Edge of Eternity (19 page)

Mawhinney’s face changed and he waved across the restaurant. George glanced back over his own shoulder and got a shock.

The person Mawhinney was waving at was Maria Summers.

She did not see him. She was already turning back to her companion, a white girl of about the same age.

‘Is that Maria Summers?’ he said incredulously.

‘Yeah.’

‘You know her.’

‘Sure. We were at Chicago Law together.’

‘What’s she doing in Washington?’

‘Funny story. She was originally turned down for a job in the White House press office. Then the person they appointed didn’t work out, and she was the second choice.’

George was thrilled. Maria was in Washington – permanently! He made up his mind to speak to her before leaving the restaurant.

It occurred to him that he might find out more about her from Mawhinney. ‘Did you date her at law school?’

‘No. She only went out with coloured guys, and not many of them. She was known as an iceberg.’

George did not take that remark at face value. Any girl who said ‘No’ was an iceberg, to some men. ‘Did she have anyone special?’

‘There was one guy she was seeing for about a year, but he dumped her because she wouldn’t put out.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ George said. ‘She comes from a strict family.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘We were on the first Freedom Ride together. I talked to her a bit.’

‘She’s pretty.’

‘That’s the truth.’

They got the check and split it. On the way out George stopped at Maria’s table. ‘Welcome to Washington,’ he said.

She smiled warmly. ‘Hello, George. I’ve been wondering how soon I’d run into you.’

Larry said: ‘Hi, Maria. I was just telling George how you were known as an iceberg at Chicago Law.’ Larry laughed.

It was a typical male jibe, nothing unusual, but Maria flushed.

Larry walked out of the restaurant, but George stayed behind. ‘I’m sorry he said that, Maria. And I’m embarrassed that I heard it. It was really crass.’

‘Thank you.’ She gestured towards the other woman. ‘This is Antonia Capel. She’s a lawyer, too.’

Antonia was a thin, intense woman with hair severely drawn back. ‘Good to know you,’ George said.

Maria said to Antonia: ‘George got a broken arm protecting me from an Alabama segregationist with a crowbar.’

Antonia was impressed. ‘George, you’re a real gentleman,’ she said.

George saw that the girls were ready to leave: their check was on the table in a saucer, covered with a few bills. He said to Maria: ‘Can I walk you back to the White House?’

‘Sure,’ she said.

Antonia said: ‘I have to run to the drugstore.’

They stepped out into the mild air of a Washington autumn. Antonia waved goodbye. George and Maria headed for the White House.

George studied her out of the corner of his eye as they crossed Pennsylvania Avenue. She wore a smart black raincoat over a white turtleneck, clothing for a serious political operator, but she could not cover up her warm smile. She was pretty, with a small nose and chin, and her big brown eyes and soft lips were sexy.

‘I was arguing with Mawhinney about Vietnam,’ George said. ‘I think he hoped to persuade me as a way of indirectly getting to Bobby.’

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Maria. ‘But the President isn’t going to give in to the Pentagon on this.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He’s making a speech tonight saying that there are limits to what we can achieve in foreign policy. We cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity. I’ve just written the press release for the speech.’

‘I’m glad he’s going to stand firm.’

‘George, you didn’t hear what I said. I wrote a press release! Don’t you understand how unusual that is? Normally the men write them. The women just type them out.’

George grinned. ‘Congratulations.’ He was happy to be with her, and they had quickly slipped back into their friendly relationship.

‘Mind you, I’ll find out what they think of it when I get back to the office. What’s happening at Justice?’

‘It looks like our Freedom Ride really achieved something,’ George said eagerly. ‘Soon all interstate buses will have a sign saying: “Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, colour, creed or national origin”. The same words have to be printed on bus tickets.’ He was proud of this achievement. ‘How about that?’

‘Well done.’ But Maria asked the key question. ‘Will the ruling be enforced?’

‘That’s up to us in Justice, and we’re trying harder than ever before. We’ve already acted several times to oppose the authorities in Mississippi and Alabama. And a surprising number of towns in other states are just giving in.’

‘It’s hard to believe we’re really winning. The segregationists always seem to have another dirty trick in reserve.’

‘Voter registration is our next campaign. Martin Luther King wants to double the number of black voters in the South by the end of the year.’

Maria said thoughtfully: ‘What we really need is a new civil rights bill that makes it difficult for Southern states to defy the law.’

‘We’re working on that.’

‘So you’re telling me Bobby Kennedy is a civil rights supporter?’

‘Hell, no. A year ago the issue wasn’t even on his agenda. But Bobby and the President hated those photographs of white mob violence in the South. They made the Kennedys look bad on the front pages of newspapers all over the world.’

‘And global politics is what they really care about.’

‘Exactly.’

George wanted to ask her for a date, but he held back. He was going to break up with Norine Latimer as soon as possible: that was inevitable, now that Maria was here. But he felt he had to tell Norine their romance was over before he asked Maria out. Anything else would seem dishonest. And the delay would not be long: he would see Norine within a few days.

They entered the West Wing. Black faces in the White House were unusual enough for people to stare at them. They went to the press office. George was surprised to find it a small room jammed with desks. Half a dozen people worked intently with grey Remington typewriters and phones with rows of flashing lights. From an adjoining room came the chatter of teletype machines, punctuated by the bells they rang to herald particularly important messages. There was an inner office that George presumed must belong to press secretary Pierre Salinger.

Everyone seemed to be concentrating hard, no one chatting or looking out of the window.

Maria showed him her desk and introduced the woman at the next typewriter, an attractive redhead in her mid-thirties. ‘George, this is my friend Miss Fordham. Nelly, why is everyone so quiet?’

Before Nelly could answer, Salinger came out of his office, a small, chubby man in a tailored European-style suit. With him was President Kennedy.

The President smiled at everyone, nodded to George, and spoke to Maria. ‘You must be Maria Summers,’ he said. ‘You’ve written a good press release – clear and emphatic. Well done.’

Maria flushed with pleasure. ‘Thank you, Mr President.’

He seemed in no hurry. ‘What were you doing before you came here?’ He asked the question as if there was nothing in the world more interesting.

‘I was at Chicago Law.’

‘Do you like it in the press office?’

‘Oh, yes, it’s exciting.’

‘Well, I appreciate your good work. Keep it up.’

‘I’ll do my very best.’

The President went out, and Salinger followed.

George looked at Maria with amusement. She seemed dazed.

After a moment, Nelly Fordham spoke. ‘Yeah, it takes you like that,’ she said. ‘For a minute, there, you were the most beautiful woman in the world.’

Maria looked at her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly how I felt.’

*  *  *

Maria was a little lonely, but otherwise happy.

She loved working at the White House, surrounded by bright, sincere people who wanted only to make the world a better place. She felt she could achieve a lot in government. She knew she would have to struggle with prejudice – against women and against Negroes – but she believed she could overcome that with intelligence and determination.

Her family had a history of prevailing against the odds. Her grandfather, Saul Summers, had walked to Chicago from his home town of Golgotha, Alabama. On the way he had been arrested for ‘vagrancy’ and sentenced to thirty days’ labour in a coal mine. While there, he saw a man clubbed to death by guards for trying to escape. After thirty days he was not released, and when he complained he was flogged. He risked his life, escaped, and made it to Chicago. There he eventually became pastor of the Bethlehem Full Gospel Church. Now eighty years old, he was semi-retired, still preaching occasionally.

Maria’s father, Daniel, had gone to Negro college and law school. In 1930, in the Depression, he had opened a storefront law firm in the South Side neighbourhood, where no one could afford a postage stamp, let alone a lawyer. Maria had often heard him reminisce about how his clients had paid him in kind: home-made cakes, eggs from their backyard hens, a free haircut, some carpentry around his office. By the time Roosevelt’s New Deal kicked in and the economy improved, he was the most popular black lawyer in Chicago.

So Maria was not afraid of adversity. But she was lonely. Everyone around her was white. Grandfather Summers often said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with white people. They just ain’t black.’ She knew what he meant. White people did not know about ‘vagrancy’. Somehow it slipped their minds that Alabama had continued to send Negroes to forced labour camps until 1927. If she spoke about such things, they looked sad for a moment then turned away, and she knew they thought she was exaggerating. Black people who talked about prejudice were boring to whites, like sick people who recited their symptoms.

She had been delighted to see George Jakes again. She would have sought him out as soon as she got to Washington, except that a modest girl did not chase after a man, no matter how charming he was; and, anyway, she would not have known what to say. She liked George more than any man she had met since she broke up with Frank Baker two years ago. She would have married Frank if he had asked her, but he wanted sex without marriage, a proposal she had rejected. When George had walked her back to the press office, she had felt sure he was about to ask her for a date, and she had been disappointed when he had not.

She shared an apartment with two black girls, but did not have much in common with them. Both were secretaries, and mainly interested in fashions and movies.

Maria was used to being exceptional. There had not been many black women at her college, and at law school she had been the only one. Now she was the only black woman in the White House, not counting cleaners and cooks. She had no complaints: everyone was friendly. But she was lonely.

On the morning after she met George she was studying a speech by Fidel Castro, looking for nuggets the press office could use, when her phone rang and a man said: ‘Would you like to go swimming?’

The flat Boston accent was familiar, but she could not identify it for a moment. ‘Who is this?’

‘Dave.’

It was Dave Powers, the President’s personal aide, sometimes called the First Friend. Maria had spoken to him two or three times. Like most people in the White House, he was amiable and charming.

But now Maria was taken by surprise. ‘Where?’ she said.

He laughed. ‘Here in the White House, of course.’

She recalled that there was a pool in the west gallery, between the White House and the West Wing. She had never seen it, but she knew it had been built for President Roosevelt. She had heard that President Kennedy liked to swim at least once a day because the water relieved the pressure on his bad back.

Dave added: ‘There will be some other girls.’

Maria’s first thought was of her hair. Just about every black woman in an office job wore a hairpiece or a wig to work. Blacks and whites alike felt that the natural look of black hair just was not businesslike. Today Maria had a beehive, with a hairpiece carefully braided into her own hair, which itself had been relaxed with chemicals to mimic the smooth, straight texture of white women’s hair. It was not a secret: it would be obvious to every black woman who glanced at her. But a white man such as Dave would never even notice.

How could she go swimming? If she got her hair wet it would turn into a mess that she would not be able to rescue.

She was too embarrassed to say what the problem was, but she quickly thought of an excuse. ‘I don’t have a swimsuit.’

‘We have swimsuits,’ Dave replied. ‘I’ll pick you up at noon.’ He hung up.

Maria looked at her watch. It was ten to twelve.

What was she going to do? Would she be allowed to ease herself carefully into the water at the shallow end, and keep her hair dry?

She had asked all the wrong questions, she realized. She really needed to know why she had been invited and what might be expected of her – and whether the President would be there.

She looked at the woman at the next desk. Nelly Fordham was a single woman who had worked at the White House for a decade. She hinted that, years ago, she had been disappointed in love. She had been helpful to Maria from the start. Now she was looking curious. ‘“I don’t have a swimsuit”?’ she quoted.

‘I’m invited to the President’s pool,’ Maria said. ‘Should I go?’

‘Of course! Just as long as you tell me all about it when you come back.’

Maria lowered her voice. ‘He said there will be some other girls. Do you think the President will be there?’

Nelly looked around, but no one was listening. ‘Does Jack Kennedy like to swim surrounded by pretty girls?’ she said. ‘No prizes for answering that one.’

Maria still was not sure whether to go. Then she remembered Larry Mawhinney calling her an iceberg. That had stung. She was not an iceberg. She was a virgin at twenty-five because she had never met a man to whom she wanted to give herself body and soul, but she was not frigid.

Dave Powers appeared at the door and said: ‘Coming?’

‘Heck, yes,’ said Maria.

Dave walked her along the arcade at the edge of the Rose Garden to the pool entrance. Two other girls arrived at the same time. Maria had seen them before, always together: both were White House secretaries. Dave introduced them. ‘Meet Jennifer and Geraldine, known as Jenny and Jerry,’ he said.