The Beaufort Sisters

‘I promise. If he has to have a surrogate father, how about George Biff?’

‘Couldn’t be better. Goodbye, darling heart. Don’t look at any other chaps.’

‘Let’s make love as a final reminder.’

‘Here? I don’t think the sports deck was meant for that sort of sport.’

The ship sailed and Tim went back to London and two days later flew out to the Middle East. He hated the place: the desert, the discomfort, the tightly enclosed living among the small oil community. But he hid his feelings from those he worked with and was popular with them. He became acquainted with some of the American-educated young men and idly wondered if, as Lucas had predicted, they would provide trouble in the future.

He had been there three months when he flew up to Beirut with one of the engineers. The engineer, who had a girl friend, left him to his own devices. He met an English dancer from one of the night clubs, took her home and went to bed with her. In the morning she asked him for fifty pounds.

‘I don’t do it for love, love. When my legs have gone and my bosom’s drooping, I want to live in as much luxury as I can afford. I’m the original whore with a heart of gold. Only I have it in a bank and I keep adding to it every week.’

He handed her the money. ‘That’s penance, not payment.’

She kissed him. ‘You married men. Your conscience stands up as your cock goes down. Shall I see you again?’

‘I think not. Take care of your bullion.’

He went back to Abu Sadar, wondering how many people in Kansas City would think of him as a male whore when he went back there.

Nina had arrived home with mixed feelings that stayed with her like a dull fever for a month after her return. She missed Tim and she hated her father for what he had done to them. But she welcomed the security and warmth of being back home with her sisters.

‘How’s your love life?’ she asked Margaret.

‘She’s going out with an ancient man.’ Prue was now seven, bright and observant; she still had the innocence of childhood but was looking forward to losing it. ‘He’s a professor.’

‘He’s not a full professor and he’s only twenty-eight, for God’s sake.’ Margaret, trying to please her father, had elected to go to the University of Missouri instead of Vassar; but Lucas, disappointing her again, had taken her decision for granted. ‘He’s teaching me politics.’

‘Hah-hah,’ said Sally, who was beginning to show some of the beauty of her older sisters. She was still a tomboy, still mad about cars, but Nina noticed that when a boy called on Saturday evening to take her out she was as feminine as any of them. She had begun to learn that boys didn’t like kissing a grease-stained cheek, no matter how mechanical-minded they were. ‘That Frank Minett is more interested in Daddy than he is in you.’

‘What about you? Who’s your regular boy-friend?’

‘She’s got dozens,’ said Prue, the gossip columnist. ‘She goes out with anyone who’s got a sports car. She’s going to get into trouble some day, that’s what I heard Daddy tell Mother.’

‘Not in a sports car,’ said Nina, winking at Margaret and Sally. ‘Where does this child get her education?’

‘Reading books. She reads everything she can find. She brought home Forever Amber the other day from school. God knows where she got it.’

‘I think I’d like to have lived in olden times,’ said Prue. ‘Men liked women in those days.’

That six months was, up till then, the most drawn-out period Nina had ever lived through. Each day fell reluctantly from the calendar; a week was a long treadmill that never got her anywhere. She attended dinner parties put on by her parents, went to other parties with Margaret, took up with old schoolfriends; but all the distractions were only a way of filling in time and were not always successful. Sometimes, desperately hungry for Tim, she thought of taking off to join him but she knew she could not take Michael with her and she put the idea out of her mind. Once again she began to spoil Michael, lavishing on him all the attention that normally he would have had to share with his father.

That year, 1948, spun itself slowly off the globe and into the fog of history. The new nation of Israel was proclaimed; Arab armies invaded Palestine. Nina suddenly worried that Tim might be caught up in another war; but he wrote her reassuringly, telling her that the Arabs would never be united against a common foe. President Truman announced that the 80th Congress was the worst in history, a judgement that Lucas agreed with, though it gave his Republican conscience a hernia to say so. The Russians blockaded Berlin and some people began to wonder if Germany was to be another battleground so soon. Thomas E. Dewey was nominated as the Republican candidate for the coming Presidential elections and Lucas accepted a nomination to the Missouri Republican committee; Harry Truman was nominated again by the Democrats and Lucas at once gave a quarter of a million dollars to the Dewey campaign – ‘It’s worth it to get rid of that feller Truman.’ General Pershing, D. W. Griffiths and Babe Ruth died within a month of each other, each of them taking a little glory with them into the grave. The New Look, which had come in the year before, turned into an Old Look; but bobby-socks were still fashionable, proving that bobby-soxers were not as fickle as their older sisters.

Dr Kinsey appeared, to tell the world what it had long suspected, that the next door neighbours had their secrets too; people who had thought they were perverts suddenly discovered they were normal and rushed back to bed, some even neglecting to pull down the blinds. Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living was published and some people, who never looked at an author’s name, bought it thinking it was a sequel to Dr Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. Women readers anxiously waited for Dr Kinsey’s promised book on female sexual behaviour, hoping to learn something that their husbands the dirty beasts, had experienced with the whores out at tha place on the edge of town. The months spun slowly away and Nina, careless of news or history, waited for Tim to come home.

He arrived back in time for Michael’s second birthday. ‘Good God, how he’s grown! What’s George been doing – stretching him?’

‘He thinks George is God Almighty. You’re going to have your nose put out of joint for a while. He doesn’t remember you, you know.’

‘Do you?’

She kissed him hungrily, glad that she had insisted that none of the family should come to the airport with her. ‘Don’t ever let us be separated again. I’ve practically dried up inside. I’ve had such a yen for you.’

‘Me too,’ he said, the dancer in Beirut forgotten.

Nina had bought a new car, a Buick, which she drove herself. Michael sat between them, looking up curiously at this stranger, not frightened of him but still cautious. ‘I thought you said he could talk?’

‘Give him time. He’s got to get used to having a strange man playing around with his mother.’

‘I hope he’s not going to be a two-year-old prude.’ He smiled at his son, who continued to look suspicious. ‘What does he think of his grandfather? Is he God Almighty too?’

She drove in silence for a while, as if concentrating on getting him home unscathed. She wondered if he felt that he was coming home, but was afraid to ask him.

‘Don’t start fighting with him, please darling.’

‘There won’t be any fighting. I’m a pacifist in family matters now. Totally spineless. I just want the major share of my son’s attention and affection, that’s all.’

‘You’ll get it,’ she promised, not wanting to spoil a moment of his homecoming. ‘Look, he’s already smiling at you. He has your smile, you know. Everyone comments on it.’

He looked steadily at her for a moment, then he relaxed and grinned at his son. ‘Five teeth. Is that my smile?’

The reunion with the family went off without incident. Tim was kissed warmly by Edith, Margaret, Sally and Prue, Lucas just as warmly shook hands. He was part of the family again and no one seemed to have any doubts that he might want it otherwise. Nina watched him being charming to everyone, but behind the smile and the banter she sensed a certain restraint, a reserve of feeling that he was not going to squander on this first day home.

She had been living in their own house ever since she had first returned from England and today she had prepared the place specially for him. He had always liked flowers, azaleas and camellias being his favourites, and every room glowed with their colours. She introduced him to the new staff she had engaged on her return, a cook and two housemaids, then she took him into the living-room. On the wall above the fireplace was one of Steve Hamill’s paintings.

‘The other paintings are in your study and the sketches in our bedroom. The more I look at them, the more I like them.’

He looked around the room, but in his mind’s eye he was looking all around the house and the estate. It was all so much better than anything he had lived in since leaving here a year ago. For want of a better phrase, let’s say I’ve come home.

‘Let’s have a look at the sketches in the bedroom.’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

A long time later she would remember that first night of reunion. It was perfect: the playing with Michael before he was put to bed, the dinner alone for just the two of them, the love-making when they went to bed for the night. She had never been happier, her mind completely wrapped in the joys of the moment; she did not have to make any conscious effort to shut out tomorrow, the world was just this house and time was only now. Even the pain of the six months’ separation was forgotten.

Tim went to work in the oil company and, as far as Nina could judge, seemed happy and successful in his job. He went out of town, to New York, Washington, Chicago on business, but he was never away for more than two nights and he always called her each night. September became October; then November and the elections loomed. Republicans across the nation, Lucas not least of all, prepared to welcome President Dewey.

‘We must have a party,’ said Lucas. ‘We’ll have something to celebrate – a man of our own in the White House after sixteen years of those goddam Democrats. We’ll have the party on Election Night.’

‘Mightn’t that be a little premature?’ said Tim. ‘I’m not so sure that Truman won’t win.’

‘Care for a small bet? I’ll give you ten to one.’

It was a moment before Tim said quietly, ‘All right. I’ll put up five thousand dollars.’

Lucas looked as if he was going to laugh, then he frowned as he saw that Tim was serious. ‘That’s a lot of money for you. You’ve never been a gambling man before.’

‘No. But didn’t you once tell me that this country was built by men who took chances? Your father included.’

‘They didn’t back losing Presidents. Still, if you want to throw your money away … Five thousand. That’s half what the company’s paying you a year, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. So if I win I’ll be five years ahead.’

‘You might also be out of a job,’ said Lucas, but managed to smile as he said it.

Harry Truman came home to Independence, worn out by his whistle-stop campaign by train across the country. But on the front page of the Star, which had not endorsed him, he showed the old chirpy confident smile – ‘The people are going to win this election, not the pollsters.’

‘Bull,’ said Lucas, tying his black tie in front of the dressing-table mirror; Edith had decided that a Republican victory should be celebrated in proper style. ‘The pollsters are right, every one of them. He can’t goddam win!’

‘Watch your language, sweetheart – you’re starting to sound like him.’

Though the word had not then been coined to describe them, the Establishment of Kansas City was there that night at the Beaufort party. The celebration started as soon as they arrived; guests were drinking champagne toasts to victory within ten minutes of being inside the house. There was a television set and a radio in every room; the big house resembled a luxury campaign headquarters. The men looked rather sombre in their tuxedos, but the women provided a look of bunting: gowns of every colour swirled through the rooms, visible symbols of everyone’s gay spirits. Lucas had sent George Biff down to 12th Street to recruit a band; it jammed its way through a score of numbers, playing with such verve that one would have thought that every member of the band was a ragtime Republican. The only number they didn’t play was The Missouri Waltz, Mr Truman’s own favourite.

Nina, radiant in pink, was enjoying herself immensely. She had no interest in politics, but tonight’s party had all the bright revelry of parties she could remember from her girlhood. She danced with old boy-friends, hugged old girl-friends, raised her glass a dozen times in victory salutes with her parents’ friends. Then, wanting a respite, she went out on the wide enclosed veranda with Magnus McKea.

‘Where’s Tim?’ he asked.

She had been enjoying herself so much she hadn’t missed him. ‘Probably trying to dodge Daddy. He has a bet on, you know. He thinks Mr Truman will win.’

‘God forbid. I hope he’s not broadcasting it.’

‘Tim is more discreet than that. What time will we hear the first returns?’

‘Not for another hour at least. By then all the crowd should be pie-eyed, the way they’re going. Ah, Mr Minett. Quite a night, eh?’

Frank Minett was a heavily-built, medium-height man who looked several years older than he actually was. He was ambitious and that gave him a certain spurious aggressiveness which not-too-observant people mistook for confidence. But he was out of his depth in this house tonight, acutely aware of the power and money that he would never have.

‘Quite a night, Mr McKea. I was looking for Meg – she wants me to explain the trends in voting as they come in.’

‘No need for that,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s going to be a landslide all over.’

Then, looking through the wide french doors into the living-room, Nina saw Tim and Margaret come into the room, both of them looking a little dishevelled, as if they had been out in the rain and wind that had sprung up. Margaret said something to Tim, held his hand while she smiled at him, then went to join her mother and father. Tim looked around, saw Nina out on the veranda and came out, patting down his wind-blown hair. There were rain-spots on the shoulder of his dinner-jacket and a smudge of lipstick on his shirt.

‘You look as if you’ve been celebrating already,’ said Magnus.

‘He’s backing Mr Truman,’ said Nina. ‘What’s he got to celebrate?’

Magnus and Frank Minett seemed to retreat without actually moving. Neither of them was married but they recognized the electricity in a marital storm.

‘Oh, there’s Meg!’ Minett was gone as if he had been jerked away by an invisible wire.

‘Think I need a refill,’ said Magnus, not even looking at his almost full glass. ‘Excuse me.’

‘Well,’ said Tim when he and Nina were alone, ‘my deodorant can’t be working.’

‘Your charm must be working. You have lipstick on your shirt.’

He smiled, unabashed. ‘Meg’s. Or did you think it might be someone else’s?’

Suddenly she felt ridiculous, wondering what had made her so jealous and suspicious of Margaret. He seemed only mildly concerned, as if perplexed that she should suspect him of any sort of philandering with Margaret or anyone else.

‘Sorry. I think I’ve had too much champagne.’

It was only later, just as she was about to drop off to sleep in his arms in their bed, that it came to her that he had made no attempt to explain why Margaret’s lipstick was on his shirt. But that was after they had made love and she knew from experience that the mind had a way of shooting off at tangents after sex, thought trying to re-establish itself again after animal instinct.

The party began to wind down around midnight when it became apparent that Dewey was not going to have a landslide victory after all, that in fact President Truman was leading in the early returns. Magnus McKea got on the phone to the Star and came back to report that the political writers were now working on second, revised drafts of their columns.

‘They tell me that Harry Truman is out at Excelsior Springs, has gone to bed and is sound asleep. The man’s too damned cocky.’

‘Going to sleep while feeling cocky – that’s no mean feat,’ said Tim. ‘We had a Prime Minister who used to go to sleep, Stanley Baldwin, but that was because he couldn’t stay awake once he sat down in the Commons.’

‘You’re looking cocky, too,’ said Lucas.

‘Would you make out the cheque to cash, just in case you decide to commit suicide before the banks open? I don’t want Magnus as your executor freezing all transactions.’

The men grouped around the television set in Lucas’ study. A few women, Margaret included, hovered in the background. Edith had looked in once or twice, but like most of the women at the party she knew better than to intrude too much. When things were going bad politically, men found women a nuisance. Politics, Lucas had told her, was a male disease that the weaker sex should avoid.

It was Nina, inoculated by too much champagne, who intruded. She breezed into the study, looked at the glum faces, then announced, ‘Cheer up, for God’s sake! It’s not going to be the end of the world if Truman wins!’

‘Darling heart,’ said Tim, the only cheerful face in the room, ‘you are risking being scalped. I believe the gentlemen here are just about to join the Indians.’

Frank Minett laughed, then strangled it as several of the black-tied Indians looked at him as if he should be scalped. Margaret, sitting on the arm of his chair, cuffed his ear. Lucas didn’t even glance at him but looked at his favourite as if she had hit him with a poisoned arrow.

‘Nina, we’re not worried about the world. It’s what that feller can do to this country that concerns us. Now please stop acting like a high school cheer leader.’

‘I think I should make a confession – I voted for Mr Truman.’ She had not, but she was in a rebellious mood; something had gone wrong with her evening and she wasn’t sure what it was. ‘I’m disgusted that anyone from the Midwest could vote for a New Yorker like that Tom Dewey.’

‘I apologize for my daughter, gentlemen,’ said Lucas.

‘He feels like Mrs Brutus,’ said Tim. ‘Darling heart, you shouldn’t stab Caesar in this temple.’

‘I think you’re both drunk,’ said Margaret, coming to her father’s aid.

‘French champagne,’ said Tim. ‘It wouldn’t have happened if we had been drinking domestic stuff. Never trust the French. Remember saying that, Lucas?’

‘I hate to say it,’ said Magnus McKea, ‘but I think it’s all over. I shall go home and get drunk. On domestic bourbon.’

‘Spoken like an honourable loser,’ said Tim. He sounded as recklessly rebellious as Nina; she had never seen him so opposed to her father in public. He was smiling all the time, seemed in high good humour, but he was getting malicious satisfaction from the fact that he looked like winning his bet with Lucas. ‘I’ll be over in the morning, Lucas old chap. Shall we leave the wake, darling heart?’

Nina took his arm, ‘Bear up, Daddy. You only have to wait another four years. Who knows whom you’ll find?’

Next day, after he had collected his cheque from Lucas, Tim went downtown to the Muehlebach Hotel and managed to shake hands with President Truman. ‘My father-in-law Lucas Beaufort asked me to give you his congratulations, Mr President,’ he lied.

The President’s eyes twinkled behind his glasses. ‘I’ll bet. Ask him if he’d like to come to Washington and work for me. I’m looking for someone to run the social welfare programme.’

Tim went across and deposited his cheque in his account in the City and Country Bank. The teller’s eyes went up when he saw the amount and the signature; Tim was tempted to tell him what the cheque represented, but refrained. Last night’s champagne was now a sour taste in his mouth. There was also another sour taste, the memory of what had happened with Margaret in one of the empty rooms above the stables. His sense of guilt was doubled by the knowledge that he had enjoyed being with her and that he could be tempted again.

He stood outside the bank in a drizzle of rain wondering where he might go. He was thinking of the ends of the earth, but eventually he went home. Or what, in today’s mood, passed for home.

2

Though they never came to open warfare and they were always polite to each other, the gap between Tim and Lucas widened. Nina only slowly became aware of it, because Tim never mentioned it. She also slowly became aware of a change in him, a retreat into himself. It was not so much a shutting-out of her as that he seemed to become absent-minded about her. He was just as passionate in bed; but then it is difficult to be absent-minded about sex unless one is a professional. But the light-hearted courting of her that had been such a custom of his was now only an occasional whim. She wondered if this was how it was with all marriages, if husbands and wives, though still in love, stopped being lovers. On a couple of occasions when he went off on business trips he neglected to phone her at night. She even, to her shame, began to look for signs that he was having an affair with another woman, but there was none. Her one stab of jealousy towards Margaret had already been forgotten, put out of her mind by the fact that Margaret’s time now seemed taken up with Frank Minett.

‘Is he getting serious?’ she asked one day when she had volunteered to pick up Margaret at the university. ‘Prue tells me he’s always hanging around the house.’

‘Prue notices too much. Yes, he’s serious. But I’m not. The trouble is, Daddy thinks he’s just great. He wants Frank to leave the university and go into the bank.’

‘I thought Frank’s subject was politics, not economics.’

‘Frank’s subject is anything that’s going to get him to the top.’

‘You sound as if you don’t like him.’

‘Oh, I like him all right. But I’d like to do my own choosing, not have Daddy do it for me – which is virtually what he’s doing. You were lucky. I mean, choosing Tim without any interference from Daddy.’

‘Oh, he tried to interfere. He’ll never forgive Tim for being independent.’ She paused. ‘Have you noticed any change in him lately? Tim, I mean.’

Intent on driving, she did not notice Margaret’s careful glance at her. ‘No. Why?’

Nina took her eyes off the road for a moment. ‘You sound as if I shouldn’t have asked you that question.’

‘Maybe that’s how I do feel. He’s your husband – we shouldn’t be talking about him.’

‘We’ve been talking about Frank.’ She knew she had made a mistake. If Margaret herself had been married it might have been different, but Margaret had no experience to draw upon, had, as far as she knew, never been in love, not really in love. ‘No, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s just that – well, Daddy’s turned his back on him. Tim’s not going to get anywhere in the oil company.’

‘How do you know? Has he told you?’

Nina turned the car in through the gates of the estate, nodded to the security guard as he saluted them. ‘No. But I recognize the signs. It’s going to be the stockyards all over again. I’m beginning to think we should go away again.’

‘Where would you run to this time?’

Nina jerked the car to a halt, skidding it in the gravel. ‘That sounds so – so brutal!’

‘It’s true, isn’t it? If you take Tim away from here again – ’

‘For your information, I didn’t take him away last time. It was a mutual idea – ’

‘You still went, that’s the point, and it didn’t work out. You’re never going to win your fight with Daddy by trying to beat him from a distance.’