Jon Cleary - The Beaufort Sisters

‘I hate to say it,’ said Magnus McKea, ‘but I think it’s all over. I shall go home and get drunk. On domestic bourbon.’

‘Spoken like an honourable loser,’ said Tim. He sounded as recklessly rebellious as Nina; she had never seen him so opposed to her father in public. He was smiling all the time, seemed in high good humour, but he was getting malicious satisfaction from the fact that he looked like winning his bet with Lucas. ‘I’ll be over in the morning, Lucas old chap. Shall we leave the wake, darling heart?’

Nina took his arm, ‘Bear up, Daddy. You only have to wait another four years. Who knows whom you’ll find?’

Next day, after he had collected his cheque from Lucas, Tim went downtown to the Muehlebach Hotel and managed to shake hands with President Truman. ‘My father-in-law Lucas Beaufort asked me to give you his congratulations, Mr President,’ he lied.

The President’s eyes twinkled behind his glasses. ‘I’ll bet. Ask him if he’d like to come to Washington and work for me. I’m looking for someone to run the social welfare programme.’

Tim went across and deposited his cheque in his account in the City and Country Bank. The teller’s eyes went up when he saw the amount and the signature; Tim was tempted to tell him what the cheque represented, but refrained. Last night’s champagne was now a sour taste in his mouth. There was also another sour taste, the memory of what had happened with Margaret in one of the empty rooms above the stables. His sense of guilt was doubled by the knowledge that he had enjoyed being with her and that he could be tempted again.

He stood outside the bank in a drizzle of rain wondering where he might go. He was thinking of the ends of the earth, but eventually he went home. Or what, in today’s mood, passed for home.

Though they never came to open warfare and they were always polite to each other, the gap between Tim and Lucas widened. Nina only slowly became aware of it, because Tim never mentioned it. She also slowly became aware of a change in him, a retreat into himself. It was not so much a shutting-out of her as that he seemed to become absent-minded about her. He was just as passionate in bed; but then it is difficult to be absent-minded about sex unless one is a professional. But the light-hearted courting of her that had been such a custom of his was now only an occasional whim. She wondered if this was how it was with all marriages, if husbands and wives, though still in love, stopped being lovers. On a couple of occasions when he went off on business trips he neglected to phone her at night. She even, to her shame, began to look for signs that he was having an affair with another woman, but there was none. Her one stab of jealousy towards Margaret had already been forgotten, put out of her mind by the fact that Margaret’s time now seemed taken up with Frank Minett.

‘Is he getting serious?’ she asked one day when she had volunteered to pick up Margaret at the university. ‘Prue tells me he’s always hanging around the house.’

‘Prue notices too much. Yes, he’s serious. But I’m not. The trouble is, Daddy thinks he’s just great. He wants Frank to leave the university and go into the bank.’

‘I thought Frank’s subject was politics, not economics.’

‘Frank’s subject is anything that’s going to get him to the top.’

‘You sound as if you don’t like him.’

‘Oh, I like him all right. But I’d like to do my own choosing, not have Daddy do it for me – which is virtually what he’s doing. You were lucky. I mean, choosing Tim without any interference from Daddy.’

‘Oh, he tried to interfere. He’ll never forgive Tim for being independent.’ She paused. ‘Have you noticed any change in him lately? Tim, I mean.’

Intent on driving, she did not notice Margaret’s careful glance at her. ‘No. Why?’

Nina took her eyes off the road for a moment. ‘You sound as if I shouldn’t have asked you that question.’

‘Maybe that’s how I do feel. He’s your husband – we shouldn’t be talking about him.’

‘We’ve been talking about Frank.’ She knew she had made a mistake. If Margaret herself had been married it might have been different, but Margaret had no experience to draw upon, had, as far as she knew, never been in love, not really in love. ‘No, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s just that – well, Daddy’s turned his back on him. Tim’s not going to get anywhere in the oil company.’

‘How do you know? Has he told you?’

Nina turned the car in through the gates of the estate, nodded to the security guard as he saluted them. ‘No. But I recognize the signs. It’s going to be the stockyards all over again. I’m beginning to think we should go away again.’

‘Where would you run to this time?’

Nina jerked the car to a halt, skidding it in the gravel. ‘That sounds so – so brutal !’

‘It’s true, isn’t it? If you take Tim away from here again – ’

‘For your information, I didn’t take him away last time. It was a mutual idea – ’

‘You still went, that’s the point, and it didn’t work out. You’re never going to win your fight with Daddy by trying to beat him from a distance.’

‘You’re talking about transferring to Vassar next semester. Is that how you’re going to win your fight over Frank?’

‘My case is different. I’m not married to Frank and not likely to be. I just want to get away from here for a year or two. I’ll come back eventually because I don’t think I’d want to live anywhere else. But Daddy’s not going to run my life the way he’s tried to run yours and Tim’s. Thanks for picking me up.’

She got out of the car and ran up the steps and into the big house, not looking back. Nor did Nina look after her: instead she looked across the lawns to where Tim, George Biff and Michael were playing with a tennis ball. Tim had been spending a great deal of time with Michael and George; as a mother she was delighted but as a wife she sometimes felt she was in the way. She looked at the man’s world there on the green lawns and suddenly wished for another child, a daughter. She drove on down to the stables, garaged the car and walked back up the winding path. The air held the promise of a hot dry summer to come and she wondered where she, Tim and Michael could go to avoid it. Perhaps to Minnesota or even Maine. A long way from her father.

‘Two and a half years old and he has the reflexes of Fred Perry,’ said Tim, showing his chauvinism when it came to sport.

‘And Sugar Ray Robinson, too,’ said George, who wouldn’t have known Fred Perry from Suzanne Lenglen but knew his boxers. ‘He gets beat at tennis, he can knock out the referee.’

Michael was a sturdy child, big for his age and seemingly without fear. He tumbled about the lawn, chasing after the ball when it was thrown to him, falling over and coming up gurgling with laughter. It was obvious that his father had now become his particular favourite, even over George. He saw Nina, threw the tennis ball at her, then rushed at her and almost bowled her off her feet.

‘Terrific tackler, too,’ said Tim. ‘We’ll put him down for Cambridge next year. Eton or Harrow first, then Cambridge.’

‘He’s going to be educated in England?’ She meant to say it lightly but it came out tart. Which was her real feeling.

‘I thought we’d discussed it.’ He managed to get the proper light note; he tossed the ball high into the air and caught it to his son’s great delight. ‘English education is still the best, despite the socialists.’

Michael saw his aunts, Sally and Prue, come out of the rear of the big house. He screamed at them, then galloped off towards them. Tim nodded at George. ‘Keep an eye on him, George. Don’t let the girls spoil him.’