Cheyney Fox (38 page)

“No, he’s in New York, but will be at the Schloss sometime tomorrow. He did, however, send you something. Look behind your seat.” The boy turned around and rummaged behind him. He came up with a squash racquet in a maroon-colored, soft leather cover. He unzipped it and pulled out the racquet. His face lit up.

“He did send a message about the racquet. Oh dear, I do hope I remember it,” she teased. And the boy rose to the bait.

“Mom, the racquet is smashing, so light, yet solid. It feels great in the hand, and the subtle change in the shape is really slick, I can’t wait to see what it will do for my game. Oh, Mom, it’s great! Don’t tell me you forgot Takashi’s message, you’ve got to remember. Think, Mom, think. What did he say about it?”

“Oh, something about the Rolls Royce of squash racquets. Some such thing. That this is the prototype, the original, and signed by the designer, or someone special. I simply don’t see how the pair of you can get so excited about a squash racquet. But he did say to call him collect if I was going to be all vague about the thing.”

She smiled at her son’s enthusiasm and, turning to face him for a moment, said, “Call him, Taggart, collect, he said. Actually I think he misses having you around.” The boy beamed, and then issued more road directions.

On the outskirts of Windsor they took a narrow paved road and then, where it forked, took an even narrower dirt path. It
came abruptly to an end in front of an old, wooden, weather-weary boat house, with peeling gray paint, its roof partially caved in. It was standing among tall grass and wildflowers. Its first-floor porch hung drunkenly over the river.

“This car does go in reverse, doesn’t it?” His turn to tease. Cheyney blushed, and Taggart began to laugh uproariously at his mother. “Mom, I don’t believe it! You’ve never even had it in reverse.”

“Well, I haven’t exactly had time. I only drove it out of the showroom this morning. Now, you won’t go telling the boys at school, will you, Taggart? If you do, I shall feel such a fool.”

“And so would I, Mom.”

He reached into the glove compartment and took out the manual before he opened the car door. Then, looking at his mother with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “I’m starved. You do know how to open the trunk, don’t you, Mom?”

“I’m not entirely a fool, dear.” She rather smugly reached under the dashboard and pulled a small lever. The steering wheel dropped neatly to its second position. Taggart didn’t even laugh. He turned his head from side to side in disbelief. Cheyney’s face was hot and flushed. Her son leaned against her, and, for the first time since mother and son had met that day, he kissed her and then put his arms around her and gave her a loving hug.

“Yes you are, Mom, when it comes to anything with a motor in it.” Then he opened the manual and concentrated on finding out where the release-lever was for the trunk, or if indeed there was one at all. His kiss, Taggart’s affection, touched her heart, as her son’s love for her always did. Cheyney had to fight back tears. Time was short this visit.

The dock was partially collapsed into the Thames. What was left at least stood firm. Taggart heaved himself onto the rickety boards and then helped Cheyney up onto it. “How did you find this place?” asked Cheyney.

“Better not to ask, Mom. And it would be better if you don’t tell anybody in my house where we picnicked.”

“I think I understand,” said Cheyney, trying to look disapproving. They sat down on white, calfskin-covered cushions Taggart found in the trunk of the car, and together they opened
the Fortnum & Mason basket. Cheyney shook out a light blue linen cloth with a border of navy-blue stripes and checks of a bright red and white five inches deep all around it. It turned the drab berth into a gay and happy place. Especially so when Cheyney had laid out the linen napkins, an all-over pattern of full-blown, bright red roses with a matching border the same as the cloth.

The Waterford crystal goblets and white Limoges plates, with a band of blue and red around them, sparkled under the warm sun. “Flowers. What we need are a few flowers,” said Cheyney, looking hopefully at her son. He good-naturedly hopped off the dock and set off to find some, calling back over his shoulder, “Well, if you’re gonna die without them …”

“A few would be fine, Taggart. No need to cause an ecological disaster,” she called back. Happy just to be there with him. It was reminiscent of the scores of picnics they had had together in some of the loveliest places in the world. She listened to the lap of the river against the shore, the song of small birds, felt the warmth of the sun on her shoulders, and gave a silent prayer of thanks to herself for having Taggart. The rest of her existence paled next to the delight of being with her son.

Cheyney had just finished laying out the Fortnum’s feast. Cold vichyssoise, Taggart’s favorite, with snips of fresh chives floating on the surface of the rich cream soup greeted him when he sloped back onto the platform, a handful of wildflowers, bluebells mostly, and lovely unusual grasses, shoved into a broken whiskey bottle filled with Thames water.

Taggart’s eyes viewed the feast greedily. There was laid before him a soupçon, a portion just large enough to give a midterm taste, of each of his favorite things: avocado stuffed with prawns, lobster tails, quail’s eggs, sausages wrapped in bacon and phyllo pastry, a green salad, a potato salad, a bean-and-celery salad, hot ham-and-chicken-cider pie. He watched the bubbles rise in the goblet he held in his hand as his mother poured chilled apple juice. He tried to take his mind off the desserts: chocolate mousse, wild strawberries and fresh cream, mangoes and peaches and luscious black grapes for fruit, Stilton for cheese. Thirsty, he took a long drink, and Cheyney refilled his glass.

He dispensed with the soupspoon and drank from the bowl. Looking over the rim, he watched his mother follow suit. He selected a Southern-fried chicken drumstick and took a bite out of it. With mouth full, he said, “Not a bad banquet, Mom. This is great, but what are we doing here? What’s going on?”

A wave of anxiety washed over Cheyney. She couldn’t quite understand why. She stopped thinking and plunged in. “I have been offered an appointment, one that could be controversial. And I have a good chance of getting it.”

“That’s great. Sounds all right. Just for the States, or for the world?”

“Just for the States. The world next time.”

“Oh, you’ll win. You’ll wipe out the opposition, Mom. Is that what this is all about? What’re you so worried about?”

Taggart picked up a large silver spoon and plunged it into the hot ham-and-chicken-cider pie, schoolboyishly careful to serve his mother before himself. Cheyney explained the position offered to her, the politics involved. “Well, what do you think?”

“Mom, what am I meant to think? Why are you so nervous? You are already a big shot in the art world. It’s even got through to the odd boy at school. Even some of their parents know who you are. I don’t know another boy at Eton with a mater as clever and famous as you are. Not one of them has the power or influence in the arts that you already have. The world over, Mom. I think this job is one you deserve, and you should have it. I don’t know what you thought I was going to say, but what I do say is, go for it Mom, go for it.”

The immense relief Cheyney felt hearing her son encourage her this way made her almost dizzy, light-headed. For most of his life she had stayed completely out of the limelight of business and the press. He had known her as nothing more than his mom, whom he could depend on to be there always. In the three years of her climbing back to the top of the art-world ladder, he appeared to enjoy her new role in life. He took every opportunity he could to be around the artists and in their studios, the galleries and museums, always interested in every new painter and painting she came up with. She credited that to the love of paintings he had shown since he was a small child. Here, picnicking by the river, was one of the rare times he
expressed his feeling about her and her profession.

Suddenly she was ravenous. She picked up a large knife and cut into a cold game pie. Leaving the end slice thick with short crust on the plate, she sliced two pieces rich with pheasant and quail and woodcock and placed the first slice on Taggart’s plate, the other on her own. A dollop of English mustard for each of them. Then she cut into hers with a fork, and said, before she started eating, “Wait a minute, hang on, Taggart. ‘Going for it’ may not be that easy. Not for either of us.”

Now it was out, she had said it, and there was no turning back. She would have to warn him that, when an investigation began, the knives would be out. The thought suspended her appetite. He spoke with a mouth full of game pie and several crisp leaves of Belgian endive on their way to his mouth.

“Why not? And what’s it got to do with me?”

She explained about the procedure, the official probing that might rake up things from her past, things that might lose her the appointment unless she faced them and fought them. As she spoke, she watched his face intently, for a sign of disapproval, anxiety over the invasion of her life, his own. She could read nothing in his face. During the telling, he had gone through one lobster tail, most of the potato salad, and four gherkins. He was slicing into the Stilton. She suddenly wanted to cry. He was so sweet and so innocent. Why should he have to confront the dark side of his mother’s life? Possibly learn things about Kurt that might shock him? For Taggart had only known his stepfather as perfect. Cheyney had gone to great lengths to make certain of that.

“Mom, we can handle it.”

“I’m not so sure I want you to have to handle it, Taggart.”

“I thought you were here because you wanted to give me that choice, Mom? You and I have equal votes always, don’t we?”

He’s got me, she thought. “Yes, that is why I’m here. And that’s true, we do have equal voting power. But, before you cast your vote, I have to be honest with you. Facts are almost certain to be revealed about me. Some of them I would never have concealed from you. But I would be happier if they simply never surfaced.”

“For example.”

That caught Cheyney off guard. But she refused to shy off now. She answered. “Okay, a perfect example, and this is only one. I was once mixed up with some probable Nazi war criminals, Israel, and the CIA. It was to do with paintings. I don’t want to spoil your lunch with all the ins and outs of it. It’s something I’ll have to recall in detail when the investigation gets going. I can explain then. If it all gets out, and the press takes it up, a distorted picture of the facts might come across. It may not be well received. It’s always hot stuff if Nazis can be dug up. Everyone has a moral freebie. But the point for us is the total invasion of our privacy. Domestic Blitzkrieg!” She looked for a sign of shock at this news. She could see none in his boyish face. Did he think he was just part of a movie?

The boy wiped his hands on his napkin and tossed his head back. He ran his fingers through the shock of dirty blond hair that fell to one side of his forehead. He looked into his mother’s face with his large dark brown eyes, and asked, “Mom, did you ever kill anyone? Deliberately take a life?”

“What a question, Taggart! Of course not. I may have made some stupid mistakes in my life, but I never got around to killing anybody. Are you serious?”

“I thought you and I decided that the one great evil was to take a human life. Next was not to do all you can to make the most of life. I don’t think you are guilty of either one of those things. So I don’t see that I have any choice but to vote in favor of you accepting the appointment. And frankly, Mom, I don’t think you do either.” He emptied his goblet yet again and smiling at Cheyney, he reached for the chocolate mousse. Complexities were weighing light on him so far.

Cheyney looked at her son with some pride. Maybe he was the remarkable fifteen-year-old the housemaster took him for. Time was about to show how right he was. She managed a forkful of the game pie, and then said, “You know Taggart, sometimes I think you’re fifteen going on forty.”

“I don’t want to be rude, Mom, but sometimes I think you’re an over-forty going on fifteen. How could you even think we couldn’t cope with this thing?”

And then, before they realized what was happening, they were embracing and kissing each other excitedly about Cheyney
calling the White House to accept the appointment.

Now it was Taggart’s turn to watch his mother delve into the food. Between spoonfuls of chocolate mousse, he spoke to her, “Mom, have you a plan? A campaign of how you are going to handle this thing to win?”

“No not exactly. I have two attorneys, well one and a half actually. You know one of them, Judd Whyatt. The other is a man called Rosewarne, he’s the half because I have yet to make a call to him that would confirm his working for me. He was my legal adviser way back before you were born. At the time I had all my troubles in the sixties, in the Andy Warhol days. I think between the two of them they can handle any problems that might arise from my speaking directly to the press or any investigation committee. An investigation is inevitable, by the way, TG, the norm in the case of an appointment like mine. I have sort of gathered my generals together. But no, I have no real campaign planned. Both lawyers and Takashi agree it should not look as if I am soliciting this job. And there seemed no point in thinking any further about a campaign to win until I had seen you. Why, what do you think?”

“Well, Mom, the way I see it, you’ve got some critics and some enemies. We know that from when you came out with your Andy Warhol story, three years ago. They’re sure to rally around again for an attack.

“If it’s anything like school, I know just what will happen. Soon as your name comes up for captain of this or head of that, they’re on to you, all the people who think they ought to have the post. Everyone remembers everything bad they ever knew about you.

“I think you just have to face them. If you back off, it just makes you look guilty. You just have to tell the truth, put the record straight. If people don’t believe you — well, there’s not much point in your getting the post anyway, because you won’t have any authority when you’ve got it. That’s how it works at school, at least …”