The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ man.’ Prue was now seven, bright and observant; she still had the innocence of childhood but was looking forward to losing it. ‘He’s a professor.’

      ‘He’s not a full professor and he’s only twenty-eight, for God’s sake.’ Margaret, trying to please her father, had elected to go to the University of Missouri instead of Vassar; but Lucas, disappointing her again, had taken her decision for granted. ‘He’s teaching me politics.’

      ‘Hah-hah,’ said Sally, who was beginning to show some of the beauty of her older sisters. She was still a tomboy, still mad about cars, but Nina noticed that when a boy called on Saturday evening to take her out she was as feminine as any of them. She had begun to learn that boys didn’t like kissing a grease-stained cheek, no matter how mechanical-minded they were. ‘That Frank Minett is more interested in Daddy than he is in you.’

      ‘What about you? Who’s your regular boy-friend?’

      ‘She’s got dozens,’ said Prue, the gossip columnist. ‘She goes out with anyone who’s got a sports car. She’s going to get into trouble some day, that’s what I heard Daddy tell Mother.’

      ‘Not in a sports car,’ said Nina, winking at Margaret and Sally. ‘Where does this child get her education?’

      ‘Reading books. She reads everything she can find. She brought home Forever Amber the other day from school. God knows where she got it.’

      ‘I think I’d like to have lived in olden times,’ said Prue. ‘Men liked women in those days.’

      That six months was, up till then, the most drawn-out period Nina had ever lived through. Each day fell reluctantly from the calendar; a week was a long treadmill that never got her anywhere. She attended dinner parties put on by her parents, went to other parties with Margaret, took up with old schoolfriends; but all the distractions were only a way of filling in time and were not always successful. Sometimes, desperately hungry for Tim, she thought of taking off to join him but she knew she could not take Michael with her and she put the idea out of her mind. Once again she began to spoil Michael, lavishing on him all the attention that normally he would have had to share with his father.

      That year, 1948, spun itself slowly off the globe and into the fog of history. The new nation of Israel was proclaimed; Arab armies invaded Palestine. Nina suddenly worried that Tim might be caught up in another war; but he wrote her reassuringly, telling her that the Arabs would never be united against a common foe. President Truman announced that the 80th Congress was the worst in history, a judgement that Lucas agreed with, though it gave his Republican conscience a hernia to say so. The Russians blockaded Berlin and some people began to wonder if Germany was to be another battleground so soon. Thomas E. Dewey was nominated as the Republican candidate for the coming Presidential elections and Lucas accepted a nomination to the Missouri Republican committee; Harry Truman was nominated again by the Democrats and Lucas at once gave a quarter of a million dollars to the Dewey campaign – ‘It’s worth it to get rid of that feller Truman.’ General Pershing, D. W. Griffiths and Babe Ruth died within a month of each other, each of them taking a little glory with them into the grave. The New Look, which had come in the year before, turned into an Old Look; but bobby-socks were still fashionable, proving that bobby-soxers were not as fickle as their older sisters.

      Dr Kinsey appeared, to tell the world what it had long suspected, that the next door neighbours had their secrets too; people who had thought they were perverts suddenly discovered they were normal and rushed back to bed, some even neglecting to pull down the blinds. Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living was published and some people, who never looked at an author’s name, bought it thinking it was a sequel to Dr Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. Women readers anxiously waited for Dr Kinsey’s promised book on female sexual behaviour, hoping to learn something that their husbands the dirty beasts, had experienced with the whores out at tha place on the edge of town. The months spun slowly away and Nina, careless of news or history, waited for Tim to come home.

      He arrived back in time for Michael’s second birthday. ‘Good God, how he’s grown! What’s George been doing – stretching him?’

      ‘He thinks George is God Almighty. You’re going to have your nose put out of joint for a while. He doesn’t remember you, you know.’

      ‘Do you?’

      She kissed him hungrily, glad that she had insisted that none of the family should come to the airport with her. ‘Don’t ever let us be separated again. I’ve practically dried up inside. I’ve had such a yen for you.’

      ‘Me too,’ he said, the dancer in Beirut forgotten.

      Nina had bought a new car, a Buick, which she drove herself. Michael sat between them, looking up curiously at this stranger, not frightened of him but still cautious. ‘I thought you said he could talk?’

      ‘Give him time. He’s got to get used to having a strange man playing around with his mother.’

      ‘I hope he’s not going to be a two-year-old prude.’ He smiled at his son, who continued to look suspicious. ‘What does he think of his grandfather? Is he God Almighty too?’

      She drove in silence for a while, as if concentrating on getting him home unscathed. She wondered if he felt that he was coming home, but was afraid to ask him.

      ‘Don’t start fighting with him, please darling.’

      ‘There won’t be any fighting. I’m a pacifist in family matters now. Totally spineless. I just want the major share of my son’s attention and affection, that’s all.’

      ‘You’ll get it,’ she promised, not wanting to spoil a moment of his homecoming. ‘Look, he’s already smiling at you. He has your smile, you know. Everyone comments on it.’

      He looked steadily at her for a moment, then he relaxed and grinned at his son. ‘Five teeth. Is that my smile?’

      The reunion with the family went off without incident. Tim was kissed warmly by Edith, Margaret, Sally and Prue, Lucas just as warmly shook hands. He was part of the family again and no one seemed to have any doubts that he might want it otherwise. Nina watched him being charming to everyone, but behind the smile and the banter she sensed a certain restraint, a reserve of feeling that he was not going to squander on this first day home.

      She had been living in their own house ever since she had first returned from England and today she had prepared the place specially for him. He had always liked flowers, azaleas and camellias being his favourites, and every room glowed with their colours. She introduced him to the new staff she had engaged on her return, a cook and two housemaids, then she took him into the living-room. On the wall above the fireplace was one of Steve Hamill’s paintings.

      ‘The other paintings are in your study and the sketches in our bedroom. The more I look at them, the more I like them.’

      He looked around the room, but in his mind’s eye he was looking all around the house and the estate. It was all so much better than anything he had lived in since leaving here a year ago. For want of a better phrase, let’s say I’ve come home.

      ‘Let’s have a look at the sketches in the bedroom.’

      ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

      A long time later she would remember that first night of reunion. It was perfect: the playing with Michael before he was put СКАЧАТЬ