Allegiance (10 page)

“Of course,” I say. “They must have figured out I've been growing too much wheat. Seriously, what could that be about?”

“I don't know,” says Gressman. He taps a thoughtful finger on his lips. “Maybe we've been looking at this from the wrong end. I have another idea.”

“What?”

“Give me a little time to figure it out. You can't hurry genius.”

“No,” I say. “But I can hurry you.”

“Patience,” says Gressman. “All in good time.”

CISSY PATTERSON IS
late to her own party. Once this might have been whim, when she was one of the Three Graces of Washington and balls held in her honor went on like as not in her absence. Now her triumvirate is the Three Furies of Isolation, and it is work that detains her. She is tramping through the newsroom, copyediting on the fly; she is inserting barbed jabs at her rivals and spicing the gossip on page three. Emeralds drip from her wrists and throat; a string of short-tempered poodles trails behind her, snapping at reporters. Soon a car will take her to Dupont Circle. She will recite to her maid a string of numbers, signifying the articles of clothing selected for the night. She will fortify herself with a drink and perhaps a pinch of cocaine. And she will descend the marble staircase to sniff eagerly at her guests like the half-crazed bitch she is.

Or so Drew Pearson tells me as we wait in a sitting room. It is not the customary way to describe one's host, in my experience, and I say so. “A bit tendentious, maybe?”

He sips from his martini. “Of course, I'm biased,” he admits. “I know her.” Pearson is a solid man with something truculent in his eyes, a well-trimmed mustache, and receding hair. I have seen him before at Black's house, where he sat in the garden drinking and swapping stories with Justice Douglas. He is from Philadelphia, like me, though he seemed not to care when I pointed it out.

I take a cautious taste of my Scotch. “How did you make her acquaintance?”

“The usual,” he says. “Dinner party. Married her daughter.” He rises abruptly and strides from the room. I have to follow quickly to catch his words. “Divorced her. One thing FDR forgot in the New Deal, the agency to protect you from ex-mothers-in-law.”

“I suppose it's natural there would be hard feelings after the split,” I call after him.

“Wasn't that,” he answers. I catch up. We are in the foyer now, eye to eye with marble busts at the foot of the stairs. Caesar Augustus, I think, and another I cannot place. “Scipio Africanus,” Pearson says. “The conqueror of Hannibal.” A Gobelin tapestry on the wall depicts a hunting scene, and animal heads are mounted along the stair. “It looks like they came out of the weaving, doesn't it?” Pearson asks. “But they didn't make it far through the house. It's a dangerous place.”

I blink, mildly surprised. “This house?”

“Cliveden on the Potomac. Of course it's not the house you have to worry about; it's the people. Crawling with isolationists. And Cissy. She shot all these herself.”

“Oh,” I say. Few women hunt, in my experience, but those that do seem to enjoy it a great deal.

Pearson makes a pistol of his thumb and forefinger. “She's got you in her sights now. She wants something from you. Better watch out.”

“I don't mean to be rude,” I say, “but I'm surprised she still invites you to her parties.”

“She likes sparks,” Pearson says. “She hopes I'll take a swing at one of her fascist friends. I might do it, too, with enough of these.” He raises his empty glass. “I'll see you later. We're at the same table.”

• • • • 

Dinner awaits Cissy's arrival. I have never seen Cliveden, but this place is indeed a mansion. It raises itself up grand red-carpeted stairs; it spreads marble wings as though to embrace the circle. In the dining room flowers bedeck the tables; in the ballroom candles flicker in crystal chandeliers. Guests have scattered themselves about. Bill Douglas is here, and Francis
Biddle. Justice Black is not. Then there are diplomats, military men, and reporters, vaudeville entertainers passing from room to room, a jazzman at the piano, and a magician in the parlor.

In the library, I find Biddle inspecting the bookshelves. He smiles at my approach, something welcoming, something indulgent. He is, I realize, an example of what Judge Skinner described to me, society taking part in governance, for the Biddles are Philadelphia's First Family. But Judge Skinner would not approve of the side he has taken. He has thrown his lot with the New Dealers, and I have not seen him since the November evening in '36 when he led a line of men down Broad Street to City Hall, singing Roosevelt campaign songs. I watched them go from the windows of the Union League, where my father and the Judge clutched their
Literary Digest
s in icy disbelief.

Biddle's hair is thinner now, and he parts it on the side and combs it over the top.

“Ah, Cash,” he says. “Pleasant to see you.”

“But not a surprise, I think. I should thank you for the invitation.”

He shakes his head. “Believe me, Cissy doesn't ask my opinions on her guest list.” He turns back to the books.

“Looking for yours?” Biddle wrote a novel,
The Llanfear Pattern
, about a Philadelphia man who tests convention and subsides. I remember my father and the Judge debating how the ending was meant to be taken.

“No.” He laughs softly. “I've given her copies, of course, but it wouldn't be flattering to find them here.”

“Why not?”

“These are just for decoration,” he says. “There's a company that sells them by the yard.” He pulls one out. “See, the pages aren't cut.”

“So,” I say. “Why do you suppose Cissy invited me?”

“No idea, I'm afraid.”

“Drew Pearson suggested it was for some sinister purpose.”

Again Biddle gives his soft and pleasant laugh. “Don't pay too much attention to him. They've hit a rocky patch these past few years. Cissy's not at her best in relationships of mutual dependence. Not with Drew, or her daughter either.” His face brightens. “I met her in Jackson Hole, at Struthers Burt's
ranch. It was a grand time, and I think it left her with a soft spot for Philadelphia. Or Philadelphians.”

I frown. If he is offering this as an explanation of my presence, it does not seem adequate. Biddle does not notice my expression. “She had a way with the horses,” he continues. “And the cowboys. There was this one chap, Cal . . . well.” He raises his eyebrows, then tilts his head to the side. “She must be here now. I believe they're calling us for dinner.”

• • • • 

The dining room is red-tapestried, with a white marble fireplace. As he said, Pearson is at my table; so are Francis Biddle, Cissy's brother Joe, and an army colonel named Richards. Of Cissy there is still no sign.

There is a general din of conversation in the room. At our table I catch fragments from Pearson and Joe while trying to talk to the woman next to me, a dark and attractive functionary from the Spanish Consulate. I am making very little progress with my description of Philadelphia clubs. Either she cannot hear me, or she does not care.

“So they crank them down to the horizontal and open up,” Pearson says. “Of course, they've got fragmentation rounds, not armor-piercing shells.”

I make another attempt. “There's one we call the State in Schuylkill,” I say. “No other authority is recognized.”

Now I have caught her interest; she leans forward and smiles. Red lips curl back and even teeth glint. “You are separatists?” The idea seems to excite her. “Like our Basque, yes?”

“Not exactly.” The State in Schuylkill is nominally a fishing club, though like most such organizations its purpose is to facilitate an escape to fraternal society. Tracing its origins back to a treaty with the Lenni Lenape, it asserts independent sovereignty over its castle. But not in any meaningful sense. “It's just that the club officers have governmental titles. There's the governor, the sheriff, so on.”

Her face falls. “But what is the point?”

I hesitate. Removed from the Philadelphia soil in which they flourish, the customs seem wilted and insipid. Indeed, what is the point? “There's an annual dinner. We plank shad.”

Her expression is blank. Either the construction exceeds her grasp of English, or she thinks it does not answer the question. Upon reflection, it does not seem much of an answer to me, either. “And the government does not mind this, this rebellion? Mr. Biddle is not concerned?”

I look across the table at Biddle, who gives a permissive nod. It occurs to me that he and Pearson share more than their tidy mustaches. Without Biddle's comb-over, they would have the same hairline, too. It may be a reason they enjoy spending time together, so that each can congratulate himself on avoiding the other's fate.

My Spanish friend awaits a response. “Oh, no,” I say. “We've never caused any trouble.” A coincident silence gives everyone at the table the benefit of my next line. “Except in the matter of the Fish House Punch.” This is a guaranteed laugh-getter at any Philadelphia gathering. Fish House Punch has the reassuring taste of lemonade, but it is insidiously strong and best not drunk unless one has a full evening to devote to the enterprise. Among the unaccustomed, its force has produced plenty of scandalous tales for the society pages. The table is dead silent. Even Francis Biddle's smile is one of sympathy, rather than amusement.

I feel my face reddening. Suddenly I am wishing I had not come to this party. A Merion dinner would look much the same on the surface, but I would understand everything that went on below. I can tell you what it means that a man lives in Haverford, not Devon; that he has joined the Philadelphia Club and not the Union League; that he plays the right wall and not the left in doubles squash. But Washington is impenetrable. Its signs are illegible to me; they are the alphabet of power, which Philadelphia spurns to cover its loss. We have our secrets, but the biggest one, I see now, is that no one else cares, and that is a secret we keep only from ourselves.

A waiter takes away my plate, still half-filled with leathery meat. Cissy obtained beef, but not a choice cut, and the braising was an inadequate disguise. The Spaniard smiles at me, murmurs something, and leaves the table. The apocalypse is complete.

“Thirty-seven batteries,” says Pearson to Joe Patterson. He has the tone of a man making a clinching point. Dimly I realize he is talking about the story I read in Cissy's paper, the Panzers on the outskirts of Stalingrad, the high
school girls behind their useless antiaircraft guns. But he seems to have more details. “Not a one stopped shooting until it was destroyed. Those are the Reds you want to bleed white, Joe.”

Patterson sighs. He is one of the richest men in the country. He owns the
New York Post
, and other things. There is American Fruit; there is the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. But the railroad went bankrupt in 1935, and Joe seems to be on the decline as well. His hair is cut short in a youthful style, but it is mostly white and it gives him an air more of bemusement than vigor, like a tolerant grandfather costumed by the children. His uniform is from the last war and it is approaching the limits of what alterations can achieve, stretching taut across his belly. “No one likes war, Drew,” he says. There is a strange rasp to his voice. “But if it's Russian girls or American boys . . .” He makes a vague gesture with his hand and drinks from his wineglass.

Colonel Richards steps in. His face is tan and his brass buttons sparkle in the candlelight. “I'd say if their girls fight that well, they don't need our help.”

Part of me is glad to see that I am not the only one whose remarks can fall flat. Patterson is peering down into his glass, but Pearson has the look of a man whose mind has turned to violence. “English boys,” he says. “French. Jews of every age and description.”

Patterson's face has a sad puzzlement, as though he believes we should all be friends and cannot understand why we must disagree. His breath rasps slowly out; he says nothing. Richards does not give up. He raises his glass with a smile. “To our gallant allies. Long may they fight.” There is a murmur of assent from some at the table, who I assume have not been following the conversation. Pearson actually makes a move to get up out of his chair. Francis Biddle surveys it all with the calm equanimity of a man attending a slightly dull matinee. I have a sudden unwelcome image of the Russian girls, watching their shells bounce off the tanks and reloading while the turrets sniffed toward them.

Before Pearson can do anything, Richards slides out of his seat and moves to the empty one by my side. “So,” he says. “I hear you're at the Court.”

“Yes.”

“An upsetting place to be right now, I'd imagine.”

The sudden sensitivity surprises me. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

Richards presses on. “An independent Court,” he says. “The Constitution gave us that to protect us from dictators. And now it's just a tool for the Democrats.”

Here is a theme I have heard often enough in Philadelphia. But it is not one I can engage in now. “At the Court we try to stay out of politics.”

“Quite right.” Richards leans closer to me. “But patriotism is not politics.” There is an intensity to his gaze. “People ask me if I am a Democrat or a Republican. I say country before party. I am an American first.”

There is something conspiratorial in his smile. Now I think I recognize the rosette in his lapel. “America First is a party,” I say.

“Not anymore,” says Richards. “Not since Pearl Harbor.” He sighs. “Taft might have kept us out, but that was it, of course. There's no going back now. Who'd have thought the Japs would save the Jews? Jesus wasn't good enough for them, but now Tojo is their messiah. Thanks to Comrade Roosevelt, of course.”