My Real Children (13 page)

Helen was nine, and her father’s favorite. He spoiled her. Tricia found herself using this—using Helen to ask him for favors, for a visit to Grandma’s, a new record player, lights for the tree at Christmas. She did not like to see her child wheedling, but wheedling worked on Mark. Helen was pretty. She had Tricia’s fair hair, but with the thickness and body of Mark’s hair. Her features were regular. From babyhood, strangers had been cooing over her and admiring her. Tricia worried about spoiling her, and about other people spoiling her.

George at six had just started school. He was nervous of everything—he hated being left at the school gate, was afraid of the dark, cried when dogs barked and when his father shouted. Tricia would have given him a night light, but his father forbade it. She compromised by moving the boys’ room to the front where there was a streetlight outside, and allowing them to have the curtain open a crack. George was her secret favorite, because he clung to her and was loving.

Cathy was three, an energetic toddler who liked to walk everywhere, no matter how much it slowed her mother down. They spent time in parks and at the library and at meetings. The Peace Pledge Union had been replaced by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Tricia longed to go on the Aldermaston Marches protesting the American missile sites on British soil, but Mark had forbidden it. However, he knew nothing about what she did in the daytime, and CND daytime meetings generally had other mothers with children and they traded childcare. Cathy seemed truly gregarious, and loved playing with other children while Tricia signed petitions, and even helped to draft petitions for circulation. CND were writing to the Russians, the French, and the Americans as well as the British. Their aim was nothing less than complete nuclear disarmament and a new era of world peace. Tricia’s typing ability was welcome. She began to make friends and feel as if she was making a difference.

She had come back from an afternoon typing petitions on November 22nd. The six of them had dinner, all sitting down together and eating as Mark preferred. Tricia’s cooking had improved slightly through practice and with the availability of better ingredients, but she was unadventurous. That night they had pork chops with applesauce and mashed potatoes. Mark complained that the chops were overdone, which they usually were. Tricia was terrified of undercooking pork.

There was a bottle of wine sitting on the sideboard. Tricia sighed when she saw it, but no longer feared this as she had. The act itself remained unpleasant, and Mark’s apologies remained painful, but as long as she took her pill every day there was no risk of pregnancy.

After dinner she put Cathy to bed at six, George at seven, and Helen at eight. Doug was allowed to stay up until after the nine o’clock news. So the three of them were sitting together on the sofa watching the news, and they discovered together that the American President, John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas.

“The bomb is believed to have been hidden in the massed flowers below the banquet table,” the announcer read, visibly shaken. “President and Mrs. Kennedy were killed instantly, along with the Governor of Texas and—” Tricia looked at Mark, who was gaping at the screen.

“Who could have done that?” she asked.

“The Russians?” Mark suggested. “The Cubans?”

“I know the CIA engineered a coup in Cuba in May, the way they did in Guatemala a few years ago, but surely they wouldn’t have the ability to do something like that?” The screen was showing them the Vice-President, Johnson, taking his oath of office.

“He had Castro killed, why wouldn’t they try to kill Kennedy?” Mark asked. “But you’d think they’d have trouble getting a bomb into a reception in Texas. A Cuban would be conspicuous there. Or a Russian.”

Bobby Kennedy was insisting vehemently that there would be a full investigation and that whoever was responsible would pay.

“It doesn’t seem right having the President’s brother be one of the bosses,” Doug said.

“He’s not one of the bosses. He’s Attorney General,” Mark said.

“What does an Attorney General do?” Doug asked.

Mark hesitated. “He’s in charge of legal decisions,” he said, sounding unsure.

“That’s being one of the bosses, then,” Doug said. “Having the President’s brother be one of the bosses makes them seem like feudalism.”

“This isn’t the moment, when Kennedy has just been killed,” Mark said, angrily. “Anyway, it’s time you were in bed.”

Doug kissed Tricia goodnight and went upstairs. “I’ll come up and tuck you in in five minutes,” Tricia said.

“You should stop babying him,” Mark said, as the scene of carnage played again on the black-and-white screen.

The next day at the CND office everyone was talking about the assassination. Some of the people were quite well-informed. “There are lots of Latino people in Texas,” Sylvia said. “A Cuban could disguise himself as a waiter and get the bomb in on a tray, easily.”

Tim, a one-legged veteran of the Great War, disagreed. “I think it was an internal thing. If it had been the Russians, or even the Cubans, something else would have happened by now. The President has been killed, but there’s been no attack.”

“The Americans can’t think they can just do whatever they want anywhere in the world without making themselves unpopular,” Tricia said. “I mean sometimes it’s good, like stopping us from attacking Egypt over Suez, but all this sponsoring coups in countries because you don’t like their governments? It had to end in tears.”

“I agree!” Sylvia said. “They have that awful Committee for Un-American Activities and they’re interfering in Vietnam. Maybe this will bring it home to them.”

“Well, time will tell, when we see what comes of it,” Tim said. “Did we get that Vietnam petition out, by the way? Military advisors my foot.”

“Yes, I did it Friday,” Tricia said. “Do you really think something else will happen?”

“If it was the Russians it will,” Tim said. “Surely they’d have an attack ready to take out America while they’re all still reeling. They’ve declared a national day of mourning, all schools and everything closed. If the communists had real support there would be strikes and uprisings. Or if they don’t have that kind of thing because their leaders have all been imprisoned or suppressed, you’d expect a military attack.”

“War?” Sylvia asked, shuddering.

Tricia glanced at the peace symbol on the wall. “It feels closer than ever. The war that will end everything. I was tucking my little boy in last night and I wondered if we’d even see the morning.”

Sylvia hugged her. “That’s how I feel every night!”

No attacks followed the assassination. Things continued on, and the big war news was Johnson wanting to site more missiles in Britain, while sending more troops to Vietnam. Then in February, to everyone’s astonishment, Bobby Kennedy’s investigation into his brother’s death found evidence implicating Johnson in the purchase of the explosives. The evidence was by no means conclusive, and people were vehemently divided on the subject. Some thought Bobby Kennedy was trying to smear Johnson, and others were equally sure that Johnson was the real murderer.

“Cui bono,” said Mark, as if he had always suspected the Vice-President of luring the President to Dallas so he could kill him and take his place.

Though some called for impeachment, nothing came of it. Johnson, beaten down by the scandal, declined to run again. Bobby Kennedy, flanked by his brother’s children, declared his own candidacy for the 1964 election. There seemed little doubt he would be elected.

“Feudalism,” muttered Doug under his breath.

“I always thought that Johnson was a piece of work,” Sylvia said. “Not a trustworthy person. I’m glad he won’t be the one with his finger on the button any more.”

“It’s as if they weren’t content with instigating coups abroad and had to have a coup at home,” Tim said, shaking his head. “Do you think Bobby will relent about those missiles that were coming here?”

“My son says it’s feudalism,” Tricia said. “Bobby being JFK’s brother, I mean.”

They laughed, uneasily. “It is like feudalism in a way,” Sylvia said.

“Nothing wrong with having political families. We think family businesses are good. If you heard about a son inheriting his father’s shop, or a doctor whose two sons became doctors, you’d think that was splendid,” Tim said.

“It’s different with power,” Sylvia protested.

Tim threw up his hands. “It is different.”

In the autumn of 1964, Cathy got a place at nursery school. Tricia suggested to Mark one night when the children were in bed that she might go back to teaching, part-time or on supply at first.

“I make enough to keep us,” Mark protested.

“Of course you do, but a little extra might be nice, so we could afford a new car, or to get your new book professionally typed. But really it would be an interest to me, now that the children are growing up.”

Mark grudgingly agreed, and Tricia began to work as a supply teacher, filling in for teachers who were ill. Sometimes it would just be a day or two, other times it would be for a few weeks. She continued to volunteer at the CND office in between. She also managed to get over to visit her mother every week. It took a little over an hour to get to Twickenham from Woking, depending on connections. Tricia’s mother was getting vaguer all the time. Tricia did her shopping and cleaned the house. She sometimes felt the most important thing she did was sitting and talking to her mother. If she asked what she had been doing her mother didn’t know, but they could have real conversations about her childhood, or her mother’s childhood. Her memories of times long ago were as clear as ever. Sometimes Tricia would really enjoy her mother’s stories—hearing how her parents met, or her mother’s work as a nursemaid. Sometimes she took the children, though they got so easily bored, and her mother could no longer remember their names.

Bobby Kennedy was duly elected in his brother’s place, and the British election in the spring brought in a progressive Labour government. She and Mark did not discuss their votes. She did not want to confirm her fear that he might have voted Tory. Mark’s new book came out and was well received. Mark visited the Burchells, and came home looking very pleased with himself. “There’s a possibility I may be offered a lectureship at a new university next year,” he told Tricia.

“Where?” Tricia asked, her heart sinking at the thought of relocating all of them, and just before Doug’s School Certificates.

“Lancaster,” Mark said.

To Tricia it was still no more than a distant station with no trains going in the direction she wanted to go. “That’s so far,” she said.

“Nonsense. I thought you’d be pleased. You always hated Woking. And far from what? We’ll all be there.”

“I am pleased,” Tricia said. She could not say far from her friends or her volunteer work, because he did not know about that. “But it’s a long way from my mother. You know she’s been getting—”

“She’s nothing but an old nuisance,” Mark said. “You baby her. You baby everyone.”

“If the time comes when she can’t cope on her own, we’ll have to have her with us. In Lancaster if that’s where we are.”

“And what about my parents?”

Mark’s parents were well and strong and continued to look down their noses at Tricia. “If they needed it, we’d have them too, obviously,” she said.

“Well that’s not the case now,” Mark snapped. “Lancaster. A real job for me. Try to like it.” He stormed out of the room.

Tricia was shaking. She needed to know when they’d be going, and whether he’d thought about schools for the children. She could get Helen to ask him about that. Lancaster. She remembered the station very well, Baronial style, a Victorian castle, and the little train to Barrow-in-Furness, and the kindness she had found there. People in the North were kind. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe she’d be able to find a proper job there.

13

“If the World’s Still Here”: Pat 1962–1963

They did not have to wait until they came back from Italy to find somebody. Constable planned to do new updated editions of the Florence and Venice books, this time daringly with color photographs. They sent a young photographer out to Italy to take the pictures. His name was Michael Jacobs, and he was just beginning to make a name for himself. He saw this job as an opportunity to become better known and get more magazine work; and also, as he said, to have the chance to take photographs of some beautiful things. It was his first time out of England. He stayed in their house in Florence. He was the first overnight guest they had had, and they had to buy a pillow for him. Pat liked him, liked what he did with the camera, and liked his enthusiasm for Florence, and for Venice when they went there. He lay flat on the cobbles to take a photograph of St. Mark’s, heedless of the damage to his clothes. He was also entirely understanding about their relationship—he treated Pat and Bee as a couple, without being either embarrassed about it, or trying, as people so often did, to make one of them into the man and the other into the woman.

In the Pitti Palace, trying to find a good angle to photograph the fresco of Lorenzo de Medici welcoming the exiled muses to Florence, he suddenly turned to Pat with tears in his eyes. “It makes you realize they were just people, people who were excited about art and making things and sharing it with other people who cared about it.”

“Yes,” Pat said, gesturing at the next fresco, Lorenzo pointing out the young Michelangelo. “I always call that one
‘Let’s Have a Renaissance’.
”

“I wish people felt like that now,” Michael said. “I mean it’s fashionable to be cynical and jaded about everything, but when I look at the passion those Renaissance people had, that clarity of … of caring about things, I envy them.”

“That’s what I’ve always felt here,” Pat said. “That’s what first drew me to Florence in particular. It’s why I wanted to write about it, to explain that to other people. I’m not an art historian, or any kind of historian really. My degree is in English. But I came here and I responded to the beauty and I wanted to know more about it.”

Near the end of his two-week stay, Pat and Bee sat down together to discuss him. It was early in the morning, and they sat at the wrought iron table on the patio eating terrible Florentine unsalted bread with wonderful fresh mozzarella and some of Bee’s honey.