The Proprietor's Daughter

by Lewis Orde

  Under the barrage of bad publicity, and the loss of its staff, there was no way for “Fightback” to continue. The announcement was made on Thursday morning that the show was canceled from that night. Katherine received the news with sadness. Not for the people involved, but for the show itself. For almost two years, “Fightback” had been an important part of her life, what Thursday evenings were all about. Now it was gone, just a step in her career. A memory.

  Out of curiosity, she watched television that evening to see what replaced “Fightback.” The station ran a special feature on actor Steve McQueen, who had died earlier that month. Katherine switched off, and went out for a walk, hoping the cold night air would dispel the depression she felt forming.

  It did not. By the time she returned home, she was feeling quite maudlin. She went upstairs to her bedroom, looked at her address book, and dialed the fourteen-digit telephone number of the man who always managed to amuse her.

  “Raymond, it’s Katherine. I’m miserable. Cheer me up.”

  “What’s got you down in the mouth?”

  She told him. He already knew about the Glassman story and Katherine’s resignation — he’d read that in the airmailed edition of the Eagle he bought each day from the Hotalings shop in Times Square — but the closure of “Fightback” was news.

  “You’re creating upheavals in television on both sides of the Atlantic, Katherine. You’re a one-woman wrecking crew.”

  “Not funny, Raymond.”

  “But it is. Remember Larry Miller, the former producer of ‘Speak Out’?”

  “Former?” What trouble had she caused for the poor man?

  “He got fired after that show. A couple of major advertisers blamed him for your being so insulting —”

  “Whom did I insult?”

  “With that closing comment? Everyone except the American Indian. Anyway, Miller got fired, but the next thing you know, another station offered him a new show — because he’d had the brains to use someone as outrageous and controversial as you.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Katherine said, her own dejection forgotten, “the television world’s crazy.”

  “That’s right. Aren’t you glad you’re out of it?”

  “I think I am. Raymond, you’re not using that story for your column, are you?”

  She expected him to say yes. Instead he said, “I’m using my powers of censorship to kill it because it might upset someone I like very much.”

  “Thank you.”

  When she replaced the receiver and lay back on the bed, the depression had lifted. A conversation with Raymond Barnhill was good medicine. The hours she’d spent with him in New York had been a real tonic. Without seeing him, she realized, the New York trip would have been the most tedious week she’d ever spent.

  *

  Despite Katherine’s assurance to Saxon that the argument with Jeffrey Dillard would have no effect on their relationship, an awkwardness grew between them. Perhaps it was because Saxon continued to maintain his friendship with Dillard, and Katherine felt uncomfortable about it. Not that she would ever dream of telling Saxon whom he could, and could not, have for friends. Saxon had once done that to her, on the night of the party at Kate’s Haven. He had questioned her friendship with Raymond Barnhill, who had worn a borrowed tuxedo to the party, and Katherine had cut him down instantly.

  Whatever the reason, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, she and Saxon saw each other no more than once a week, for polite conversation over dinner. There were no visits by Katherine to Saxon’s Marble Arch home, no journeys back to Kate’s Haven late at night, with her hair and makeup disarranged. From lovers, she and Saxon had metamorphosed into acquaintances.

  Two weeks before the holidays, Saxon asked Katherine if she would be his guest at a Christmas Day dinner party given by Sir Donald Leslie. “I’d love to, John,” she told him, “but Christmas is very special. The family gets together at my father’s home.” Despite the rejection, Saxon turned up at Kate’s Haven on Christmas Eve with gifts to be placed beneath the tree.

  Early Christmas morning, Raymond Barnhill called from New York to wish her a happy holiday. As a rule, he wrote, claiming he could express himself better on paper than through any other medium. A telephone call was something special, and Katherine, still snuggled up in bed, cradled the receiver to her ear.

  “How’s New York?”

  “Damned cold.”

  “How’s the Staten Island Ferry, the subway, and gigantic corned-beef sandwiches — all those wonderful glimpses of America you showed me? Not to mention the ones I found for myself, like television preachers and fanatical pro-lifers.”

  “All missing you. When are you coming over again?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Are you looking for a job yet? No, of course not — you don’t have to worry about your next meal.”

  “Only if you’re buying it.”

  “When you make fun of hot dogs and sauerkraut” — Barnhill impersonated John Wayne — “you’re making fun of everything the United States of America stands for.”

  “You make me laugh.”

  “Your father’s going to cry when the Eagle accounts office gets my next telephone bill.”

  “Let him cry. If an employer won’t let you make personal telephone calls at Christmastime, then he’s a rotten employer.”

  For a minute after the conversation ended, Katherine lay with the receiver pressed between the pillow and her ear. Damn, she missed Raymond Barnhill. Even more so now that she and Saxon were just friends.

  Christmas Day followed the set routine. The five members of the household drove to Stanmore, where Roland and Sally Roberts waited. Gifts were exchanged, then the family sat down to enjoy Peg Parsons’s traditional Christmas fare.

  During the following week, Katherine took the children on the usual round of pantomimes and seasonal treats. They enjoyed themselves, but Katherine felt empty. She knew why. There was nothing special about the holidays for her. Without a job to return to, one day was much the same as the other.

  After the children returned to school at the beginning of January, Katherine went to see Sally Roberts at the Eagle building. “I’d like a job, please.”

  Sally smiled triumphantly. “I told you that you’d be back. Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  “What’s open?”

  “Feature writer on the Eagle’s color supplement. That’s the only senior position available.”

  The color supplement, published every Wednesday, dealt with a mixed bag: the arts, leisure activities, real estate. “I’ll take it,” Katherine said, with barely a moment’s hesitation.

  Katherine began working the very next day, making the familiar journey each morning to the Eagle. It was harder than she remembered to find a parking space close to Chalk Farm Station, and the trains seemed less frequent and more crowded, but she was glad to be back. The Eagle was her home — the people there were family — and she’d been away for too long.

  That evening, she telephoned Raymond Barnhill in New York to tell him they were coworkers. When he asked what she was doing, she replied, “Editing your ‘Glimpses of America’ columns.”

  There was a long pause from the other end, then Barnhill said, “Tell me you’re joking. Please.”

  “I’m joking. I’m working on the color supplement.”

  Barnhill’s sigh of relief was audible from three thousand miles away.

  Two days later, Katherine received a bunch of red roses, ordered by Barnhill from New York, and an accompanying card that wished her luck.

  At the end of the first week, she had one of her infrequent dinner dates with John Saxon. He arrived at Kate’s Haven at six-thirty. When she went outside, Katherine’s eyes sought the familiar Rolls Royce. Instead, she saw the sleek, powerful shape of an Aston Martin. “Bought a new toy for yourself?”

  “Psychologists contend that it’s a way of fending off approaching middle age. I thought I’d try it.” He helped her
in, settled himself behind the steering wheel, and started the engine. “Want to see how quickly she reaches a hundred?”

  “Not really. I don’t encourage people to break the law.”

  Over dinner, Katherine asked about William. “Surely you don’t need a chauffeur to drive an Aston Martin?”

  “He looks after the Rolls. I kept it.”

  “Two cars; I am impressed.”

  “Why? You own two cars.”

  “John, by no stretch of the imagination does a Porsche and a Jag equal an Aston Martin and a Rolls Royce. There’s something particularly decadent about your combination.”

  “Perhaps that’s because I am decadent.”

  When they left the restaurant, Saxon took the Aston Martin onto the motorway. His behavior until this moment gave Katherine no clue as to what would happen next. Twenty miles north of London, when traffic became sparse, Saxon slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. The speedometer needle rocketed from the legal seventy to one hundred and twenty.

  “Slow down!” Katherine cried out. “You’ll get us killed!”

  Saxon’s response was to increase the speed to one hundred and forty. “Don’t tell me you’re scared, Katherine.”

  She tore her gaze away from the white lane markings being gobbled up by the Aston Martin’s headlights, and looked at Saxon. His face was taut with the concentration of keeping under control a car that was covering a mile every twenty-six seconds. His eyes were slits, his lips drawn back from gleaming teeth.

  Katherine had to shout to make herself heard over the wind and road noise. “What is the matter with you, John Saxon?”

  “I’m angry!” he shouted back.

  “At what?”

  “At myself. And at you. What went wrong, Katherine?”

  “Stop driving like a maniac, and we’ll talk about it!”

  Saxon lifted his foot, and the Aston Martin slowed. Half a mile ahead was a service area. Saxon pulled into it, and killed the engine. “Is it that American you saw while you were in New York with me? Were you carrying on with him there? Or was it that business with Jeffrey? You said that it wouldn’t affect us, but that’s when you started to draw away from me.”

  “Maybe whatever there was between us had just about run its course.” Katherine unfastened her seat belt and swung around to face Saxon. “John, when we first met, Franz was healthy. I brushed you off then, remember?”

  “The large husband and the two small children. Of course I remember.”

  “When we met again, at the opening of your hotel out by Heathrow Airport, my situation was entirely different. Franz was crippled, and I was going crazy both at home and at work. I needed something — affection, sympathy, a shoulder to cry on. You provided all those things for me.”

  “I see. I filled a need. And now that you’ve got your life all straight again, the need’s no longer there, and I’m excess baggage. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I was trying to make it sound less cold and cruel.”

  “You succeeded in sounding like a first-class bitch. Besides, I don’t agree that we have run our course. I think we’re as good for each other as we ever were.”

  He restarted the Aston Martin’s engine and gave the gas pedal a couple of sharp jabs. Katherine touched his arm. “If you’re planning on driving back the same way you drove out here, you can drop me off right now. I’ll take my chances on thumbing a ride home.”

  “Don’t worry.” Back on the motorway, Saxon kept the speedometer needle fixed at the legal limit. Instead of driving to Kate’s Haven, he headed right into town. When he pulled up outside his home in Marble Arch, he switched off the engine and swung around to face Katherine. “Would you like to come inside?”

  “If I say no?”

  “I’ll take you home. And” — he gave a philosophical shrug of the shoulders — “perhaps I’ll agree with you that we’re all washed up. But I don’t think you really believe that.”

  Katherine felt torn. Earlier, she had seen this as the night she finished with John Saxon. He had started out by making it so easy, tearing up the motorway in his new Aston Martin, shouting, even offering her reasons for the break-up. Now it was different. He was asking her to make the decision, a firm yes or no, and while her brain could form the words, her mouth was unable to speak them. Despite the denials of her mind, her body yearned for him.

  “Well, Katherine?”

  Instead of answering, she opened the passenger door, stepped out, and walked toward the house.

  It was midnight when Saxon drove her home. Katherine sat contentedly, one hand resting on Saxon’s shoulder, her fingers curling the ends of his hair. Out of the blue, she said, “How did you come to hire William as your chauffeur?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Deidre told me to.”

  “My ex-wife? When did you meet her?”

  “On election night, two years ago. She telephoned me, and we met at the Spaniards. She’d seen our names linked in that gossip piece about Jeffrey’s party, and she wanted to pour a pint of poison in my ear. She said, and I quote, that you were the biggest bastard ever to walk this earth.”

  Saxon chuckled, as though proud of the description. “Did you believe her?”

  “Would I have just made love with you if I had done?”

  “You could be the kind of woman who likes loving a bastard.”

  Katherine did not respond, because she suddenly had the unnerving thought that Saxon might be right. She searched for another topic, one that would take her mind off that particular doubt. “Tell me about William. Deidre made him sound far more interesting than I’ve ever found him to be. Without going into all the gory details, she said he did all your dirty jobs.”

  Saxon gave Katherine a querying glance, as though wondering exactly what she had been told. “When Deidre and I were married, I caught William trying to steal my car. He was broke and hungry, and I felt sorry for him. Instead of calling the police, I gave him work.”

  “That was very charitable of you.”

  “Deidre didn’t think so. She wanted, and I quote, ‘the despicable little swine locked up for the rest of his miserable life.’ As for all the dirty jobs, he does whatever chauffeurs and general factotums normally do.” He looked at Katherine again, trying to see how she was accepting the story. Her face gave no clue to her feelings. “Why did you never mention meeting Deidre before?”

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “And now you don’t mind?”

  “I just feel we’ve found a different level tonight, John. A new, more open plane.”

  Saxon swung the Aston Martin into the forecourt of Kate’s Haven. “Where do we go from here?”

  “Can we leave things as they are, John?”

  “Until when?”

  “I don’t know.” She kissed him good night and entered the house. Everything had gone a little crazy tonight. She had thought, for an instant, that her limping relationship with John Saxon was coming to an end. Instead, they had revived it.

  There was only one problem. For a moment, as she had lain in his arms, in her mind’s eye she had seen Raymond Barnhill.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  RAYMOND BARNHILL wrote at least one letter a week to Katherine. She responded by telephoning him just as frequently, always happy to hear his voice, and glad to learn that he had finished the second book and was outlining the third. The poor reception encountered by the first book had not destroyed his enthusiasm.

  In the middle of March, he was brought over to London by the Eagle for two days of meetings. He stayed at the Mayfair Hotel. The first night, he took Katherine out to eat. The second night, she invited him to Kate’s Haven for a rack-of-lamb dinner. He came by taxi, bringing gifts for Henry and Joanne.

  “Why don’t you stay in England longer?” Katherine asked.

  “I’d love to, but who’s going to write the column? On top of that, I’ll have the galleys for Vietnam, the NCOs to check soon. That book’s scheduled to
be out in the late summer. I’m also breaking my back to get ahead with the third book of the trilogy, about the enlisted men. That’s supposed to be completed by the beginning of August. Why don’t you” — he looked at Katherine, then the children — “all come over to the States this summer for a couple of weeks?”

  “Can we, Mummy?” Henry and Joanne chorused.

  Katherine spread her hands to show surrender. “Why not?”

  After dinner, when the children had gone to bed, Katherine and Barnhill went for a walk. Wrapped up warmly — Katherine in a sheepskin coat, and Barnhill in the ever-present lined Burberry — they strolled arm in arm. A bright, cold moon shone through the branches of the oak and horse chestnut trees that lined the avenue where Katherine lived.

  “What happened at your meetings today?” Katherine asked.

  “I signed a new contract for ‘Glimpses of America.’ That takes me through to the end of next year.”

  “You grew to really like it, didn’t you?”

  “It’s a lot of fun, and it’s a healthy contrast to books. I think a column like that needs a solid couple of years from one person before another writer can take it over.” He paused for several seconds, before asking, “Did you mean what you said before, about coming over in the summer?”

  “Of course. It’ll be exciting for the children. The only glimpse of America they’ve had was Disneyland. Will you take off some time to show us around?”

  “I’d be delighted to.” He switched subjects suddenly. “How’s your friend John Saxon?”

  “As arrogant as ever,” Katherine answered with a laugh.

  “That’s a good description. You still see him, though?”

  “Once a week or so.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because he makes me appreciate quiet, unassuming men like you.” She stopped beneath a street light and looked at him. “Why have you never made a pass at me, Raymond?”

  “I did once.”

  “When you were drunk? That wasn’t a pass — that was a wild lunge and a grab.”

  “I thought it was a pass.”