The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary
see?’ said her father. ‘Stay at home and join the Red Cross. I’ll buy you a new car.’
‘Don’t be stupid, sweetheart,’ said Edith, who began to recognize in her daughter something of herself that she had forgotten. ‘You aren’t going to bribe her with an automobile. She still has the MG we gave her – ’
‘I’ll give that to Margaret,’ said Nina, glowing with zeal, feeling like a Missouri relative of Francis of Assisi.
‘Darling,’ said her mother, who reserved sweetheart for her husband, ‘these – UNRRA? – people do have a point, don’t they? About your being too young.’
‘What’s wrong with being young? Youth has more energy and maybe more compassion than older people.’
‘I knew she shouldn’t have gone to Vassar,’ said Lucas; then sighed because he knew he couldn’t refuse his favourite anything she asked. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Write to President Truman and ask him to have me put on the American team for UNRRA.’
‘Ask a favour of that feller in the White House? I’d rather commit suicide!’
‘You can’t,’ said Edith, who had her own way of deflating her husband. ‘The Nichols and the Kempers are coming to dinner tomorrow night. You can telephone President Truman. He’ll always take a call from Kansas City.’
‘Not when he hears who’s calling. He knows I can’t stand him.’
‘Just be thankful you don’t have to approach him through Tom Pendergast.’ The political boss had died six months before, a bright occurrence only dimmed for Lucas by the succession a little later of Harry Truman to the Presidency. ‘Call the White House now. Harry Truman is an early riser.’
‘Harry? When did you get so familiar with him?’
But Lucas rang Harry Truman and the President spoke to someone who spoke to someone and in August 1945 Nina sailed for Europe as an accredited worker for UNRRA.
On the night before she left home the four girls gathered in Nina’s room. Margaret was now almost sixteen, Sally was twelve and Prue, the late arrival, was five-and-a-bit. Nina had laid out the treasured possessions of her childhood and girlhood and invited her sisters to take their pick.
‘You’re not going to be a nun.’ Margaret was jealous of her sister’s chance for adventure. ‘You might want to keep these when you come back.’
‘Can I have your car?’ Sally was mechanical-minded and not interested in any of the things laid out on the bed. ‘I’ll drive it around the gardens.’
Prue was picking over what was offered. ‘I’ll take them all,’ she said.
Nina hugged her youngest sister, gazed at the other two. ‘I’m just the first. When you are all old enough, we should all go out and help the poor of the world.’
‘What’s the poor of the world?’ asked Prue.
‘I think we’d all look rather silly trying to be Sisters of Charity,’ said Margaret, practical-minded. ‘We can always get Daddy to write a cheque. The poor don’t want people like us fussing over them.’
‘They needn’t know who we are. We could always change our name!’
‘I don’t want to change my name,’ said Sally.
‘I do,’ said Prue. ‘I’d like to be called Mickey Rooney.’
A few weeks later Nina wished she had changed her name before applying to UNRRA. She crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary on a return trip after it had transported almost a division of GI’s back home. The music this time was Rum and Coca-Cola, but there was no dancing; Tom Pendergast was dead, but a British merchant naval officer winked and waved at her and got no further than the political boss had nine years before. She landed in Southampton and flew from England to Frankfurt in Germany in a MATS cargo plane. She landed in Frankfurt on the day that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on the other side of the world; but the bang wasn’t heard and nobody seemed to hear or even feel the ripples spreading into the future. The UNRRA people were waiting for her, some of them with quite open hostility. They made it plain that they thought theirs was no job for spoiled rich kids with political pull. For the first time she realized there was a handicap to being a Beaufort.
Her boss was a retired colonel who had worked with Herbert Hoover on the American Relief Administration after World War One. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Beaufort. I was young then and there was the same opposition towards me. But some day the young are going to take over the world.’ Then added, because he, too, had grown old, ‘God help it.’
‘Am I doing a good job, Colonel Shasta?’
‘As well as anyone on the team. I have to go up to Hamburg next week and see the British. Would you care to come with me as my driver and secretary?’
‘Won’t that cause gossip, Colonel?’
‘I hope it does. I’ll be flattered. But you’ll be safe with me, Miss Beaufort. I’m that old-fashioned sort, a faithful husband. My wife, who lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also happens to have antennae than can pick up any immoral thoughts I may have on this side of the Atlantic. I believe it is called extrasexual perception.’
So in October, two months after landing in Germany, Nina drove up to Hamburg with Colonel Shasta. She had become accustomed to the bomb damage she had seen around Frankfurt, but it was still a shock to pass through the towns on the way north and see how widespread was the destruction of Germany. They passed queues of people standing outside shops, Germans wearing the wardrobe of the defeated, half-uniforms, thin ersatz tweed, worn fur coats, and all with the same pale, hopeless faces. The jeep was halted by a military policeman at a cross-street and Nina became acutely aware of the people standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross. She was wearing for the first time the camel hair coat that her mother had had made for her and specially dyed a not-too-unbecoming khaki. She looked at a young girl her own age, saw the thin cotton dress covering the thin bony body; the girl stared back at her, face expressionless. Then Nina saw the envy and hate in the dark eyes and she turned away, too inexperienced in the expressions victors should wear.
‘Don’t show pity,’ said Colonel Shasta, who had been watching her. ‘That’s the last thing they want.’
‘It’s difficult not to show it.’
‘Tell that to the men who fought them.’
They drove into Hamburg, crossed the Lombard Bridge and after getting lost several times at last found the office Colonel Shasta was looking for. It was in a large house two blocks back from the Altersee; next door to it was another large house that was a club for British officers. Except that they needed a coat of paint, neither house looked as if it had suffered at all from the war.
‘Rather grand, aren’t they?’ Nina said. ‘I wonder if any Germans still live around here?’
‘Every house in the street has been commandeered,’ said a voice behind her and Colonel Shasta. ‘The fruits of victory. I was told you were due here today. I’m Major Davoren, Commanding Officer of the unit that’s taken over this house. I’m afraid UNRRA has been moved to a larger but less attractive place than this.’
He was dark-haired, good-looking, with a black moustache and dark eyes that might have been tired or just bored. He was tall, with heavy shoulders, and a certain ease of movement that suggested he might have been an athlete before the war. There was a row of ribbons on the breast of his battle tunic, including, Nina was to learn later, the ribbon of the Military Cross.
‘Could you have someone direct us?’ Shasta asked.
‘I’ll take you there myself.’ He got into the back of the jeep and, it seemed, looked at Nina for the first time. ‘Straight ahead, driver, then second right.’
‘This