The Beaufort Sisters Read online

  ‘Yes. So if I win I’ll be five years ahead.’

  ‘You might also be out of a job,’ said Lucas, but managed to smile as he said it.

  Harry Truman came home to Independence, worn out by his whistle-stop campaign by train across the country. But on the front page of the Star, which had not endorsed him, he showed the old chirpy confident smile – ‘The people are going to win this election, not the pollsters.’

  ‘Bull,’ said Lucas, tying his black tie in front of the dressing-table mirror; Edith had decided that a Republican victory should be celebrated in proper style. ‘The pollsters are right, every one of them. He can’t goddam win!’

  ‘Watch your language, sweetheart – you’re starting to sound like him.’

  Though the word had not then been coined to describe them, the Establishment of Kansas City was there that night at the Beaufort party. The celebration started as soon as they arrived; guests were drinking champagne toasts to victory within ten minutes of being inside the house. There was a television set and a radio in every room; the big house resembled a luxury campaign headquarters. The men looked rather sombre in their tuxedos, but the women provided a look of bunting: gowns of every colour swirled through the rooms, visible symbols of everyone’s gay spirits. Lucas had sent George Biff down to 12th Street to recruit a band; it jammed its way through a score of numbers, playing with such verve that one would have thought that every member of the band was a ragtime Republican. The only number they didn’t play was The Missouri Waltz, Mr Truman’s own favourite.

  Nina, radiant in pink, was enjoying herself immensely. She had no interest in politics, but tonight’s party had all the bright revelry of parties she could remember from her girlhood. She danced with old boy-friends, hugged old girl-friends, raised her glass a dozen times in victory salutes with her parents’ friends. Then, wanting a respite, she went out on the wide enclosed veranda with Magnus McKea.

  ‘Where’s Tim?’ he asked.

  She had been enjoying herself so much she hadn’t missed him. ‘Probably trying to dodge Daddy. He has a bet on, you know. He thinks Mr Truman will win.’

  ‘God forbid. I hope he’s not broadcasting it.’

  ‘Tim is more discreet than that. What time will we hear the first returns?’

  ‘Not for another hour at least. By then all the crowd should be pie-eyed, the way they’re going. Ah, Mr Minett. Quite a night, eh?’

  Frank Minett was a heavily-built, medium-height man who looked several years older than he actually was. He was ambitious and that gave him a certain spurious aggressiveness which not-too-observant people mistook for confidence. But he was out of his depth in this house tonight, acutely aware of the power and money that he would never have.

  ‘Quite a night, Mr McKea. I was looking for Meg – she wants me to explain the trends in voting as they come in.’

  ‘No need for that,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s going to be a landslide all over.’

  Then, looking through the wide french doors into the living-room, Nina saw Tim and Margaret come into the room, both of them looking a little dishevelled, as if they had been out in the rain and wind that had sprung up. Margaret said something to Tim, held his hand while she smiled at him, then went to join her mother and father. Tim looked around, saw Nina out on the veranda and came out, patting down his wind-blown hair. There were rain-spots on the shoulder of his dinner-jacket and a smudge of lipstick on his shirt.

  ‘You look as if you’ve been celebrating already,’ said Magnus.

  ‘He’s backing Mr Truman,’ said Nina. ‘What’s he got to celebrate?’

  Magnus and Frank Minett seemed to retreat without actually moving. Neither of them was married but they recognized the electricity in a marital storm.

  ‘Oh, there’s Meg!’ Minett was gone as if he had been jerked away by an invisible wire.

  ‘Think I need a refill,’ said Magnus, not even looking at his almost full glass. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Tim when he and Nina were alone, ‘my deodorant can’t be working.’

  ‘Your charm must be working. You have lipstick on your shirt.’

  He smiled, unabashed. ‘Meg’s. Or did you think it might be someone else’s?’

  Suddenly she felt ridiculous, wondering what had made her so jealous and suspicious of Margaret. He seemed only mildly concerned, as if perplexed that she should suspect him of any sort of philandering with Margaret or anyone else.

  ‘Sorry. I think I’ve had too much champagne.’

  It was only later, just as she was about to drop off to sleep in his arms in their bed, that it came to her that he had made no attempt to explain why Margaret’s lipstick was on his shirt. But that was after they had made love and she knew from experience that the mind had a way of shooting off at tangents after sex, thought trying to re-establish itself again after animal instinct.

  The party began to wind down around midnight when it became apparent that Dewey was not going to have a landslide victory after all, that in fact President Truman was leading in the early returns. Magnus McKea got on the phone to the Star and came back to report that the political writers were now working on second, revised drafts of their columns.

  ‘They tell me that Harry Truman is out at Excelsior Springs, has gone to bed and is sound asleep. The man’s too damned cocky.’

  ‘Going to sleep while feeling cocky – that’s no mean feat,’ said Tim. ‘We had a Prime Minister who used to go to sleep, Stanley Baldwin, but that was because he couldn’t stay awake once he sat down in the Commons.’

  ‘You’re looking cocky, too,’ said Lucas.

  ‘Would you make out the cheque to cash, just in case you decide to commit suicide before the banks open? I don’t want Magnus as your executor freezing all transactions.’

  The men grouped around the television set in Lucas’ study. A few women, Margaret included, hovered in the background. Edith had looked in once or twice, but like most of the women at the party she knew better than to intrude too much. When things were going bad politically, men found women a nuisance. Politics, Lucas had told her, was a male disease that the weaker sex should avoid.

  It was Nina, inoculated by too much champagne, who intruded. She breezed into the study, looked at the glum faces, then announced, ‘Cheer up, for God’s sake! It’s not going to be the end of the world if Truman wins!’

  ‘Darling heart,’ said Tim, the only cheerful face in the room, ‘you are risking being scalped. I believe the gentlemen here are just about to join the Indians.’

  Frank Minett laughed, then strangled it as several of the black-tied Indians looked at him as if he should be scalped. Margaret, sitting on the arm of his chair, cuffed his ear. Lucas didn’t even glance at him but looked at his favourite as if she had hit him with a poisoned arrow.

  ‘Nina, we’re not worried about the world. It’s what that feller can do to this country that concerns us. Now please stop acting like a high school cheer leader.’

  ‘I think I should make a confession – I voted for Mr Truman.’ She had not, but she was in a rebellious mood; something had gone wrong with her evening and she wasn’t sure what it was. ‘I’m disgusted that anyone from the Midwest could vote for a New Yorker like that Tom Dewey.’

  ‘I apologize for my daughter, gentlemen,’ said Lucas.

  ‘He feels like Mrs Brutus,’ said Tim. ‘Darling heart, you shouldn’t stab Caesar in this temple.’

  ‘I think you’re both drunk,’ said Margaret, coming to her father’s aid.

  ‘French champagne,’ said Tim. ‘It wouldn’t have happened if we had been drinking domestic stuff. Never trust the French. Remember saying that, Lucas?’

  ‘I hate to say it,’ said Magnus McKea, ‘but I think it’s all over. I shall go home and get drunk. On domestic bourbon.’

  ‘Spoken like an honourable loser,’ said Tim. He sounded as recklessly rebellious as Nina; she had never seen him so opposed to her father in public. He was smiling all the time, seemed in high g
ood humour, but he was getting malicious satisfaction from the fact that he looked like winning his bet with Lucas. ‘I’ll be over in the morning, Lucas old chap. Shall we leave the wake, darling heart?’

  Nina took his arm, ‘Bear up, Daddy. You only have to wait another four years. Who knows whom you’ll find?’

  Next day, after he had collected his cheque from Lucas, Tim went downtown to the Muehlebach Hotel and managed to shake hands with President Truman. ‘My father-in-law Lucas Beaufort asked me to give you his congratulations, Mr President,’ he lied.

  The President’s eyes twinkled behind his glasses. ‘I’ll bet. Ask him if he’d like to come to Washington and work for me. I’m looking for someone to run the social welfare programme.’

  Tim went across and deposited his cheque in his account in the City and Country Bank. The teller’s eyes went up when he saw the amount and the signature; Tim was tempted to tell him what the cheque represented, but refrained. Last night’s champagne was now a sour taste in his mouth. There was also another sour taste, the memory of what had happened with Margaret in one of the empty rooms above the stables. His sense of guilt was doubled by the knowledge that he had enjoyed being with her and that he could be tempted again.

  He stood outside the bank in a drizzle of rain wondering where he might go. He was thinking of the ends of the earth, but eventually he went home. Or what, in today’s mood, passed for home.

  2

  Though they never came to open warfare and they were always polite to each other, the gap between Tim and Lucas widened. Nina only slowly became aware of it, because Tim never mentioned it. She also slowly became aware of a change in him, a retreat into himself. It was not so much a shutting-out of her as that he seemed to become absent-minded about her. He was just as passionate in bed; but then it is difficult to be absent-minded about sex unless one is a professional. But the light-hearted courting of her that had been such a custom of his was now only an occasional whim. She wondered if this was how it was with all marriages, if husbands and wives, though still in love, stopped being lovers. On a couple of occasions when he went off on business trips he neglected to phone her at night. She even, to her shame, began to look for signs that he was having an affair with another woman, but there was none. Her one stab of jealousy towards Margaret had already been forgotten, put out of her mind by the fact that Margaret’s time now seemed taken up with Frank Minett.

  ‘Is he getting serious?’ she asked one day when she had volunteered to pick up Margaret at the university. ‘Prue tells me he’s always hanging around the house.’

  ‘Prue notices too much. Yes, he’s serious. But I’m not. The trouble is, Daddy thinks he’s just great. He wants Frank to leave the university and go into the bank.’

  ‘I thought Frank’s subject was politics, not economics.’

  ‘Frank’s subject is anything that’s going to get him to the top.’

  ‘You sound as if you don’t like him.’

  ‘Oh, I like him all right. But I’d like to do my own choosing, not have Daddy do it for me – which is virtually what he’s doing. You were lucky. I mean, choosing Tim without any interference from Daddy.’

  ‘Oh, he tried to interfere. He’ll never forgive Tim for being independent.’ She paused. ‘Have you noticed any change in him lately? Tim, I mean.’

  Intent on driving, she did not notice Margaret’s careful glance at her. ‘No. Why?’

  Nina took her eyes off the road for a moment. ‘You sound as if I shouldn’t have asked you that question.’

  ‘Maybe that’s how I do feel. He’s your husband – we shouldn’t be talking about him.’

  ‘We’ve been talking about Frank.’ She knew she had made a mistake. If Margaret herself had been married it might have been different, but Margaret had no experience to draw upon, had, as far as she knew, never been in love, not really in love. ‘No, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s just that – well, Daddy’s turned his back on him. Tim’s not going to get anywhere in the oil company.’

  ‘How do you know? Has he told you?’

  Nina turned the car in through the gates of the estate, nodded to the security guard as he saluted them. ‘No. But I recognize the signs. It’s going to be the stockyards all over again. I’m beginning to think we should go away again.’

  ‘Where would you run to this time?’

  Nina jerked the car to a halt, skidding it in the gravel. ‘That sounds so – so brutal!’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it? If you take Tim away from here again – ’

  ‘For your information, I didn’t take him away last time. It was a mutual idea – ’

  ‘You still went, that’s the point, and it didn’t work out. You’re never going to win your fight with Daddy by trying to beat him from a distance.’

  ‘You’re talking about transferring to Vassar next semester. Is that how you’re going to win your fight over Frank?’

  ‘My case is different. I’m not married to Frank and not likely to be. I just want to get away from here for a year or two. I’ll come back eventually because I don’t think I’d want to live anywhere else. But Daddy’s not going to run my life the way he’s tried to run yours and Tim’s. Thanks for picking me up.’

  She got out of the car and ran up the steps and into the big house, not looking back. Nor did Nina look after her: instead she looked across the lawns to where Tim, George Biff and Michael were playing with a tennis ball. Tim had been spending a great deal of time with Michael and George; as a mother she was delighted but as a wife she sometimes felt she was in the way. She looked at the man’s world there on the green lawns and suddenly wished for another child, a daughter. She drove on down to the stables, garaged the car and walked back up the winding path. The air held the promise of a hot dry summer to come and she wondered where she, Tim and Michael could go to avoid it. Perhaps to Minnesota or even Maine. A long way from her father.

  ‘Two and a half years old and he has the reflexes of Fred Perry,’ said Tim, showing his chauvinism when it came to sport.

  ‘And Sugar Ray Robinson, too,’ said George, who wouldn’t have known Fred Perry from Suzanne Lenglen but knew his boxers. ‘He gets beat at tennis, he can knock out the referee.’

  Michael was a sturdy child, big for his age and seemingly without fear. He tumbled about the lawn, chasing after the ball when it was thrown to him, falling over and coming up gurgling with laughter. It was obvious that his father had now become his particular favourite, even over George. He saw Nina, threw the tennis ball at her, then rushed at her and almost bowled her off her feet.

  ‘Terrific tackler, too,’ said Tim. ‘We’ll put him down for Cambridge next year. Eton or Harrow first, then Cambridge.’

  ‘He’s going to be educated in England?’ She meant to say it lightly but it came out tart. Which was her real feeling.

  ‘I thought we’d discussed it.’ He managed to get the proper light note; he tossed the ball high into the air and caught it to his son’s great delight. ‘English education is still the best, despite the socialists.’

  Michael saw his aunts, Sally and Prue, come out of the rear of the big house. He screamed at them, then galloped off towards them. Tim nodded at George. ‘Keep an eye on him, George. Don’t let the girls spoil him.’

  ‘No chance. He’s like me, a man’s man.’

  As she and Tim walked towards their own house, Nina said, ‘I don’t think we’ve said a word about Michael’s education.’

  ‘No, we haven’t. That was why I was surprised when your father told me everything was arranged.’

  ‘Nothing is arranged! Did you argue with him?’

  ‘I no longer argue with your father. In another nine or ten years, when Michael is ready to go to boarding school, your father may no longer be with us. He’s almighty, but I don’t think he’s immortal.’

  She changed the subject abruptly. Criticism was not one of her pleasures, especially of him. ‘Why home so early?’

  ‘I’ve decided I’m
working too hard.’

  ‘Are you getting lazy?’ She smiled, straining to be light.

  He bounced the tennis ball on the close-cut lawn as they walked. ‘Yes, I think I am. Or put it another way – I ask myself is there any point in working? Daddy, I’ve learned, is invincible. He is never going to allow me to be sacked from the oil company – he would never let that happen, for your sake. But I’m never going to get very far up the ladder, either. The truth is, I am not a businessman at heart. The thought of selling millions or billions of gallons of oil doesn’t thrill me in the least. And the word has got through to Daddy that the marketing division finds me less than enthusiastic.’

  ‘What’s got into you? You sound, I don’t know, shiftless. You were never like that before.’

  ‘I think I was, only you never saw it. Neither did I. Darling heart, don’t be offended by this. I’ve decided I like being a rich girl’s husband, but I’m not going to work at it. Steve Hamill had a word to describe me – a bludger. If one can swallow one’s conscience, and I’ve been chewing mine for some time, there’s no pain at all in being a bludger. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the way it is going to be, I’m afraid. I enjoy luxury. Just as you do,’ he added unmaliciously.

  ‘I was born to it,’ she said, as if that were some sort of argument. But he was unimpressed and she went on, ‘What are you going to do, then?’

  ‘I’ll do what all the other bludgers – ’

  ‘Don’t use that word.’

  He looked at her quizzically, bounced the ball a few times. She felt awkward, somehow naked; this was a crisis in their marriage and she was unprepared for it. From the maples at the rear of the park there came the plaintive note of a mourning dove; but across the lawns the laughter of Michael, Sally and Prue was a counterpoint. Somewhere a lawn-mower whirred and out on the parkway traffic growled, hummed and sighed. In the midst of an ordinary day, surrounded by the security that she treasured, she felt her life falling apart. She stared at him for some help, but he was blind to or ignored her silent plea.