The Beaufort Sisters Read online

  ‘What happened to Lazia and his gangsters?’

  ‘Nothing. Daddy went to the police department, but they just didn’t want to know. Lazia was hand-in-glove with Tom Pendergast and the police didn’t want to tread on the boss’ toes.’

  ‘I’m getting a new respect for your father.’

  ‘I’m hoping that one of these days you and he will understand each other exactly. You’re still getting used to each other. I think he admires you for wanting to start at the bottom. But I wish you’d chosen somewhere less smelly than the stockyards.’

  6

  Michael Lucas Davoren was born on Labor Day, 1946 – an appropriate day, as his mother remarked, since his birth was not easy. He came into the world reluctantly and for the first minute of his life was as poor as he would ever be. Then the two doctors and the nurse and all the trappings took over; his swaddling clothes might have been a coronation robe. Lucas and Edith made sure that their first grandchild, even if his name was not Beaufort, should begin life in proper Beaufort style. The nursery was re-decorated and re-furnished, a night- and a day-time nurse were engaged. Toys that would not be used for months or even years swamped the nursery and Edith even ordered a bookshelf of children’s books.

  ‘He has the best library of any illiterate in America,’ said Tim.

  ‘Don’t be churlish, darling,’ said Nina. ‘All grandparents get carried away like that.’

  ‘But Christ Almighty – what are they leaving us to buy him? I’d like to bring him home something, but there’s nothing he hasn’t got!’

  ‘You’re bringing home the smell of the stockyards.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He softened, stroked her golden hair as it lay on the pillow beside his own dark head. ‘By the time our next one comes along I’ll be taking it all for granted again.’

  But there were to be no more children for Tim and Nina. Her gynaecologist, Dr Voss, was a man who delivered babies and punches with the same precision. ‘Your uterus is useless from now on. Forget about any more children. Consider yourself lucky young Michael came out okay.’

  Tim got over the disappointment soon enough, but it remained with Nina not only for the next few months but for years to come. She reacted by slipping into the attitude of her parents and spoiling Michael unrestrainedly. He was not allowed to utter a yelp without being picked up and soothed; breezes, draughts and heavy breathing were kept from him as if they were gusts from the plague. Tim was the only one who didn’t spoil him, breathing anthrax, foot-and-mouth and a dozen other animal diseases all over his only son. Michael survived both treatments.

  In February 1947 the Davorens moved into their new house.

  ‘I love it,’ said Tim and Nina knew that he meant it. ‘It’s – comfortable. What a home should be.’

  They were walking round the paths, a habit each of them looked forward to, knowing it was a way of being together for a while before going back to the main house and dinner with the family. Now they had moved into their own house Nina decided she liked the routine and they would keep it up.

  ‘I’m keeping the staff to a minimum. I don’t want us overrun.’

  ‘Good idea. For starters, could we fire the nurse? I think it’s time Michael stood on his own two feet.’

  ‘He’s less than six months old. Don’t you think he’s a bit young for that?’

  ‘Not if his mum and dad stand on either side of him.’

  His tone was easy, almost flippant, but she knew he was serious. She was too happy to argue; besides, the idea appealed to her. It would be another way of showing him that she could be independent when she tried. She had begun to fuss less and less over the baby, who was now allowed to cry sometimes for two minutes before being picked up.

  ‘All right, the nurse goes. I’m so happy, darling.’ She squeezed his arm and he returned the pressure but said nothing. After a moment she said, ‘But you’re not. What’s the matter?’

  He was silent for a few steps, the gravel crunching beneath his feet like the sound of his thoughts being sorted out. ‘I think I made a mistake going to work at the stockyards. The chaps I work with in the yards are all right, but the fellows in the office, the manager and two or three others, think I’m after their jobs. My future down there has about as much promise as a steer’s.’

  ‘Well, we’d better speak to Daddy – ’

  ‘We shan’t speak to him. This is between you and me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that he should put any pressure on those men. I meant he can find a position for you with one of the other companies. Something where you don’t come home smelling like Buffalo Bill.’

  They had reached the house. He said nothing until they were inside and upstairs in their bedroom. Then he took her by the shoulders and pressed her down on the bed.

  ‘Are we going to make love? Before dinner?’

  ‘Sit up. You talk about me being sex mad. Sit up.’ She raised herself and he sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Now listen to me. From now on you don’t go near your father regarding anything about me. If I want him to do something, I’ll go to him myself. Understand?’

  She stared at him, then slowly nodded. ‘You’re not taking things for granted, are you? Not even now.’

  ‘Certain things, yes. But I’m not going to become your father’s puppet. Hold it – ’ He held up a hand as she started to protest. ‘He doesn’t think of himself as a puppet-master, but that’s what he is. With you, your sisters, me, everyone who works for him. The only one who escapes is your mother.’

  She was about to argue with him, but only out of her loyalty to her father. Then she realized she had no argument: what he had said was true. At least in regard to herself and her sisters; she had no idea how much power her father wielded over those who worked for him. She had been brought up in a private world: even the years at Vassar and the six months in Germany had been only half-opened windows on the world at large. She knew that money, in a money society, was power; there had been a teacher at Vassar who had taunted his students with that lesson. She was all at once conscious of the fact that she was ignorant of what everyone outside the family thought of Lucas Beaufort. The kidnappers in Germany had taught her nothing except that the family wealth could make her father vulnerable from certain angles. But at the same time she wondered how many children in other families, rich or poor, were in the dark as to what the rest of the world thought of their fathers. Public opinion was a prism she had never examined.

  ‘All right,’ she conceded, tasting disloyalty for the first time and not liking it. ‘What are you going to do? Go into business on your own?’

  ‘Doing what? I told your father once that I thought of being a teacher, but I know now I’d be no good at it. I don’t have enough patience to care whether someone would learn anything from me. As for going into business, what could I do? Take off your dress.’

  ‘Making love is no answer. We have a problem – ’

  He took his hands from her, rolled over on his back and looked up at the bed canopy. It was a copy of a French tapestry: Diana stood with her hunting dogs, like a greyhound trainer who had lost her shirt at the races. Her blue silk eyes looked straight down at the bed, a voyeur who amused him. But not this evening: he was beyond amusement. None of the goddesses, especially Diana, could help him. Except, perhaps, one of the bitch-goddesses and he had never trusted any of them.

  ‘We’ll work it out,’ he said listlessly.

  A long time later she wondered if that was the moment when his defeat began. But right then, the telephone rang. She leaned across him and picked it up.

  ‘Darling,’ said her mother, ‘I have a wonderful idea! You must have a house-warming party.’

  Nina felt the string being pulled: her mother, too, was a puppeteer. ‘Mother, I don’t think I really want a party just now – ’

  Underneath her she saw Tim looking at her expressionlessly. His face was close to hers, only part of it visible: his one eye was like a dark marble, telling her nothing. She lifted herse
lf from him, put her hand over the phone.

  ‘Mother wants us to throw a house-warming party.’

  He shrugged, his shoulder rubbing against her stomach. ‘Why not? We haven’t played host to anyone since we got here.’

  She sat up, turned her back on him. ‘All right, Mother. We’ll have a party. Just one thing, though – I want to plan it all on my own.’

  There was silence at the other end of the line. At last, with a sigh that was a plain reproof: ‘Of course, darling. But if you need any help – ’

  7

  ‘I hate to admit it,’ said the railroad president, ‘but there have been worse Presidents than Harry Truman.’

  ‘In some banana republic,’ said the banker. ‘Not in this country.’

  ‘I believe in the work ethic,’ said the banker’s wife. ‘I don’t know what the workers would do without it.’

  ‘Women’s rights?’ said the retired general. ‘If they’d been important they’d have been discussed at Potsdam. Right, Ethel?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said his wife. ‘Permission to stand easy now?’

  Nina moved through the froth of party talk, feeling a pride that was new to her: hostess in her own home. The party was already a success, an instant house-warming; Nina took smug secret pride in the knowledge that it had been due solely to her own efforts. She had chosen the caterers, showing her independence by ignoring her mother’s usual choice; she had made out the guest list, splitting it between her parents’ friends and her own. It had disturbed her that she had created an awkward moment by asking Tim if there was anyone he would like to invite.

  ‘Only Bumper Cassidy. But I don’t think he’d fit in. He’s my sidekick down at the yards.’

  ‘Darling, invite him!’

  He had shaken his head. ‘He would only feel out of place and so would his wife. She’s a waitress in a joint on 12th Street.’

  ‘My, how you get around when I’m not with you. Sidekick. Joint on 12th Street. You’re becoming more American every day.’

  ‘Tell your father. It’ll make his year.’

  She approached her father now, sliding into his arm as he crooked it out for her. ‘Nina, it’s the best party I’ve been to in years. Where’d you get that band?’

  ‘George was my talent scout. I got them specially for you.’

  ‘Great. I haven’t heard music like that since I was a young man and used to go to the Old Kentucky Barbecue down on the Paseo. How much are you paying them?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘Don’t spoil them. I can remember when you could get Hot Lips Page for three dollars a night. Where’s Tim?’

  ‘Out on the veranda dancing with Sally.’

  Tim had already danced with Miss Stafford, Edith’s secretary, a plump plain woman who was a snob but likeable and who thought Tim was a real-life version of Ronald Coleman. She lived in the past and Tim played up to her with a courtliness that made her laugh but didn’t offend her by mocking her. She was only one of his conquests among all the women, family and staff, on the Beaufort estate.

  Now he was charming Sally who, at her first adult party, was in seventh heaven and Tim’s arms, floating inches above the floor. ‘You dance like Ginger Rogers. Or a ballerina. Why don’t you become a dancer?’

  ‘I hate indoors. You know what my ambition is? To win the Indy 500.’

  ‘Sally my love, don’t be a racing driver. Stay feminine.’

  ‘I’m not a lesbian, if that’s what you’re thinking – ’

  My God, what happened to the innocent girls of my youth? ‘Nothing was further from my mind. I don’t think they allow lesbians into the pits at Indianapolis.’

  Sally shrieked, clutching him. ‘Oh Tim, I adore you! Divorce Nina and marry me!’

  ‘A child bride – just what I’ve always wanted. But don’t they hang a man for that here in Missouri?’

  ‘Daddy would fix that.’

  ‘Just the man I’d ask. Can I tear myself away now and dance with Meg?’

  ‘Oh God, her. Look at her – all those boys hanging around – ’

  ‘You’ll be like that yourself some day.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  Tim left her, moved across to Margaret and took her away from the six boys hanging around. ‘Thanks for rescuing me. Boys that age are so gauche. I think I like older men.’

  ‘We have our uses. Would you mind backing off a little? Your sister, my wife, is watching us.’

  She blushed and was embarrassed, proving she was still only seventeen going on eighteen. ‘Oh God. That’s the way boys expect you to dance.’

  ‘The gauche ones. Some older men, too. But not this one, not in front of his wife.’ They danced sedately for a while, Jane Austen set to A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Then he said, ‘Let’s head down towards your mother.’

  ‘Are you working your way through the Beaufort women tonight?’

  ‘All of them. I have a date with Prue at midnight in her room.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s man-mad. At six.’

  Smoothly as a gigolo he left Margaret and took Edith in his arms. They moved back down the veranda to There Goes That Song Again, which someone had requested and which the band was playing as if they had been insulted.

  ‘Tim, we don’t seem to talk to each other very much these days.’

  ‘I’m so busy being a bread-winner, husband and father, I don’t have time for other women. But let me know when Lucas is out of town and I’ll pop over.’

  Edith didn’t respond to flirting. ‘Were you a philanderer before you met Nina? You have a way with women.’

  ‘Would you expect me to admit it if I had been?’

  ‘Unhappy men sometimes do stray, just as a diversion.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m unhappy?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean you and Nina. That part is happy enough. But you don’t really like America, do you?’

  ‘America is a very big country.’

  ‘All right. Kansas City. You don’t like it, do you?’

  He smiled, took her through some intricate steps which she had a little difficulty in following. ‘That would be tantamount to saying I don’t like the family, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Tantamount. You sound like Walter Lippmann. Yes, I suppose it would be tantamount to saying you don’t like us. But I don’t believe that.’

  ‘Edith – don’t worry. I love you all. I’d love you even more if we didn’t live quite so much on top of each other. Offended?’

  ‘No, I just missed my step.’ The band, on orders from Lucas, had thrown There Goes That Song Again out the window and had started in on Make Believe Rag. Lucas stood by the band, foot tapping, face thirty years younger. ‘You can’t blame me, Tim. I’ve never tied Nina to my apron strings.’

  ‘Edith, when did you ever wear an apron? I’m not blaming anyone in particular. It’s the circumstances – ’ He appreciated her intelligence and tact in not asking for an explanation of the circumstances. ‘Nina and I should have gone down to live on the plantation. I think I’d have made an ideal Massa Tim.’

  ‘You can still go down there. Do you want me to talk to Nina?’

  ‘Take your apron off, Edith.’

  ‘What? Oh. You mean stop interfering? It’s difficult for a mother like me not to interfere. I grew up in a social frame of mind where mothers expected their daughters to marry within their own circle. Their own class, I suppose you’d call it in England.’ Despite her respect for perspective, Edith’s world was still small and she felt safe in it. The kidnapping of Nina had had an effect on her, the depth of which not even Lucas suspected. She had presented a brave, calm face to everyone at the time, but in her secret self there was wreckage, the realization that the world was full of enemies for people like themselves. ‘You’ve met all our friends – there are practically no outsiders. Some of the younger ones, maybe, have other ideas – Nina, for instance. The war changed things. I try, Tim, but it is difficult for me. Lucas and I are selfish, I k
now, but we want our family around us. And we think of you as family, Tim.’

  But I’ll always be an outsider; but not for the reasons you think. He had belonged to a middle-class family who had always had enough money to get by, mainly because their wants and ambitions had been small. His father had been a suburban solicitor who had been more than content with his house in Ealing with a modest mortgage on it, the second-hand Wolseley car and membership of the local tennis club. Wealth, real riches, was something the family never thought about, as they never thought about the families who had the wealth, the Grosvenors, the Cavendishes, the Howards. Perhaps it had something to do with the English system: he might have been different had he been an American. Ambition, even envy, was not considered off-side in this country. He was handicapped by his upbringing, by a mother and father who had, without ever mentioning the subject, taught him to be satisfied with his lot. But these days he felt like a man who, accustomed to everyday sunsets, was all at once confronted with the pyrotechnics of Judgement Day. It was an image he never confided to Nina. Something else he also never confessed to her, and only reluctantly to himself, was that he was afraid of the seduction of money. Since coming here to Kansas City he had realized he had a weakness he had never suspected in himself: if he had enough money of his own he would be nothing but a hedonist. That was the ultimate and real reason for not taking the Beaufort riches for granted. It was not something he could explain to Edith.

  He handed Edith over to Lucas, collected Nina and took her into the buffet supper. ‘It’s a marvellous success, darling. We should do this more often.’

  ‘You’re really enjoying yourself? Truly?’

  ‘Darling heart – ’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Truly.’

  8

  The stockyards’ strike began on the day the Paris conference on the newly announced Marshall Plan opened.

  ‘Truman should be running this country,’ said Lucas, ‘instead of trying to run Europe. We’ve got enough damned Reds here without trying to stop the Reds over there. Let ’em look after themselves.’