The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary

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      ‘You’d soon tire of that,’ said Lucas, as if he had known Tim all his life. ‘You wouldn’t think of coming back to Kansas City?’

      ‘What would I do?’ Tim kept his voice deliberately flat, a characteristic he had just before he was about to erupt.

      ‘You could take your choice,’ said Lucas, not entirely undiplomatic. ‘Come back there and see what offers.’

      Tim walked in silence letting his anger subside. He recognized that the older man was only trying to do the natural thing, protect his daughter. But he also recognized that Lucas was already trying to assert some authority over his future son-in-law. And that’s just not in your book, Tim old boy.

      ‘I’ll talk it over with Nina.’

      Lucas walked in silence, too. Then he seemed to accept that he could ask for no more. He nodded, then said, ‘She tells me she is pregnant. How did that happen?’

      ‘The usual way,’ said Tim.

      Lucas stopped, looked as if he were offended, then suddenly let out a gust of laughter, surprising Tim, who had decided that the older man had no sense of humour at all. ‘Of course! Damnfool question – damn good answer. I’ll tell her mother that. You’ll like her mother. Has a sense of humour, something I haven’t got. Gurter? You don’t mean Go-eth, the poet, do you? You don’t like poetry, do you?’

      ‘Only if it rhymes,’ said Tim, and Lucas seemed satisfied.

      That evening Tim had dinner with Nina and her father, then took Nina back to her billet. He had sent the Mercedes and his driver back to Hamburg; they walked home through the ill-lit streets, careful of the ice on the cracked sidewalks. They stood just inside the doorway of her billet and, bundled up against the cold, embraced each other like a couple of bears.

      ‘Darling heart, you shouldn’t have told your father you were pregnant, not yet. You’re too honest. Never be more than discreetly honest with people you have to live with.’

      ‘Will that include you, too?’ She kissed him, silencing his answer. She still had not recovered from her ordeal and she was in no condition to suffer lovers’ truths. ‘Mother would have guessed in time. Girls usually don’t have babies six months after they’re married.’

      ‘Did what happened to you – there won’t be a miscarriage?’

      ‘I think he, or she, is going to be indestructible. I haven’t even felt nauseous.’ Then in the darkness, unable to see his face, she said, ‘You don’t mind going home with me to Kansas City?’

      His head was stiff and unmoving against the light in the windows of the house opposite. ‘No,’ he said quietly.

      But she wondered if he was being only discreetly honest with her. She was too afraid to ask. She drew the dark head towards her, felt for his lips with hers and kissed him, seeking a true answer there. But already she had learned that lips were no more truthful than the tongue.

      Lucas Beaufort went back to Kansas City relieved and satisfied. Nina and Tim were married quietly by an army chaplain a week after he left, with Colonel Shasta and Major McKea as their witnesses. When Lucas arrived back in Missouri it was announced without fanfare that Miss Nina Beaufort, eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs Lucas T. Beaufort, had been quietly married three months earlier to Major Timothy Davoren, only son of the late Mr and Mrs Clive Davoren of London, England. If anyone in Kansas City wondered why a Beaufort girl, the first one to be married, should have wed so secretly, no one voiced their wonder in public. Not even when she arrived home in March 1946 obviously pregnant.

      Word of the kidnapping had got out. However, since the kidnappee had escaped unhurt, the kidnappers had not been caught and no money had been handed over, editors gave the story only a narrow spread in their newspapers. Who in the rest of the world thought anyone from Kansas City was interesting? Even Harry Truman was at pains to say he came from Independence, though cynics said that was only a play on words to show he was not Tom Pendergast’s man. Anyone passing through the two places wasn’t sure where Kansas City ended and Independence began.

      Edith Beaufort, adamant that she had to meet her new son-in-law before anyone else in Kansas City saw him, insisted that she and Lucas go to New York to meet the Davorens as they got off their ship. She liked Tim as soon as she met him and he liked her.

      ‘You’ll do,’ she told him. ‘You’re much better than I expected or hoped for.’

      ‘A bad advance report from Mr Beaufort?’

      ‘Just say unenthusiastic. You’re not American, specifically not from the Midwest, that’s the main thing against you. He ignores the fact that he’s only two generations removed himself from England. And his grandfather left under a cloud, as they say.’

      ‘No cloud over me,’ said Tim. ‘The sun shines on me all the time. Especially when Nina is around.’

      ‘Your charm is obvious, but I like it,’ said Edith. ‘If there is any charm from our local men, it’s accidental and biennial. My husband is a good example. But I love him, Tim, and I hope you will love Nina just as much.’

      They rode back from New York in a private railroad car. Nina and her mother watched the two men gradually thaw towards each other, but the thawing was slow, like two polite icebergs cruising down from Greenland. They were half-way between Columbus, Ohio, and St Louis before Lucas slapped Tim on the knee at one of the latter’s jokes. By the time they got off at Kansas City they were Tim son and Lucas old chap and moved in a common cloud of cigar smoke. Nina and her mother felt the future was secure.

      There were four cars at Union Station to meet the train. One car contained the other three Beaufort sisters and Edith’s secretary, Miss Stafford; one car was for Lucas and Edith; another was for the newly married couple; and the fourth took the luggage. They moved out to a fanfare of flash-bulbs from the press photographers.

      ‘Do you usually travel in convoy?’ said Tim as he and Nina settled back in the pre-war Packard.

      ‘Only for weddings and funerals. Darling, please – take it all for granted. Please?’

      He laughed: nervously, it seemed to her, though she had never thought of him as having nerves. ‘I’m not overwhelmed, but I’m certainly whelmed. Even that – ’ He nodded at the glass partition which separated them from the chauffeur. ‘We have those in England still, but I thought it had all gone out in democratic America.’

      ‘Don’t refer to it as Democratic America,’ she said, misunderstanding his adjective. ‘Daddy is a Republican. This car belonged to my grandmother – you can see how old it is. She didn’t believe in servants listening to their mistress’ conversation. Neither do I. What’s wrong with a car with a glass partition?’

      ‘It’s not just the car. It’s just everything. The private railway carriage, your father bringing half a million dollars to Germany in a couple of suitcases … Take it for granted, she says.’

      ‘It’s the only way.’

      ‘You were born to it. I’ll try, my love, but don’t blame me if I occasionally get a glazed look in my eye.’ Then a little later he said, ‘What’s this?’

      ‘Home.’

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