War Baby (24 page)

They drove out through Loudon County towards Leesburg, past the trim white fences of thoroughbred horse studs. Huntingdon Lodge was a mid-nineteenth-century plantation house set in fifty-six acres of rolling hills. As Ryan drove through the gates he saw a line of cars stretched right along the gravel drive, waiting to be parked. He pulled up behind a new Volvo; in the rear-vision mirror he saw a red BMW 525i. Here he was in a white Mercedes coupe. To think he had spent a large part of his life getting around in a Mini Moke with bullet holes in it.

‘What’s wrong?’ Mickey asked.

He couldn’t really say. He checked his look in the driving mirror; dark hair, straying over his collar, a clean-shaven face that somehow contrived to look much the same as it had ten years before. Next year he would be forty. His mates called him Dorian Gray. They were losing their hair and their bellies were sagging, but Sean Ryan, shot to shit half a dozen times, looked like he’d spent his life at a health farm. Something in the genes, he supposed. He guessed his father might have worn well, too, if he hadn’t drunk himself to death.

He brushed some imagined lint from his tuxedo. This was a long way from an outback wheat town in Queensland. He had risked his neck so many times to get here. So why did he feel like a fraud?

‘This is all bullshit,’ he said.

‘What is?’

‘Life. It’s all bullshit.’

Mickey raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s not going to be the theme of your speech tonight, is it? These ladies are from North Neck, remember.’

Look at Mrs. Ryan: evening gown of pale blue silk, blonde hair teased with mousse, pale pink gloss on her lips. Radiant, on the surface at least. Why aren’t I happy? When Buford held the gun to his head that night in La Esperanza, this was what he bargained for. There were a lot of blokes counted themselves lucky with a lot less.

Why was it, when a man felt like shit, he always took it out on his wife? Perhaps that was why he had never got married before, the same reason he didn’t like going out to the front line with new guys. Sometimes it was hard enough just taking care of yourself.

If it weren’t for the baby, perhaps they could rethink this. But he couldn’t back out now. ‘You’d think they’d let the guest of honor park first,’ Mickey said.

‘I may be the guest of honor tonight but I’m just an employee the other six days of the week.’ They pulled up at the forecourt, and someone opened the door for his wife. A valet came around the car, took his keys and handed him a chit.

A liveried footman in a black top hat led them inside. ‘Welcome to Huntingdon Lodge, Mr. Ryan,’ he said, and then,
sotto voce
, ‘I watch you on television all the time.’

‘What’s it like being married to a celebrity?’ Ryan whispered to Mickey as they stepped inside.

‘Remember the vampire bats in La Esperanza? I miss them. That’s what it’s like being married to a celebrity.’

They walked into the cocktail bar. Mickey sat on a bar stool and Ryan stood beside her. She ordered
Stoli
and orange, he asked for Bushmills with ice.

‘Are you nervous?’ she asked him.

‘I hate talking in front of crowds.’

‘You’ve got an audience of fifty million every night of the week.’

‘No, I have an audience of two, my cameraman and my soundman. If the other fifty million yawn or pick their noses or fall asleep with their heads in their dinner I don’t have to watch.’

‘You’ll charm the pants off them.’

‘Not the men, I hope.’

He looked around the room; it was decorated to resemble a colonial inn, warmly lit with lamps. There were hunting prints on the wall, some Victorian antiques and a stone fireplace with a log fire.

He watched his wife out of the corner of his right. Something not right there; he noticed the tremor in her hand, and she was drinking way too fast. Her Stoli had just about evaporated and he’d hardly touched his whisky. Perhaps she was just nervous. She never liked playing the Washington socialite. ‘You’re the star,’ she had told him more than once. ‘I look for pulses and carry bedpans.’

‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.

‘Sure.’

‘You’re not nervous?’

‘Why should I be nervous? I don’t have to stand up on stage and bare my soul to a couple of hundred blue-rinsed Loudon County matrons.’

‘I’m not going to bare anything.’

‘That’s a relief.’ She put her empty glass on the bar. ‘One more before we go in.’

‘Give me a chance to catch up.’

‘Why should I? Australians are all pussies. Same again, barman.’

He decided to sit on his Bushmills. He didn’t want to slur his words; that wouldn’t be good for his public image.

‘Can I ask you a personal question?’

He braced himself. ‘Sure.’

‘Are you having an affair?’

‘Oh,
that
personal.’

‘I don’t mean to pry. But I suppose being the wife of a celebrity has made me a little audacious.’

‘No.’

‘No what?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Don’t be cute with me, Sean. I have to know. Is that a no, not at the moment, or a no, not ever. Or is it a no, but I’m thinking about it?’

‘This is not a good time to discuss this.’

‘I’m not mad at you, Sean. I just need to work a few things out before it’s too late.’

He looked at his watch. ‘I’m wanted elsewhere.’

‘What I mean is, before you came to Washington you were dangerous, you were charming, you were good-looking. Now you’re all those things and you’re a highly paid television star as well. I can understand that puts a lot of strain on the best of intentions.’

‘We can’t talk about this now.’ They crossed the lobby and went into the dining hall; Irish linen on heavy oak tables, silver service, white jacketed waiters.

Mrs. Carson, president of the Loudon County Literary Guild, swept towards him, arms open.

‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,’ Mickey whispered, and slipped away.

‘Sean Ryan! I’m so delighted you could be with us tonight. Everyone is
so
excited to meet you.’ She embraced him as if he were a long-lost nephew. ‘You look even more handsome than you do on television.’ She indicated a plump, expensively dressed woman at her side. ‘This is Mrs. Havermeyer, our treasurer. She’s your greatest fan.’

Oh, Christ.

‘You are a naughty boy,’ Mrs. Havermeyer said.

‘Why’s that?’ he said, feeling his features set into a death’s head mask.

‘You have been saying some very unkind things about our Mr. Reagan lately.’ She made it sound as if he had insulted one of the family. ‘But we forgive you.’

Ryan looked around for an escape. Mickey was talking to an olive-skinned waiter with a designer ponytail. She saw hi.m watching her. She took a flute of cuvée brute from the tray, raised her glass in a toast and smiled.

* * *

There was salmon and scallop mousse with lobster sauce, followed by venison game pie and crêpes flambées. Afterwards Ryan sang for his supper, a perfectly timed twenty five minutes on the life of a world famous journalist, name-dropping shamelessly - Sihanouk and Carter, Schultz and Begin, Cao Ky and Reagan. Then he fielded their questions for another half an hour and finally sat down, grinning, to rapturous applause.

Later, as the waiters drifted among the tables, clearing away the empty coffee cups and wine glasses and creased linen napkins, Ryan looked desperately around the room for Mickey so that he could make his escape.

‘Mr. Ryan?’

He looked around, saw a small dark-haired woman in a rather plain woolen dress. There were flecks of grey in her hair, and she had large, sad eyes that were accentuated by her spectacles. Unlike most of the women at the dinner, she wore little jewelry, just a pair of pearl earrings and a small, emerald brooch. ‘I did enjoy your talk.’

‘Thank you,’ Ryan said, and surreptitiously checked his watch.

‘I especially enjoyed what you said about Vietnam. I think it was so important what you and your fellow news correspondents did. It meant a lot to the boys over there.’

‘I like to think so. But think people see the war in a different perspective now.’

‘You must have been so relieved when it was all over.’

‘Not really. I was a bit sorry, to be honest.’

It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. She stared at him, stunned. ‘You cannot mean that.’

‘I’d go back there tomorrow if they decided to have a rematch.’

‘Why would you want to go back to a place like that?’

‘I had a good time. We got to play with guns, ride in helicopters, see things getting blown up. If you’ve never done a combat landing in a C-130 you haven’t lived. Major pucker factor. It’s like riding the biggest rollercoaster in the world with the most fantastic firework display ever staged going on around you. To be brutally frank with you, I loved every minute of it.’

‘My son died in Vietnam,’ the woman said, and walked away.

Mickey emerged from the ladies’ rest room. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I’m fine. Where the hell have you been?’

‘Who was that woman? She’s crying. What did you say to her?’

‘Let’s just get out of here.’

Why did I say that? You don’t have to tell people you enjoyed it. Maybe you did, but it wasn’t the only reason you were there. You and Spider and Cochrane and Croz and the rest, you made a difference. Someone had to be there to show up the lies and turn the tide of opinion back home.

Why did you want that woman to hate you?

He threw back the bedclothes, swung his legs out of bed and padded across the carpet to the window. The street lamps were still lit, but the sun was creeping up the sky, pale and wintry. On Wisconsin cars were heading towards the parkways and train stations. Washington was getting ready for another day.

Mickey was dead to the world. She had worked another overtime shift at the hospital. God alone knew why. They didn’t need the money; he had told her that.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her sleep. She always slept in a T and scrub pants. She said that when she first got to Vietnam she was posted to the 71st Evac at Pleiku, and one night they had come under mortar fire. She had leaped out of bed and run straight into the nearest bunker, and had to spend the entire twenty minutes of the bombardment crouched in the dark stark naked, surrounded by a dozen sweating soldiers. Since then she had never slept in the raw again.

She was grinding her teeth again. He brushed a lock of hair from her face. Her eyes blinked open, and she looked startled. Then she frowned, rolled onto her side and went back to sleep.

He kissed her on the forehead and slipped on his dressing gown. He went downstairs and made a cup of strong black coffee. While it was filtering he stripped the Washington Post and the New York Times from their plastic wrappers.

US CONSIDERING EMERGENCY ARMS FOR EL SALVADOR

IP A, Washington: Secretary of State George Schultz said today the Reagan administration is considering giving El Salvador emergency military aid, without waiting for Congress to act, so its army can maintain pressure on the insurgents in the coming election period . . .

He threw the newspaper on the breakfast bar in disgust. Whoever had written the story, or whoever had edited it, had made no attempt to balance Schultz’s view of the world. Why didn’t they just print the press releases? It wasn’t journalism, it was propaganda.

No matter what they thought in Loudon County, he and his fellow correspondents had changed nothing, and nothing had changed. They were still going down the same road, making the same mistakes, killing the wrong people, committing the same unpardonable sins. Here was a country founded on the principles of democracy, yet it was exporting murder and oppression because its leaders didn’t believe democracy was enough on its own.

He went back upstairs to shower. He stood with his back against the cold tiles and let the hot needles of water play on his scalp. He thought about his day: Larry Speakes’ office, 9.15, for the press briefing; rest of the day digging around for the real story, everything Speakes hadn’t told them. Just like the Five O’clock Follies.

I’d rather be back at Quang Tre. At least I knew who was shooting at me.

* * *

They had just got through another mas-cal; Mickey stumbled bone-weary from the ER into the room where they put the expectants. It stretched forever, row upon row of gurneys, jungle boots, and tom and bloodied fatigues. She looked down at one of the litters and there was the Vietnamese boy the paramedics had brought in from the street. His eyes blinked open and he smiled. He was holding a grenade.

… She sat bolt upright in the bed, her body slick with sweat. It took her a few moments to remember where she was. She looked out of the window at the dawn creeping up the Georgetown sky.

She swore softly and lay down again.

She heard the thud of rotors overhead. There was someone in the hallway:
Mickey, hurry, mas-cal.
She swung her legs out of bed and threw open the door, expecting to see the other nurses rushing past in their olive-green uniforms. But the landing was empty.

She heard Ryan in the shower.

Fuck. Her heart was racing. She leaned on the banister at the top of the landing and took a deep breath. Calm down.

She went downstairs to the kitchen. Ryan had left coffee on the range. She poured some, straight and black, into a china mug and took two muffins out of the refrigerator. Her head was pounding. She felt as if she hadn’t slept all night.

Why were the dreams coming back now, after all these years? She thought she was through all that. The war was years ago.

She put the muffins in the toaster.

They wouldn’t go down. They wouldn’t go down.
The fucking muffins wouldn’t go down!

* * *

Ryan stared at the orderly rows of suits and shirts hanging in his wardrobe, a regiment of respectability arrayed for his inspection. We become what we hate.

He heard a crash from downstairs, the sound of breaking crockery. He took the stairs two at a time, launched himself into the kitchen, thinking she had fallen. Mickey stood in the middle of the kitchen in her T-shirt, arms folded. The toaster lay at her feet; the coffee percolator had been swept from the counter and lay in a litter of glass and coffee grounds on the tiled floor.

‘What happened?’ he said.

‘The muffins wouldn’t go down,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand it when the muffins won’t go down.’

He tip-toed through the shards of glass and wrapped his arms around her. It was like holding a storefront manikin. ‘The muffins won’t go down,’ she repeated.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, but he knew that it was not all right. Perhaps it was just hormones, because of the baby. He hoped so. Because if this was about Vietnam, then Mickey was in big trouble.