He trotted now across the hall and into the bedroom, drying his hands on the front of his T-shirt, and picked up the phone beside the bed. “Hello?”
The voice was instantly recognizable as Sterling. “Robert? We’ll be there in about five minutes. Are you ready?”
For just a second his mind was a blank, and then a chute opened inside his head and the trip to meet Bradford Lockridge came popping out into the open.
For God’s sake, he’d forgotten all about it! Monday there’d been the apparently casual conversation with Sterling, and Bradford Lockridge had been mentioned, and Sterling had offered to arrange a meeting between his brother and Robert. On Wednesday Robert had been surprised when Sterling said, at lunch, “Well, it’s all set.”
“What’s all set?”
“We’re driving down Saturday to see my brother. You and Elizabeth and me. Saturday’s all right, isn’t it?”
He’d said sure, Saturday was all right, and Sterling had said he’d come by for him about eleven, and now here it was about two minutes to eleven on Saturday and he’d gotten out of bed this morning without a thought in his head. It had just been a normal Saturday, the usual routine. The plan to meet a former President of the United States had gone straight out of his mind.
“Uh,” he said. He half-turned and sat down heavily on the bed.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m a little slow today. Could you give me ten minutes?”
“Of course, of course. Elizabeth isn’t really ready yet anyway.”
“Fine. Ten minutes.”
Robert hung up, and at first he just sat there, stunned. From this position he could see himself in the mirror on the closet door, and didn’t he look like something to go visit celebrities with. Stained T-shirt, ripped and paint-smeared and generally filthy Army fatigue trousers, and white tennis shoes without socks. He looked sweaty and dirty, and he was sweaty and dirty.
Ten minutes. He ran for the bathroom again, shedding clothing on the way.
iii
The trip, all in all, took an hour and a half. Their route skirted every town along the way, so that once out of Lancashire they didn’t see another populated area until they arrived at Eustace, which turned out to be a surprisingly sleepy little town that obviously hadn’t allowed the international fame of one of its citizens to alter its style and pace. Robert sat forward as they drove through town, his elbows on the seat back, and said, “Take away the automobiles and you could make a movie here and call it 1925.”
Sterling, at the wheel, chuckled and nodded, but Elizabeth said, “That’s better than calling it 1984.” At sixty-two, five years younger than her husband, Elizabeth was a tall and straight and slender woman, her face very little lined, her hair gray but well-cared-for, her mental faculties and political impatiences intact.
Robert looked at her grim profile in some surprise. “Do you really think that’s a possibility?”
“More and more every day,” she said, and turned to glance at him; he saw her eyes take in his crewcut.
“I’ll grant you we’re on a swing away from liberalism,” Robert said, “but it’s only a swing. The country is heading for conservatism again, but sooner or later the pendulum will start back. It always does. America has always had its Know Nothing party, and it’s always had its Abolitionists.”
Elizabeth’s expression was cynical. “The right-wingers want to stop the clock entirely, you know, and one of these times they’ll make it. Then the pendulum won’t come back at all. That’s what Orwell was talking about.”
“I don’t see it happening,” Robert said. “I know the political history of this country, and the whole story is summed up in the pendulum swinging between left and right.”
“The reason I worked for Eugene McCarthy,” Elizabeth said, “is because he was the only man in public life to stand up and say that kind of thinking was fuzzy-headed and dangerous. Complacency will do more harm to this country than a full-scale atomic attack.”
Sterling, humor in his voice, said, “Robert, for God’s sake don’t get her started now. She gives poor Brad enough hell every time they meet as it is, for not bringing peace on Earth during his administration.”
“If any one man on the planet could do it,” Elizabeth said fiercely, “it’s the President of the United States. He’s the only one with anything approaching the power, the public attention and the prestige. I’ve told Brad that before, and I’ll tell him again. The hour is too late for politics as usual.”
“See what you’ve done,” Sterling said, looking at Robert in the rearview mirror. “On your head be it.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be good,” Elizabeth said. “It’s too late for him now, he’s missed his opportunity. I’ve told him that, too, more than once. Besides, this is Robert’s day. I promise I won’t hog the conversation.” She turned to smile at Robert, who smiled back, and the car slowed.
Looking out through the windshield, Robert saw that they were now on a gravel road surrounded by trees, and that just ahead was a chain-link fence with a gate closed across the road. An elderly man in a gray uniform without markings was just coming out of a small shack beside the gate. He peered at the car, and evidently recognized either it or Sterling, because all at once he began huge pantomime nods and waves, during which he stumped to the gate and slowly swung it open.
Robert said, “What if we were kidnappers? Or assassins?”
Sterling said, “He has a gun and a telephone. And there are Secret Service men up at the house.”
Elizabeth shook her head, smiling, and said over her shoulder to Robert, “It’s only Bradford up there. The moment has passed for all that, too. No kidnappers, no assassins any more.”
iv
They had lunch in a second floor room overlooking the orchards, with the Tuscarora Mountains for a backdrop. They were six at table.
Bradford Lockridge sat at the head of the table, with Robert to his left. It was Robert’s first experience of being in the same room with a face completely familiar but heretofore seen only in photographs or on television, and he kept being surprised that he recognized the man.
Bradford Lockridge had a strong face, big-boned and square-jawed, almost an American Gothic face, and a long broad body to go with it. His hands were surprisingly gnarled and knobby, the hands of a farmer rather than a politician, but he moved them gracefully, he moved his entire body in a way lighter and more delicate than his appearance would suggest. The familial resemblance between him and Sterling, now sitting opposite him at the foot of the table, was very close, except that all of the features that were strong in Bradford were softer and more gentle in Sterling.
To Lockridge’s right, opposite Robert, sat Howard Lockridge, Sterling’s older son. It had been a surprise to Sterling and Elizabeth to find him here, and they’d explained to Robert that Howard was Bradford’s editor on his memoirs. He’d brought down the galleys on Bradford’s new volume, The Temporary Peace, and though he tried to be gracious about it, Robert could tell he wasn’t pleased at having his work interrupted this way. He’d managed twice before lunch to tell Robert that the book was running badly behind schedule, as though Robert wouldn’t be tongue-tied enough as it was.
To Robert’s left sat Elizabeth, enjoying life as usual, even enjoying her son’s badly dampered irritation and once or twice poking quiet fun at him for it, winking at Robert to make him willy-nilly a co-conspirator. And completing the table, sitting opposite Elizabeth and catty-corner from Robert, was a woman who looked to be about thirty, named Evelyn Canby. She’d been introduced as Bradford Lockridge’s granddaughter, and Elizabeth had explained in an aside that Mrs. Canby’s husband had died something over a year ago in Southeast Asia.