The Beaufort Sisters

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 herself 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 know, 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.’

‘I don’t think there’s a Red down in the yards,’ said Tim. ‘Except Red Ludwig, the feed man, and he makes you look like Joe Stalin. I didn’t think it was possible for a man to be so far to the right without falling off the edge of the world.’

‘Well, someone’s stirring up this trouble. Wanting seventy-five cents an hour as the minimum wage – if we give them that, there’ll be no end to their demands. You get that now, don’t you?’

‘Yes. But the minimum is forty cents an hour.’

‘Are you supporting the demand?’

‘They’re letting me stay neutral. The chaps appreciate my position. But there’s a lot of solidarity down there, Lucas. You won’t employ union labour, but these chaps are as solidly together as if they were a union.’

‘You sound as if you do support them.’

‘I told you, I’m neutral. But I’m leaning a little your way in telling you just how strong their feelings are. They’re not going to back down. I think you ought to meet with them.’

‘I’m not meeting with anyone. I’ve got fellers down there to run the company – I don’t believe in interfering.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Nina, who had been sitting quietly listening to their discussion. ‘I’ll bet you’ve already told management to say no to the men.’

‘A Red in my own family,’ said Lucas. ‘Emma Goldman.’

They were sitting on the enclosed back porch of the Davoren house. Tim and Lucas had played two sets of tennis on the court behind the main house, then they had come across for a beer. Even though they had played late in the afternoon, the July heat had been too much for Lucas and he was exhausted and testy. He was also very red, but in the circumstances of the discussion Nina diplomatically did not mention it. She placidly knitted, a pursuit she had taken up in the past month, telling Tim it would not only keep her occupied but would save them money on Michael’s clothes, a thriftiness which Tim, with a perfectly straight face which she hadn’t missed, said he appreciated. Occasionally she looked out towards the lawns where Michael was crawling around under the benevolent eye of George Biff. The nurse had been got rid of and George, without asking or being asked, had taken over.

‘You’re behaving like Grandfather.’

‘You don’t know how your grandfather behaved.’ Something more personal than the strike had made Lucas irritable. He had always fancied himself as a tennis player, but Tim, playing at only half-pace, had beaten him without the loss of a game.

‘I do know, Daddy. We had a teacher at Vassar who gave us a short course in labour history. Grandfather wasn’t quite as bad as Rockefeller and Henry Ford at breaking strikes, but he was bad enough. I was ashamed when the teacher told us what Grandfather did here in, I think it was 1924, some time then, when he locked out the railroad workers.’

‘Your teacher didn’t show much taste by mentioning that with you in his class.’

‘You don’t learn history by being squeamish. I knew he was trying to make me uncomfortable, he was that sort of man. But I checked and found out he was telling the truth.’

‘There are two sides to every dispute.’

‘Maybe you should go down to the yards and listen to the men’s side.’

Lucas, still red and sweating, wiped his face with his towel. He looked at his favourite, sensing, as he had for some time, that he was losing her day by day. He supposed this happened to all fathers when their daughters married; he wondered how Edith’s father had felt. A father’s rival was his son-in-law and all at once he felt a stab of jealousy towards Tim. He stood up, picked up his racquet and headed for the door with the abrupt departure that was an occasional characteristic of his, as if he had heard a whistle that called him to some other place.

‘Thanks for the game, Tim.’ The screen door banged behind him, a thudding first-act curtain.

‘That’s not the end of our argument with him,’ said Tim.

‘Do you think you should take a week off till all this blows over? We could go down to the plantation, you could do some fishing – ’

‘It’s not going to blow over in a week. The men are as stubborn as your father. And I think it would be cowardice for me to walk out before it was over.’

‘You’re not neutral, are you? You’re on their side.’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Not if you think they’re right. I just can’t imagine how people live on those sort of wages. They can’t live much better than those people I worked amongst in Germany.’

‘Oh, they live better than that. Nobody down at the yards is starving and they’ve all got a roof over their heads when they go home. But Bumper Cassidy told me, even with him and his wife working, they’ve never been out of debt in the fifteen years they’ve been married.’

‘Is he going on strike?’

‘He’s one of the leaders.’

She folded up her knitting, put it away in the expensive embroidered sewing bag that had cost her ten times the price of the wool she was knitting. ‘Don’t get involved, darling,’ she said and went out to Michael and George Biff, closing the screen door quietly behind her.

George picked up the baby, brushed the grass from him. ‘You stopped spoiling him, Miz Nina, he’s a good kid now.’

‘George, when did you become an expert on child raising?’

‘I had six brother and four sisters, all younger’n me. They started yowling, I belt ’em over the ear. They’s all grown up, nice people.’

‘But all deaf in one ear.’

He grinned, bounced Michael up and down in his arms. ‘Miz Nina, a little paddy-whacking never hurt nobody.’

‘If ever I see you paddy-whacking Michael I’ll knock you down.’

His grin broadened. ‘Ain’t never gone a coupla rounds with a lady. You want six-ounce or eight-ounce gloves?’

Each of them knew how far their banter could go before she lost her authority. There were always certain hints, which she recognized, that he loved and respected her: he had said ‘ain’t never gone a coupla rounds with a lady’ instead of ‘with a woman.’ Such small gestures were always there behind his easy cheek.

She took Michael from him, kissed the flushed chubby face. He was blond like her, but there were traces of his father in him, glimpses of the future. ‘I’ll let my son defend me when he grows up. You just watch out.’

Tim went to work next day and came home that night worried and upset. He showered and changed and went out with Nina and the baby for their walk round the park. She could see that something was troubling him, but she contained her impatience. It was after dinner, when they were having coffee in the living-room, before her patience finally ran out.

‘Well, what happened today?’

Inger, the Swedish maid, brought in fresh coffee. Nina had a staff of three helping her run the house and Inger was the brightest of them, a plump plain girl whose eyes and ears were like magnets for every splinter of gossip dropped about the house. Nina waited till she had gone out of the room again, then she repeated her question.

‘Nothing happened.’ He sipped his coffee, then leaned back in his chair, the big red leather wing-back that she had bought specially for him, and sighed. ‘It’s tomorrow something’s going to happen. Your father is bringing in scab labour.’

‘Daddy or the company managers?’

‘Same thing. He’d have to okay it. They’ve recruited them from down in Arkansas and they’re bringing them in by truck tomorrow morning. They announced it to us this afternoon, just as if they were asking for a flat-out confrontation. We’ve been locked out.’

‘We?’

‘I’m sorry, darling, but I’m with the men. I can’t be otherwise – I think they’re entitled to what they’re asking for. I don’t want to be an agitator or anything like that, but I have to support Bumper and the other chaps. I find I have a social conscience, something that’s never troubled me before.’

‘Do you think you should go over and tell Daddy what you’re going to do?’

‘It wouldn’t do any good. If he doesn’t understand the men’s reasons for the strike by now, no amount of explanation will convince him I’m doing the right thing. He’s living in the past. He still believes in the sanctity of capital, right or wrong.’

‘I don’t understand him.’ She could feel anguish boiling up inside her, less bearable because she was unprepared for it. She had wanted her father and Tim to be friends, though she had known there would always be powder there to explode a division between them. She had not expected the powder train to come from the direction of the stockyards. ‘He’s basically a kind man. He’s charitable – look at the money he’s given to charity. The Foundation isn’t just something he inherited from Grandfather – he believes in it.’