‘That’s sweet of you, Mother, but I’m not sure that she can make it. She’s been out of the play for a couple of days, with a sore throat and—’
‘I’m sorry to hear it. I hope it’s not serious.’
‘No, it’s not. She’ll probably go back to work tomorrow night. However, as far as Thanksgiving’s concerned, I have a feeling the theatre’s open that evening.’
‘Oh dear, what a shame. Your father will be disappointed, as I am. You’ll still come?’
‘Yes, darling, I will.’
‘That’s wonderful. I must rush now. I have a dental appointment. Oh, Nick dear…’
‘Yes, Mother?’ he asked patiently, glancing at his watch, wanting to get to work on his new screenplay for Victor.
‘Is there any truth in all the rumours? Your father and I have been wondering—’ Her voice trailed off lamely.
‘What rumours are you referring to specifically, Mother?’ he asked, knowing exactly what she meant.
‘Er, er, all those items in the press. About your romance with Katharine, that you’re seen here, there, and everywhere together. Are we about to get a daughter-in-law at last?’
‘Don’t rush me, Ma,’ he laughed.
‘You’re forty, Nicky.’
‘Thirty-six, Ma. So long. See you next week.’
‘Goodbye Nicky,’ his long-suffering mother sighed and hung up.
He was still chuckling as he rolled paper into his typewriter, numbered the page and then sat back, staring at the wall facing him, letting the scene he was about to write roll past his eyes like a segment of film. The telephone rang again, and he cursed under his breath as he swung in the chair and answered it. His literary agent apologized for disturbing him, talking briefly about a possible motion picture sale of the new novel, and hung up. In rapid succession he received three more calls, from his editor, his part-time secretary Phyllis, and a sales assistant at Tiffany’s, who told him his order was ready.
Lighting a cigarette, attempting to clear his head of all this extraneous matter, Nick put both of his telephones on the floor, removed the receivers and threw two large cushions over them. He finished his cigarette and slowly began to type, filling the blank page with words. After two hours of solid uninterrupted work he went to the kitchen, returned to his study with a mug of coffee, launched himself into the screenplay once more.
His concentration and his absorption in his writing were so complete it was a few minutes before he heard the strident pealing of the front door bell. He glanced at his watch, saw that it was almost three o’clock. Wondering who his unexpected caller was, he ran downstairs.
Flinging open the door, Nick was surprised to find Katharine standing on the steps, muffled up in a thick woollen headscarf and a sable coat, huge dark glasses masking her face. ‘Hi, darling,’ he said delightedly, drawing her inside out of the cold, glancing down the steps to the kerb, his eyes seeking the limousine. He frowned. ‘Where’s the car? You didn’t walk di—’
‘Nick, you don’t know, do you?’ Katharine gasped, seizing his arm fiercely, taking off her dark glasses, staring at him. Naturally pale, she was now chalk white and obviously dreadfully shaken. Before he could respond, she stammered, ‘The P-P-P-President. He’s been shot… assassinated. I’ve been trying to call you for ages. Your ’phones—’
‘Oh my God!’ Nick’s eyes widened, filled with incredulity. As though he had been slammed hard in the stomach, he staggered back against the wall. Stunned and shocked, he said, again. ‘Oh my God. Are you sure? Where? When? Oh Jesus, no!’
‘Dallas. Around twelve-thirty,’ Katharine replied shakily. She stepped towards him, her face crumpling. Nick took her in his arms, held her to him. His face was suddenly as deathly pale as hers, his eyes swamped with horror. He saw nothing in the small dim hall, only an image in his head of the handsome young President, so full of vitality and zest and hope for the future. How could he be dead? No, not Jack Kennedy. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. It was a mistake. He cried, in a rasping tone, ‘Kath, are you sure? How did you find out?’
She pulled away from him, looked up into his face, the words spilling out of her in a rush. ‘It’s true, Nick! I happened to have the television on. Reading, not really watching. It was a soap. As the World Turns, I think. Suddenly CBS interrupted the show with a news flash, and there was Walter Cronkite looking terribly serious and worried, saying three shots had been fired at the President’s motorcade in Dallas, that he was seriously wounded. I remember glancing at the clock. It was just one-forty. I dialled you, but your lines were busy. I kept calling you, then realized you’d taken your—’
‘Let’s get to a TV set,’ Nick cried and bounded up the stairs. He turned on the television in his study, stood staring at it, his disbelief rapidly dissipating. Cronkite had all the facts now, was delivering them in a grave and shaken voice, a muscle in his face twitching. He was repeating what he had apparently said a few minutes before, for viewers who had just turned on, confirming the horror. President Kennedy was dead. Lying in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Nick could not accept it. The facts would not sink in, and he flipped stations repeatedly, catching additional bits of information from each stunned newscaster. He swung to Katharine. She had disappeared. He had not even noticed her leave. She was back a moment later, had shed her coat, was carrying two mugs of coffee. Silently she put them on the table, sat down on the sofa. Nick joined her and she placed her hand on his arm, and her voice quavered as she said, ‘Nick, this is America, not a banana republic. We don’t have assassins here. Oh Nick, I’m frightened… what’s happening to the country?’
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘And the crucial question is what’s going to happen to it from now on?’ He rubbed his hand over his forehead distractedly, took a cigarette, lit it, the flame from the lighter fluttering in his shaking hands.
They kept their vigil by the television set for hours, hardly speaking, straining to catch all the horrendous details of the ghastly and senseless murder of their President. Several times Katharine broke down and cried bitter tears, and Nick’s own tears fell as he gentled her. ‘I can’t believe it. I keep thinking of his wit and humour, and his graciousness to us when we were campaigning. Oh God, Nicky, think of what his poor wife must be suffering. And those little children, they’re so very young.’ She shook her head mournfully. ‘Why Jack? Why him, Nick?’
All he could say, sounding dazed, was, ‘I don’t know, Kath. I just don’t know.’ And he thought: What have they done to us? Why did they kill him?
When she was more composed, Katharine went down to the kitchen and made tuna-salad sandwiches, brought them back to the study. But neither of them could eat and the sandwiches remained untouched on their plates. A little later Nick remembered his telephones were off their hooks and he replaced them. The calls started coming in then, fast and furious: his literary agent, his brother-in-law Hunt, and his father, all of them in shock, grown men weeping unashamedly. Francesca rang from Connecticut, where she had gone for the weekend, and she too was stricken and numb, asking the same questions as Katharine. How could it happen here? What was happening in the country? Was it a conspiracy? He had no answers for her either, and he was filled with dread and rage and bitterness. Later in the afternoon, Victor called from California, his voice broken and charged with emotion, and as they talked Nick heard a twin echo of his own anger flowing back to him over the wire, and sorrow and bafflement dwelt in Victor’s voice as well.
At six-fifteen that evening, Lyndon Baines Johnson appeared on television and made his first statement as President to a stunned and grieving nation. And it was only then that Nicholas Latimer accepted the fact that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was really dead, slain by an assassin’s bullet. He felt so great a personal loss that he was as profoundly affected as he had been when his sister Marcia had been killed in the accident seven years before.
***
Nick lay on the sofa in his study, smoking a cigarette in the darkness, un
able to sleep, his mind turning endlessly. Nick knew something dangerous and evil was loose in his country, that dark forces were at work, and this alarmed and terrified him. He was a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines, and a student of history, the past and in the making, and so he had long understood that the Radical Right was on the march, that hatred and bigotry flourished. His country had just been savaged by an insane and incomprehensible act of violence, but had it not been savaged for a long time and from within? Fascism? He shuddered. As a Jew he could not help thinking of Nazi Germany. He remembered, suddenly, how he had once had a conversation with Christian von Wittingen about the rise of Hitler, had asked him how in God’s name Hider had persuaded so cultured a nation as the Germans to espouse his anti-Semitism, his racist policies. Christian had looked at him in surprise, had answered with a question of his own: ‘What has culture to do with anything?’ Nick recalled now that he had shaken his head silently. And Christian had gone on to say, in a gloomy voice, ‘You’re a Rhodes Scholar, look to the history you read at Oxford. You will soon understand that hate and bigotry and prejudice are emotions all too easily engendered in people, in a nation as a whole, when evil and sinister men are at their diabolical work. Those maniacal fanatics play on weakness and fear and ignorance. Look into the history books, Nicholas. You will find atrocities jumping out from every page. Tomás de Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, the Turks slaughtering innocent Armenians, and what about the pogroms which started in Russia after the assassination of Csar Alexander II?’ Christian had exhaled heavily, sorrowfully. ‘Regrettably, lamentably, atrocity is a human crime, one that has been perpetrated for centuries, by people, Nick. Shocking, is it not, when one thinks that the most heinous acts imaginable have been committed by supposedly civilized men against other men? And we’d better watch ourselves, watch the whole world, be on our guard against that kind of blind and terrible wickedness, otherwise we may find ourselves facing new unholy terrors in the not too distant future. History is cyclic.’
Nick shuddered again, recollecting Christian’s warning, recollecting how he had stared helplessly at Christian’s stern and suffering face, and then at the young man’s crippled and useless legs. And he remembered thinking at the time: He knows. He’s been there. To hell and back.
Stubbing out his cigarette, Nick pulled the blanket up over himself. He wondered if Katharine was asleep in the other room. She had asked if she could stay the night, telling him she could not bear to go back to the empty apartment. Just after midnight she had donned a pair of his pyjamas and crept into his bed, looking as drained as he had been feeling.
Towards dawn, Nick heard the door creaking open and Katharine whispering, ‘Are you awake, Nicky?’
‘Yes, darling.’ He sat up as she came into the room.’ I haven’t closed my eyes all night,’ she said, hovering near the sofa. He moved, made a place for her next to him, and she came into his arms gratefully, willingly, clinging to him.
After a while, she said, ‘I’m so scared, Nicky.’ He felt her breath near his cheek as she continued, ‘Afraid for all of us, and especially for Ryan. I wish he weren’t going into politics. If this kind of thing can happen once, it can happen again.’ When he made no reply, she whispered, ‘Well, it can, can’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted reluctantly, thinking of Christian’s words, and praying that it never would.
They continued to talk, holding each other tightly, trying to console each other as best they could. And Nick, growing increasingly conscious of her warmth and sweetness and closeness, moved her hair away from her face at one moment, kissed her deeply. ‘I love you, Katharine,’ he told her, unable to contain himself a second longer.
‘And I love you, Nicky,’ she responded at once. Her arms crept around his neck and she kissed him in return.
And much later they made love for the first time, baring their feelings at last. And their act of love was an affirmation of life.
Chapter Forty-Four
One morning, about four months later, Katherine awakened to find herself filled with a curious and unfamiliar sense of lightness. It was as if a terrible burden had been lifted from her, and for a few seconds she was baffled. Then it began to dawn on her that the feeling of lightness was compounded of two things: relief and joy. For the first time in years, the gnawing anxiety she lived with had evaporated, no longer existed; and she was euphoric with happiness because of Nicholas Latimer.
Jumping out of bed energetically, she pulled on her dressing gown and went into the kitchen of her new apartment, which Nick had found for her and which she had recently purchased. She made herself a pot of tea, toasted an English muffin and carried her simple breakfast back to bed on a small tray. Sipping the tea, she glanced at the framed photograph of Nick on her bedside table. She loved him so much, more than she had ever loved any other man, and so wholeheartedly she was continually dazed by the depth and strength of her emotions. Her gaze lingered on the lean and handsome face, the light, amused eyes, the puckish smile. He was everything she could ever want in another human being. Loving, thoughtful, intelligent, wise, tender and also very very funny at times. She wondered suddenly how she could have ever thought his one-line cracks were acerbic. She smiled to herself. They were a little sardonic, but now she understood that there was never any cruelty behind his words. They sprang, quite simply, from his wry view of the world, his penchant for poking fun at it, and at himself most of all.
Her thoughts swung to Beau Stanton. Like Nick, Beau had always made her feel safe and secure and at ease, and she had loved him, although not to the degree she loved Nick, and they had been happy. In the beginning at least. And then their relationship had started to deteriorate, why she had never been sure, and Beau had become withdrawn and moody. One day she had admitted to herself that he had changed towards her, was more of a friend and mentor than a husband. She had not minded this gentle shift, but apparently Beau had been bothered about it. In the end their marriage had collapsed, perhaps because Beau had totally misunderstood her and had attributed her placid acceptance of the situation to indifference on her part. No one had been more surprised than she when he had insisted on a divorce. Yet she knew Beau still cared for her, loved her even, in his own way, and they were now the dearest of friends. And instinctively Katherine was certain Beau would always be there for her, if ever she needed him.
Katherine laughed out loud, remembering how jealous Nick had been two weeks ago, when Beau had flown in from the Coast specially to see her in the play. Although it had opened as a limited engagement, it had been held over twice because of its enormous success, and was still playing to packed houses. Beau had been thrilled about this, crediting her with the long box office queues, and awed by her performance. He had insisted on taking them to dinner after the show, and he had so doted on her through the meal Nick had grown suspicious and wary of Beau. For days afterwards he had pestered her about her marriage, bombarding her with probing questions about its failure, but without eliciting any real responses from her. It was not that she was reluctant to confide in Nick. There was nothing to confide really, since she herself was uncertain why the marriage had gone on the rocks in the first place. Nick’s jealousy had amused her. She and Beau had separated in 1959. It was now March 1964. There was hardly anything to be jealous about. Not any more.
The small Tiffany carriage clock shrilled, the alarm announcing it was ten o’clock, reminding Katherine it was Saturday and that she had a matinée as well as an evening performance to give. Hurrying into the bathroom, she turned on the taps, poured perfumed oil into the tub and pinned up her hah. Her fetish about cleanliness had not waned over the years; if anything, it was even more pronounced. Consequently, her toilet, grown increasingly ritualistic and lengthier than ever, always took well over an hour. After working through an assortment of toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorants and perfumes, she brushed her hair, secured it in a pony tail and went into the bedroom. The large chest of drawers held an incredible amount of exquisite
and expensive underwear, stacked in meticulous piles, and she selected lace-trimmed white satin items to wear under her white silk shin and an azure-blue trouser suit of tailored wool. Stepping into low-heeled black suede shoes, she tied a blue ribbon on her pony tail and added her watch, as well as the aquamarine-and-diamond pendant and matching ring Nick had given her for Christmas.
She put on her dark glasses, picked up her suede bag and a small overnight case and left the bedroom. Since it was Saturday she would spend the weekend with Nick at his house, as she always did. She locked the apartment door behind her, glided to the elevator and, as she rode down to the lobby, realized how much she was looking forward to the next couple of days. Nick had been at Che Sarà Sarà for the entire week, conferring with Victor Mason on the new script, but was due back from California in the early evening. She could hardly wait to see him, to tell him how much she had missed him.
When she reached the lobby of the apartment building she saw Howard, her driver, chatting to the doorman. He came forward, greeted her pleasantly, took the case from her. ‘Hello, Howard,’ she said, smiling. She glanced out at the street. ‘It looks like a lovely day. I wish I could walk to the theatre.’
Howard shook his head. ‘No way, Miss T. Mr Latimer would kill me. You know you’d be mobbed in two minutes.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed, thinking the price of fame was a high one sometimes, especially when it came to small things such as taking a walk.
As the car rolled away from the kerb and proceeded down Seventy-Second Street towards Park Avenue, Katharine sat back, mentally ticking off the things she had to do the following week. There were the final decisions to be made on the last purchases for the apartment, which she had been decorating herself with Francesca’s help. They must have it ready by the middle of the month, when she was throwing a party for Hilary Ogden. She also had to talk to the caterers about the menu for the buffet supper, send out invitations, buy a gift for Hilary, and go shopping for a new summer wardrobe. The play was closing at the end of March, and in April she and Nick were taking a vacation in Mexico, at a place Nick knew called Las Brisas, in Acapulco. It would be a marvellous, much-needed rest for them both, before he went to work on his next novel and she started her new picture.