Cheyney Fox (47 page)

Clearly the boy was getting flustered. Grant tried to ease things and asked, “How about that drink you offered me? It is, after all, as you suggested, a celebration, meeting your son for the first time and having him turn out to be a lad you already like.”

The boy beamed. A light came into his face that reflected both pride and an adolescent enthusiasm as he rushed to pour his father a much-too-large tumbler of whiskey. Taggart handed it to Grant, who said, “It’s not going to go wrong, Taggart.”

“Boy, am I glad to hear that, Mr. Madigan.”

“Look, Tagg, I want to marry your mom. I’m very much in love with her. Deeply in love with her. And though I never expected ever to have a son, there is no boy in the world I would rather have than you for my own. I can’t pretend to be a father to you the way that Kurt Walbrook has been. You’ve told me enough about your life with that dad for me to understand he was all the father I have never been to you, and probably never will be able to be. But I can be something else to you. Taggart, I am very proud that you are mine. But it’s going to take a lot of getting used to having an almost grown-up son. A great deal of getting used to for all of us, this getting together as a family.”

“Are you sure you want to take us on, Mr. Madigan?”

Grant took a large swallow of whiskey. Then while looking over the cigar he was lighting, said with a smile. “Yes, Taggart, that I do.”

“Me and Mom, and what Mom calls our magnificent obsession. Art. I, as my dad used to say, was born into it. I’ve got the disease, you know, Mr. Madigan, from my mom and my dad, I mean my number-one dad. We spend an awful lot of time cultivating the arts. Do you think you can live with us and that?”

“I’ve got a few obsessions of my own, Taggart. Ones you two will have to learn to live with and enjoy. Oh, I think we can manage it. More than manage it, Taggart, make a great, rich, wonderful life together. I think we should give it a go. What about you, Taggart?”

Taggart moved several of the things on the headmaster’s desk to one side and sat down on it next to Grant. He was aping the way Grant was sitting. Grant had in the past seen
the boy pick up his mannerisms. An offshoot of a kind of hero-worship he had been aware of and been amused by. Now in the headmaster’s office Grant Madigan was more than amused. He was delighted.

“I think I’m one of the luckiest guys in this school, maybe even alive. I had a wonderful papa. He was one of the most interesting and exciting fathers any guy could have. He was good to me, Mr. Madigan, he loved me. I was his very own. And he never minded talking to me about you. We did that mostly in private, because Mom used to get sort of all anxious but not really, if you know what I mean. Papa used to say it was because she was always worrying about doing the right thing for me vis-à-vis me and you. You would have liked Papa. He taught me wonderful things and was very wise, and he showed me the world and loved me as his own son. And then one day he was gone. And that was the most terrible day of my life. The worst thing that had ever happened in my life. The only thing that made it bearable was that I knew I had another dad and it was Grant Madigan, another very special kind of man, as interesting and special as my papa. Everything I had been told about you, had read about you for all those years, told me that.”

The boy’s sincerity, the adoration in his eyes for both Kurt Walbrook and Grant Madigan, was touching. It reached down into that core of love within Grant that had until then only known Cheyney Fox. He reached out and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, but words would not come. For the moment he was unable to express what he felt for this most remarkable boy. The lump of emotion stuck fast in his throat. All he could manage to say was:

“And when we met?”

“I kept thinking how different a dad you would be to Papa. A completely different kind of man. So American. Much bigger, an adventurer, a rough and tough, sort of hard-bitten kind of a man. Another father to be close to, to look up to for a second time around. Boy, you have no idea, Mr. Madigan, how relieved I am that you know I’m your son. I feel very emotional about it.”

With a decided awkwardness that was touching, Grant Madigan ground the end of his cigar out in the heavy glass ashtray
sitting on the desk between them. He reached out and grabbed Taggart by the arm and crushed the boy to him in a huge bear hug.

Grant Madigan felt the boy hug him back. A moment father and son were never to forget in their lives. They fought back tears when they stepped apart and touched each other’s cheek affectionately and smiles crept across their lips.

“How about Grant? I think we could start from there, Taggart. Grant instead of Mr. Madigan. I want to marry Cheyney, Taggart, and as soon as possible. I want you to be there with us. But, before I can do that, we have one great problem to solve, and that’s the reason I’m here. Not because I wanted to find you and know you, although I do, of course, want that very much. But more because your mom has not found the courage to tell me we have a son.

“I think she never expected any more than I did that we might meet and fall in love again. Or that we might have loved each other always but put that out of our hearts while we let the circumstances of our lives sweep us along. Or, as you put it so well, each let our magnificent obsessions take over our lives. I think she’s riddled with guilt for not having shared you with me. Guilt is a negative, destructive emotion that is a burden she could do without in the best of times. But now, with the pressure of her life and her life’s work laid bare for all the world to know and the possibility of losing the job that would bring her to the peak of the art world, this guilt our love has now fostered in her is the last thing she needs. I can’t tell her that. But I cannot stand around and watch her suffer trying to find a way to tell me about you and then feel sorry about her long-kept secret. That’s really why I am here. To meet you and take you back to your mom, so that we can confront her with nothing more than that whatever she did has been right for all of us. She’s had it hard enough. Let’s make it easy for her.”

“You’re right, Grant. Guilt sucks.”

Grant began to laugh. Threw his head back and laughed a laugh that lifted the heaviness of the conversation. Taggart laughed, too. “That tells it all, Taggart. Let’s cut out of here and go tell your mom just that.”

It wasn’t easy. But, at last, they were able to get back to
America and present themselves together at Cheyney’s flat. “Our son and I together … better than words and explanations …” said Madigan to Cheyney Fox. They who were three could now await as one the world’s poor verdict upon the life of Cheyney Fox.