The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary
court were disturbed by the mocking acoustics of the near-empty galleries. None seemed more upset than Clive Harvest, one of the two Australians playing a South American pair.
He was a tall muscular man, some years older than the other three men on court, with blond good looks and a set of expressions that seemed to jump back and forth between temper and laughter. He went up for a smash, misjudged it and put the ball well out of court; he cursed loudly and flung his racquet after the ball. Then he suddenly jumped the net, raced to each of his opponents, grabbed their hands and went through a pantomime of apology, retrieved his racquet and jumped back over the net. A lone spectator in the upper gallery, wanting to communicate with someone, anyone, gave him a loud Bronx cheer; Harvest saluted the compliment with two fingers. The two South Americans glowered in disgust and Harvest’s partner, a boy of about twenty, just looked embarrassed.
‘Mr Harvest,’ said the umpire from his throne, ‘if you’ve finished your little act, may we continue the match?’
For a moment it looked as if Harvest were going to give the umpire the two-fingered salute; then suddenly he smiled, a broad flash of teeth in his tanned face, and looked genuinely contrite. ‘Sorry, Mr Baker. I’m a perfectionist, that’s my trouble. Missing an easy smash like that – ’
‘We all aim for perfection, Mr Harvest. Let’s try for a little less this afternoon, so that we can get this match finished.’
There was scattered applause, but Harvest just looked around and smiled broadly, as if his antics and display of temper had been committed by someone who had already left the court.
He won the next point and the game with a deft interception that split the two South Americans like a guerrilla’s bullet. As the two teams crossed over, pausing near the umpire’s chair to towel themselves, Harvest looked towards the Beaufort boxes. He had done the same thing several times during the match. It was impossible to tell who it was interested him; his glance was always too quick and casual. He was, however, more than casually interested in someone in the boxes.
‘I think I’ll go,’ said Nina. ‘This isn’t very interesting.’
‘You can’t walk out in the middle of a match!’ Margaret waved a protesting hand. Sometimes she acted as if she were the family matriarch. She was taller than her sisters, no hint of grey yet in her dark brown hair, and she carried herself in what Nina called Missouri Regal style. ‘It’s an insult to the players.’
‘That Australian has been insulting us spectators all afternoon,’ said Sally. ‘You don’t owe him any compliment, Nina.’
Nina stood up, slipping her arms into the sleeves of the vicuna coat she had been wearing across her shoulders. She was the shortest of the sisters, a little too tall to be called petite; her golden blonde hair would have been darker if not for her weekly visit to her hairdresser. She was no better or more expensively dressed than her sisters, but she had just that extra touch of elegance. In Kansas City, Missouri, the Beauforts were the family and it was as if Nina had taken it upon herself to show outsiders that the citizens were not all descendants of One-Eyed Ellis, Wild Bill Hickok and other, later rascals.
She left the boxes, stares following her from the other boxes, and went out into the entrance lobby. George Biff, patient as a statue of himself, the light gleaming like points of humour in his ebony face, was waiting there. He touched the peak of his chauffeur’s cap with his maimed hand.
‘I get the car, Miz Nina. Be but two minutes, out front there.’
‘No, I’ll come with you, George.’
The old black looked at her, seeing the nervous tension in her, wondering what had upset her. But he said nothing, led her out to the Rolls-Royce in the nearby parking lot.
Going home in the car Nina sat gazing out the window with a face that seemed suddenly to have become younger, as if years had been wiped away from it. But then George Biff, watching her anxiously in the rear-view mirror, saw the frown appear between her eyes, and then her eyes close, but not before he had seen the glistening of tears.
‘You all right, Miz Nina?’
‘Yes.’ She did not open her eyes. ‘Just a headache.’
The car purred along, George Biff making no attempt to get out of line in the traffic and overtake other cars. All the Beauforts had expensive cars, but only Nina had a Rolls-Royce, one of the few in the city. Margaret, who cared too much about such things, being political, thought it a little nouveau-riche for the Middle West, something one might expect from the new millionaires who wished to make their wealth conspicuous. But Nina had always had her own way and this was her second Rolls-Royce. Her only concession to inconspicuousness was that both cars had been black and that George Biff was under strict instructions not to show any arrogance in traffic. Not that a Rolls would have had much deference from the local wheelborne peasants.
‘Be on the Parkway in a minute. You just relax back there.’
‘I am relaxed.’ Nina opened her eyes. ‘Don’t be such an old fusspot, George. Sometimes I think you should have been a mammy.’
George grinned. ‘Would of got me locked up, a black mammy chasing some of them black gals like I used to. Don’t think I ever heard of a gay black mammy. Here’s the Parkway. Nearly home.’
2
Ward Parkway runs south out of Kansas City and is lined with some of the more magnificent homes in the nation. There is no consistency of style, unless conspicuous expenditure of money is in itself a style. French Regency, English Tudor, Southern Colonial: the great-granddaughter of Scarlett O’Hara waves across the manicured lawns to a blue-rinsed Elizabeth R of Missouri. Yet even though the homes are symbols of the wealth of their owners, vulgarity, like the weeds in the expensive lawns, is not allowed to flourish. Reticence, if such a trait is possible in a $500,000 mansion set back only yards from a busy thoroughfare, is looked upon as desirable as being white, Protestant and Republican. Some Catholic Democrats managed to settle along the Parkway, most notably the political boss Tom Pendergast, but they appear to have done little to change the ideas of the majority as to what is right and proper for such an address. When a Catholic President moved into the White House, black crêpe was observed hanging in the windows of one or two of the older mansions. It is only fair to add that they did not hang crêpe in their windows when President Nixon moved out of the White House.
The original Beaufort house had been one of the first to be built along the Parkway. Thaddeus Beaufort, the founder of the family fortune, built the house as he had built his wealth: solidly, conservatively and to last. The architect, made light-headed by the commission, had mixed his design but somehow avoided vulgarity; the mansion was an amalgam of English Elizabethan manor house and French chateau, without the libidinous air of either. The property had once taken up fifty acres of a whole block and had been known as Beaufort Park; a private park which the public hoi-polloi could only admire through the spiked iron-railing fence surrounding it. Peacocks, avian, not human, had strutted the lawns; Thaddeus, walking the paths of his estate every evening summer and winter, had always worn black. His wife Lucy wore only mauve; walking together, they offered no competition to the peacocks. Sunday afternoons the hoi-polloi would stand outside the iron railings and whistle at both the peacocks and the Beauforts, but got no recognition from either. Late in life Lucy bore her only child, Lucas, and he too was dressed in dark clothes as he grew out of babyhood. Walking their rounds, the father, mother and small boy looked like a tiny funeral cortège trying to find a graveside ceremony.
Lucas grew up to marry Edith Pye, whose father was one of the principal stockholders in the Kansas City Railroad and who also owned half of Johnson County just over the State line in Kansas. When Thaddeus and Lucy died within six months of each other, in 1923, they left Lucas $220 million, which, with what Edith had inherited from her parents, made Lucas and Edith the richest couple in Missouri; all that in a day when income tax, compared to what was to come, was no more unbearable than an attack of hives. Lucas and Edith’s money continued to grow since, as any Wall Street farmer will tell you, there