Читать книгу: «The Beaufort Sisters», страница 3

‘I’m already blaming myself,’ said Davoren, careless of the driver. ‘For everything.’

3

Nina had a headache and felt ill. So far she had had no morning sickness; but she was sick this morning. And cold and miserable and afraid. She sat on the floor of the bare room, wondering where she was. She could hear no sound from outside except the occasional harsh cry of a bird; she recognized country silence, remembering vacations spent on the Beaufort plantation down in the south-east corner of Missouri. The two men who had kidnapped her had fed her army rations last night and again this morning: at least they were not going to let her starve. They had given her two army blankets, but even with those and still wrapped in her camel hair coat, she had not been able to sleep for the cold. She had never felt worse in her whole life and only an effort kept her from breaking down and weeping helplessly at her plight.

The door was unlocked and one of the men came into the room with a mug of steaming coffee. He was the one who had been driving the truck and she had not seen him until she had woken up in this room last night. He was a small man, in uniform and wearing a parka with the hood up; Air Force dark glasses covered his eyes. In the gloom of the room, with the only light coming through the cracks of the boarded-up window and through the half-open door, it was impossible to distinguish his features. He was just a dark body and head with a rough soft voice.

‘Get this into you, honey. Sorry we can’t give you any heat, but we don’t want people coming around asking why smoke’s coming outa the chimney. If your daddy don’t fool around, you oughtn’t to be here too long.’

Nina stood up, took the mug and almost scalded her throat as she gulped down the coffee. The man stood looking at her and she suddenly felt even more afraid: was he going to rape her? She tightened her grip on the mug, ready to hurl it if he moved towards her.

‘I’m just looking at you.’ The man’s voice was most peculiar, as if he had a small bag of sand or gravel in his throat instead of a voice-box. ‘We put a price of half a million bucks on you. You think you’re worth that much?’

She almost said, My father would think I’m worth much more; but she was not so cold and miserable that her mind had stopped working. She suddenly realized how dangerous wealth could be. It was said that kidnapping in America had originated in Kansas City; people must have been abducted in colonial times, but it had been turned into a modern profession by gangsters in her home town. They had even kidnapped the city manager’s daughter; Lucas Beaufort had wanted to broadcast a plea that the kidnappers come back for the city manager, too. The spate of abductions had frightened the wealthy citizens and for a while no children of rich families went anywhere without an escort. When Nina had gone to college her father had wanted a private guard assigned to her, but the Vassar board had been firm that their campus should not be turned into a security camp. From her early teens Nina had been aware that great wealth made her and her sisters different from other children, but, despite her father’s concern, she had never really thought of it as endangering her. Now, chillingly, she knew better.

‘Why are you doing this?’

But even as she asked she knew it was a foolish question, and the man laughed. ‘You ain’t that dumb, Nina. We’re doing it for money. Ain’t that what your old man and his old man worked for, screwed people for? We come over here, us GI’s, to fight for a better world, that’s what they told us. You need money for a better world, if you’re gonna enjoy it properly. My partner and me, we been making a little on the side. But you’re worth more than a truck-load of cigarettes, more than a whole PX.’

‘They might hang you for kidnapping. They wouldn’t do that for selling things on the black market.’

‘The Krauts spent three years trying to shoot my ass off, but I survived. I think my luck’s gonna hold. Nobody’s gonna hang me. You work for UNRRA, but you don’t know nothing about the real world. The real world is made up of people without money, and I don’t mean just Krauts. We gotta take risks, we wanna get anywhere. You’re lucky, you’re never gonna have to take a risk in your whole goddam life!’

He sounded abruptly angry, though his voice didn’t rise. He went out of the room, slamming the door behind him and locking it. Nina put the mug down on the floor, began to walk round the room in an effort to turn the blocks of ice in her shoes back into feet. She heard an engine start up outside and she went to the window and tried to peer out through the thin cracks between the boards. But all she could see was snow, a blank white mockery.

The truck, or whatever it was, drove away. When its sound had faded she stood listening, ears alert for any sound in the house. She could hear nothing; then the house creaked as if to reassure her that she had been left alone. She made up her mind that she was going to escape.

She had always been a resourceful girl, though never as good at practical matters as Margaret and Sally. She hoped she could get herself out of a locked, boarded-up room. One could not be more practical than to know how to escape from kidnappers.

Buoyed up by her own determination, she began at once to seek a way out of the room. Ten minutes later she was as depressed and miserable as when the kidnapper with the husky voice had come in. There was nothing in the room that she could use as a club to bash the boards away from the window; the door was too stout to be broken open and the lock would have defied Jimmy Valentine or any other cracksman. She sank down to the floor beside the fireplace and began to weep.

Then something fell into the grate, a lump of soot, and she heard the flutter of wings in the chimney. She sat up, waited, then crawled into the fireplace and looked up. A film of soot floated down on to her face; but high up in the chimney she could see a small square of light. She withdrew from the fireplace, sat on her haunches and considered. Weighed her strength and size (would the chimney be too narrow and too high?) against the urge to escape. Weighed, too, her determination against her fear that the men would come back, find her trying to escape and vent their anger on her.

She measured the width of the chimney with her hands, decided it was wide enough to take her shoulders and hips. She took off her coat, knowing the bulk of it would handicap her once she began climbing up the narrow space. But she would need it once she was outside the house; she put the belt of it through the loop inside the collar, tied the belt round her waist and let the coat hang down between her legs. She pulled the knitted cap she wore down over her face to just above her eyes, pulled on her gloves. Then she crawled into the fireplace, stretched her arms above her, eased herself upright into the narrow blackness of the chimney and began to climb.

She was glad she was wearing stout winter shoes; she searched for and found tiny crevices in the chimney wall into which she drove her toes. The chimney had not been cleaned in years and she had climbed no more than her own height when she began to feel she was smothering. A bird suddenly fluttered out of the top of the chimney in a panic; soot cascaded down on her and she shut her eyes and turned her face downwards just in time. She lost her grip and went plunging down, scraping against the bricks, taking more soot with her. She hit the floor of the fireplace, feeling the jarring shock go right up through her body to her skull; but she remained upright, unable to fall over because the chimney held her like a brick corset. She held her breath, feeling the soot in a thick cloud about her face, waiting for it to settle, then she opened her eyes and stared into the blackness.

It seemed that every bone and muscle in her body hurt; her knees and ankles felt as if they might be broken. Her arms were trapped above her head; she could feel the pain where her elbows had been scraped as she fell. Her right knee felt as if there was an open wound in it and her right hip as if it had been kicked by a horse. She wanted to gasp for breath, but she was afraid that would mean sucking in a lungful of choking soot. She thought of the baby inside her, wondered if it was already beginning to miscarry. She was frighted, ready to scream, discovering, now, for the first time in her life, that she was claustrophobic.

But she held on to herself, didn’t bend her knees, kept herself upright in the black prison of the chimney. She was on the point of hysteria, but, without recognizing it, something of the iron she had inherited from her parents and grandparents kept her from breaking. She continued to stare into the blackness, smelling the burned wall only an inch or two from her face, willing herself to believe that it was not going to collapse in on her and smother her. She was no longer cold, she could feel sweat running down her face and body. Some instinct told her that all she had to do was survive the next minute or two. If she didn’t, if she gave in and retreated from the chimney, she knew she would never enter it again. And the chance of escape would be gone.

Then the hysteria passed, gone all of a sudden, as if wiped away by her will. She started to climb again, feeling more confident with every foot gained; soot continued to float down, but she ignored it, holding her breath till it had gone past. Her body was just one large ache, but she kept climbing, elbows, knees and ankles scraping against the brickwork. Then, all at once it seemed, the blackness turned to gloom, then there was light and a moment later her head cleared the top of the chimney.

She scrambled out, holding desperately to the chimney so that she would not slide off the snow-covered roof. She was on top of a farmhouse that was more ruin than building; the only rooms left intact were the one in which she had been imprisoned and the room immediately below it. The rest of the house was a shell; charred timbers, a tumble of bricks and a big bomb crater told their own story. All around her the fields lay white and empty.

It took her another five minutes to get down from the roof. Twice she almost fell; snow slid down beneath her like an avalanche and fell into the yard. Then she was down on the ground, stumbling through the mud and snow, running like a crazed person, whimpering like a child. She fell down twice before she realized she had tripped over the coat between her legs. She stood up, gasping for breath, giggling hysterically at herself, and struggled into the soot-blackened, mud-stained coat. Then, steadying herself, she walked out into the lane beside the yard and began to hurry away from the farm.

4

Davoren and McKea were stopped twice for speeding by military police, so that it was dark before they pulled into the warehouse on the Fulda road where the supply company was headquartered. The place seemed deserted and it took them a few minutes to find a soldier who could tell them where the adjutant was.

‘What an army!’ said Davoren. ‘How did you chaps manage to win the war?’

‘We won it, that’s the point. It’s over and everybody just wants to go home. Don’t you?’

But Davoren didn’t answer that, going instead to look for the adjutant, who told them, ‘Burns and Hiscox? Sure, they’re on weekend passes. They went off Friday night. I understand they do a little business on the side.’

‘You condone that?’ said Davoren.

The adjutant was fat, bald, homesick and not inclined to take any moralizing from an unknown Englishman ‘The war’s over, mac. Didn’t you know?’

Outside the office Davoren spat into the dirty snow in the cobbled yard. But he made no comment on the adjutant, just said. ‘Do we send your MP’s looking for Burns and Hiscox?’

‘We can’t go looking for them ourselves.’ McKea himself had a sour taste in his mouth at the sloppy moral attitude of the supply adjutant. ‘I understand how you feel, Davoren. But I think we have to do this through the proper channels.’

‘Bugger channels!’ Then Davoren threw up his arms and let out a loud sigh that was almost a moan of pain. ‘You’re right. But Jesus Christ – ’

‘Let’s go and see Jack Shasta. He may have heard something further.’

Colonel Shasta was in his office, even though it was Sunday night. ‘I’ve been trying to call you, but Hamburg said you’d left, didn’t know where you’d gone. It’s a helluva way to run an army, I must say.’

Davoren looked at McKea, grinned, looked back at Shasta. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

‘We’ve been doing some sleuthing,’ said McKea, all at once liking Davoren. ‘We think we might have a lead. If you get in touch with the Provost-Marshal – ’

‘There’s no need,’ said Shasta. ‘Miss Beaufort is safe.’

‘Where?’ The heart did not leap, said practical-minded medical men: but Davoren felt something rise in his chest. ‘Where, for God’s sake?’

She was asleep in her billet, a house on the edge of the bombed ruins of the old city. The other women in the house did not try to stop Davoren as he walked in, asked where Miss Beaufort’s room was and went straight upstairs and into the room without knocking. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her still asleep. She had been bathed and fed; her muddied and blackened clothes were in a heap in a corner of the room. But even in sleep her face showed the strain she had been under. She whimpered even as he looked at her and her body shook in a quick spasm. He bent and kissed her, feeling weak and empty himself, demolished by relief and love.

Nina opened her eyes, saw his face close to hers and started away in fear. Then she recognized him and her arms, the elbows decorated with chevrons of medical tape, came out from beneath the blankets and went round his neck.

‘Let’s go home.’

‘Just what I had in mind,’ he said, thinking of England.

5

They went home to Kansas City two months later.

Burns and Hiscox did not return from their weekend leave and were officially posted as deserters and never heard from again. Since kidnapping was not classified as a military crime, armies having indulged in it for centuries, they were not listed as suspected kidnappers. Military authorities, who had not even bothered to start a file on the Beaufort case, promptly forgot about it and went back to wondering what the hell one did with the peace when one had won a war. The black market continued to flourish, becoming a major industry, and the fed-up GI’s gave up demonstrating and went back to gold-bricking, fraternizing and all the other important functions of an occupation force.

And Lucas Beaufort returned to Kansas City with his half a million dollars still unpacked. But not before meeting Nina’s brand-new fiancé.

‘Are you sure of him?’ The army had given him a room which they kept for VIP’s. Generals, senators, even Bob Hope had stayed in the room, but Lucas was unimpressed. They had left no presence that made him feel he was in better company than himself. ‘He seems rather – cavalier, I think is the word.’

‘Wasn’t that what Grandfather was?’

‘Not towards your grandmother. Only towards his business partners.’ Lucas had no illusions about his father. ‘Major Davoren says he wants to take you back to England. But he admits he has no prospects there, none at all.’

‘I have my own money.’

‘I’m sure he knows that.’ Then, seeing the angry flush in her face, said, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘No, you shouldn’t have, Daddy, and I’ll never forgive you for saying it. Not about the father of my baby.’

‘Dear God!’ Lucas normally had only a social relationship with the Almighty. He attended Sunday service at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, where he sat in a reserved pew and wondered why God, if there was a God, answered the prayers of men like Roosevelt and Truman. ‘You mean you’re –?’

‘Pregnant. Enceinte. Schwanger. Or as the English put it, a bun in the oven.’ Then, because it hurt her to hurt him, she impulsively put her hand on his. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy – I shouldn’t have said that. But you made me so angry – you’re not being fair to Tim – ’

Lucas took her hand in his. His face had a handsome boniness to it, but only his family ever saw it softened into his true good looks. ‘Nina sweetheart, all I want is to be sure that you are happy. It’s just that I have to re-adjust – your mother and I always expected you to marry someone from back home – ’

‘That’s it, Daddy. You don’t really want me to have a mind of my own. You don’t want me to be anything but a Beaufort – ’

‘All right. I’ll talk to Major Davoren.’ Lucas didn’t know how to cope with a daughter who showed such independence. Already back in Kansas City Sally and even young Prue, only five years old, were showing they had minds of their own. Only Margaret, the one to whom he showed the least favouritism (and was ashamed for his prejudice), seemed content to do what her parents wanted. ‘But do you mind if I try to persuade him to come back to Kansas City? There’s no future in England, not under that fellow Attlee.’

Nina made the concession, now secretly wanting to go home to Missouri. She had had enough of Europe, or anyway post-war Europe. All her charity had been frozen out of her by her fear for her own safety. She was ashamed of her selfishness, but she was not the first to discover there are limits to one’s self-sacrifice; she was even more ashamed that her limits had been so shallow. The older hands had been right: she had just been a rich kid playing at being a do-gooder.

‘But don’t press him, Daddy. Let him make the decision.’

Tim Davoren had stayed in Frankfurt and later that day Lucas, who had been in the city only once before, took him on a guided tour. ‘This is where the Rothschilds began, did you know that?’

‘So I understand. Goethe, too.’

‘Gurter? Never heard of him.’ Lucas had not been interested in the humanities at college; stick to the money subjects, his father had advised him. ‘I was here in 1936. The Rothschild house was still standing then. Right over there.’

Tim Davoren knew he was being tested: for Nina’s sake he showed interest. ‘From small acorns etcetera, as they say in Kew Gardens.’

‘Yes,’ said Lucas, his suspicions rising again. ‘I take it you are not very interested in the making of money?’

‘I don’t think I have the talent for it.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily disqualify you. Gamblers have no talent, but they are interested in making money. Do you gamble?’

‘Not knowingly. But I suppose everyone gambles one way or another.’

‘What are your talents, may I ask? I understand you are a good soldier, that you won the Military Cross. It’s not much of a career, though, is it? Not in peace time.’

‘I’m getting out of the army. I thought I might try teaching.’

‘You’d soon tire of that,’ said Lucas, as if he had known Tim all his life. ‘You wouldn’t think of coming back to Kansas City?’

‘What would I do?’ Tim kept his voice deliberately flat, a characteristic he had just before he was about to erupt.

‘You could take your choice,’ said Lucas, not entirely undiplomatic. ‘Come back there and see what offers.’

Tim walked in silence letting his anger subside. He recognized that the older man was only trying to do the natural thing, protect his daughter. But he also recognized that Lucas was already trying to assert some authority over his future son-in-law. And that’s just not in your book, Tim old boy.

‘I’ll talk it over with Nina.’

Lucas walked in silence, too. Then he seemed to accept that he could ask for no more. He nodded, then said, ‘She tells me she is pregnant. How did that happen?’

‘The usual way,’ said Tim.

Lucas stopped, looked as if he were offended, then suddenly let out a gust of laughter, surprising Tim, who had decided that the older man had no sense of humour at all. ‘Of course! Damnfool question – damn good answer. I’ll tell her mother that. You’ll like her mother. Has a sense of humour, something I haven’t got. Gurter? You don’t mean Go-eth, the poet, do you? You don’t like poetry, do you?’

‘Only if it rhymes,’ said Tim, and Lucas seemed satisfied.

That evening Tim had dinner with Nina and her father, then took Nina back to her billet. He had sent the Mercedes and his driver back to Hamburg; they walked home through the ill-lit streets, careful of the ice on the cracked sidewalks. They stood just inside the doorway of her billet and, bundled up against the cold, embraced each other like a couple of bears.

‘Darling heart, you shouldn’t have told your father you were pregnant, not yet. You’re too honest. Never be more than discreetly honest with people you have to live with.’

‘Will that include you, too?’ She kissed him, silencing his answer. She still had not recovered from her ordeal and she was in no condition to suffer lovers’ truths. ‘Mother would have guessed in time. Girls usually don’t have babies six months after they’re married.’

‘Did what happened to you – there won’t be a miscarriage?’

‘I think he, or she, is going to be indestructible. I haven’t even felt nauseous.’ Then in the darkness, unable to see his face, she said, ‘You don’t mind going home with me to Kansas City?’

His head was stiff and unmoving against the light in the windows of the house opposite. ‘No,’ he said quietly.

But she wondered if he was being only discreetly honest with her. She was too afraid to ask. She drew the dark head towards her, felt for his lips with hers and kissed him, seeking a true answer there. But already she had learned that lips were no more truthful than the tongue.

Lucas Beaufort went back to Kansas City relieved and satisfied. Nina and Tim were married quietly by an army chaplain a week after he left, with Colonel Shasta and Major McKea as their witnesses. When Lucas arrived back in Missouri it was announced without fanfare that Miss Nina Beaufort, eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs Lucas T. Beaufort, had been quietly married three months earlier to Major Timothy Davoren, only son of the late Mr and Mrs Clive Davoren of London, England. If anyone in Kansas City wondered why a Beaufort girl, the first one to be married, should have wed so secretly, no one voiced their wonder in public. Not even when she arrived home in March 1946 obviously pregnant.

Word of the kidnapping had got out. However, since the kidnappee had escaped unhurt, the kidnappers had not been caught and no money had been handed over, editors gave the story only a narrow spread in their newspapers. Who in the rest of the world thought anyone from Kansas City was interesting? Even Harry Truman was at pains to say he came from Independence, though cynics said that was only a play on words to show he was not Tom Pendergast’s man. Anyone passing through the two places wasn’t sure where Kansas City ended and Independence began.

Edith Beaufort, adamant that she had to meet her new son-in-law before anyone else in Kansas City saw him, insisted that she and Lucas go to New York to meet the Davorens as they got off their ship. She liked Tim as soon as she met him and he liked her.

‘You’ll do,’ she told him. ‘You’re much better than I expected or hoped for.’

‘A bad advance report from Mr Beaufort?’

‘Just say unenthusiastic. You’re not American, specifically not from the Midwest, that’s the main thing against you. He ignores the fact that he’s only two generations removed himself from England. And his grandfather left under a cloud, as they say.’

‘No cloud over me,’ said Tim. ‘The sun shines on me all the time. Especially when Nina is around.’

‘Your charm is obvious, but I like it,’ said Edith. ‘If there is any charm from our local men, it’s accidental and biennial. My husband is a good example. But I love him, Tim, and I hope you will love Nina just as much.’

They rode back from New York in a private railroad car. Nina and her mother watched the two men gradually thaw towards each other, but the thawing was slow, like two polite icebergs cruising down from Greenland. They were half-way between Columbus, Ohio, and St Louis before Lucas slapped Tim on the knee at one of the latter’s jokes. By the time they got off at Kansas City they were Tim son and Lucas old chap and moved in a common cloud of cigar smoke. Nina and her mother felt the future was secure.

There were four cars at Union Station to meet the train. One car contained the other three Beaufort sisters and Edith’s secretary, Miss Stafford; one car was for Lucas and Edith; another was for the newly married couple; and the fourth took the luggage. They moved out to a fanfare of flash-bulbs from the press photographers.

‘Do you usually travel in convoy?’ said Tim as he and Nina settled back in the pre-war Packard.

‘Only for weddings and funerals. Darling, please – take it all for granted. Please?’

He laughed: nervously, it seemed to her, though she had never thought of him as having nerves. ‘I’m not overwhelmed, but I’m certainly whelmed. Even that – ’ He nodded at the glass partition which separated them from the chauffeur. ‘We have those in England still, but I thought it had all gone out in democratic America.’

‘Don’t refer to it as Democratic America,’ she said, misunderstanding his adjective. ‘Daddy is a Republican. This car belonged to my grandmother – you can see how old it is. She didn’t believe in servants listening to their mistress’ conversation. Neither do I. What’s wrong with a car with a glass partition?’

‘It’s not just the car. It’s just everything. The private railway carriage, your father bringing half a million dollars to Germany in a couple of suitcases … Take it for granted, she says.’

‘It’s the only way.’

‘You were born to it. I’ll try, my love, but don’t blame me if I occasionally get a glazed look in my eye.’ Then a little later he said, ‘What’s this?’

‘Home.’

‘Well, I suppose King George has to say the same when someone asks him about Buckingham Palace. Where are we going to live?’

‘We’re having our own suite for the time being, in that wing there. Daddy is going to build us a house in the park. Something smaller,’ she added as he looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

‘Let it be as big as you want,’ he said expansively. ‘If I’m going to take it all for granted, I may as well not be cramped.’

Nina was relieved at how her three sisters took to Tim. ‘He’s absolutely out of this world!’ exclaimed Margaret. ‘He’s thrilling!’

Sally, equally thrilled, rolled her eyes in ecstasy. ‘And he’s got you pregnant – already! He’s a quick worker.’

‘Most husbands are,’ said Nina, wondering how much her mother had told her sisters. ‘That’s what wedding nights are for.’

‘Are you going to have a baby?’ asked Prue, already that mixture of shrewdness and romanticism that would plague her all her life. ‘You’re a bit fat. I’ll look after it if you don’t want it.’

‘We’ll look after it together, darling. What do you think of Tim?’

‘He’s got funny eyes. They’re always looking at things.’

Tim’s eyes were indeed always looking at things, Nina noticed as the weeks went by. He made no comment, but his eyes were too sharp and observant for someone who was resigned to taking everything for granted. And, as if his eyes were a mirror of her own, she began to see things from a new angle and in a different light. For the second time since meeting him she saw the family wealth as something not to be taken for granted. You think you’re worth that much? the kidnapper had asked her. And she wondered just what she was really worth in Tim’s eyes.

He had refused to take a job in the Beaufort bank or the oil company or the lumber business or with the railroad. He considered going to work for the granary company, but that would have meant living away from Kansas City and Nina refused to do that; small town living, or even small city, was not for her. The same reason ruled out living and working on the cotton plantation down-State. So he went to work for the Beaufort Cattle Company in the stockyards.

‘What do you know about cattle?’ Nina asked.

‘Nothing. But your father tells me he knows nothing about lumber, but he’s president of the company. Is that right, Lucas?’

‘He’s got you there, sweetheart.’ Lucas smiled at his daughter, telling her how pleased he now was with her husband. He had half-expected Tim to settle for the cushiest job offered him, but he had turned out to have a wide streak of independence in him. ‘But I have fellers who know the business and they see I don’t make any mistakes. I’m putting Tim in as a vice-president of the Cattle Company and he’ll soon learn.’

‘I think you misunderstood me, Lucas. I don’t want to start as a vice-president. I’d rather go in as an ordinary worker, right at the bottom.’

‘Cutting off the bull’s knackers,’ said Prue. ‘George took me down to see the man doing it.’

‘I think you had better eat alone in the nursery from now on,’ said Edith. ‘And, Lucas, I think you had better have a word with George.’

They were in the big panelled dining-room where Lucas insisted that they eat every evening. The table could seat thirty, but two leaves had been taken out of it, reducing it to a size that did not ridicule the family sitting at it. Nina and Tim sat on one side, the three younger sisters on the other, and Edith and Lucas sat at the ends. Thaddeus and Lucy Beaufort had always dressed for dinner, but when they died and Edith took over the running of the house she had abolished that rule. She loved dressing up, but the fun went out of it if one had to dress every night.