by Jon Cleary
“Are we going to have trouble with him?” Joe said.
“How did you get on with him when he worked here before?”
“Okay, I guess. He was never pushy. But he was always his mother’s son. You could never forget that.”
“Well, don’t let us forget it till we find out what he’s got in mind. You and I have got a good paper here, Joe, and we don’t want anyone, mother’s son or not, lousing it up.”
Alain came to the conference that afternoon, was polite and affable to Cleo and the other editors and sat quietly, offering no suggestions and making no notes, while the paper was put together for tomorrow’s edition. When the conference was over he limped after Cleo to the door of her office.
“Cleo, could you come up to my office for a few minutes? There is more privacy there than in this goldfish bowl.” But he was smiling as he described her office.
Biding her time, waiting to see what moves he had in mind, she went up with him to the floor above. The publisher’s office was next to the boardroom, had the same panelled walls and the same suggestion that, socially, it was several levels above the newsroom below. Early American prints decorated the walls; a sword that Napoleon had once worn hung in its scabbard above the marble-fronted fireplace; the thick Persian carpet dared one to throw screwed-up copy paper on it. The big room, however, was not entirely masculine; Claudine had added her own touches. The drapes and lamp-shades were pale yellow, the desk was a French writing table; a large mirror, with a Matthias Lock rococo frame, hanging on the opposite wall, reassured whoever was at the desk where authority lay. Alain sat down behind the desk looking slightly uncomfortable.
“I hope you and I will work together without any friction between us. As my mother said, there should be nothing personal in business. However—” he paused, as he might before he drew the sword from the scabbard above the fireplace. “However, I shall have certain points of view I’ll be putting forward, some of which you may not agree with.”
“It’s possible. We don’t all agree at the news conference each day. You didn’t disagree with anything that’s going into tomorrow’s paper?”
“Not disagree, no. Reservations, yes. I think we should tread more carefully with our opinions on what’s happening in Iran at present. I don’t know whether you know, but Roger is going over to Cairo next week on a private study tour. He has contacts there and I think we might wait for what he can bring back for us.”
“Roger is not a newspaperman. And Iran might be blown off the map by next week, the way things are going there.”
“Nonetheless, I think we should wait till Roger comes back with his impressions.”
“I’ll think about it.” She stood up. “How’s your wife settling into New York?”
“Very happily. How’s Tom? You know, I never knew there was a thing between you and him.”
“There never was. Not till recently.” But she wasn’t going to discuss her love for Tom with him. Nor was she going to discuss every editorial decision with him. She laid down the implied rule that she was not going to be at his beck and call: “I’ll see you at tomorrow’s conference.”
When she went downstairs she looked for Tom at the desk he had chosen for himself at the far end of the newsroom. Keeping his distance, as he described it. So far nobody in the newsroom, except possibly Joe Hamlyn and Carl Fishburg, suspected there was a thing between her and him. She wondered how long Alain would keep the knowledge to himself.
When she reached home that night Tom was waiting for her in the lobby of her apartment building. As they rode up in the elevator he said, “We can’t go on meeting like this.”
“Is that a joke or are you serious?”
“It was a joke once.” She had not given him a key to her apartment, something Jack had had, and he waited while she opened the front door. Once inside he took her in his arms and kissed her almost savagely. Then he said, “I think I’m serious.”
She put down her handbag, took her second door-key from it and held it out. “That makes us serious, I guess.”
They had a light supper, went to bed and after they had made love he turned over to go to sleep. He did not stay at the apartment every night, but she was still so hungry for him, there was so much lost time to be made up, that she never turned him out if he wanted to stay. Tonight she clutched his shoulder and pulled him over on his back.
“Don’t go to sleep yet, I want to talk. Did you ever discuss me with Alain?”
He had the bemused look, like that of a half-gassed bull, of a man who had just made satisfying love. Why did women always want to talk after it? Simone occasionally had been the same. “What? Would I do that?”
“I don’t know.” It made her feel cheap that he and Alain might have discussed her, though Tom at the time could hardly have had any confidences to exchange. “But he knows there is a thing, as he calls it, between you and me.”
Tom stared at the ceiling, frowning; then at last he looked at her. “It must have been Simone. Right at the end she asked me if there was another woman. I had to be honest with her. I told her there had been nothing between us, but that years ago I’d fallen in love with you.”
“What did she say?” She really didn’t want to talk about Simone, but another woman’s opinion couldn’t be ignored.
“Nothing. I think she understood—Simone was always a very understanding girl—”
“Go to sleep,” she said, cutting off any further accolade; one cheer was enough for an ex-wife. “I just wish she’d kept it to herself instead of mentioning it to Alain . . . No, wake up!”
He rolled on his back again, the bemused look gone to be replaced by one of patient irritation. He looked like a husband. “What is it now?”
“Would you like to go to Cairo next week with Roger Brisson?”
“What for?”
“You’re experienced in that region—” Last year, freelancing from the Paris bureau, he had done a piece for the Courier on NATO bases in Turkey and then gone on to Israel, from there to Cyprus and then on to Egypt. “I don’t know exactly why Roger is going there, but I think Alain is going to foist some of Roger’s opinions on us. I’d rather you wrote them.”
He looked at her warily. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Don’t joke,” she said, hoping he wasn’t serious. “I owe you a good story after spiking the Rossano piece. I’ll talk to Roger about it tomorrow.”
“Will you talk to Alain about it?”
“Only after we’ve bought your ticket. Now you can go to sleep.”
“I’m wide awake now.” He lay for a while staring at the ceiling while she turned over to go to sleep. Then he reached for her shoulder and pulled her over on her back. “Will you marry me?”
She stared at him, but their faces were too close and she could not get his into focus. Or perhaps it was her mind that had suddenly become astigmatic.
“Will you marry me?”
She buried her face against his neck, closing her eyes, blind with love. “Yes. Yes.”
III
“No,” said Alain. “That editorial is out.”
“Why do you object to it?” said Cleo.
“It’s nothing but a condemnation of the Shah. We need to support him.”
“We?” said Cleo. “We’re a newspaper, not the government. The Shah’s record needs to be put in perspective and that editorial of Tom Border’s does it.”
“I don’t know why you had him write it in the first place. He’s a reporter, not an editorial writer.”
“I suggested using him,” said Dan Follett, chief of the editorial page. “He knows the area.”
“Well, it’s out. It suggests we’re supporting the Ayatollah Khomeini.”
“It doesn’t suggest anything of the sort.” Cleo could feel herself getting angry, but she was determined to remain cool, if only on the surface.
“The support is implied. That’s the way I read it and so will a good many of our readers. As the publisher I have some resp
onsibility for what appears in the paper—”
Cleo did not remind him that he was only the associate publisher. She was tempted to suggest they should consult his mother, but though she was angry with him, even beginning to hate him for his obduracy, she could not castrate him by bringing Claudine down to resolve the argument. In any event she knew how Claudine would resolve it.
“Righto, it’s out, Dan. If we can’t have some honest criticism of the Shah, we’ll say nothing at all. For the time being, anyway. We’ll wait till Tom comes back from Cairo.”
“Are you sending Tom Border to the Middle East?” said Alain. “Why?”
“Because he has contacts there. He’s going with Roger, who thinks it’s a good idea . . . Okay, Joe, what else have you got for us?”
She took the conference back under her control. The other editors round the table had sat quietly during the short skirmish between her and Alain, all of them by now aware that there was an animosity, at least on Alain’s part, that was going to influence all future conferences. The amiable, dry-humoured but always efficient atmosphere that had prevailed since the departure of Jake Lintas was showing distinct cracks.
Alain made no more objections or suggestions and when the conference was finished he picked up his stick and limped out without a word. He knew who was the odd man out.
Cleo gestured for Joe Hamlyn and Dan Follett to remain behind and when everyone else had filed out she said, “We have a problem, as you can see.”
“I think we should have voted on that editorial.”
“Dan, a newspaper isn’t a democracy. You know that as well as I do. I don’t give you guys a vote when I think I’m right. His Nibs has got it into his head that he has to show some authority. Today was his day for the demonstration. I don’t believe he cares two hoots about the Shah.”
Dan Follett nodded morosely. He was the oldest of the editors, a grey-haired stick of a man who could alternate between flights of fancy, in wacky third leaders, and pedantry. He had a savage hatred of the misuse of words such as hopefully and momentarily. He had once been a survivor in an aircraft that had crashed moments after take-off. He had come back to the office and remarked, “The flight attendant was correct. She said we’d be airborne momentarily and that was it—we were in the air momentarily.” He was only restrained from writing a sarcastic editorial by the knowledge that over a hundred other passengers had died permanently.
“Okay, I’ll save it till Tom Border comes back.”
He went back to his desk and Joe Hamlyn waited while Cleo gathered up her papers. She looked up at him. “What is it, Joe?”
“Will you have supper with me? Uncle Joe would like to talk to you.”
She saw at once that he had something important on his mind. “I’m having sandwiches brought in. I’ll order some for you.”
“There’s no privacy in your office. I’ll take you to McDonalds.”
“A real hideaway. Joe, you’re not going to tell me you love me?”
“In a way,” he said and went back to his own desk.
The McDonalds was round the corner. It was almost empty when they walked in. A few people sat at the tables, but their eyes had the tired, empty look of people who were not interested in others; they were at the end of their day and some of them looked at the end of their tether. Cleo watched them with a stirring of pity, wondering if she had ever felt as low as these strangers looked, while Joe went and fetched the coffee and hamburgers.
He came back, sat down and without preamble said, “Cleo, you and Tom Border have got to get yourselves sorted out.”
“What do you mean?” She had been about to bite into the hamburger, but now held it, like a grenade, as if she were about to throw it at him.
“Don’t tell me it’s none of my business. It is. Because I like you and because of the effect it’s going to have on the paper. Editors and reporters should never share the same bed.”
He came close to having the hamburger shoved in his face. “I don’t think it is any of your business, Joe.”
“Come off it, Cleo. Look, you and Tom have been discreet, I’ll admit that. But people have seen you around town. We see you in the office—you’re almost leaning over backwards not to be noticed together. You’re like all women—you think we guys don’t notice things like that. You two are in love—right?—and I’m glad for you. But it’s not going to make things easy for you or us around the newsroom. Are you thinking of getting married?”
She put down the hamburger, no longer hungry. “Yes.”
“Then I think Tom had better look for a job on another paper.”
“Crumbs, you’re taking a lot on yourself. Or are you speaking for all the guys in the newsroom? And the women, too? Don’t let’s forget the girls.”
“Eat your hamburger, Cleo, while I give you some fatherly advice.”
Why do I get all my advice from men? she asked herself. Where could she get some motherly counsel? She had been in a state of quiet rapture since Tom had proposed; she was thirty-four years old and she had been seduced, propositioned and loved; but never proposed to. She did not count Jack’s proposal of a Mexican marriage; that suggested all the binding ties of a United Nations resolution. She had called her father and told him the news and her own pleasure had increased, if that were possible, at his delight in it. Unwisely, however, he had asked:
“Will you give up your job?”
“Dad! Why should I do that?”
“All right, all right.” It was no longer like the old days, when the women’s vote had been blind and trusting. “But there’s always a risk when a man works for his wife. Or vice versa,” he added diplomatically but a trifle late.
Now Joe Hamlyn was telling her the same thing. “Cleo, it won’t work. All the guys—and the women—will be looking for some favouritism of Tom. Or you’ll go the other way and finish up not using Tom for what he’s worth. Either way the paper’s going to suffer. Tell him to find a job somewhere else. The Times might be glad to have him.”
“Joe, how do I fire my future husband?”
“I don’t know. Use your woman’s intuition.” He bit into his hamburger, his hunger unspoiled.
“I hope you choke,” she said.
When she went home that night Tom was already in the apartment. She was hungry by then and she warmed up a TV dinner, poured some wine and fired him after her second mouthful. It was best, she decided, to get it over and done with.
He surprised her by saying, “I’ve been thinking about resigning. I’ve actually talked to the Times—”
“You might have told me!”
“Don’t be woman-like, be an editor. Does a worker tell his boss in advance what he’s got in mind? You should learn something about labour relations. The Times will give me a job. I’ll resign at the end of the month and then we’ll get married. Okay?”
She sighed and sat back, relieved that there was to be no unpleasantness but annoyed that he hadn’t told her what he had in mind. “Why are you always so agreeable and understanding and lovable?”
“It’s just my nature.”
It wasn’t his nature, at least not totally; he had all the faults of an honest, intelligent man. He had used his intelligence to sum up his life-to-be with Cleo. There would be drawbacks, hurdles, fights, obstacles of every kind; it would still be immeasurably better to live with her than without her. Love would give him stamina and patience. He said, “The first Stoic was a man who married his boss.”
“Bull.” She was still prudish with her language, except in bed where prudery can sometimes tie a tongue. “Maybe it’s for the best. But I’ll miss you at your desk down at the end of the newsroom. Every time I see you down there I’m tempted to wave.” She giggled; the ridiculousness of the image suddenly and completely convinced her that he had to leave the Courier. An editor fluttering her fingers at her husband would finish up using copy-boys to deliver love notes. “Do you still want to go to Cairo?”
“Yes. I’d rather keep working than m
ope about missing you. How about a little humpin’?”
“You’re the boss,” she said and meant it.
IV
Jack Cruze was sitting in his library watching Gloria Swanson in Sadie Thompson when Emma phoned to tell him that Dorothy St. Martin had just died. It was the first time she had called him in more years than he could remember; but he recognized her voice before she named herself. Not only in his films was he more and more living in the past. His head was full of echoes.
“I’ll go to the funeral,” he said. “Will you be there?”
“Yes.”
She had not been at Rose’s funeral, the excuse being that she was not well enough to attend. He had been glad he had not had to meet her publicly, but now all at once he wanted to see her again. He was about to ask her to have lunch with him after the funeral, then decided it would be better to wait till he saw her. He did not have to rush headlong back into the past.
They had a short, formal conversation, then she hung up. He sat for a while thinking about the St. Martin sisters; he had always enjoyed their company back in the old days, even though they had always made him feel socially inferior. But he should be grateful to them: they had brought him both Emma and Cleo. He debated whether he should call Cleo and tell her of Dorothy’s death.
He had been tempted to phone her several times: the desperate cries of a drowning man. But he had resisted the urge; he knew it was all over between them. Occasionally he felt bitter and furious, but there was more acceptance of the loss of her than he had expected; his own resignation surprised him. When he had left New York to come home to London it had not even occurred to him to send her white roses; that would have been too spiteful, something he could not do to the woman he still loved. Now there was an excuse to call her.
He phoned her at the Courier, knowing she would still be putting the paper to bed. He knew her professional habits had not changed; she was the sort of editor who might leave the chores to other people but never the responsibility. He was put through to her at once.
He was more awkward with her, whom he had spoken to less than a month ago, then he had been with Emma. “Don’t hang up on me—”
