The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary
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Beauforts had never been as ostentatious in the display of their wealth as the rich in the East: the caliphs of New York and Newport had had a barbarous bad taste that had both frightened and offended Thaddeus. His granddaughters had inherited his discretion, to a degree; it was foolish to be too reclusive about one’s money, because that only aroused the suspicions of the tax men. Part of the land had been sold off, but the estate still covered just over twenty acres. Nina occupied the original big house and beside it, on the northern side of a private street, three other mansions, slightly less grand but still formidable, housed the other sisters. The peacocks had gone and so had most of the fifty servants and gardeners who had once worked on the estate. But no strangers, passing by the empty lawns, would have mistaken the houses for empty museums or institutions. The Beaufort sisters, even when not visible, had their own vibrancy.
The Rolls-Royce pulled in through the big gates that still provided the main access to the estate. The uniformed security guard saluted Nina; as a child she had been saluted, less formally, by the guard’s father. The car went up the curving drive, past the big maples and the bright blaze of azaleas, and pulled up in front of the big main house. Nina got out, said a short thanks to George, went inside and straight up to the main bedroom that looked out towards the gates.
She took off her dress and lay down on the wide double bed. Even in the years between her marriages, here at home and in the houses she had rented abroad, she had always slept in a double bed. As if the sleeping place beside her would, inevitably, once again be filled. As it had been, and happily, for the past three years.
She had been lying there an hour when she heard the car coming up the drive.
Downstairs George Biff, who doubled as butler on the latter’s day off, alerted by the security guard on the intercom, went to the front door and opened it as the tall blond young man got out of the red compact and came up the steps.
Nina slipped on a robe and went out on to the gallery above the curving staircase. ‘What is it, George?’
George looked up in surprise: his mistress normally never came asking who was at her door. ‘A Mr Harvest to see you, Miz Nina. He don’t say why he want to see you.’
‘Why do you want to see me, young man?’
Harvest licked his lips, a hint of nervousness that one would not have expected in him. ‘Miss Beaufort – ’ His voice was tight; he cleared his throat. ‘I believe I am your son Michael.’
1
Nina Beaufort met Tim Davoren in Hamburg in the fall of 1945, the happiest accident of her life up till then.
It was not her first visit to Europe. In the spring of 1936 Lucas and Edith Beaufort took the three children they then had, Nina, Margaret and Sally, on a grand tour of the Continent. Lucas, who had been nurtured as an isolationist from an early age by his father, had not wanted to make the trip; if the family had to travel out of Missouri, there were another forty-seven very good and interesting United States to be explored. But Edith, who had graduated from Vassar, a notoriously internationally-minded school, had insisted that she and the children needed more perspective than any American trip, even to outlandish California, could give them. So the three Beaufort sisters, aged twelve, seven and three, eager for perspective, whatever that was, left Kansas City with their parents, a governess, a nurse, George Biff and twenty-two pieces of luggage for New York and the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary.
Once at sea and committed to the trip, Lucas, a man who cut his losses and made the most of what was left, began to enjoy himself. He smiled indulgently as his daughters paraded the deck singing Onward Townsend Soldiers, even though he detested the socialist crank, Francis Townsend, who was the New Messiah to pensioners all over America. He danced with Edith to the tune of The Music Goes Round and Round; he relaxed in a deck chair and read an advance copy of a book called Gone With The Wind and was glad that his Edith was not like Scarlett O’Hara. He went to the ship’s cinema with his wife and daughters and saw Shirley Temple in Captain January and wondered aloud why all American children could not be like the cute curly-haired charmer. When Nina threw up in the cinema, everyone put it down to sea-sickness.
Lucas’ only bout of sea-sickness came when he learned that Tom Pendergast and his wife were also on board the Queen Mary. The political boss’ European trip had been well publicized before he left Kansas City; but, careful of the Irish vote, he had neglected to tell the reporters that he was travelling on a British ship. The Queen Mary was just passing the Statue of Liberty when Nina brought her father the news.
‘Stop the ship!’ Lucas ordered his wife.
‘I can’t,’ said Edith placidly. ‘Now settle down, sweetheart. It’s only for five days. You don’t have to walk arm in arm with the dreadful man all the way across the Atlantic.’
Nina giggled and, though she was his favourite, her father glowered at her. ‘There is nothing to be laughed at about that man.’
‘Is he really so wicked, Daddy?’
Mr Pendergast certainly didn’t look wicked. She and Margaret trailed him all across the ocean, spying on him from behind deck chairs, air funnels and lifeboats. He would wink at them and wave, as if they might be Democratic voters of the future, and they would wave back, though they never told their father. The elder Beauforts and the Pendergasts would occasionally pass each other and though Tom Pendergast would smile expansively, Lucas would only nod stiffly and pass on.
Edith had wanted to visit Spain, but the Spanish, not knowing the Beauforts were coming, inconveniently started a war amongst themselves. So the family spent more time in Germany where Lucas and Edith, paying a courtesy call at the American Embassy in Berlin, were offered the chance to meet Adolf Hitler at a reception. Lucas was impressed by the charm and affability of Der Fuehrer and a week later he and Edith, with the children in tow, met Hitler again at a trade fair in Munich. The German leader showed his attraction for children and Nina, Margaret and Sally were photographed smiling up at the man they obviously thought would make a marvellous uncle. Back home the Kansas City Star ran the picture on Page One and everyone but the few Jews in the city remarked on the proper recognition that the élite of Kansas City had been given, much more than they got in New York or Washington.
Nina, for her part, fell in love with the old towns and castles of Germany and determined to return some day on her own. As she grew older and moved into her teens she found it hard to believe the stories she now read about Hitler, but by the time she was in college she hated him and the Nazis as fiercely as did anyone she knew. Except perhaps the Jews, but there were not too many Jewish girls at Vassar.
She graduated in June 1945. Her father had argued that she should go to a college nearer home, where she would not only be under his eye but also under the proper influences. But her mother, still talking about perspective, had prevailed and Nina had gone East to Sodom, Gomorrah and Vassar. She came home and told her parents she wanted to go to Europe with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency and help re-build Germany.
‘Impossible,’ said her father and even her mother agreed. ‘You’re too young for such an adventure.’
‘I’m not thinking of it as an adventure,’ said Nina. ‘I thought of it as something I should do, a social duty if you like.’
‘There is plenty you can do right here in Kansas City.’ Lucas had missed his favourite all the time she had been East; he did not want to lose her again so soon, certainly not to foreigners who had got themselves into their own mess. ‘Returning GI’s, for instance. The Red Cross would be glad to have you help them.’
‘I want to go to Germany,’ said Nina stubbornly.
‘Why?’ asked her mother.