The Beaufort Sisters Page 16

  ‘No.’ Then she had to prompt him: ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well – well, I thought some payment would be in order, you know what I mean? Just between you and me.’

  ‘Do you have photos? I understand you people go in for things like that.’

  ‘I’ve got a photo of you and Mr Davoren coming out of a motel over in Leavaworth. But I got none of you in flagrante delicto, as they say. I don’t go in for that sort of stuff.’

  ‘I admire your ethics.’ She sounded calm and composed again; but she felt that parts of her whole being had been chipped away. ‘I take it you and I are to have some sort of business deal. How much?’

  ‘Ah well – ’ Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses gave him no basis for a blackmail fee. He licked his lips again and took a plunge: ‘I was thinking of $5000.’

  ‘Thinking of it as what? A down payment, a retainer or a flat fee?’

  He noticed she hadn’t even blinked at the sum: he wasn’t used to dealing with the really rich, either as an investigator or a blackmailer. ‘A flat fee. I won’t be back, Mrs Minett, I promise you that.’

  ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

  ‘I’ve been an honest man up till now …’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’

  He nervously adjusted his glasses. Perhaps he had been an honest man, she decided. He looked too uncomfortable for an experienced crook, even a petty one. ‘Maybe you won’t believe this, but it was your father. I’ve never worked for anyone in his class before, I mean his sort of money. I had a chance to get into the big money, I mean my idea of big money, in my profession. I wanted the job of tracing Mr Davoren when he disappeared. But your father turned me down flat. I thought he owed me a chance to try, but he didn’t give it to me. So …’

  ‘So you decided I owed you something? Just so long as you got some Beaufort money?’

  ‘Well, put like that – ’

  ‘I can’t think of any other way of putting it. All right, I’ll pay you. How do you want the money?’

  ‘Cash would be best. I mean, for both of us.’

  ‘Meet me this afternoon where you suggested this morning. The side road the other side of Belton. Three o’clock.’

  ‘I dunno why you didn’t come down there this morning – ’

  ‘I didn’t trust you, Mr Pedemont. To tell you the truth, I thought you might be a kidnapper. Not just a cheap little blackmailer.’

  He flushed, adjusted his glasses again, stood up. ‘One thing I’ve never done, Mrs Minett, is cheat on my wife. Don’t talk to me about being cheap. I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘The door’s behind you.’

  ‘That’s what your old man said. I wonder what he would have said if I’d told him who was sleeping with his son-in-law?’

  She sat on in the living-room after she had heard his rough-engined old car drive away. A maid came in to see if she wanted anything, but she shook her head. The maid, after a curious glance at her, went away. She sat on, unconsciously resting one hand on her belly. She felt locked and frozen into a dark curve that went downwards into the future years. She went to church regularly, but only because her mother insisted; she had never believed in punishment for sin, but now she knew she was being punished. She blinked her eyes, trying to start tears as some relief, but she had never wept easily. Not even now, when she was flooded with self-pity.

  She went into Country Club Plaza that afternoon and drew $5000 from her account in the City and Country Bank branch there. If the teller thought anything of such a large withdrawal he did not show it; she was the daughter of the chairman of the bank and, besides that, $5000 was hardly missed from her account. She went out into the autumn sunlight, crossed the road and sat down on a bench beside the Pool of Four Fauns. Ever since she was a child she had loved the fountains of the city and this had always been her favourite. The fauns spouted water that sparkled in the sun; the fauns themselves looked far too cheerful for her own mood. They mocked her now, reminding her of a time when she had had not a care in the world. She got up hurriedly, avoiding the gaze of two friends she had just seen come out of a store, and walked quickly back to her car. It occurred to her, with sickening irony, that she had been as furtive as this when she had been going to meet Tim.

  She drove south to Belton, found Pedemont waiting for her on the side road. She handed him the money and a slip of paper.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A receipt, Mr Pedemont. My father taught me never to give money to anyone without getting a receipt.’

  ‘Well, I dunno – ’ He looked suspiciously at the slip of paper. ‘It doesn’t say what it’s for.’

  ‘I’ll add that, if you like. How do you want me to word it? Just simply, For Blackmail?’

  ‘Geez, you’re a tough one.’ He signed the paper in a crabbed hand, gave it back to her. ‘You’re not thinking of going to the police, are you?’

  She folded the paper, already wondering where she would hide it when she got home. A shot sounded nearby and she jumped; but it was only some hunters after quail. She was nervous, querulous, anything but tough. But Pedemont would never have known it.

  ‘Not now, Mr Pedemont. But if ever I see you again, I might. You’d better start being an honest man again.’

  ‘Sure.’ For the first time he smiled, a pleasant smile full of good teeth. ‘You stay an honest woman, Mrs Minett.’

  She drove home, adjusting her mind to the future. Whether Pedemont re-appeared or not, she would always be vulnerable. In the months ahead she would strengthen her defences, people would come to wonder at how cool and arrogant she had become; but it would only be because she would be preparing for the worst. But being prepared did not mean that she would be successful in handling the worst if it came. The worst being that Nina or her mother should find out about Tim. She could stand to hurt her father and Frank; but not her sister and mother. She drove on through the rain that had begun to fall heavily, the perfect end to a totally imperfect day.

  Frank came home almost bouncing like a varsity cheerleader. ‘I went in to see your father this afternoon after classes. I’m resigning from the university and joining the Family Trust. Francis B. Minett, vice-president in charge of public relations.’

  ‘What do you know about public relations?’ She tried to sound interested.

  ‘Actually, I’m going to be more of a political lobbyist. Over in Jefferson City, maybe even in Washington when I’m more experienced. Don’t worry, honey. I’ll do all right at it.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’ She kissed him, feeling guilty again; but she wished he wouldn’t call her honey. Already little things about him were beginning to irritate her, rough edges to him that, perhaps because she had not been too seriously interested in him before, she had not noticed. He was not, to put it bluntly, in Beaufort class.

  ‘You want to go out and celebrate?’

  ‘Not tonight, Frank. I’m a little off – ’

  He was solicitous at once. ‘You do look a bit peaked. I’m sorry, honey. I should’ve noticed. I was so taken up with myself – ’

  She put her hand against his cheek, determined to love him. ‘Maybe tomorrow night.’

  ‘Sure. We’ll ask your mother and father if they’d like to go out with us. They could do with a night out. It’s been pretty rough on them, the last couple of months.’

  ‘On us all,’ she said.

  A week later she got a letter from Nina, written from London.

  I’m at the Savoy again, as you can see – I guess I’m a sentimental traveller, she wrote with an insouciant unawareness of how elegantly sentimental she was. I’ve found no sign of Tim and Michael. I’ve decided not to come back home yet awhile – perhaps I’ll stay over here for a year or two. I have a feeling that Tim won’t turn up in K.C. again, that if I hear of or see him again, it will be by chance. And that chance will more likely come on this side of the Atlantic than in America and particularly in K.C. I shan’t stay in London for the winter – I have a rather bit
ter memory of an English winter. I’ve heard of a place I can rent at Cap Ferrat and I think I’ll go down there. Who knows, maybe I’ll become one of those expatriate Americans I used to read about in Scott Fitzgerald and used to envy so much. Except … Well, never mind except. I miss you all …

  Margaret wished she were with Nina, as expatriate as she could possibly be.

  3

  The days slipped by like numbered shadows, disappeared into months that were just as insubstantial: Margaret felt she was in a state of limbo, an un-American state. She did not look forward expectantly to the birth of the baby; it was just there, a part of her thickening body. Frank, perhaps out of deference to the loss of her figure and her sexuality, gave up parading around the bedroom in the nude. A couple of months before it was really necessary she told him they had better not have any more intercourse; she was surprised and a little ashamed that he acquiesced so agreeably. She just hoped, for his sake, that the baby would, by some miracle, have some resemblance to him. At the same time she was glad that she did not have to respond to his love-making.

  Their social life quietened down. Frank, having left the university, had left all his university friends; Margaret realized with distaste that all his friendships were based on how much his friends could help him. Lucas had not yet sent him to Washington, but he came home talking of the new friends he was making every day in business and over in the State capitol in Jefferson City. Lucas, with Tim seemingly put out of his mind if not entirely forgotten, now had a favourite son, if only by marriage. Margaret had married a man who, if he didn’t entirely please her, certainly pleased her parents.

  Beaufort Oil widened its interest in Oklahoma and Texas, where oil was continuing to sprout like liquid weed. Dirt farmers became rich almost overnight: although none of them ever became as rich as the oil companies. But, as economists told anyone who would listen, fortunes were just lying there to be made in America. Up in Boston some masked men made their fortune in a few minutes by robbing Brink’s express office; even Lucas, who had the greatest respect for law and order particularly in regard to private property, admitted he admired the robbers’ big thinking. Nina wrote from Cap Ferrat that she was well, though France, indeed Europe in general, was not. She still had no clues to Tim’s and Michael’s whereabouts.

  Margaret’s baby was born in May 1950 and was named Martha Edith. She was two weeks overdue, but Dr Voss told the father and grandparents that she was two weeks early. That seemed to satisfy everyone that Margaret and Frank had observed the proprieties before marriage. Martha was just a month old when the Korean War broke out. She had colic at the time and neither she, her mother or her grandmother gave a thought to the war.

  Lucas and Frank gave a lot of thought to it. Lucas was appalled that, once again and so soon, American young men were to be killed fighting for a lot of foreigners who would never be properly grateful; at the same time he appreciated that the war would be good for business and anything that cranked up the economy couldn’t be all bad. President Truman called him to Washington and he went this time without complaint or rhetoric, taking Frank with him. Frank, as a new father, was not yet liable for the draft.

  Martha, to Margaret’s great relief, was said by everyone to be the spit’n image of her mother; it was a description appreciated by Frank, who possibly thought his own attributes, hirsute or sexual, would have looked out of place on a girl. He came back from Washington in September, full of bounce and ambition, certain now that he was on his way to the top. He took off his clothes in the bedroom and strutted like a pole vaulter warming up. Margaret, hungry for sex again now, didn’t laugh at him. She took no precautions, wanting, out of a sense of guilt, to give him his own child. By December she was pregnant again.

  ‘I’m happy about it,’ Frank said. ‘But I was hoping we could move to Washington. They’ve asked me to take over a desk in Defence. Your father thinks I should, he says I can build up future contacts for all our companies.’

  Our companies, she noticed. She had remarked his growing confidence, his easier attitude towards her father: he never overstepped the mark but he was no longer deferential. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I don’t think I could cope with the baby and another one on the way, not in Washington. Can’t you fly home each weekend?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was going to be like this – I mean, being away from you so much. But I can’t say no to this job. If I did, they might draft me and I could finish up in Korea. I couldn’t fly home from there for the weekend.’

  She had not learned to love him, despite her hopes, lukewarm though they had been. She had come to be amused by him, sometimes irritated; she had actually begun to feel more mature than he. His enthusiasm for getting to the top seemed almost juvenile to her; born to wealth, she had never been exposed to real ambition. But he was not wicked in his attitude and he had something, she confessed to herself, that Tim had never had: loyalty.

  ‘We’ll have no more children after this one.’ She patted her belly. ‘At least not for a while. We’ll just enjoy each other.’

  ‘I love you, honey.’

  ‘And I love you.’ She kissed him, thinking how easy it was to lie about love. ‘Especially this.’

  She touched him and he rose to the occasion. He lay on his back and admired himself. She restrained herself from asking him if he thought of it as the biggest weapon in the Defence Department. She ran a hand over the mat of him, wondered what he would say if she tried to Hoover him. She giggled, getting hysterical, and had to start acting playful to cover up. Later, when he was asleep, she wept silently, knowing she had ruined her life.

  She had heard no more from Dave Pedemont and she began to feel a little easier. Life settled into a pattern, quieter than she had known when she was single but bearable. Edith, deprived of one grandchild, fussed over Martha; Michael’s nursery was redecorated to suit a girl and preparations were begun long in advance for the next grandchild. Margaret had decided that she and Frank would not build their own house just yet; there would be time for that if and when Nina came home. Nina was living in London again, still hoping, still searching.

  Frank came home in the middle of July 1951 for the birth of his second daughter, Emma. It was a day of disastrous floods in Kansas City, especially in the stockyards area; the Beaufort Cattle Company alone lost over a million dollars in livestock and property. But Frank might have come in from a shining beautiful day. He was unaware of the elements outside as he beamed down at his new child.

  ‘She’s cute, eh? She looks a bit more like me than you. All that hair.’

  ‘Let’s hope it just stays on her head.’

  He laughed heartily, pleased with her, his children, even the flooded world at large. ‘I’m finished in Washington. Did your father tell you I’m coming back as executive vice-president of the bank?’ Then he said wistfully, ‘But I enjoyed Washington, honey. There’s something about that place …’

  Lucas’s relations with President Truman had cooled again when the President had sacked General MacArthur. Feeling a deserter but unable to stay on in Washington any longer, he took the Kansas City floods as an excuse to resign and come home to help organize the city’s flood relief and rehabilitation programme.

  ‘I think it’s time Nina came home, too,’ he said. ‘She’s on a wild goose chase.’

  ‘I wouldn’t suggest it, Daddy,’ said Sally. ‘She’s not exactly enjoying herself over there, but she’s not unhappy. Not as much as she was here,’ she added undiplomatically.

  Sally was eighteen now and due to start at Vassar. She had gone to England to spend the summer with Nina and the two of them had gone on to Paris, the Riviera and Rome; she had come back to Kansas City and confided to Margaret that she could never, never, live in this backwater for the rest of her life. She was an attractive girl, not as beautiful as her two older sisters, and there was still a tomboyish quality about her. She was still crazy about cars and Lucas had bought her a new MG as a going-away-to-college present.

  ‘
Why don’t you take a year off, sweetheart?’ Edith said to Lucas. ‘We could travel, spend some time with Nina. You don’t need to go on making money.’

  ‘I know I don’t need to.’

  ‘Why do you go on then?’ said Margaret: it struck her that it was the first time she had ever asked such a question of her father.

  ‘Satisfaction,’ said her father without hesitation, as if he had given the matter a lot of thought. ‘That’s all there is for people like us. Beyond a certain point, money doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Let me know when I get there, Lucas,’ said Frank Minett.

  It was a Sunday afternoon and they were all having tea on the lawn behind the main house. Frank’s parents were there, and Magnus McKea. Sun umbrellas had been set up to shade the women; Lucas and Magnus both wore straw panamas. Frank and his father sat bare-headed in the sun, not denying their Sicilian complexion.

  ‘We’ll bring Nina home for Christmas,’ said Lucas, ignoring Frank Minett’s comment. Money might not mean anything beyond a certain point, but you never joked about it.

  ‘If she won’t stay, we could all go over there next summer.’

  Lucas shook his head. ‘Next year is election year. We’ll be busy trying to put some respectability back into the White House.’

  ‘Next year’s our chance.’ Jack Minett was an older version of his son, but he was less energetic. He was a professional politician who had learned to take the long view and conserve one’s stamina. ‘Did Frank tell you what he’s planning?’

  ‘Not now, Pop.’ Frank all at once looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Why not now?’ said his mother, looking around for her grandchildren, wondering why a nurse should be allowed to take them over. She was a good-looking woman who would have run to fat if her husband, mindful of the fact that he often needed a partner at political functions, had not told her to stay trim. Republican women, he had noticed, did not run to too much fat. Francesca Minett, under her Harzfeld clothes which she had only been able to afford since her elder son had married money, was still basically a peasant woman. If anything was for the good of her husband and sons, she did it without argument. Even if it meant giving up pasta and gelati and having to touch her toes every night Jack was home. ‘Tell them what you’re going to do, Frank.’