education had been delayed and who was trying to make up for lost time. She saw Stephen Jensen, who had probably been born already educated, barely hide a smile.
“We?” said Claudine, looking first at Jerry, then down the table at Cleo.
“The people I represent,” said Jerry and Cleo wondered why Jack had asked the banker, and not herself, to bring up the matter. Then, looking up the table at Claudine, she saw the wisdom of Jack’s move. He was leaving her to fight the battles in the newsroom, while Jerry fought with Claudine and the board. “Advertising space has dropped still further. It’s not going to improve unless the paper itself is improved.”
“Hear, hear,” said Stephen Jensen unexpectedly, and smiled at Cleo. “Have you any ideas, Cleo?”
“I have one,” said Jerry, not giving up the floor. “Retire the present editor, Mr. Lintas.”
“Is that what—the people you represent have in mind?” said Claudine, looking at Cleo rather than at Jerry.
“Yes,” said Jerry, still holding the floor. When he was at the board table there was no sign of the giggle that handicapped him at the dinner table. He looked ready to call the tune, or anyway twenty-two per cent of it. “There’s something else we have in mind. That Miss Spearfield take over the editor’s chair.”
“I thought you might have that in mind,” said Claudine, who could have started a library of the minds she had read.
Cleo sat quiet. Jack had said nothing to her of this move, though she had always known it would come some day. It was like him to spring it on her through Jerry. He had been meticulous about the distance he had kept between them, as if he were going out of his way to show her that, though no longer lovers, they could be the best of friends.
Claudine went on, “Mr. Lintas still has two years to go before our compulsory retiring age.”
“I didn’t think we had a compulsory retiring age for editors,” said Stephen Jensen. “I’ve had the impression Jake Lintas had been with the paper since your great-grandfather bought it.”
Claudine ignored his sarcasm. “The retiring clause is there in the books. But we’ve never applied it if the man has been doing a good job.”
“Which Jake Lintas hasn’t been doing,” said Jerry. “Not in today’s terms.”
One of the other directors looked at Cleo. His name was Beaton, he owned seven per cent of the stock, he was Claudine’s age and he was in her camp. “What do you think of Mr. Lintas?”
“I wear two hats in this corporation,” said Cleo carefully. “None of you does that. I’ll put them both on now. I agree with Jerry. Jake Lintas may once have been a good editor, but he’s twenty years out of date now. We need someone else in his chair.”
“Yourself?” said Beaton.
“If you vote for me, yes. But we definitely need someone, otherwise it won’t be long before we’re meeting here to wind up the paper.”
“You think you could do the job?” said Beaton.
“Yes.” She knew that she could, though she also knew that there would be major problems, not least the matter of her sex. There were several women publishers throughout the United States, but no major city newspaper had a woman editor.
“You show a lot of confidence,” said Claudine, who had learned the value of it. “But I don’t think our other editors will accept a woman over them.”
“They can always look for jobs elsewhere,” said Stephen Jensen. “If they can find them.”
“I think you should be backing Cleo, Mrs. Roux,” said Jerry Kibler. “There is a lot of criticism about the lack of opportunity for women in business. You as a woman should be delighted to hav
e someone as competent as Cleo to take over as editor.”
Claudine smiled at Kibler’s naïveté. Whatever gave him the idea that she divided the world into male and female? It was a matter of the survival of the fittest, preferably the most powerful and the richest. Cleo had neither riches nor power and Claudine was reluctant to give her any of the latter. But she was pragmatic, a word she had never known when she was Cleo’s age.
“Perhaps Cleo is our answer to Rupert Murdoch,” said Jensen. “An Australian to fight an Australian.”
Claudine ignored that, horrified by the idea that Cleo might try to make the Courier into a morning edition of the Post. “I’ll talk to Jake Lintas. He may be prepared to resign if he knows he no longer has the confidence of some of the directors.”
“We’ll give him a golden handshake,” said Jensen. “If we can dig up the cash.”
He’s becoming impossible, thought Claudine, ignoring Jensen again. She suddenly had the same drying-up feeling she had experienced out at Sands Point: she was losing control of things. “I’ll talk to him and we’ll have another meeting on Friday. This meeting is now closed. Cleo, will you have luncheon with me?”
Cleo saw Jerry Kibler give her an almost imperceptible nod. It’s your battle now, it said. She looked up the table at Claudine. “It will be a pleasure, Mrs. Roux.”
Claudine took her to the Colony Club on Park Avenue at sixty-second Street. The big blue flag above the entrance whipped back and forth in the wind and Cleo, glancing up at it as they got out of Claudine’s Rolls-Royce, wondered if the atmosphere at the luncheon table would be as disturbed.
In her on-again, off-again studies of American social history, Cleo had learned that the club had once been New York society women’s answer to the exclusive men’s clubs. It no longer had the grand exclusiveness it had once had; in its earliest days it had once been reckless enough to admit an actress or two as members, but they had been ladies of such high standing as Ethel Barrymore and Maude Adams; a musical comedy star would not even have been allowed to use the bathroom if she had been carried in from the street with a bursting bladder. These days younger women joined other clubs such as the Cosmopolitan, but the Colony’s stuffiness somehow suited a woman who was publisher of the Courier, even if it did not fit Claudine personally.
