Kal (43 page)

‘Everything's going according to plan, he's fitting in perfectly,' Paul continued, oblivious. ‘Not only does the boy love college, he's made valuable friends there and he's becoming more American by the minute. Why, he even follows the blasted Boston Red Sox! I'll not have him disturbed in any way.'

Elizabeth knew there was little point in discussing the subject any further. Her husband was obsessed. Utterly obsessed. She returned to her petit point.

‘You'll speak to her?' he insisted.

‘I'll speak to her.'

Elizabeth's response was chilly. A talk with Meg would do little except widen the already existing rift between mother and daughter. She wouldn't tell Meg it was her father's request that she spend less time with Paolo. There was no sense in alienating the girl from both her parents.

Elizabeth was an eminently sensible woman, just like her mother, Mehitable. ‘Girls always rebel against their mothers, dear.' That's what Mehitable told her time and again. ‘They rebel against their mothers and hero-worship their fathers. But don't you worry your head, they always come back to their mothers in the end.'

As Paul rang for their bedtime hot chocolate, Elizabeth could only pray that Mehitable was right.

 

‘T
HE BOY LOVES
college,' Paul Dunleavey had said and he was right. If anything, his words were an understatement. Paolo loved Harvard with a passion. Sometimes he would leave home early and walk across Harvard Bridge, dawdling and enjoying the views up and down
the Charles River Basin. Other mornings, he would opt for public transport and, as the streetcar rattled around the curved tracks of Harvard Square, he would thrill to the thought that he, Paolo Gianni from the goldfields of Kalgoorlie, was a student at the oldest college in America.

He was exhilarated, too, by the mental challenge. His brain seemed on fire with the stimulation of learning. Harvard was changing Paolo. No longer the withdrawn, contemplative young man, he was becoming more eager, more competitive and, in Paul Dunleavy's eyes, more American.

The greatest evidence of this was undoubtedly Paolo's devotion to the Boston Red Sox, an allegiance which had initially disturbed Paul who strongly disapproved of baseball. Much as Paul Dunleavy liked to think of himself as modern, he could not help but agree with his friends who insisted that the sport infecting the youth of America was the devil's game. The players looked for all the world as if they were attired for gladiatorial combat in their dingy knickerbockers, heavy boots and vulgar peaked caps. Paul would vastly have preferred to see his son follow the dignified ritual and white-flannelled grace of cricket, the sport of gentlemen.

Paul was further frustrated by the knowledge that, along with several fellow students, his son frequented the saloon bar at the Copley Square Hotel. Not that there was anything wrong with the Copley Square Hotel, it was an eminently respectable establishment and Paul still used the place for the odd business meeting. But it was common knowledge that the saloon bar of the Copley Square Hotel was a gathering place for the followers of the Boston Red Sox, and even the team members themselves when it was a home game. God alone knew the class of people with whom Paolo might be associating.

‘Whom do you see at the Copley Square Hotel, Paolo?' Paul tried to sound as casual as possible. ‘Just as a matter of interest, you understand.'

‘It depends whether the Red Sox are playing at home, sir,' Paolo answered. ‘I've seen Tris Speaker a couple of times and last home match when the Red Sox played the Detroit Tigers I saw Ty Cobb. Hugh Duffy's retired now but he sometimes—'

Paul smiled at the boy's literal interpretation of the question, his lack of guile was certainly charming. ‘No, no, son, I meant who are the friends that you meet there?'

It had taken well over a year for Paul to muster the courage to call the boy ‘son' and, when he had, he'd watched Paolo's reaction carefully. There had been none. No doubt the boy presumed it was just a term of address, but it wasn't. Each time Paul said ‘son' he felt a rush of paternal pride. Just as he did when Paolo called him ‘sir'. Not that the boy recognised any personal connotation in that either. It had been quite obvious from the outset that Paolo referred to any older man as ‘sir'.

‘No thank you, sir,' he'd replied, the very first day he'd arrived, when the butler had asked him if he would like some refreshment.

Paul had been quick to point out that the butler's name was Geoffrey. Then he'd added that ‘sir' was the form of address Paolo should reserve for Paul, as his benefactor. He didn't mention that, for his entire life, he had called his own father ‘sir'. And each time from that day on, when the boy said ‘sir', Paul felt a fatherly pride. He had a son, a son who called him ‘sir'.

When Paul's gentle interrogation revealed that Paolo's fellow baseball devotees at the Copley Square Hotel saloon bar were none other than David Redmond—a distant cousin of Elizabeth's—and Stephen Sanderson—whose mother was one of the Saunders
girls, Paul was sure—the situation took on a whole new perspective.

‘And both boys go to Harvard, you say? Excellent contacts, son, well done.' Two fine old Bostonian families, Paul thought; yes, that was excellent, excellent.

Paolo was irritated by the comment but he didn't let it show. He liked David and Stephen only because they shared his passion for baseball. Personally he was a little weary of Stephen's preoccupation with social position and David's preoccupation with girls. It was Ira Rubenstein who remained Paolo's closest friend, but he knew better than to mention that to Paul Dunleavy.

Ira had been the first friend Paolo had made at Harvard. They hadn't actually met at Harvard at all, but in the Boston Public Library, poring over their respective books at their respective wooden tables beneath the massive domed ceilings of the reading room. Paolo had noticed Ira on campus, and decided to introduce himself. He stood, pulled back his chair, wincing as the wooden legs squealed alarmingly on the marble-slabbed floor, and walked over to Ira's table.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘I'm Paolo Gianni, I've seen you on campus.'

‘I'm Ira Rubenstein.'

They shook hands and Paolo sat. ‘You're always on your own,' he said.

‘I'm a Jew.'

‘So?' Paolo didn't understand.

‘They don't like Jews at Harvard.' Ira shrugged as though he didn't care. ‘No matter, I'm at Harvard to study, not to win popularity contests.'

From that day on, the two boys became close friends. They had a lot in common. They were both living away from home—Ira's parents were in New York which, he admitted wryly, was a little closer than Kalgoorlie—and
they both came from poor families. Ira was a scholarship student.

‘I guess even the anti-Semites at Harvard can't ignore the truly brilliant Jews,' he grinned. ‘And you?'

‘I have a wealthy benefactor who thinks I'm brilliant—same thing I reckon.'

Ira was very impressed. ‘I didn't think things like that happened any more.'

Paolo and Ira quickly discovered they shared a mutual passion for learning. They stimulated each other's intellect and, despite utterly dissimilar personalities, genuinely liked each other.

Ira was a dour-looking young man. Dark, pensive and given to heavy cynicism, which Paolo reasoned was mainly for self-protection, he nevertheless found people deeply interesting and his shrewd observations always came as a surprise from one who appeared so melancholic and introverted. His Russian parents had fled European persecution to arrive in New York in 1894 and Ira had been born one month later. His mother had been as sick as a dog during the ocean crossing, he said, and swore that as a result he couldn't even catch a Manhattan ferry. ‘So many things happen in the womb, Paolo. Amazing.' And Paolo didn't know whether he was joking or not. With Ira it was often hard to tell.

Mostly they met at the library, or walked along the river or through the parks. Ira didn't care to keep company with anyone, even Paolo, on campus.

‘It would mean I'd have to associate with those other friends of yours,' he explained, ‘and they don't like me.' When Paolo started to protest, he smiled that gloomy smile of his. ‘I don't like them either, believe me; I far prefer to be on my own. And we can always meet and talk elsewhere.'

Paolo asked Ira home to the Dunleavy house in
Commonwealth Avenue but he refused. ‘I'd rather not,' he said, but he wouldn't explain why.

When, after he'd been attending Harvard for several months, Paul Dunleavy asked Paolo if he'd acquired any special friends, the boy was quick to answer. ‘Yes, sir,' he said, ‘one really good mate. Ira Rubenstein. He's a funny bloke though. Private. Sort of—'

‘He's a Jew.'

It wasn't a question and the tone was accusatory. Paolo was taken aback.

‘Yes, sir.'

Paul realised the boy was shocked by his brusqueness. Not that he'd meant anything by it of course. He had nothing against Jews himself, but it simply wasn't to Paolo's advantage to befriend a Jew at Harvard. What gain could there be in such a friendship?

‘Don't misunderstand me, Paolo,' he said, his voice mellow, his smile benign, ‘I have absolutely nothing against the Jewish community, but you must be aware that, besides your degree, there are other advantages to be gained from Harvard, not least among them the cultivation of valuable friends.'

He went on about the importance of making connections with old Bostonian families, meeting sons of influential men who could advance a young man's career, but Paolo had stopped listening. He was studying Paul Dunleavy closely, suddenly aware that he was seeing the man clearly for the first time.

Why did he feel such disillusionment? Paolo wondered. This was a world he had never known, a world where people behaved in a fashion foreign to him; he had no right to criticise. But he couldn't help it. He had recognised, and with a strong sense of disappointment, that there were flaws in the benefactor he had so unquestioningly admired.

Ira Rubenstein's name was never mentioned again
and, a year later, when Paul displayed his open approval of the other friendships his son had forged, Paolo simply neglected to mention that Ira Rubenstein remained his closest friend.

 

W
HEN
P
AOLO PASSED
his second year at Harvard, once again with flying colours, a lavish family dinner was held in his honour at the stylish new Copley Plaza Hotel. Built barely two years previously, the Copley Plaza was the gathering place for Boston's urbane society.

‘Invite your friends,' Paul insisted, and Paolo couldn't help but wonder what would happen if he were to ask Ira—but of course Ira wouldn't come even if he did. To appease the family, Paolo asked Stephen Sanderson and David Redmond instead. He also invited Mary-Jane Stewart, the pretty young arts student who was in love with him.

The current object of David Redmond's desire, a saucy redhead called Amy, was also in attendance and Meg found herself seated beside Stephen Sanderson, squirming in the knowledge that he obviously presumed he was her date. Her father did little to discourage the young man's misconception.

‘Stephen Sanderson's mother is one of the Saunders girls, Elizabeth,' he'd said to his wife as they'd dressed for dinner. ‘It would be an excellent match.'

Elizabeth felt for her daughter as she watched Meg's discomfort—the Sanderson boy certainly was pompous for one so young—but then, she thought, one couldn't always marry for love. Meg could do a great deal worse.

Between tightly polite responses to Stephen's monologue, Meg was casting surreptitious glances at Mary-Jane and Paolo, both of whom were in conversation with her father. She wondered whether they were sleeping together. Yes, of course they were, she decided. Mary-Jane's manner to her host had all the deference of
youth to middle-age but, when she turned her attention to Paolo, she couldn't disguise the glow in her eyes. She was a woman in love. Fascinated, Meg looked for similar signs in Paolo but couldn't see any. If he was in love then he was cleverly concealing the fact. But then it was often difficult to tell what was going on in Paolo's mind, Meg thought; that was what made him so very attractive.

She turned her attention to David and Amy. No guesswork needed there, they were definitely sleeping together. Meg thought their behaviour most unseemly, it was quite obvious they were holding hands under the table. Did they have to be so blatant? But, despite her disapproval, she was fascinated. The lust between them was palpable.

More and more these days Meg found herself wondering what it would be like. When she felt her breasts she wondered what it would be like if the hand caressing them was a man's hand. She had even touched herself intimately between her legs and wondered what it would be like to feel a man inside her. Then, quickly, guiltily, she had stopped.

A month previously, late at night, after the freshmen's ball, Meg had received her first sexual kiss. She hadn't particularly liked the young man but he was a Harvard sporting hero and when he'd asked her to walk along the embankment she couldn't resist being seen leaving the ballroom on his arm. She'd expected to be kissed, of course. She knew she looked beautiful in her pink silk gown. And the full-length, fur-trimmed evening coat she had gathered about her for the chilly walk to the embankment made her feel very sophisticated and fashionable. A recent birthday gift from her mother, the coat was the most expensive and chic item of apparel Meg had ever owned.

A romantic moment overlooking the Charles River was exactly what Meg anticipated so, when he took her
in his arms, she tilted her head back, closed her eyes and waited for the gentle meeting of lips she had experienced several times before with Peter, the very nice boy who always contrived to sit beside her during lectures.