Christmas Bells (19 page)

“Of course,” she had said, coming around behind his chair to rest her hands on his shoulders and kiss the top of his head. “But I would argue that his grin is utterly adorable, with nothing goofy about it.”

“Tell me something.” He had placed a hand on hers and had gazed up at her quizzically. “How'd he end up in these pictures with those people?”

She had laughed and had kissed him again, and had teased that all those renowned world figures undoubtedly kept the same photos in their offices, to impress visitors with evidence that they had shaken hands with the distinguished Senator Paul Barrett. She remembered the moment well, for it had occurred during those heady, anxious days when the party leadership was urging him to run for president, an honor that after much contemplation he had declined. He had not yet completed all he had set out to accomplish for the people of Massachusetts, he confided to Camille, and he was unwilling to abandon the work unfinished. Neither of them would have imagined that years later, illness would force him to leave so much undone, or that his untimely death would leave the way open for his political opponents to tear down all he had built. Already newspaper editors and
television talking heads were heatedly debating who might fill Paul's place until the next election, perennial rivals from the other party were loudly promising to repeal measures he had so wisely and thoughtfully crafted—

The sound of sobbing tore her from her reverie. With a start, Camille turned to discover Alicia sitting on the floor transferring manila folders from a filing cabinet into a carton, her shoulders shaking, tears streaming down her face.

“Oh, no,” Camille murmured, heart cinching as she hurried to Alicia's side. Paul's loyal assistant was forty-six, a mother of three, a model of steadfast composure at the heart of any political storm, and yet she clung to Camille and wept as if her heart had broken. “It's going to be all right,” Camille murmured, holding her and patting her on the back gently, soothingly, as if she were Ella or Grace. “Everything will be all right.”

Eventually Alicia composed herself and accepted the handkerchief Kendra offered, her face contorting as if she too might at any moment burst into anguished tears. This would never do. Camille rose and helped Alicia to her feet. “Why don't we close up these boxes, water the plants, and call it a day?” she said. “I think this task can wait until after Christmas.”

Alicia sniffled into the borrowed handkerchief and nodded, but Kendra looked uncertain. “We still have to clear out his Washington offices,” she reminded Camille. “You said you wanted to take care of this office first, by the end of December, to divide up the work.”

“We have plenty of time. The interim senator hasn't even been appointed yet.” Briskly, Camille put her arms around the other women's shoulders and turned them toward the door. “It's the last Friday before Christmas, and I'm sure we all have other, more urgent, matters to attend to.”

“I was just going to go home and decorate my tree and order takeout,” Kendra replied, an uncharacteristic tremor in her
voice, “but you're introducing the keynote speaker at the benefit dinner for Boston Children's Hospital.”

“Oh, yes, that's tonight.” After Paul died, the organizer had kindly offered to let her off the hook, but Paul's younger brother had been treated for cancer at Boston Children's Hospital and Paul had always given the institution his staunchest support. “Clearly we don't have time to finish now even if we wanted to. Let's adjourn until the first Monday of the New Year, nine o'clock sharp. Agreed?”

Kendra and Alicia could hardly disagree, so they nodded, looking somewhat dazed. Camille helped them into their coats, distracting them with chat about the snowy forecast and holiday travel as she shooed them out the door. The caterers and the cleaning crew were still finishing up, so she wished them happy holidays, put on her coat, collected her purse and a file of documents she had to look over for the lawyers, and hurried from the office without looking back, down the stairs and outside to where Robert waited with the car.

“Where to, Mrs. Barrett?” Robert asked as he opened the back door for her.

“The Fairmont Copley Plaza, please.”

“Right away, ma'am.”

He shut the door, and as he came around to take the driver's seat, she settled gratefully into the warmth and comfort of the car, closing her eyes and letting her head fall against the headrest, her thoughts drifting on the melodious strains of classical music playing on the radio. She shut out the clamoring stresses of the day so effectively that she had traveled more than a mile before she remembered that she had allotted several hours to the sorting of Paul's office. If she continued on to the Fairmont Copley Plaza, she would arrive ridiculously early for the dinner. She would interrupt the preparations, her hosts would feel obliged to entertain her, and she would end up making more work for
everyone—and subjecting herself to attention and condolences she really could not bear at the moment.

“Robert,” she said, “could we stop by Saint Margaret's on the way?”

“Certainly, Mrs. Barrett.” He put on his turn signal and changed lanes, too professional to point out that the church was not at all on the way.

Snow was falling as the car pulled up to the curb in front of the church, icy crystals whisked smoothly aside by the windshield wipers. “I won't be long,” she told Robert as he helped her from the backseat. He nodded, shut the door, and offered to escort her up the stairs, but a glance told her they had been recently swept and salted, so she declined.

The children's choir rehearsal was under way when she entered the church, and the sweet loveliness of their voices and the rich, achingly familiar tones of the piano struck her with such force that she forgot to ease the tall, heavy door gently shut. It closed behind her with a muffled boom, drawing the attention of Sister Winifred, who had been quietly walking the aisles, raising kneelers and replacing hymnals and missals, and the young choir director, who was inexplicably standing near the front pew rather than with the choir. Camille offered the choir director an apologetic smile as she unbuttoned her coat and settled into the back pew, and the younger woman smiled back.

The choir director joined the accompanist at the piano, and the choir began to sing “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” a lovely carol that Camille knew better as the Longfellow poem “Christmas Bells.” A few years before, Camille and Paul had discovered an original manuscript of the poem—or rather, one of Camille's most reliable contacts in the auction world had—which they had donated to the Longfellow House on Brattle Street in Cambridge. “Do you remember . . .” she murmured, before shock and remembrance choked off her words. For a moment she had
forgotten that Paul was not sitting beside her listening to the choir, to the piano, as he had so often before. For a moment she had forgotten he never would again.

Overcome, she closed her eyes against tears. She knew it comforted everyone else to see her bearing up so well, so bravely, but in the sacred peace of St. Margaret's, she could set the mask aside. She missed Paul desperately, with every thought, with every breath. She kept busy—everyone advised her to keep busy—but what would she do when she ran out of distractions? How would she bear the long, bleak, empty years without him? Thoughts of the future chilled her heart as if nothing lay ahead of her but cold, grim, endless winter, windswept and barren.

Intellectually, she knew this was not so. In her darkest hours, she reminded herself that all around her, life was flourishing, that she had important work yet to accomplish, that she would not always feel so rawly despondent as she did at that moment. But her heart—her heart declared that solace and resignation would forever elude her.

She had loved Paul too long to imagine any happiness without him—life, surely, but no joy.

She had never thought to marry, much less to know truly great love. She had known marriage was expected of her; from childhood, her mother and a series of nurses, governesses, and headmistresses had taught her that young ladies of her class had no greater duty and ought to have no other ambition but to marry suitable young gentlemen and carry on as their mothers and grandmothers had done since time immemorial—acting as her husband's hostess, furthering his ambitions and discouraging his vices, bearing children to carry on the family line, managing the household staff, supporting charitable endeavors, displaying perfect manners and elegant dress, shrewdly managing her fortune.

Camille loved her mother and grandmothers but found their lives astoundingly dull. Instead, from the time she could read a
newspaper well enough to understand her family's role in the industry, she longed to emulate her father—Graham McAllister, Pulitzer Prize winner, scion of the McAllister media empire that had begun in 1861 when his grandfather founded a Republican newspaper in Hartford to champion Abraham Lincoln's policies throughout Connecticut. By the time Graham assumed the role of CEO upon his father's retirement, the McAllister News Group consisted of hundreds of newspapers in cities large and small from coast to coast, dozens of radio stations, and several television networks. In recent decades, Camille's brother, Asher, had survived the decline of print media by diversifying into the Internet and new media well ahead of his competitors.

From the cradle Asher had been groomed to take over the corporation from their father one distant day; from an equally early age, Camille had been expected to play no part whatsoever. When she became the editor of her preparatory academy's newspaper, her parents had been charmed but not impressed. When she decided to major in journalism at Radcliffe, her mother had been taken aback—she had been somewhat skeptical of the need for Camille to attend college at all—but her father had approved her choice, evidently perceiving it as a sign of filial admiration. Both parents expressed the appropriate amount of sincere pride when Camille won a national student journalism award for her insightful, elegant feature biography of one of Radcliffe College's founders, Alice Mary Longfellow. And yet somehow they were utterly astonished when, upon receiving her degree, she announced her desire to come to work for the McAllister News Group, as Asher had done two years before.

“Hear, hear, sis,” said Asher, raising his glass to her from the opposite side of the dining table. “Welcome to the sweatshop.”

“Congratulations are a bit premature,” said their mother, maintaining her composure admirably well. “Camille, darling, what could you possibly be thinking?”

“I want to be a journalist,” Camille declared. “I want to cover the big stories—Watergate, Vietnam, nuclear testing in Nevada. The IRA. The Soviet Union breaking our trade agreement.”

Martha—Muffy to family and friends—shook her head. “I can't imagine there are any positions suitable for young ladies on the staff of our papers. Isn't that so, Graham?”

“There aren't many,” he acknowledged, but Camille was aware of his appraising gaze. “So, Camille, writing for the school papers all these years hasn't been just a diverting hobby?”

“No more than studying for my degree has been.”

“Graham, don't encourage this folly,” Muffy admonished. “Camille doesn't need a job—goodness, the very idea! If she finds she has too much time on her hands now that she's finished school, I can find any number of worthwhile charities that would be glad to have a McAllister on the board.”

“I want to be a journalist,” Camille repeated firmly. “Not out of boredom but because the work is important and I happen to excel at it.”

“We have a few girl reporters,” Asher remarked. “We could always use a few more. Camille could write circles around most of them.”

Camille threw him a grateful look, which he answered with a grin and a wink. “All I want is the same opportunity you offered Asher,” she said, turning to her father. “If I were a man, we wouldn't be having this discussion. You would've already told me where to report on my first day.”

Graham shrugged, but he seemed to be suppressing a grin. “I suppose that's true.”

“With good reason,” her mother said, incredulous. “A man has to support a family. Some less fortunate girls have to earn their keep. Camille shouldn't take a job that ought to go to someone who truly needs it. She'll only have to resign when she marries.”

Camille thought it wiser to refrain from admitting that she
was not certain she would ever marry. “All I want is a chance,” she said, keeping her gaze fixed determinedly on her father. “If I can't hack it, fire me, but at least give me an opportunity to sink or swim instead of demanding I stay on the shore.”

“Asher started at the bottom, in the mailroom,” her father reminded her. “I would expect no less of you. How fast can you type?”

“Graham,” Muffy protested.

“Eighty words a minute,” Camille replied

“You can do better.” Her father sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “Very well. I'll give you a job. You won't like it, but if you want something better you'll have to work for it. I won't show you any special favors. No one will know you're my daughter.”

“Trust me,” Asher broke in. “He'll be harder on you than anyone.”

“I want to go on the record as opposing this ridiculous scheme in no uncertain terms,” Muffy declared.

“Noted, my dear,” said Graham, smiling. “Remember, Camille, your mother did try to warn you, as did I.”

As it happened, her parents' warnings were not without merit. The entry-level job was in Bridgeport, a twenty-five-minute train ride away, and it paid barely enough to cover her fares and lunch. Camille loathed fetching coffee and dry cleaning for harried editors, and she gritted her teeth every time some leering cub reporter addressed her as “doll” or “girlie,” but she loved the energy of the newsroom, the frantic pace, the insistence upon confirming sources, the relentless pursuit of the truth. Some days she typed other writers' copy until her fingers ached, longing to put her own words down on paper, fighting the urge to revise clumsy phrases or correct dangling modifiers. Usually she succeeded, but on one particularly frustrating day—first she had been sent out in a torrential downpour to bring back lunch for the editorial board and had spent the rest of the day with
bedraggled hair and damp clothes, and later a copyeditor had communicated the need for haste not by telling her a particular errand was urgent but by smacking her on the bottom with a rolled-up newspaper—her pride got the better of her. In part because she feared her writing skills would atrophy if she did not put them to good use, in part because she was angry that her bosses could find no better use for a summa cum laude graduate of Radcliffe than Girl Friday, she rewrote an article for the financial page rather than merely transcribing it, cutting three hundred words, polishing the dull prose that remained, and bringing the point into much better focus.