AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Charles smiled at her briefly. “Darling, Elena won’t even notice, she’ll be far too interested looking for faces to make pictures of. She’s hell-bent now on being a great photographer. She won’t consider a new factory or the trains running on time to be interesting, much less a work of art. I’m just glad she’s found something harmless to do…” It was an oblique reference to her disaster at the Foreign Office, and a reminder to Lucas that Charles had not forgotten it, or forgiven the embarrassment it had caused him.
“Has anyone heard from her?” Josephine asked before Lucas could speak. “Or from Margot?”
“It’s a little soon.” Katherine shrugged. “A wire from Margot to say they’ve arrived, but that was three days ago. I expect they’re having fun. Amalfi is a gorgeous place, and very fashionable this time of year. Everybody who’s anyone at all goes to Capri.”
“Then Margot will be there,” Charles said with a smile. References to Margot’s spirit and glamour always pleased him. She understood loss as much as he did.
“There’s no reason why she shouldn’t have fun.” Katherine was instant in her defense, misunderstanding. Charles had meant no criticism. She longed for Margot’s happiness. She was a woman very aware of her children’s pain. It was simply a side of herself she seldom allowed to show.
“Of course she’s having fun,” Josephine agreed. “It’s part of survival. And the little dash of wit or glamour serves others as well. They can aspire to it, too, if they see it’s possible.”
Charles drew in his breath as if to argue, and then seemed to change his mind. For the moment the discussion was over.
Quite willing to turn the conversation along a different course, even if her tactic was obvious, Josephine asked if anyone had seen any motion pictures recently.
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Katherine said, immediately picking up the thread. “Fredric March was brilliant.” She went on to describe the actor’s skill, and how thoroughly she thought he had deserved the Oscar that he had won for it.
Lucas smiled. He admired Katherine’s diplomatic skill as much as her good humor. Did Charles realize what an asset she was in his career? Probably. Lucas looked at him now and saw the total attention in his son’s face as he watched his wife. His regard for her was unmistakable. He was surely aware that she was deliberately keeping the peace, for all their sakes. No one could heal the differences, but she could ignore them. Perhaps that was what diplomacy was really about: finding the meeting grounds you could, and choosing to ignore those that could never blend, because to force them to mix required a winner and a loser. In a good agreement, there were no losers.
They went into the dining room shortly after and Josephine left briefly for the kitchen. Katherine offered to help, as she always did, and wa
s declined, as help always was. Now that there were only Lucas and herself at home, Josephine preferred to do all the cooking, which she was good at, though she had other domestic help.
They had saved the best for entertaining, and they ate an excellent roast saddle of mutton with the very first of the spring vegetables from the garden.
It was Katherine who touched back on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “It’s extraordinarily clever acting,” she said with admiration. “No special effects or makeup. You could watch him almost changing shape in front of you. He begins as a gentle, benign person, then the darker side of him gradually takes over, and within seconds, less than a minute, he becomes brutish, all humanity gone out of him and something vile in its place. Something completely out of his control.”
“It was in the writing,” Charles observed, “but it was certainly clever. I wonder how long it took him to get that effect?”
Lucas did not answer. It suddenly seemed to him far deeper than the skill of an actor or even the imagination of a fine writer. “Did he fear it in himself, do you suppose?” he said to Charles.
“What?” Charles asked, interested but slightly puzzled.
“Stevenson,” Lucas replied. “Did Jekyll know there was a monster inside him over whom he had no control? Was that what Stevenson was showing us? Knowledge, and at the same time, helplessness.”
“What on earth made you think of that?” The way Charles’s face was set showed his determination. He had scented a real meaning, something deeper than polite discussion over the dinner table. Was that what he himself had intended?
“All sorts of things can spark off emotions we can’t control,” Lucas replied. “A good artist knows that, and so does a good politician—or a good demagogue.”
“A contradiction in terms.” Josephine shook her head. “Demagoguery is not good, by definition. The only civilized rule is by consent.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Lucas corrected. “Not good as regards morality. Perhaps I should have said skilled, effective, achieving its aim.”
“There’s a lot to be said for that, at certain times.” Charles looked at him steadily. “Now would be one of them. Feed the hungry, house the homeless, create jobs to bring honor and a sense of purpose to those who have none. Is that demagoguery?” There was challenge in his voice, and in his eyes.
The temperature in the room had dropped, or perhaps it was the light that had changed. Everyone was watching Lucas. Josephine still held her dessert fork in her hand, but she had forgotten the pastry on her plate. She was watching Lucas, knowing him too well to imagine he could be stopped from answering.
Lucas chose his words very carefully, looking only at Charles. “It isn’t what you do with power, certainly not to begin with. It is whether those who give it to you have any chance of curbing it once you have it, when and if you abuse it. And one day you will.”
Charles sidestepped the issue. “Would they rather be cold and hungry? There’s not much point in worrying about a problematical tomorrow if you don’t survive tonight. Any woman with hungry children pulling at her skirts will tell you that, Father. Sometimes I think you live in such an ivory tower that you have no idea of the realities of war and Depression, and what it has done.” There was pain in his voice, as well as anger. “If you back people into a corner and leave them no dignity, and no hope, sooner or later they’ll fight…and to the death, if you take it that far! You’ve left them nothing to lose. Always leave people a way out, to save face. That’s the essence of diplomacy. You live in your safe Civil Service castle and don’t even see the realities, never mind taste them.”
Josephine drew in her breath sharply, as if to speak, and then looked down at the table and said nothing.
Of course, Charles had no idea what Lucas had done during the war, the sleepless nights worrying about the men he had sent on crazy, too often hopeless errands behind enemy lines. And the women! Never knowing if the men would come back. Too many of them didn’t. Charles didn’t know of the secret meetings, the waiting, the judgments that could win or lose, save lives, or cost them. He did not know how many times Lucas had taken a small boat across the Channel in the dark and landed secretly on the shores behind the fighting, in German-occupied Belgium or Holland, for secret meetings, dealing with misinformation, betrayals of every sort. Was it harder than in the daylight, when you could see the enemy? Or at least see your friends? What could Lucas say that would not break the secrets he had kept all these years, and must still keep? The one he hid even from himself was that he missed it, missed the passion of purpose, the knowledge that he was part of the battle, not a bystander. He saw the anger, and a degree of contempt, in his son’s eyes. It was the contempt that hurt.
Josephine spoke softly, reproach in her voice. “You have no idea what your father did or did not do in the war, Charles, and your assumption that you have the right to judge has no place at this table. Perhaps if the diplomats had been a little more skilled at their jobs, and a little more diligent, we wouldn’t have had a war. Had you considered that?”
Charles stared at her. It was a blow he had not expected, especially from her, and Lucas saw the idea cross his face and fill him with surprise. He turned to Josephine, but she was not looking at him.
