The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary

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      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.’

      ‘It could be from a sense of guilt. I don’t know, I’m not judging his charity. But he’s like a lot of rich men – we have them in England, too – as soon as the workers start demanding a little more, they think they’re endangered, they’re going to have another revolution on their hands. From what I’ve read, John D. Rockefeller was like your father. He gave away millions with one hand and with the other hit a worker over the head with an iron bar. I don’t mean he wielded the iron bar himself, but he condoned it when it was done by others.’

      ‘Daddy would never allow any violence.’

      ‘There’s going to be violence tomorrow when those scabs turn up.’

      ‘You better not go to work tomorrow, then. I don’t want you getting hurt.’

      But when she woke in the morning he was already gone. Distressed, she couldn’t eat breakfast. She tried to bathe the baby, but he was in one of his playful moods and she got short-tempered with him and finally called in Inger to take over. She dressed without showering, careless of what she put on, then hurried across to the main house. Her mother was having breakfast in her bedroom, planning her day with Miss Stafford.

      ‘Where’s Daddy?’

      Edith looked at her, СКАЧАТЬ