Spearfield's Daughter (48 page)

“Did you ever call her?” Cleo asked.

“I can't remember who she was.”

The
grimy windows were open to give the inmates a choice of suffocating from the pollution outside or the smoky fug inside. The half dozen other reporters in the rooms seemed to have dressed down to their surroundings; Hal Rainer himself looked as if he had come from a welfare handout. American crime, Cleo decided, must be scruffy. She had had little experience of British crime and none at all of Australian.

Over the next few months she began to widen her American education, beginning at the bottom of the moral scale. She found more cynicism than she had ever known back in Britain or Australia; but she had moved in different circles there, where the cynicism had been more refined and therefore to be taken for sophisticated wisdom. She was still appalled, however, at some of the stories she had to write.

“Don't waste your sympathy,” said Hal Rainer. “Most of the time all we are writing about is the shit of human nature.”

“You should be teaching philosophy at Yale or Harvard.”

“Two posts I've applied for over the years.”

The two of them, the sleek once-successful girl and the scruffy middle-aged man who had never made it, had reached a compatibility where they could kid each other without offence. He never made a pass at her, not even in a joking word, never complimented her on how she might look; he treated her as he might another man. Which, she realized, was his way of complimenting her.

But she knew she was on probation as far as the paper was concerned. The
Courier
had obtained a working visa for her but it was valid only for so long as she continued to work for the paper. She soon realized that Jake Lintas saw no reason why she should be working for the paper at all; but The Empress had sent down instructions and he had obeyed them. But giving Cleo a job did not mean he had to treat her with any favouritism; he had a certain autonomy and he jealously guarded it. Cleo was just one of the reporters and if she wanted to rise higher she would have to prove she had something more than the others.

“How are you making out?” said Alain.

She went out with him once a week, never on the same night, rationing him as well as herself. He wanted to spend all his free time with her; he was in love with her and she knew it, but so far he had not told her so. She went to bed with him but not on a regular weekly basis; she was trying, in not very subtle ways, to let him know that she was not to be taken for granted. He accepted the situation because, the more
he
came to know her, the more he came to know that she had an ambition that might override any other inclination she might have. He was not absolutely sure that that would occur, but it scared him and so he held back and settled for what she was willing to give him. He had never before been involved with a really ambitious woman.

“I'm getting impatient. Every time I try to give a lift to anything I've written, the guys on the copy desk wipe it out. You were right—the
Courier
really is a stuffy sheet.”

“That's Jake Lintas. But Mother and the board would never get rid of him. They're afraid they'd get someone who'd turn it into another
Daily News
.”

“That formula works.”

“Not for the
Courier.
Not while Mother runs the board.”

She went home with him to his apartment on the floor below his mother's penthouse. They made love under his mother's feet. There was humpin' with bumpin' and no restraint: it is an acoustical fact that the squeak of bedsprings does not travel upwards. Cleo did cry out in ecstasy but no one heard her: the inventor of double-glazed windows was not a man afraid of the cold but one who had a wife given to knock-off-siren whoops of joy. Afterwards Cleo went into the bathroom and showered, then looked at herself in the wall-length mirror.

“Perfect,” said Alain, naked, leaning against the door-jamb. When he leaned on the proper side his crippled leg was not apparent. “Girls with a body like yours should never be allowed to dress.”

Outside, though it was only November, sleet was falling. “Just the weather for getting around like that. My nipples would stand out like six-inch spikes.”

“What a wonderful way to be stabbed to death.” He put his hand to his bare chest.

I wish he'd grow up all the way, she thought. She looked at herself again in the mirror. She did mild exercises every morning, walked to and from the office every day, watched her diet: it all paid off, there was no sign yet of any erosion. She looked at her hair, still worn short and with bangs. “I may change my hair style.”

“No,” he said emphatically. “It's you. Cleo Spearfield.”

“Being me isn't amounting to much. Jake Lintas still hasn't given me my by-line.”

“Changing your hair style won't get you a by-line. It'll come.” He wished it wouldn't. He would
like
her to fail, give up all ambition and be his wife, take up the by-line of Mrs. Alain Roux.

“It had better happen soon. I think Jake is just letting me work out my visa time.”

Christmas came and went. She spent it at Souillac with Alain and his mother and Roger and Louise Brisson; which was a mistake. It suggested she was family, or almost; and Claudine, without being rude, made it clear that the family, like Fort Knox, was not easily broken into. Presents were exchanged on Christmas morning and Cleo was discreet enough to make her gifts to Alain and Claudine modest ones.

Claudine recognized the discretion and wondered whether Cleo was shrewd or was not seriously interested in Alain. She was disturbed by the gift Alain gave Cleo, an expensive gold bracelet, but she said nothing. Then she and Cleo exchanged looks above the gift when the latter opened the velvet box, and she was reassured. The girl also thought the gift was too expensive.

Alain, for his part, enthused about Cleo's gift to him, a Mark Cross wallet, as if it were a five-piece set of Vuitton luggage. Do restrain yourself, his mother told him silently, or soon you'll be on your knees before her.

Cleo had tried to call her father before leaving Manhattan, but all the lines to Australia had been busy. With Claudine's permission she called him from Souillac on Christmas night.

“How are you, Dad?”

The belly-laugh floated across the world, sounding in her ears as sweet as bell-song. “Sweetheart, you know better than to ask.”

Then she remembered his old advice: never ask an Aussie how he is because he'll bloody well tell you, at great length.

“Righto, what sort of Christmas did you have?”

“We had dinner up at Perry's,” he said, his voice coming and going on the wire. “Roast turkey, plum pudding, all the English stuff. We were in our cossies beside the pool—it was bloody hot. We should have our heads read, all this sticking to tradition.”

Cossie:
she hadn't heard the word in ages. Nobody even used
bathing costume
any more; but Sylvester still put on his cossie to go for a swim. Suddenly she wanted to weep, loving him so much that she actually felt a physical pain in her chest; but she knew, too, that she wanted to weep for the child she had once been, when her mother had been alive and all the family had been together, unspoiled by ambition,
careless
of possessions, just happy in the traditional Christmas spirit.

“How are things down in Canberra?”

“The bloom has worn off, Cleo. We're beginning to stumble around like a lot of blind chooks—”
Chooks:
chickens.
Oh Dad, go on speaking Australian to me!
“Gough's still in charge, but he's got a few no-hopers he should sack. We've got more trendies in Canberra than you'd find in an arcade of boutiques—” His voice died away, lost across the snows of America, the winds of the Pacific; or just lost in the bitter climate of himself? Then he came back, laughing the old belly-laugh: “Don't worry. I'll still be here when all the trendy professors are back in their universities. Nobody will remember them, but I'll bet Sylvester Spearfield will be. What do you reckon?”

He sounded pathetic, wanting reassurance from
her.
“I'll bet on it.”

“Hooroo, sweetheart. Take care.”

“Hooroo, Dad.” She did weep then. “Have a happy 1975.”

That evening she heard on the news that a cyclone, the worst in Australian memory, had hit Darwin in the far north. She hoped that it was not an omen for her father and the old-timers in the Labour Party.

Alain drove her back to Manhattan late that night. In the morning when she went downstairs to the delicatessen to buy milk, the owner, Mr. Kugel, brought out a dozen red roses.

“They came Christmas Eve, just after you left. No note, nothing. I kept them in water for you.” He was thin, looked as if he had been boned, had a blotchy complexion like sliced salami; but he was kind and friendly and believed red roses from anonymous admirers should be kept from dying. “They must of cost a fortune, this time of year.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kugel.” She took the roses, knowing that the man who had sent them could well afford them. It did not occur to her that Alain might have sent them: they smelled of Jack Cruze. “Did you have a nice Christmas?”

“I'm Jewish, what's to celebrate?” But he smiled. He liked pretty girls, even Christian ones. “May the roses last. They become you.”

She went upstairs, wrapped the roses in brown paper, put on her topcoat and went for a walk. She passed an old black woman, stopped and gave her the roses. The old woman looked at her first with
suspicion,
then with surprise, then with puzzlement. But Cleo had already left her and walked on. She wondered how Jack had discovered her address and thought that she would immediately have to look for a new apartment. Then she realized that he would know she worked for the
Courier
and it would not matter where she lived. She passed a Catholic church, paused, then went in and prayed that Jack would not follow up the signal of the red roses. She came out feeling guilty: she only talked to God when she wanted a favour of Him.

In late January she applied to
The Times,
the
News
and the
Post
for a position; but none of them wanted a foreigner, not if they had to go to the extent of guaranteeing her for a work visa. It seemed that it was to be the
Courier
or
International
and no other choice.

III

She had been working on the
Courier
a year when she began to worry that she was getting nowhere. She had a good salary and she was still earning money on the outside with articles in various magazines; she kept waiting for Jake Lintas to crack down on her outside work, but so far he had made no move. On the paper itself she was being held down by men much older than herself who were hidebound by their prejudice against women; they laughed at Women's Liberation and knew that God, who was a man, would eventually convince them of their foolishness. Books by Friedan, Millett or Greer, if they were reviewed at all in the book columns, were always reviewed by men and invariably panned. The mood of the editorial staff was that one had only to look at Washington where, though men had fouled up the White House, women, quite properly, were not trusted with running the country. What was good enough for the country was good enough for the
Courier.
They conveniently overlooked the fact that they themselves worked for a publisher who was a woman. Like most people afflicted with the cataracts of prejudice, they looked down, never up.

News came in every day, some of it turning into history; but Cleo never felt she was contributing to any story that would last beyond tomorrow's edition. She had lost interest in what was going on in Vietnam; though she had had experience of it, no editor ever asked her opinion of it. Television had taken over Vietnam: as someone wrote, war was now in the living-room.

Alone in her apartment one Saturday night, she was watching the news when she saw a familiar
face
turn and stare at her from the screen. Pierre Cain, out of uniform, looking almost ragged in unpressed shirt and trousers, stood in line outside the US embassy in Saigon amongst a crowd of other would-be refugees. There was no sign of Madame Cain. The major, sad—and bitter-faced, stared at the camera, accusing—whom? Cleo suddenly felt a sharp stab of guilt. She was not responsible for his and his country's plight; but she, too, had deserted him. Out of sight, out of mind . . .

She sat down at once and wrote him care of JUSPAO, unable to think of anywhere else he might be traced. She offered to help him in any way she could, asked after Madame Cain, finished by saying how much she regretted the way the war had gone. She went out immediately and posted the letter, as if Pierre Cain had to be rescued before daylight. But then the weeks went by and she never heard from him. Guilt still troubled her, but it slowly faded. Life, meaning her own, had to go on.

She took two weeks' vacation and went to Miami. It was the wrong time of the year to go to Florida, Alain told her: wait till Christmas and he would take her down to the Brisson house at Palm Beach. But she wanted to get away from him as much as from New York; she wanted to swim in the ocean, lie on the sand and think. If she was to remain in America she would need to do a lot of thinking.

She did not like Miami, but was fascinated by it; or rather, by the people she saw there. It seemed that everyone wore dark glasses; she felt she was in a city of walking skulls. Though it was a vacation city only the very young seemed to be enjoying themselves. Everyone else walked around with the same expressions she had seen on the faces of New Yorkers. America, she decided, was as worried as herself.

On her third day in the city a Senate Crime Commission came to town. Educating herself in America, she had been reading recent American history as well as past; she now remembered reading snippets on the Kefauver inquiry into crime in the 1950s. That had quietened organized crime down for a few years; it hadn't lessened it, it had just become less visible. Now, with Richard Nixon gone and Gerald Ford in office, a new moral tone was taking over Washington. The nation was about to be cleaned up again.