Touchstone (45 page)

It could also mean Richard Bunsen hadn’t put his bomb into place yet.

As he moved into the long gallery, heading for the stairs, he saw Laura Hurleigh and her father, in a group with Bunsen and four others. Laura caught Stuyvesant’s eye, making a small hand gesture to indicate that he should join them.

He shook his head and would have moved on, but her look grew more emphatic, one eyebrow raised in a manner that instantly evoked his mother saying, “Don’t make me come get you, Harris Stuyvesant.”

A look like that, a man had no choice: Stuyvesant walked over to join them.

As he drew near, he realized that one of the men was Stanley Baldwin. The Prime Minister was a placid man with a high forehead, a large nose, and a slight look of eyebrow-cocked disbelief that lent his face more humor than one would expect. He had a reputation for being a fair-minded plodder, which Stuyvesant didn’t think at all a bad thing to be, for a government official, and although he had been through Cambridge and was a cousin of Rudyard Kipling, he’d managed the family iron works before running for Parliament. The Prime Minister was listening to something Laura was saying, and when she finished, he and the others laughed.

They called it “breaking the ice,” Stuyvesant reflected; he could only pray that once the ice broke, it wouldn’t drop them all into deadly cold waters below.

Laura reached out and pulled him in. “Mr. Baldwin, I don’t believe you’ve met Richard’s friend from America, Harris Stuyvesant? Mr. Stuyvesant is a particularly appropriate addition to this little get-together, not only bringing the outsider’s point of view, but because he can claim membership in both the working class and management. Harris, Mr. Baldwin.”

She made it sound as if the Prime Minister of Britain should be just delighted to make his acquaintance, and to Stuyvesant’s astonishment, Baldwin was. Or acted as though he was. She gave the conversation a couple of gentle nudges and then stood back as five men—Britain’s Prime Minister; a recently elevated Ford Motor consultant; the charismatic Union representative with the film-star looks; a mine owner with a face like a bulldog; and a slim young male secretary on his longest trip out of London in his whole life—began to argue genially about cricket.

After a bit, Laura rested her hand briefly on the Prime Minister’s sleeve, murmured something, and faded backwards out of the circle.

Five minutes later, Stuyvesant pulled the same self effacement, and walked towards the tea samovar. Laura detached herself from another group, this one centered around her father, and slipped her arm through his to continue in the direction of the refreshments.

“It seems to be starting off well,” he said.

“It was heavy going for the first few minutes, but a bit of oil has spilt on the gears and it’s moving more easily now.”

“Is that your job, spilling oil?”

“We aristos have to be good for something.”

“Well, better oil than blood.”

“Hmm,” she said, distracted by the pouring of tea out of the samovar, and Stuyvesant decided she hadn’t heard him. She was, he noticed, one of two women (other than the maids) in a room full of powerful men, the other being the iron-faced lady secretary of the miners’ president, Herbert Smith.

“Can I ask,” he said, lowering his voice for her ears only, “is it going to be a problem for you, being Bunsen’s…”

“Associate?” She completed his sentence, one eyebrow arched with amusement. “I am openly an advocate of the working class, Mr. Stuyvesant. Anything further, well, they may have heard rumors, but the British are far too polite to believe rumors. Here, I am no one’s mistress but my own. One lump or two?”

She held out a cup and saucer that looked as if they might have come from a London museum, and he closed his big fingers gingerly on the saucer. “No sugar, thanks.”

“Really? Well, you must have one of the cheese savories, they’re divine, and one of these little purply things, for after. Now, my dear Mr. Stuyvesant, please tell me you know something about the sport of boxing?”

“I’ve been in the ring once or twice, in my youth,” he admitted.

“Oh, bless you! Come,” she ordered, and propelled him across the room to where a gruff old man and a nervous-looking young man were planted. “Mr. Smith, this is a friend of Richard’s from America, Harris Stuyvesant, who was telling me that he used to box when he was a boy. Harris, this is Herbert Smith, who as you know is the president of the Miners’ Federation. Mr. Smith was a prize fighter when he was a lad in the fields, weren’t you, Mr. Smith? And this is his associate, Tom Decater, who’s interested in baseball.”

Smith was a stolid old Yorkshire miner who looked as if he could still manage a hard right to the chin if he had to. Born in a work-house, orphaned not much later, he’d gone into the pits at the age of ten. He gazed calmly at the American over a pair of wire spectacles, and seemed to have summed him up in two seconds flat—not, the American was relieved to see, disapprovingly. The men did as they’d been told, and talked about boxing for a few minutes, then moved to cricket, and baseball, and to life in New York.

As they talked, Stuyvesant watched out of the corner of his eye as Laura closed in on the next group, all miners’ representatives, and abducted two of the men—one thin and with an office stoop, the other who would look more at home in front of a punching bag—in a manner that was halfway between flirtatious and maternal. She deposited the two in a group of the Prime Minister’s men and started them talking, then performed the same exchange with a pair of that group, returning them to the miners’ representatives. She spent the next hour stirring the mixture, providing constant variety, planting conversational seeds and waiting until they had begun to germinate, then moved on to the next flagging group. She touched and patted, laughed and admired, stepped in the instant any voices were raised and soothed, distracted, and amused.

He was exhausted just watching her.

At half-past five the platters were allowed to go empty, and Laura began to circumnavigate the room with the suggestion that drinks would be served in the room next door in an hour, if any of the gentlemen wished to change for dinner.

Stuyvesant waited until he saw Bunsen leave, and drifted away behind him until he turned into his bedroom, at which point the American moved rapidly to intercept the closing door. Bunsen looked around, surprised, when the door didn’t shut.

“Oh, it’s you. Come in,” he said, although Stuyvesant was already in and the door shutting behind him. “I hope you brought your D.J. We didn’t have much time to warn you what you’d need here.”

Stuyvesant assured him that he was well set for dinner jackets, then asked him, “How close do you want me to stick to you?”

“Sorry?”

“As your bodyguard, that is. Yesterday in London, I made it a point to be at your shoulder in a crowd, but I don’t imagine that’s what you’d want here.”

“Certainly not. You probably ought to talk to Laura about that, she’s the one who thought I should have a bodyguard.”

“I will. But as far as you’re concerned, you’d like me to be discreet?”

“Discreet would be good.”

“That’s fine. But we should have a signal if you want me to back away for a while. Perhaps lifting two fingers, like you’re holding a cigarette only without the cigarette?” It was a gesture unnatural enough not to be made by accident, but easy enough to work into a conversation’s normal hand gestures—he’d used it before, with men he was guarding.

Bunsen stretched his index and middle fingers out from his other fingers experimentally, and said, “Sure, that’s easy to remember.”

“Just try to forget I’m there. If you go for a walk, I’ll be behind you, but you can ignore me. If you’re in a room with a few others, I’ll probably be nearby rather than inside, although in a crowd like this afternoon, I’ll stick closer. And whenever you’re in here, I’ll be right outside the door.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. And didn’t add,
And if you’d thought of sneaking off to Laura Hurleigh’s rooms during the night, you’ll just have to keep it in your pants.

“If you say so.”

“Now, I have to go and talk with Laura for a few minutes, but I should be back before you’re ready to go down. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go out of your rooms or let anyone in while I’m away.” It was absolutely unnecessary, would have been unnecessary even if Bunsen was one of the good guys, but if it discouraged him from wandering, fine.

“Very well,” he said, beginning to sound irritated. It was a phase most people went through, who weren’t accustomed to a tight guard.

“Thank you. So if you’d lock your door now, I’ll be off.”

He stood outside until he heard the key turn in the lock, and went to find Laura Hurleigh.

She was not in her room, nor in the solar, nor in the Great Hall. He finally located her under the portico where he had sheltered while watching the rain fall on Grey. When Stuyvesant came out, she was fumbling through the pockets of her skirt for a somewhat crumpled packet of cigarettes.

Stuyvesant snapped his lighter into life and held it to her; she guided his hand with hers until the cigarette was going, and nodded her thanks. She pushed her dark hair away from her face and leaned back against the wall, smoke drifting from her narrow Spanish nose. He took off his jacket and eased it between the thin fabric of her dress and the stones.

“You must feel like you’ve been run through a mangle,” he said.

“What, from a tea-party?”

“That was no tea-party, that was a major phase of negotiations. I’ve got to hand it to you—I wouldn’t have thought anyone could keep that group of men from each other’s throats for an entire hour.”

“And the week-end is young,” she remarked, sounding a touch grim.

“It’ll get easier, now that you’ve set the tone.”

“It never ceases to amaze me, the extent to which this country will defer to my kind of people.”

“C’mon, don’t short-change yourself. It’s not
what
you are that pulled it off, it’s who.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say, Mr. Stuyvesant.”

“You called me ‘Harris’ in there, you’re welcome to go on with it. And I say nothing but the truth. They should elect you Queen and toss out the rest of the system.”

“Now, there is a political arrangement I’ve not heard mooted. An elected monarchy.”

“Make it an absolute monarchy, all or nothing.”

“I shall try to bring up your proposal over this week-end.”

“Seriously,” he said. “That was an impressive job of oil-pouring in there. And I think you ought to go put up your feet for a few minutes before it starts again.”

She took a last draw of tobacco and planted the butt in a bowl of sand laid there for the purpose. He held the door for her; she handed him his jacket.

“I need to know,” he said. “How close do you want me to stick to Bunsen?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m here as his bodyguard, although as you say, it’s mostly as decoration. Still, don’t you think I should go through the motions? Not on the level of pushing him through a crowd and watching for rotten tomatoes; just keeping a discreet eye.”

“We shall assume that here the rotten tomatoes will be strictly verbal. Just use your judgment, Harris.”

“Well, if I’m not going to be glued to his hip, maybe you should take my name off the dinner lists. I may stick my head in, but it’s better not to be nailed down to one place.”

“As you wish.”

“And, let me know if there’s anything I can help you with,” he told her. Her smile was warm as she went inside, leaving him thinking that Laura Hurleigh was one heck of a lady.

Dinner that night lacked the ease of the tea-time gathering, either because the setting was more formal, or because Laura Hurleigh was not permitted to circulate and turn matters to her satisfaction. Watching the currents in the room, Stuyvesant thought it a good thing that, for this time anyway, the three groups had been seated to themselves.

During dinner the Duke was at his most formal and the air of the Great Hall pressed down on all sides. Everyone breathed an exhalation of relief when the final course was cleared and they could adjourn to the billiards room and its neighboring library for brandy and cigars. Laura and the lady secretary disappeared for a very few minutes, the scantest of recognition to the traditional withdrawal of the ladies.

Laura came into the billiards room and re-inserted herself into the group, allowing one mine owner to get her a brandy and soda, permitting young Tom Decater to light her cigarette. To Stuyvesant’s interest, a short time later the Duke stood up and left, as if for a brief visit to the restroom. Except that he did not come back, and Laura’s presence ruled.

The next three hours passed like tea-time had, but smoothed further by alcohol, gramophone music, and the bonhomie of the billiards table. Laura kept in the background, but seemed to know the very moment when constraint would re-appear or two men would recall that they were opponents, when she would appear at their elbow with a question, a story, or some entertaining distraction. Once she told a joke that sounded perfectly innocent until one thought about it, then stood with a surprised look on her lovely face when the men around her began to snort with laughter. Later, she recited a conversation she’d overheard between Chancellor Churchill and his wife about water-colors, a duet of a woman’s voice alternating with a gruff, pompous man that had even the Prime Minister hiding his amusement. And before the evening was over, she succeeded in snaring nine assorted males for a game of charades, thus providing Harris Stuyvesant with the lifetime memory of the Prime Minister of Britain crawling on the carpet and yapping in an illustration of the phrase “barking mad.”

Weaving through it all, Lady Laura Hurleigh glowed, luminous with purpose as she moved through the roomful of implacable foes and soothed their raised hackles beneath her aristocratic hands, convincing them of their shared interests, reminding them that they were human beings, and British, before they were supporters of an unyielding position.

As the foundation for an agreement, it was unlikely, it was unhurried, and it was brilliant.