Spearfield's Daughter (29 page)

“I have a stewardess friend who told me exactly that. She thought
égalité
should never have become airborne. I gather it isn't on Air France.”

“I think you and I may have an enjoyable trip, Mr. Border. Now have some champagne and listen to me. No, miss,” she said to the stewardess hovering over them, “we'll have
champagne,
not Californian bubbly. One can take patriotism too far.”

When Tom's glass was filled he lifted it to Claudine, but had the sense not to say “To you, Empress,” though the words trembled on the end of his tongue.

“I don't know what position you will be taking over when you get back to New York—”

“I'm hoping they may find a place for me on the editorial page. I kid myself I know something about foreign affairs now.”

“I may be able to help you there.” Now that Alain was working on the
Courier
she intended to take more interest in what went on below board level. “It would suit me to have you in the office every day instead of running around the country gathering news. My son Alain has just gone to work on the paper.”

“Yes, Chuck Nevin told me.”

“What sort of tutor do you think you could be? Allowing for your laziness.”

“There'd be better men on the paper than me at that sort of thing. Some of the older guys.”

“I don't think my son has much respect for some of the older—guys.” She disliked slang. But she was asking a favour of him and she was willing to come down to his level for the moment. “There would be more rapport between my son and you.”

He had never met Alain Roux and he wondered how much his mother's son he was. There would be no rapport between himself and a little emperor. But if he could not get on with Alain Roux, he could always drift on. He had never worked in California and the
Los Angeles Times
was now one of the better papers in the nation. California was full of crazies, but so far none of them was a terrorist.

“I guess it's up to your son, Mrs. Roux. If he thinks I could help him . . .”

“Thank you.” She finished her champagne, handed her glass to one of TWA's scullery maids.
Travelling
by plane was one of her major dislikes and she wondered why men and women chose such jobs. She gave the stewardess a queenly smile to alleviate the girl's hardship. “You may serve our dinner now.”

“Soon, Mrs. Roux.” The stewardess was from Kansas City, where they hung the title Empress only on prize cows. “They've had to go back for the smoked salmon. They left it at Orly.”

The girl passed on and Tom hung his head as he laughed silently. Then he looked sideways at Claudine. “No rapport there, Mrs. Roux.”

“I should have her head.” But then she smiled, descending to the lower levels. “My son is not like me, Mr. Border, if that should be worrying you. He has an unhealthy respect for democracy.”

Tom wondered if she was right about her son. He doubted very much her ideas of democracy were those of the majority of the Republic.

He turned away and looked out of the window. They were flying at 33,000 feet above a carpet of cloud; yesterday, a red streak in the sky, rested on the horizon ahead of them. He looked down, but he had no idea whether England was below them or behind them. He said goodbye to Cleo from a great height, but was sad, not condescending.

10

I

CLEO WAITED
two weeks to hear from Tom, then she called the Paris office of the
Courier
and was told that Mr. Border had returned to New York. She was hurt and disappointed; but she didn't blame him too much. She had an innate sense of fairness, an aberration most women succeed in avoiding, and she knew she could offer him no more than he was prepared to offer her. But she was upset, which brought on her period early, which in turn upset Jack Cruze. He liked to keep love-making to a schedule, like the rest of his life. It was a sign of approaching age, but he would not admit that.

The new year, 1971, came in. It was the centenary year of the publication of Lewis Carroll's
Alice Through the Looking Glass,
an event that Quentin Massey-Folkes laid down for editorial comment when the exact date came; but Cleo looked hard at her own looking glass and found no entry there. It seemed that she had come to a dead end. She began to wonder where she would be ten years hence, then dismissed the thought. She wrote a column asking at what stage the young started thinking beyond next week. The young, too busy with today, didn't answer.

In March she went to Hamburg for the trial of Rosa Fuchs. Roger Brisson, as a serving officer of a foreign army, had been excused from appearing, but he sent a deposition. Cleo arrived the night before the trial was to begin, booked into the Vier Jahreszeiten and waited for Tom to arrive. But he did not put in an appearance and next morning she drove to the court with Quentin Massey-Folkes and the
Examiner's
lawyer, David Dibdin.

“I can't intervene for you, Miss Spearfield,” Dibdin told her in the car. He had a prominent belly, chins to spare and a razor-sharp mind. “But the Hamburg lawyer we have engaged for you is the best. He may not even have to intervene, the case is so straightforward.”

“Not for me it isn't,” said Cleo. “I'd rather forget the whole thing.”

Massey-
Folkes pressed her hand. “We'll get you out of here as soon as possible.”

“I'm glad you came, Quent, but you shouldn't have. You don't look well.”

“A few days away from the office is all I need. It's my wife who isn't looking well, knowing I'm in your company.”

Cleo looked at Dibdin. “He's the heaviest-handed flirt I know.”

But she had great affection for Massey-Folkes and, though she was grateful for his company, she worried about how he looked. He appeared to have lost weight and there was a tiredness to him that was too apparent to be ignored.

Tom Border was waiting at the court. He gave her the old slow smile and put out his hand, like an old acquaintance rather than a man in love.

“Cleo old girl, you look great. As usual.”

He looked like the old Tom, a bag of bones held together at the top by a loosely knotted tie. “I thought you weren't coming.”

“I couldn't leave you to face this on your own.”

Security in the court was so efficiently tight it was frightening. It seemed to Cleo that the German authorities were as afraid of the past as of the future. They were shutting out all the extremists: Nazis, Communists, anarchists. They were also shutting out the democracy, or at least that was what some of the banned would-be spectators shouted outside the court.

Rosa Fuchs was brought into court and at first Cleo didn't recognize her. The long hair was neatly done in a chignon, she wore a plain grey dress that showed off her figure, and her face, classically beautiful, was discreetly made up. Either she had an astute lawyer or she had rejoined the bourgeoisie against which she had rebelled.

She made no retraction of her aims, refused to answer when asked if there were other members besides Kurt Hauser and Gerd Silber involved in the attempted kidnapping of Generals Brisson and Thorpe; but she was unfailingly polite, the model of a decorous terrorist.

Cleo and Tom, fortunately, were called on the first day. The German authorities, with an eye to a bad international press, were eager to have the foreign witnesses out of the way as soon as possible. Cleo and Tom were told that they could return to London and New York, with the proviso that they must return
immediately
if required in Hamburg. As she left the court Cleo looked across at Rosa Fuchs. The girl was staring at her, cold hatred in the beautiful blue eyes.

Outside the court she told Massey-Folkes and Dibdin that she would see them back at the hotel. “I think you'd better stay with us, Cleo,” said Massey-Folkes. “Just in case. The Boss sent me to keep an eye on you, remember.”

She saw the logic of the suggestion. “Righto. But I'd like Tom Border to come back with us. We'll have dinner together.”

“I think we should go back to London immediately,” said Dibdin. “We can't expect the German police to guard you for another night while you enjoy the town.”

Cleo turned as Tom came across towards the three of them. Police stood close to them and newspaper photographers and television cameramen hovered on flashes of light; it was no background at all for lovers to kiss and make up. Though what was there to make up? she wondered.

“Are you going straight back to New York or coming to London first?”

“Straight back to New York.” He was pleasant and friendly, but she could almost see the defences he had built up. She was in love, but not blindly so. “I'm catching tonight's plane.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Atlantic.” The
Courier
was treating him well, though the paper had known the Germans would help with the tab.

He had chosen the Atlantic because he had guessed she would be at the Vier Jahreszeiten.

“Can you drop me off at my hotel?” She ignored the frowns of Massey-Folkes and Dibdin.

“If you don't mind riding with my escort.” He was gracious, if reluctant.

The escort sat up front with the driver, stiffly formal both of them; Cleo and Tom sat in the back of the BMW with almost equal stiffness. Cleo suddenly felt a prisoner, of her emotions if nothing else. She should have ridden back to the hotel with Massey-Folkes and Dibdin.

She said bluntly, beating her way out of herself, “Why did you go back to America so abruptly? Not even a word.”

He was just as blunt. “Where's Lord Cruze? I thought he'd be here to bolster your nerve. That wasn't easy in the court today.”

“
The German police advised him not to come. They thought I was enough of a security risk on my own.” She knew that Jack had been relieved when the advice had come through from Hamburg. Not that he was afraid of terrorists, just publicity. He did not want to be shot, in her company, by photographers. “Why did you go back?”

He was more constrained by her attitude than by the presence of the two Germans up front, both of whom spoke English. He looked out of the car at the Alstersee, a lake of chopped blue ice under the March wind. All of a sudden he leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“Pull up there by the Lombard bridge, please. Fräulein Spearfield and I want a few words alone.”

The driver looked at the escorting policeman, who said, “It is not permitted, Herr Border.”

“It is permitted,” said Tom. “I'm an American citizen and your government has placed no restriction on my movements. I'll take the responsibility.”

“But if something should happen—”

“I'll feel it more than you, believe me. Five minutes, Sergeant, that's all we need.”

The police car pulled up and Tom helped Cleo out and walked with her, hand on her elbow, to the middle of the bridge that separated the two lakes that made up the Alstersee, the Aussenalster and the Binnenalster. The wind whipped at them as if to further fray their emotions.

“There was no point in prolonging the agony, Cleo—that was why I went back to New York. You're Lord Cruze's girl, no matter what.”

“Don't you think you might have asked me about that?”

“I didn't need to. You're married to your career on the
Examiner
and that TV programme of yours—that's almost the same as being married to Cruze. It's all tied in together.”

She looked back at the main part of the city, at the pale green copper domes, steeples and roofs, like faded pistachio icing on buildings that suggested the solidity of granite cliffs. Yet twenty-five years ago the city had been in ruins. She wondered what the lovers of Hamburg, standing here in those days and looking back at the jagged skyline, had thought of their future.

“I don't love him,” she admitted. “I've found that out.”

“I guessed that. But you're not going to say goodbye to him, Cleo. I just didn't want to hang around in Europe till he died.”

“
If I came to America—?”

The thought tempted him. A ferry came out from beneath his feet, from under the bridge. It was almost empty, a lone passenger standing at the bow, gazing fixedly ahead of him like an explorer looking for a new horizon. Then the man threw up his arms, as if whatever thoughts or hopes he had were fruitless, and went back inside out of the wind.

“What would you do in New York? I don't think I could keep up with you, Cleo. You have more drive than I'll ever have. You've got more ambition than just to be Tom Border's missus.”

She had never really looked at the incompatibility between them; there had been no need to, since there had been no commitment. She began to believe now that he might always be a drifter. “What are you doing now? Are you going back to Vietnam for the end of the war—when it happens?”

He shook his head. “I've put Vietnam out of my mind. Some day America will want to do that—I'm just ahead of the rest of them.”

“So what are you doing?”

“I'm writing special features and the occasional editorial.” He had also become tutor and friend to Alain Roux, but he didn't think that would interest her. In his spare hours he was writing a novel, but he did not mention that to her either: he was not sure how much of her was in the book. He said almost defensively rather than with pride, “I'm doing all right.”

“I'm sure you are. I think you're better than you let yourself be.”

“Lack of ambition.” He grinned; but it was no joke. Then he took her gloved hand and lifted it to his lips; he had learned a few things living in Paris. “It's goodbye, Cleo. There's nothing else to say.”

“Oh Tom!” But she didn't break down. She clutched his hand as they walked back to the police car. “Shall we try again in ten years' time?”