Spearfield's Daughter (68 page)

“I always thought you had the future under control,” said Cleo.

“What about General Brisson?” said Jerry Kibler, before knife-throwing could turn the meeting into a blood-bath.

“Roger owns ten per cent of the stock. That entitles him to a place on the board. If we don't create an extra post, then it will necessitate someone with a lesser holding retiring.” She looked at Jensen and the other four underprivileged directors. “I don't think we should sacrifice their experience.”

“Certainly not mine,” said Jensen, winking down the table at Cleo. She had continued to sit at the bottom of the table, always leaving argument to Jerry Kibler. She knew that he enjoyed argument and was good at it.

“I'll have to consult my client.” Kibler looked at his watch, then at Cleo. “Would he be at home now?”

“I don't know what his routine is these days,” said Cleo.

At the far end of the table Claudine's smile was like a knife-edge of wintry sun. Alain's grin was
nothing
more than a smirk: some college boy still lingered in him after all. Kibler went out of the room and Claudine said, “We shan't waste time. Let's attend to the less important matters.”

Kibler was back in ten minutes. He came to the door of the boardroom and signalled to Cleo with a hooked finger. She got up and went out to him. They stood in the corridor while secretaries, passing them, looked at them curiously and wondered what was going on in the boardroom that had sent the editor and another director out to a whispered conference in the corridor. The secretaries went on to their own offices and spent the rest of the day munching on rumours.

“Have you and Jack Cruze had a fight?” Kibler said. “He sounded as if he didn't care a damn about Alain and Roger.”

“There was no fight. We're no longer—well, the best of friends, if you want to put it that way. What did he say?”

Kibler looked carefully at her for a long moment, then decided not to ask any more personal questions. He was a banker, not a lawyer: that, to an extent, kept him out of the intimacy of his clients' lives. He had never wanted it any other way.

“He said to do whatever I thought fit.” Cleo noted the
I
. Had Jack already dismissed her from the
Courier
, just biding his time to tell her? “I'm all for saying no, at least to Alain.”

Cleo looked up and down the corridor. She remembered the political cliché, the corridors of power. There was no power here or even in the boardroom behind her: it was virtually all in the person of Claudine. Two Roux would be too much; it would be hooroo, Cleo. “What are you smiling at?” said Kibler.

“A dreadful play on words.” But she didn't enlighten him. “We'll vote yes for Roger and no for Alain.”

Jerry Kibler nodded approvingly. “Let's go back in and jerk the finger at the Empress.”

Claudine recognized the jerked finger, though she had never in her life seen the actual physical gesture. “I hope there is nothing personal in this. There never should be in business,” she said, who conducted everything she did on a personal level.

“I'm sure there's nothing personal in it,” said Stephen Jensen, who was sure there was and wished he knew the reason for it. “But a top-heavy board is like a top-heavy woman, out of all proportion to her efficiency.”

“
Thank you for the analogy,” said Claudine, sitting straighter than ever to show she was not top-heavy. “That sounds like a Hasty Pudding Club line, about 1923.”

“Before my time,” said Jensen, knowing once again that one could never have the last word with Claudine.

Alain stood up, holding his cane halfway down its length like a club. He ignored Kibler and looked down the table at Cleo. “I hope this won't prevent us from working together.”

Then he limped out of the room and Claudine looked at Cleo. “You appear puzzled by what Alain said. That was the next point I was going to raise. The paper, improving as it is every day under Cleo's able editorship—” her smile would have cut a swathe through the besiegers of the Alamo “—needs someone in the publisher's office every day, time that I cannot afford. I nominate Alain to be the associate publisher, to stand in for me.”

Kibler glanced at Cleo, who managed to restrain a shrug, knowing the matter was already decided, and dredged up a smile that matched Claudine's. “A good idea. It will give him that experience he'll need when he takes over from you.”

“I'm glad you see it that way,” said Claudine, who intended to live forever. Or at least till God would invite her to join Him as an equal.

The meeting eventually finished and Roger followed Cleo out of the room. “You'll have my support. You've done a marvellous job on the paper. It's a little more sensationalist, but I suppose that's what people want these days.”

“I like to think it's nicely balanced. I don't believe in sensationalism for its own sake.” She had encouraged the copy editors to brighten up their headings, but the paper was not strident. “It will be nice to have you on the board, if you're going to be on my side.”

“Oh, I shall be. I do owe you something.”

“I thought serving army officers couldn't take civilian jobs?”

“I retired from the Army yesterday. The announcement is being put out from the Pentagon this afternoon. It will probably get only two lines in tomorrow's papers.” He looked suitably modest, a self-inflicted wound that deserved a Purple Heart.

“I'll give it more, if you wish. I'll mention it to Joe Hamlyn.”

“
No, I want to keep a low profile for a while.”

“You're not going to content yourself with being just a part-time businessman.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No, I'll be doing some studying and some travelling.” But he wouldn't tell her any more, though she knew at once there was something to tell. “In the meantime you can rely on my support.”

“How's Louise?”

“I'm still living in Washington and she's out at Sands Point. But we have dinner together when I come up here. We're friends. Not like you and Jack Cruze, of course.” He was fishing, having listened to Claudine's suspicions.

“You're wrong. We're very much like you and Louise.”

He watched her walk away down the corridor, wondering why (but knowing only too well) she and he could not have been more than friends. She had that rare quality, a ladylike swagger to her ass. It was not as pronounced as it had been when he had first met her in Saigon, but she still had it, though it was now politely provocative. She had class and style, which one didn't expect of Australians. He was going to be an expert on foreign affairs, but a little selective xenophobia never hurt anyone.

Alain moved in as associate publisher the very next day. When Cleo arrived in the office that afternoon Joe Hamlyn strolled in immediately behind her. “Guess who's sitting up in the publisher's office sharpening his pencils and his mother's knives?”

“So soon?” But Cleo was not surprised. The emanations from the Roux end of the table at yesterday's board meeting had warned her that Alain, whether from his own intentions or his mother's, had come home to make life uncomfortable for her.

“Are we going to have trouble with him?” Joe said.

“How did you get on with him when he worked here before?”

“Okay, I guess. He was never pushy. But he was always his mother's son. You could never forget that.”

“Well, don't let us forget it till we find out what he's got in mind. You and I have got a good paper here, Joe, and we don't want anyone, mother's son or not, lousing it up.”

Alain came to the conference that afternoon, was polite and affable to Cleo and the other editors
and
sat quietly, offering no suggestions and making no notes, while the paper was put together for tomorrow's edition. When the conference was over he limped after Cleo to the door of her office.

“Cleo, could you come up to my office for a few minutes? There is more privacy there than in this goldfish bowl.” But he was smiling as he described her office.

Biding her time, waiting to see what moves he had in mind, she went up with him to the floor above. The publisher's office was next to the boardroom, had the same panelled walls and the same suggestion that, socially, it was several levels above the newsroom below. Early American prints decorated the walls; a sword that Napoleon had once worn hung in its scabbard above the marble-fronted fireplace; the thick Persian carpet dared one to throw screwed-up copy paper on it. The big room, however, was not entirely masculine; Claudine had added her own touches. The drapes and lamp-shades were pale yellow, the desk was a French writing table; a large mirror, with a Matthias Lock rococo frame, hanging on the opposite wall, reassured whoever was at the desk where authority lay. Alain sat down behind the desk looking slightly uncomfortable.

“I hope you and I will work together without any friction between us. As my mother said, there should be nothing personal in business. However—” he paused, as he might before he drew the sword from the scabbard above the fireplace. “However, I shall have certain points of view I'll be putting forward, some of which you may not agree with.”

“It's possible. We don't all agree at the news conference each day. You didn't disagree with anything that's going into tomorrow's paper?”

“Not disagree, no. Reservations, yes. I think we should tread more carefully with our opinions on what's happening in Iran at present. I don't know whether you know, but Roger is going over to Cairo next week on a private study tour. He has contacts there and I think we might wait for what he can bring back for us.”

“Roger is not a newspaperman. And Iran might be blown off the map by next week, the way things are going there.”

“Nonetheless, I think we should wait till Roger comes back with his impressions.”

“I'll think about it.” She stood up. “How's your wife settling into New York?”

“Very happily. How's Tom? You know, I never knew there was a thing between you and him.”

“
There never was. Not till recently.” But she wasn't going to discuss her love for Tom with him. Nor was she going to discuss every editorial decision with him. She laid down the implied rule that she was not going to be at his beck and call: “I'll see you at tomorrow's conference.”

When she went downstairs she looked for Tom at the desk he had chosen for himself at the far end of the newsroom. Keeping his distance, as he described it. So far nobody in the newsroom, except possibly Joe Hamlyn and Carl Fishburg, suspected there was a thing between her and him. She wondered how long Alain would keep the knowledge to himself.

When she reached home that night Tom was waiting for her in the lobby of her apartment building. As they rode up in the elevator he said, “We can't go on meeting like this.”

“Is that a joke or are you serious?”

“It was a joke once.” She had not given him a key to her apartment, something Jack had had, and he waited while she opened the front door. Once inside he took her in his arms and kissed her almost savagely. Then he said, “I think I'm serious.”

She put down her handbag, took her second door-key from it and held it out. “That makes us serious, I guess.”

They had a light supper, went to bed and after they had made love he turned over to go to sleep. He did not stay at the apartment every night, but she was still so hungry for him, there was so much lost time to be made up, that she never turned him out if he wanted to stay. Tonight she clutched his shoulder and pulled him over on his back.

“Don't go to sleep yet, I want to talk. Did you ever discuss me with Alain?”

He had the bemused look, like that of a half-gassed bull, of a man who had just made satisfying love. Why did women always want to talk after it? Simone occasionally had been the same. “What? Would I do that?”

“I don't know.” It made her feel cheap that he and Alain might have discussed her, though Tom at the time could hardly have had any confidences to exchange. “But he knows there is a thing, as he calls it, between you and me.”

Tom stared at the ceiling, frowning; then at last he looked at her. “It must have been Simone. Right at the end she asked me if there was another woman. I had to be honest with her. I told her there had
been
nothing between us, but that years ago I'd fallen in love with you.”

“What did she say?” She really didn't want to talk about Simone, but another woman's opinion couldn't be ignored.

“Nothing. I think she understood—Simone was always a very understanding girl—”

“Go to sleep,” she said, cutting off any further accolade; one cheer was enough for an ex-wife. “I just wish she'd kept it to herself instead of mentioning it to Alain . . . No, wake up!”

He rolled on his back again, the bemused look gone to be replaced by one of patient irritation. He looked like a husband. “What is it now?”

“Would you like to go to Cairo next week with Roger Brisson?”

“What for?”

“You're experienced in that region—” Last year, freelancing from the Paris bureau, he had done a piece for the
Courier
on NATO bases in Turkey and then gone on to Israel, from there to Cyprus and then on to Egypt. “I don't know exactly why Roger is going there, but I think Alain is going to foist some of Roger's opinions on us. I'd rather you wrote them.”

He looked at her warily. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Don't joke,” she said, hoping he wasn't serious. “I owe you a good story after spiking the Rossano piece. I'll talk to Roger about it tomorrow.”

“Will you talk to Alain about it?”

“Only after we've bought your ticket. Now you can go to sleep.”

“I'm wide awake now.” He lay for a while staring at the ceiling while she turned over to go to sleep. Then he reached for her shoulder and pulled her over on her back. “Will you marry me?”