Read Spearfield's Daughter Online
Authors: Jon Cleary
Spearfield's Daughter
SPEARFIELD'S DAUGHTER
Jon Cleary
FOR BENJAMIN
Copyright
© 1982 by Sundowner Productions Pty Ltd
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any formwithout permission in writing from the publisher.
First ebook edition 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-819-3
Library ISBN 978-1-62460-148-4
Cover photo ©
TK
/
iStock.com
.
CONTENTS
SPEARFIELD'S DAUGHTER
1
I
“YOU'RE SYLVESTER
Spearfield's daughter, aren't you?”
“Occasionally.”
Cleo Spearfield knew she was being unnecessarily rude to the war correspondent from Melbourne. But he, a crude chauvinist, was accustomed to being snubbed by women and just grinned and walked on, satisfied that he had put her in her place.
Tom Border looked after the Australian, then back at her. “Remind me never to ask you a question like that. Who is your father, anyway?”
“Nobody. Go on with what you were saying.”
Tom appraised her with a stare, then seemed to mentally shrug and went on with his thesis: “Wars are only benefit games for the generals. The poor grunts who have to fight the wars are necessary, but no career-minded man above the rank of colonel ever says they're not expendable.”
“I'm tired of all your male cynicism.”
“That's because you're female, sentimental and compassionate. You also have a very nice swagger to your ass. Why did you come to the war, Cleo old girl?”
“Because the mums back home in Australia are beginning to worry about their boys in a war that seems to be going all wrong. I thought I might be able to get at some of the truth.”
But that, in itself, was only some of the truth. She had come to Vietnam to escape being Sylvester Spearfield's daughter and to find her own name, if not fame.
Her father, who saw himself as everyone's guiding light and sometimes blinded himself with his own luminance, had once said to her, “Come to me when you've finished university. Whatever you want to do, I'm sure to know someone. Just don't go into politics.”
She
knew he had given the same advice to her two brothers, who had listened to him and then gone into dentistry and meteorology, as if realizing the futility of competing against a famous father in his own field. Sylvester Spearfield had never been Prime Minister of Australia, but there were Prime Ministers who would never be remembered as long as the flamboyant Senator from New South Wales, the ex-trade union organizer who had risen to be a politician for whom even his old opponents, top management, now had a grudging but sincere admiration.
“Afraid of the competition, Dad?” At both convent school and university she had already established a reputation as a radical. But all the newspaper reports on her activities called her her father's daughter . . .
Cleo Spearfield, daughter of the radical Senator, yesterday
. . .
Her father had let out the belly-laugh that the election crowds had once loved. Television had killed the belly-laugh as a campaign weapon and Sylvester had had difficulty in coming to terms with the living-room smile. “You'd lose your deposit every time you ran against me, sweetheart. I'll still be in Parliament when your kids, my grandkids, are old enough to vote.”
“You could retire and let me take your seat.”
Her father had shaken his head with its long thick thatch. He had worn his hair long ever since he had gone into politics, liking to be thought of as one of the good old-time politicians, a man from Federation days, though he hadn't been born when Australia became a nation. But fashion had caught up with him and now he was surrounded by others with long hair.
“I'm not interested in creating a dynasty. You might turn out to be better than me. Then who'd remember me? I'd just be known as Cleo Spearfield's father.”
Which would serve him right, thought his daughter. She had decided then that she was going to be better than her father, but in another field. When she graduated and got a job on the
Sydney Morning Post,
he had reacted with mock disgust.
“Whatever happened to the radical Cleo? How the hell did you con a conservative rag like the
Post
into taking you on?”
“I think they're trying to prove they're not as reactionary as they really are. They're also probably being spitefully funny, having the radical daughter of a radical Labour Senator on their women's page.”
“On the women's page, eh? Try and subvert the blue-rinse set, sweetheart. Good luck.”
But
she hadn't subverted the blue-rinse set; within three months she had been moved off the women's page and on to general reporting. Within a year she had got her by-line, but all the readers knew she was her father's daughter. She had longed to be Cleo Brown or Smith: Spearfield was too distinctive.
Now, in 1968, she had decided to put distance, if nothing else, between herself and her father. She had applied to be sent to the
Post's
London office, but they had turned her down. Then she had taken the plunge: “Send me to Vietnam. There's no other Australian woman in the field there. Let me go and give the woman's view.”
The
Post
had never had a woman war correspondent; it did not even have a woman covering the small political wars in Canberra. But it had surprised her, after sitting on her application for two weeks. The editor had said, “All right, but don't get yourself killed. And we want nothing radical, Cleo, none of your old anti-war stuff from your university days. Just good objective reporting.”
Now Tom Border was saying, “The moms back home in America are also worrying about their boys in the war that's going wrong every goddam day. But if ever we gentlemenâand ladiesâ” he bowed his head “âof the press told them the truth, they'd think we were un-American. The generals certainly would.”
They were sitting on the terrace of the Continental Hotel. Above their heads the loudspeakers attached to the columns were blaring, taking all the mystery out of the Beatles'
Magical Mystery Tour.
Out on the streets Saigon flowed, scampered, jerked past like a back-projection scene that wasn't quite in synchronization with what went on inside one's head. Cleo had been here in Vietnam a month and she had begun to wonder if she would ever get any part of this war and this country into focus. She knew that many of the men, the press correspondents as well as the GIs, stoned themselves out of focus. Drugs, opium pills, cocaine, heroin, had become standard equipment, like a chow-tin or an M-16 rifle. The Australian officers had told her there was much less drug-taking amongst their men than amongst the Americans, but they had been guarded and she had wondered whether they were lying or trying not to be too critical of the Americans. She hadn't pursued the question, however, and that had been when she had started to dodge the truth. She sipped her vermouth cassis and wondered how much more of the truth she would ignore before she went home.
“I'm going up to An Bai tomorrow. You want to come?”
As
if he were asking her to a movie or a picnic. Tom Border had been in Vietnam over a year and soon he would be going home, to be replaced by another correspondent who would arrive full of curiosity, looking for the truth, and would gradually become cynical and stoned and would wait only for
his
replacement. Though, come to think of it, she had never seen Tom stoned or even drunk, and never heard him mention that he took pills or smoked an opium pipe.
“I was going anyway.”
“You're gutsy, Cleo old girl. You could sit here in Saigon on that beautiful ass of yours, like so many of the guys who don't have beautiful asses, and write about the war from what they tell us at the Five O'Clock Follies. You swaggerâ”
“I do not!” But she knew she did: she had inherited her father's walk. Swaggering Sylvester, a newspaper had once called him, and he had let out the belly-laugh and swaggered even more.
“You do, old girl. In that custom-tailored combat suit of yours, I have trouble distinguishing you from General Westmoreland. You and he are easily the two best-dressed Beautiful People this town has seen.”
Which was more than could be said for him. No matter what he was dressed in, his clothes always seemed to fit him like a catcher's glove, as if he had bought them in anticipation of middle-age spread. He was tall and bony and he might be handsome in twenty years' time, when the bone in his face would be an advantage; he talked a lot, but she had noticed that his eyes often did not match his words, that they had a withdrawn look, as if his thoughts were a long way from his mouth. He was the correspondent for a small chain of Mid-West newspapers and she knew already that she would miss him when he went home next month.
“But you're gutsy and that makes you okay. I wish
I
could make you.”
“Forget it, Tom. I didn't come here to climb into bed with the first feller who asked me.”
“I'll bet I'm not the first who's asked you. I mean that as a compliment.” He had a slow smile which gave him a certain charm missed by those who saw only his usual sober, watchful face.
