The Evening News (9 page)

Sloane could hear voices and laughter as he walked through a short, closed corridor between the garage and the house. They stopped as he opened a door and entered the carpeted hallway onto which most of the downstairs rooms opened. He heard Jessica call out from the living room, "Is that you, Crawf
?
”

He made a standard response
.”
If it isn't, you're in trouble
.”

Her melodious laugh came back, "Welcome, whoever you are! Be with you in a
minute
.”

He heard a clink of glasses, the sound of ice being shaken, and knew that
Jessica was mixing martinis, her nightly homecoming ritual to help him
unwind from whatever the day had brought
.”
Hi, Dad
!”

the Sloanes' eleven-year-old son, Nicholas, shouted from the
stairway. He was tall for his age and slimly built. His intelligent eyes
lit up as he ran to hug his father
.
Sloane returned the embrace, then ran his fingers through the boy's curly
brown hair. It was the kind of greeting he appreciated, and he had Jessica
to thank for that. Almost from the time Nicky was born, she had conveyed to
him her belief that feelings about loving should be expressed in tactile
ways
.
At the beginning of their marriage, being demonstrative did not come easily
to Sloane. He held back in matters of emotion, left certain things unsaid
,
to be assumed by the other party. It was part of his built-in reserve, but
Jessica would have none of it, had worked hard at smashing the reserve and
,
for herself, then Nicky, had succeeded.
S
loane recalled her telling him early on, "When you're married, darling
,
barriers come down. It's why we were 'joined together'-remember those
words? So for the rest of our lives, you and I are going to say to each
other exactly what we feeland sometimes show it too
.”

That final phrase had been about sex, which for a long time after their
marriage held surprises and adventure for Sloane. Jessica had acquired
several of the explicit, illustrated sex books which were plentiful in the
East and loved to experiment, trying new positions. After being slightly
shocked and diffident at first, Sloane came around to enjoying it too
,
though it was always Jessica who took the lead
.
(There were times when he couldn't help wondering: Had she owned those sex
books when she and Partridge were going together? Had they made use of what
was in them? But Sloane had never summoned the nerve to ask, perhaps
because he feared both answers might be yes.)
With other people his reserve lived on. Sloane couldn't remember when he
had last hugged his own father, though a few times recently he had
considered doing so but held back, uncertain how old Angus-stiff, even
rigid in his personal
behaviour
might react
.”
Hello, darling
!”

Jessica appeared wearing a soft green dress, a color he
always liked. They embraced warmly, then went into the living room. Nicky
came in for a while, as he usually did; he had eaten dinner earlier and
would go to bed soon
.
Sloane asked his son, "How's everything in the music world
?
”

"Great, Dad. I'm practicing Gershwin's Prelude Number Two
.”

His father said, "I remember that. Didn't Gershwin write it when he was
young
?
”

"Yes, twenty-eight
.”

"Near the beginning, I think, it goes dum-de-dah-dum-
DEE-da-da-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum
.”

As he attempted to sing, Nicky and
Jessica laughed
.”
I know the part you mean, Dad,
and maybe why you re
member it
.”

Nicky crossed to a grand piano in the room, then sang in a clear young tenor, accompanying himself

"In the sky the bright stars glittered On the bank thepale moon
shone And from Aunt Dinah's quilting party I was seeing Nellie
home
.”

Sloane's forehead creased with an effort of memory
.”
I've heard that
before. Isn't it an old song from the Civil War days
?
”

Nicky beamed
.”
Right on, Dad
!”

"I think I understand
,”
his father said
.”
What you're telling me is, some
of those notes are the same as in Gershwin's Prelude Two
.”

Nicky shook his head
.”
The other way 'round-the song was first. But no one
knows if Gershwin knew the song and used it, or if it was just chance
.”

"And we'll never know
.”

Amused, and impressed with Nicky's knowledge
,
Sloane exclaimed, "I'll be damned
!”

Neither he nor Jessica could remember exactly how old Nicky had been when
he began to exhibit an interest in music, but it was in his very early
years and now music was Nicky's dominant concern
.
Nicky had gravitated to the piano and took lessons from a former concert
pianist, an elderly Austrian living in nearby New Rochelle. A few weeks
earlier, speaking with a heavy accent, the tutor had told Jessica, "Your
son already has a mastery of music unusual for his age. Later he may follow
one of several paths-as a performer or composer, or perhaps a scholar and
savant. But more important is that for Nicholas, music speaks with the
tongues of angels and of joy. It is part of his soul. It will, I predict
,
be the mainstream of his life
.”

Jessica glanced at her watch
.”
Nicky, it's getting late
.”

"Ah, Mom, let me stay up! Tomorrow's a school holiday
.”

"And your day will be as full as any other. The answer is no.,
,
Jessica was the family disciplinarian and, after affectionate
good-nights, Nicky left. Soon after, they could hear him playing on a portable electronic keyboard in his bedroom which he used when the living-room piano was unavailable
.
In the softly lighted room, Jessica returned to the martinis she had been
mixing earlier. Watching her dispense them, Sloane thought, How lucky can
you get? It was a feeling he often had about Jessica and the way she looked
after more than twenty years of marriage. She no longer wore her hair long
and didn't bother to conceal streaks of gray. There were also lines around
her eyes. But her figure was slim and shapely and her legs still brought
men's eyes back for a second glance. Overall, he thought, she really hadn't
changed and he still felt proud to enter a room, any room, with Jessica
beside him
.
As she handed him a glass she commented, "It sounded like a rough day
?
”

"It was pretty much that way. You watched the news
?
”

"Yes. Those poor passengers on that airplane! What a terrible way to die!
They must have known for the longest time they didn't have a chance, then
just had to sit there, waiting
.”

With a pang of conscience, Sloane realized he hadn't thought about that at
all. Sometimes as a professional news person you became so preoccupied with
gathering the news, you forgot the human beings who made it. He wondered:
Was it callousness after long exposure to the news or a necessary
insulation, the kind acquired by doctors? He hoped it was the second, not
the first
.”
If you saw the airplane story
,”
he said, "you saw Harry. What did you
think
?
”

"He was good
.”

Jessica's answer seemed indifferent. Sloane watched her, waiting for more
,
wondering: In her mind, was the past completely dead?
"Harry was better than good. He did it like that
,”
Sloane said, snapping
his fingers
.”
Without warning. With hardly any time
.”

He went on to
describe CBA's luck in having the crew in the DFW terminal
.”
Harry, Rita
and Minh all came through. We beat the pants off the other networks
.”

"Harry and Rita seem to be working a lot together. Is something going on
there
?
”

"No. They're simply a good working team
.”

"How do you know
?
”

"Because Rita's having an affair with Les Chippingham. The two of them
think nobody knows. Of course everybody does
.”

Jessica laughed
.”
My god! You're an incestuous little group
.”

Leslie Chippingham was the president of CBA News. It was
Chippingham
whom
Sloane intended to see the next day about the removal of Chuck Insen as
executive producer
.”
Don't include me in any of that
,”
he told Jessica
.”
I'm happy with what
I have at home
.”

The martini had relaxed him, as it always did, though neither he nor
Jessica was a heavy drinker. One martini plus a glass of wine with dinner
was their limit, and during the day Sloane never drank at all
.”
You're feeling good tonight
,”
Jessica said, "and you have another reason
to
.”

She got up and from a small bureau across the room brought back an
envelope, already opened-a normal procedure since Jessica handled most of
their private business
.”
It's a letter from your publisher and a royalty
statement
.”

He took the papers out and studied them, his face lighting with a smile
.
Crawford Sloane's book The Camera and the Truth had been published several
months earlier. Written with a collaborator, it was his third
.
In terms of sales, the book got off to a slow start. The New York critics savaged it, leaping at the opportunity to humble someone of Crawford Sloane's stature. But in places like Chi cago, Cleveland, San Francisco and Miami, reviewers liked the book. More important, a ' s weeks passed, certain comments in it gained attention in general news columns-the best kind of publicity any book can have
.
In a chapter about terrorism and hostages Sloane had written bluntly of
"the shame most Americans felt after the 198687 revelations that the U.S
.
Government bought freedom for a
handful of our hostages in the Middle East at the expense of thousands of Iraqi deaths and mutilations, not only on the Iran-Iraq battlefield but among civilians
.”

The war casualties, he pointed out, resulted from weaponry supplied by the
U.S. to Iran in payment for the hostages' release
.”
A modem dirty thirty
pieces of silver
”
was how Sloane had described the payment, and he quoted
Kipling's Dane-geld.-
We never pay any-one Dane-geld
,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame
,
And the nation that
plays it is lost
!
Other applauded Sloane remarks were:
-No politician anywhere has the guts to say it aloud, but hostages
,
including American hostages, should be regarded as expendable. Pleas from
hostages
families should be heard sympathetically, but should not sway
government policy
.
-The only way to deal with terrorists is by counterterrorism, which means
whenever possible seeking out and covertly destroying them-the only
language they understand It includes not striking bargains with terrorists
or paying ranso
m, directly or indirectly, ever
-Terrorists who observe no civilized code should not expect, when caught
red-handed, to shelter under laws and principles which they despise. The
British, in whom respect
for law is deeply ingrained, have been forced to
bend that law at times in defending themselves
from a depraved and ruthless
IRA
.
-No matter what we do, terrorism will not go away because the governments
and organizations backing terrorists don't really want settlements or
accommodations. They are fanatics using other fanatics and perverted
religions as their weapons
.
- We who live in the United States will not remain free
from terrorism in
our own backyard much longer. But neither mentally nor in other ways are we
prepared
for this pervasive, ruthless kind of warfare
.
When the book came out, some of CBA's brass were nervous about the "hostages should be regarded as expendable
”
and "covertly destroying
”
statements, fearing they would create political and public resentment of the network. As it turned out, there was no reason for concern and the executives quickly joined the chorus of approval
.
Sloane beamed as he put aside the impressive royalty accounting
.”
You deserve what's happened and I'm proud of you
,”
Jessica said
.”
Especially because it isn't like you to take chances in being
controversial
.”