Ex Officio Page 12

  “They graduated me,” Charles said, mock-surprise in his voice. “Princeton will never be the same.” Tall and very slender, eyeglassed, Charles at twenty-one still had the same hesitant, respectful, deprecatingly humorous manner that had throughout his childhood made adults automatically think of him as a “good boy.” And a good boy he invariably was, polite, attentive to his studies and obedient to the wishes of his elders.

  “Congratulations,” Evelyn said. “What do you do now? Graduate school?”

  Behind his glasses, Charles’ eyes looked worried. “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “There comes a time,” the other young man said with dark passion, “to stop studying and start acting.” He ignored the pained look that Charles gave him, and stared intently at Evelyn, saying, with something mocking in his voice, “Don’t you think so, Aunt Evelyn?”

  She frowned at him in surprise. Aunt Evelyn? Who was he? He was dark-haired, with the long lank hair no longer considered truly up-to-date in the states. His clothing was proper, but he wore it with a kind of careless ease. He was shorter and stockier than Charles, and seemed somewhat younger. And in some way familiar, though she couldn’t at all place him. She said, “Do I know you?”

  “Depends how you mean that, Aunt Evelyn,” he said. “I’m Eddie.”

  “Eddie! For Heaven’s sake, I didn’t even recognize you!” She stood staring at him, still having trouble believing it. This was Edward Lockridge, Jr., the son of the man subdividing Paris in the parlor. He was still only—what?—seventeen at the most. When she’d last seen him he was a neat and ordinary fifteen-year-old. “What’s happened to you in the last two years?” she asked him.

  “Call it an awakening,” he said. He was holding a book in one hand, his finger in it to hold his place, and now he held it up to show her that it was one of the books by the brothers Cohn-Bendit. She recognized their names, but didn’t know the French title. “I have decided to join Tomorrow,” he said. Everything he said seemed to have trumpets behind it, except that all these declamations were announced in a brisk matter-of-fact way, as though he himself didn’t see any drama in his statements at all. “At the moment I’m recruiting Charlie.”

  “We’re—talking things over,” Charles said. He seemed to be apologizing for something.

  “Well, good luck to you both,” she said, and to Charles she said, “Is your mother around?”

  “I think she’s in the sitting room. Down to your right and through the bedroom.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ann Gillespie was there, knitting and watching television: I Love Lucy, in French. Once a government opens the floodgates, as the French government finally and reluctantly had done, daytime television is the same everywhere.

  The sitting room would have to be called cozy. It too had the park view, but was a much smaller and dimmer room, with more of a feeling of warmth and safety to it. Evelyn found herself smiling as she walked into the room, and it was for the room more than for the occupant. “Hello, Ann,” she said.

  Ann looked up from the set. “Well, Evelyn! Carrie said you were coming to Paris. Is Bradford with you?”

  “No, he had his meeting.” Ann hadn’t risen, and now Evelyn sat in a chair which gave her a view of Ann and the park, but not the television set. “This is a comforting room,” she said, over the chatter of French.

  “I love it.” Ann was in her early forties now, a pleasant but washed-out looking woman, who wore no makeup, did her hair sensibly rather than fashionably, and dressed in drab but sturdy clothing. She was the kind of woman about whom the word most frequently spoken was reliable. She said, “Does Carrie have anyone interesting today?”

  “Edward.”

  Ann smiled, but she’d glanced at the television set and it was hard to tell if the smile was for Evelyn or Lucy. She said, “No one else?”

  “Not really. There’s one sleazy little Frenchman who wanted to know if I was attached.”

  This time the smile was clearly for Evelyn. “Isn’t that terrible?” Still smiling, Ann shook her head and said, “Carrie won’t turn anyone away, not anyone. I talk to her, but you know how it is to take care of an older person. They will have their own way.”

  “Yes, won’t they,” Evelyn said, smiling back and thinking indulgently of Bradford. An anecdote about Bradford’s willfulness entered her head, and she was about to relate it when with a sudden shock she saw herself from outside, she saw herself as Ann was seeing her this minute—as anyone would see her this minute—and she sat back, her mouth open, and stared past Ann at the far wall.

  “Evelyn? What’s the matter?”

  Evelyn shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Excuse me, it’s—” She shook her head again.

  Is that what’s happening to me? “You know how it is to take care of an older person.” But isn’t Ann an object of pity, a timid lifeless woman who buried herself under her mother-in-law’s wing at the age of twenty, widowed and pregnant, and has never lived her own life again? That isn’t me, for God’s sake, I don’t dress like that, I don’t look like that, I don’t hide myself away in cozy rooms.

  Don’t I?

  “Evelyn, are you sure there’s nothing wrong? Should I have Charles get you a brandy?”

  Ann has her Charles, I have my Dinah. Ann has her Carrie, I have Bradford. Ann lives in the middle of Paris, but for the amount of use she makes of it she might as well be living in Eustace, Pennsylvania.

  “Evelyn?”

  Fred died a year and a half ago. What happened to the time in between? Can it all go like that, and all at once you’re in your forties, there’s no need to wear makeup any more, no need to keep up with the new fashions, no point in ever going out of your cozy rooms?

  She got to her feet, suddenly frightened, feeling inanely that if she didn’t move at once, at once, she would grow roots, or become paralyzed, or lose all will to move. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need some air.”

  Ann still didn’t get to her feet, but genuine concern was on her face. “Was it the flight?” she asked. “I understand some people are affected by jet travel that way.”

  “That must be it,” Evelyn said. “Excuse me, I’ll see you again later.” And she hurried from the room.

  The apartment didn’t confuse her now. All she wanted was to get out of it, without saying goodbye to anyone. She headed directly for the front door.

  The little Frenchman was sitting on one of the spindly valuable antiques in the foyer. He was obviously waiting for her, and he leaped to his feet when she entered the room. “Madame,” he said. “You are indisposed?” He was at least two inches shorter than she.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m going back to the hotel how and rest.”

  “One will drive you,” he said. He smiled helpfully, and he was looking at her mouth.

  “No, that’s all right, really, I’ll find a cab.”

  “No,” he said. “A taxi in Paris? It is not right when you are indisposed. My car is outside. Madame is staying at Georges Cinq?”

  vi

  SHE HAD KNOWN HOW it would end, that was the worst part. She had known, and watched it all with a knowing eye, and did nothing to stop it.

  His car was a Simca, small and black, dusty and rather old, with cigarette burns on the seat back. He said, “A ride through the park will refresh Madame, yes?” And insisted it would be no trouble at all, he had nothing to do this afternoon anyway.

  And it was pleasant, after the dehydrated feeling of Carrie’s apartment, to drive through the park. He drove the Simca quickly but well, down Boulevard Anatole France to Porte de Boulogne, then into the park on Allée de la Reine Marguerite, switching to Route de Suresnes and emerging at last on Avenue Foch, flanked by the long sweep of gardens, with the Arc de Triomphe at the far end.

  His next suggestion, of course, was a drink. “I know an excellent little place on the Left Bank, where the tourists never go. Madame will be refreshed.”

  She didn’t agree, but she didn’t sa
y no, either. The little Simca scooted down the Champs Elysées, crossed the Seine on the Pont de la Concorde, and raced the rest of the traffic along the Boulevard Saint Germain, finding a parking space at last half a block from Boulevard Saint Michel, known as Boul Mich, the tourist and bohemian center of the Left Bank.

  The café to which he took her, his hand a polite pressure on her elbow, was no different from any other in the Fifth Arrondissement. The Sorbonne was a few blocks away, so many of the young people around them were probably students there. At least half a dozen of the older customers were American tourists, and the rest were probably local people. It was the equivalent of a neighborhood bar in the United States, the sort of place into which she would never have gone, and it was basically insulting of him to think her the sort of wide-eyed innocent to be impressed by a tavern simply because the tables were on the sidewalk and the language spoken by the waiter was not English. But she didn’t bother to be insulted, and she didn’t even laugh at his attempts to convince her he was showing her the real Paris. But hadn’t he heard Edward parodying just this very thing not an hour ago?

  It didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter when he disappeared for a few minutes and returned with the sudden suggestion that they visit a friend of his in the district. “Only five minutes walk.” She knew he’d gone to phone the friend and borrow the apartment, but she ignored the knowledge.

  Still, she couldn’t help making fun of him just a little, by asking him shouldn’t they phone the friend first, and be sure he was there? “Oh, no, he is always there at this time of day. He is a painter, he requires the afternoon sunlight.”

  But of course he wasn’t there. Evelyn watched the little man knock on the door, display surprise, consternation, bafflement. “But he is always here!”

  Fortunately, he knew where the friend kept his key. From atop the door-frame, voilà. “We shall see if something has happened to him.”

  It was the top floor of an ancient four-story house. They walked up creaking stairs, and the apartment offered no surprises. It was a fairly good size, four or five rooms, and very dirty. The occupant apparently really was a painter, there was a studio with a wall of windows and a lot of painters’ plyboard around, some of it bearing paintings heavily influenced by Gauguin. Café scenes, mostly, but since they were full of Gauguin’s Tahitian yellows and oranges they didn’t look like anything ever seen in Paris.

  The seduction, if it could be called that, was accomplished with all the warmth and skill of a good dentist filling a cavity. He made her orgasm, but it wasn’t pleasant, she felt he’d cheated in his methods. And throughout, his expression was intent, solemn; he was devoting himself to being letter-perfect, like someone doing the manual of arms. But he was physically small, and his approach was totally ritualistic and impersonal, so that despite the mechanically achieved orgasm she felt unsatisfied afterwards. And because she felt unsatisfied, she finally felt worse afterwards than before.

  He drove her to the hotel during the six o’clock rush hour, and became extremely irritable because of the driving conditions. Evelyn spent the time thinking of different ways to excuse herself if he should ask her to have dinner with him tonight, but he didn’t ask. At the hotel, he stayed in the car—the doorman opened the door, so it was all right—and almost indifferently he asked, “Shall I see you again?”

  “Possibly,” she said. “I’ll probably be at Carrie’s sometime.” Knowing now he would avoid Carrie’s for the next week or so, and thinking she was at least managing to get some good out of the experience, if only for Carrie. The thought made her smile, and not knowing what she was smiling about he smiled automatically back, and that was her last view of him.

  She didn’t begin to cry until she was alone in her room in the suite—Bradford wasn’t back yet—and even then she was laughing at the same time she was weeping. It had been the eighth of January, two and a half years ago, that she’d last gone to bed with her husband, the night before he’d left for Asia, eleven months before he was killed there. It was two and a half years since she’d slept with a man.

  “You’d think the first time could have been better,” she said, through her laughter, through her tears.

  vii

  BRADFORD WASN’T GETTING ANYWHERE, and Evelyn didn’t know what she could do to help. As the days went by, he became gloomier and gloomier, shorter of temper and steadily more pessimistic. And he moved and acted and looked more like an old man.

  He had come here with too much hope, that was what it was. And now the inaction, the lack of progress, were affecting him much more than they would have in the old days, when there was always something going on. He had in effect come out of retirement, and his greater anticipation had resulted in a similarly greater disappointment.

  The Chinese official, Kwong Lan Quey, had made the first tentative suggestions concerning this meeting as far back as last fall, nearly a year ago. Bradford hadn’t made a positive response at first, but had quite properly contacted people he knew in the State Department to get their reaction to the idea.

  The people at State were understandably cautious, perhaps overly cautious. Kwong Lan Quey made an overture once again, in another letter, and Bradford began despite himself to get excited at the prospect of being useful and active once more. He insisted to State that no harm could come from the meeting, and in fact that it could have a beneficial result, and at last they decided it was worth the gamble, provided certain ground rules were maintained.

  In the first place, they insisted on a European locale for the meeting. Obviously Kwong Lan Quey would prefer not to come to the Western Hemisphere, but State was adamant in its refusal to allow Bradford to go to any meeting site in Asia. It was true that he was retired, but he was still at least symbolically a famous and important American, and the risks of either kidnapping or assassination seemed to State too high in Asia.

  In the second place, they insisted on a full announcement of the meeting to the press well in advance. Secret talks which then leaked could result in unfortunate conclusions about altered U.S. attitudes toward China in other more friendly Asian capitals. The unofficial nature of the meeting would have to be stressed.

  Third, they insisted that the meeting take place in an atmosphere of other activities. That is, in whatever city was chosen, arrangements would have to be made for Bradford to hold other meetings with other individuals as well. The trip should be made to seem multi-purposed, and not be exclusively for the sake of an ex-President traveling thousands of miles expressly to meet an obscure (in Western minds) Communist Chinese official.

  State also insisted for a while that Kwong Lan Quey provide an agenda, or at least some general idea of the topics he wished to discuss, but on this point the Chinese was obdurate, and Bradford himself saw no reason to make the meeting stand or fall on it, so ultimately State came around and withdrew that as a condition.

  The other three, however, were met. The site chosen was Paris, it being traditionally a congenial locale for discussions between Americans and Asians. (Warsaw, Kwon Lan Quey’s original suggestion, was frowned on by State.) The meeting was announced to the press, and its unofficial nature was stressed. And arrangements were made for Bradford to meet with a few other individuals as well, primarily with the current Premier of France and with a retired Italian Premier whose administration had been concurrent with Bradford’s and who happened to be in Paris at this time anyway. But the prime interest—Bradford’s as well as that of the press—was in the meeting with Kwong Lan Quey.

  It was the Chinese who presented the ground rules for the meeting. It was to be four meetings, actually, rather than one. They were to be held on Saturday, June 30th; Monday, July 2nd; Thursday, July 5th; and Sunday, July 8th. All were to be afternoon meetings, to begin with lunch at one o’clock and continue until either participant declared the meeting ended.

  The first meeting continued through a 7:00 P.M. dinner, and didn’t conclude until nearly ten o’clock. Bradford returned from that one excited
and hopeful, convinced he and Kwong Lan Quey were on the threshold of something truly important. He was so buoyed up, his mind so full of the meeting just completed, that his usually observant eye failed him and he took no notice of the strange silences and odd manner of Evelyn, who had only a short while before finished her ambivalent emotional outburst following the experience with the little Frenchman. Evelyn of course said nothing about that, but listened instead to Bradford’s description of his first meeting with Kwong Lan Quey.

  It had been strange, but not yet disturbing. The Chinese had kept the talk strictly in the area of reminiscence, not only of his and Bradford’s scanty acquaintance over the years, but also of world events as they had affected the two of them. He had, for instance, given detailed information on his whereabouts and personal doings at the onset of such-and-such a specific world crisis, and elicited similar memories from Bradford. “Where were you when the word came of John Kennedy’s assassination? What were you doing when you first heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor?” That sort of thing, endlessly.

  And yet Bradford was hopeful. It had seemed to him that here and there in the meandering course of the conversation he had detected gleams of light. “He’s leading up to something,” he told Evelyn.

  On Sunday there was a cocktail party at the American Embassy in Bradford’s honor. Evelyn attended, and was approached with more or less subtlety by two Frenchmen and three Americans. She brushed them all off without a qualm, and didn’t even take her usual pleasure in being considered a woman worth making a play for.

  Monday was Bradford’s second meeting. Ann Gillespie called in the late morning, her voice dry as dust on the phone, and invited Evelyn to join her for lunch and an afternoon at the Louvre. Evelyn went with her, and it turned out what Ann wanted was merely an ear into which to pour her troubles, of which Carrie was only incidental. Ann’s primary problem was her son Charles who, she said, was being unduly and badly influenced by Edward Lockridge’s son Eddie.