Spearfield's Daughter (9 page)

There were two levels to the flat, with a staircase curving down from the upper level into the huge drawing-room. The western wall of that room was all glass through which one could see Green Park like a mural. Slantwise across the park was Buckingham Palace, the Royal Standard fluttering in the breeze like regal washing: the Queen was at home.

“What are you thinking?”

“Does the Queen ever wave to anyone who lives on this side of the park?”

“Is that why you came to England, to poke fun at us?”

“No. I came here thinking I might climb to the top in Fleet Street. Be a sort of Rupert Murdoch in drag, if you like.” She sipped her sherry, smiling at her own naïveté. “But there's never been a woman at the top in Fleet Street, has there? Certainly not on the
Examiner.
It's the journal for the male chauvinist.”

“Do you usually tell your bosses what you think of their papers?”

He led her into the dining-room. There was a long dining-table with twenty chairs (she did a quick count); they sat at one end and the empty chairs stretched away down the table like unwanted guests. A blunt-faced cheerful woman brought in helpings of potted shrimps, beamed at His Lordship, cast Cleo a critical glance, then disappeared back into the kitchen.

“
I told my last one what I thought.” She smiled at the memory; the
Sydney Morning Post
had been another male chauvinist domain. “After I'd resigned, of course.”

“Are you thinking of resigning from the
Examiner?”

“Not immediately, my Lord.”

“You pronounce it m'Lord, all one word.”

“I know.” Then she smiled, a friendly smile that, against his will, brought an answering smile from himself. “I'm sorry, Lord Cruze. I have been taking the mickey out of you. But that seemed the safest way of having to face you. I knew why Felicity Kidson sent me to do that story on the horse show. You're not half as forbidding as I'd been led to believe.”

“I can be when it's necessary. We'll have the main course now, Mrs. Cromwell.” Cleo's potted shrimps were whipped away by Mrs. Cromwell, who appeared to be both cook and maid. “Mrs. Cromwell doesn't like to be delayed in serving her main course.”

“His Lordship likes his liver and bacon just so,” Mrs. Cromwell explained to Cleo. “How do you like yours?”

“Just the bacon will do. I'm afraid I don't like liver.”

“It's better for you than bacon,” said Mrs. Cromwell, who had no time for food-pickers and fancy diets, and marched back through the swing door to her kitchen,

“Well,” said Cleo, “it seems I'm rubbing everyone up the wrong way today. My father always said I'd never succeed as a politician.”

“Is he in politics in Australia?”

It was like being asked if God was in Heaven. She felt light-headed at being released from her father's shadow. “He's a Federal Senator.”

“Spearfield? Oh,
that
one. The one who wants to do away with the monarchy?”

“Only as far as Australia is concerned.”

“I don't take much interest in Australian politics.”

“Who does?”

That had been brought home to her in the nine months she had been in London. The British, convinced that all Australians were beer-swilling, loud-mouthed anarchists, evidently believed that the
Antipodes
took care of themselves without benefit of government or politicians. They had heard of Sir Robert Menzies, but only because he had come to England every year to have tea with the Queen and watch the cricket. They looked upon him as
their
representative Down Under.

Mrs. Cromwell brought in the main course, one bacon-and-liver with fried potatoes, one bacon-without-liver and a double helping of potatoes.
Haute cuisine
would never stick its Froggy nose into her kitchen. “Just so's you won't go hungry, miss.”

She went out again and Cruze said, “Mrs. Cromwell and her husband, my chauffeur, come from my home village Chalfont St. Aidan. That's in Bucks.”

“I know. I looked up your obit. It's already written, but I suppose you know that. They up-date it every six months.”

“I hope they don't let your poison pen up-date it next time.”

She smiled, feeling more at ease with him than she had expected. She knew his reputation, though that hadn't been in the obituary: how he could be as ruthless as he could be loyal to his staff. Men such as Quentin Massey-Folkes had worked for him for years; others had worked for him for weeks, even days. She knew, too, how ruthless he could be with his women, though she had heard nothing of his loyalty to them. She had been studying him carefully during their fencing, was a little surprised by her growing interest in him. He was interesting, of course, for what he was: one of the most powerful and influential newspaper barons in Britain, indeed in Europe. But her interest was more in him as a man: she wanted to peel away the public image and look at the Emperor without his clothes.

She was beginning to see what Felicity Kidson (and a score of other women, if the stories were true) had seen in him. Physically he had little to recommend him. He was short, looked as if he might be muscular, had greying curly hair and a face that only escaped homely anonymity because of the thick eyebrows and the military moustache. He appeared to do nothing to try to improve his appearance with tailoring; she would learn that he only dressed well when he was appearing in horse shows. Now he looked like the product of a London laundry catering to the transient tourist trade: shirt ironed by a cold corrugated iron; suit pressed by hand but no iron; a tie so shiny it looked as if it had been polished rather than cleaned. But something (energy? power? She knew enough to know they were not the same thing) gleamed in him.

“Yes, I come from Bucks,” he said. “The way the papers tell it, even my own, you'd think all the
self-
made men in this country came from the north country or are Jews from the Mile End Road. I'm a grammar school boy from the Home Counties. My father was a solicitor's clerk and my mother wanted to be a teacher. I got my ambition from her. She had a crippled leg, infantile paralysis as they called it in her day, but she never let it handicap her. She was handicapped enough being a woman. That's why I always see that women are given an opportunity on my papers.”

“That's not quite true.” The bacon had been over-cooked, as if Mrs. Cromwell was putting her in her place for refusing the liver; it crackled in her mouth like verbal bullets. “You only give them a go on the women's pages.”

He looked at her over a forkful of liver; it put more iron into one, so they said. Not that he felt he needed it. “You don't want to be editor of the women's page?”

“No.”

“What do you want?” He chewed on the liver: it
tasted
like iron. This girl was upsetting him again.

“I'd like my own column.” The last of the bacon crackled between this teeth. She noticed that Mrs. Cromwell hadn't cooked His Lordship's bacon as crisp as this. “The female answer to Bernard Levin.”

“The
Examiner
doesn't have those sort of readers.”

“I know. I just dragged his name out of the air. I don't want to write about politics or music. But I'd like to go out and find my own stories, instead of being told what to write.”

“You can write what you like as women's editor. Within reason,” he added, careful of the hatchet.

“No. The women's page isn't where I want my stuff to be. I want to be read by men, too.” Especially by men, since they thought they ran the world as well as it could be run.

He swallowed the liver, which had suddenly proved hard to chew. “I never interfere with what Massey-Folkes wants to do.”

That wasn't what she had heard. Men had been fired on notes that came from this flat or from the country house in Bucks. “I shouldn't want you to. Actually, I think Quentin would give me my column if he can find someone else to be women's editor.”

“Quentin?
”

She smiled. “It's all perfectly innocent. He likes my legs, but that's all there is to it. He likes my copy better.”

“
Well, he's the—” he almost said “the boss” but he knew she wouldn't believe it. “He runs the paper. There's just one thing. If he gives you your column, you don't come to any horse shows and write any more of your guff. Understand? You ready for coffee? I never eat sweets at lunch.”

“Oh. I was looking forward to bread-and-butter pudding or tapioca custard. I'd heard you believe in sensible food.”

“There you go, more guff.” But he smiled and wondered if she liked roses.

4

I

“AS ONE
who was there myself for a while, I'd like to know, Mrs. Roux, how an older woman feels being at the top?”

Cleo knew the questioner. She was a red-head, had been Miss Something-or-other and was a movable ornament, like rented plastic flowers, at receptions and parties around town. It was rumoured that she earned extra money as a lay-by for pop stars on the road; to certain golfing show business stars she was known as the British Open. When her legs were together she wrote occasional interviews for one of the celebrity-orientated weeklies.

“Who are you, young lady?” said Claudine Roux.

“Rhonda Buick. I was Miss Galaxy 1963.” She was a fading star now, she knew, but she never used metaphors like that in her stories. She would have been a nice moral girl if she had been plain.

“My belated congratulations. I'm afraid I missed that—would you call it an event?”

“It was for me,” said poor Miss Buick, laying her head on the block.

“I'm sure it was. Anything would be.”

My God, thought Cleo, and they call
me
the Hatchet Lady. She decided then that she would ask no questions at this press conference. She had only come to it because she had wanted to see what a First Lady of the Press was like. That was how the hand-out had billed her: Mrs. Claudine Roux, First Lady of the New York Press. Mrs. Roux had come to London after buying a British publishing house and the press conference had been called for her to explain why. Americans buying British publishing houses was on a plundering par with their buying British castles or bridges. Or so the man from
The Times
seemed to think.

“You're wrong, young man. English literature is part of the American heritage and I see this as an investment in our common heritage—” It was glib, but Claudine Roux had an imperious dignity about her
that
would have stopped even a man from
The Times
from accusing her of such a thing.

Cleo lost interest. She knew as well as anyone that no reporter or columnist ever got a real story out of a press conference; but, when she had called the Connaught Hotel to ask for a private interview, Mrs. Roux's secretary had said that Mrs. Roux never gave such interviews. So Cleo, wanting a look at a woman who owned one of the most influential newspapers in the United States, had come to the press conference. Cats, she thought, may look at queens as well as kings.

Then, getting up to move quietly out of the room, she saw Tom Border standing by the door. It seemed to her that she caught her breath, but she put it down to indigestion; she had rushed her lunch to get here. There was no reason why she should be surprised or excited to see Tom. He had said he was a drifter and drifters turned up anywhere.

He gave her the old slow smile when she took his arm and pulled her out of the room. “I saw you in there. I was waiting for you to jump up and go for the Old Lady.”

“It was like the Five O'Clock Follies in Saigon. She wasn't saying anything I wanted to hear. What are you doing here—passing through?”

“I got in yesterday.” He didn't appear to have changed, he looked as much as ever like bones in a bag. “I'm joining the
New York Courier's
bureau here in London.”

“You work for Mrs. Roux? Oh, you're just the man I want! Come and I'll buy you a drink.”

The press conference had been held in the publishing house in Bedford Square. Cleo found a nearby pub, almost empty, and they took their drinks to a corner table. She looked at him and felt a complexity of emotions that she hadn't expected.

“I wrote you a note after I heard you'd been wounded.”

“I got it.” He sipped his beer, tasting it as if he were a connoisseur. “I like English beer, even when it's warm. I didn't answer your note, Cleo old girl. There didn't seem much point.”

“How's your wound? Where were you hit?”

“In the ass.” He grinned. “I was running away. It left a nice scar, but not one I can show off. You're showing no scars.” He looked at her sideways, as if she might contradict him.

“No visible ones.” She had none at all, or none that she was aware of. But women like to hold an ace, or a scar, up their sleeve; it comes in handy during their martyrdom season. Or so she had heard her
father,
a self-proclaimed expert on women, say. “But this is a tough town. The English aren't as civilized as they like to think.”

“You've done all right. Your own column—we all dream about that. Are you married or anything?”

“No. You?”

He shook his head, gave the same slow smile. “When I went back to Friendship to convalesce, my mother had the girls lined up. But I heard the clack of faraway typewriters—”

“You always had a flair for the lousy poetic phrase.”

They both smiled, all at once comfortable again with each other. “I went to New York and got a job on the
Courier.
Two weeks ago they offered me the job in the London bureau. They're cutting down on staff and they wanted a single man, one they could push around Europe at a moment's notice. The
Courier
isn't making the money it used to.”