30
Maria Summers was watching on TV, in the White House press office, as Air Force One touched down in brilliant sunshine at the Dallas airport called Love Field.
A ramp was manoeuvred into place at the rear door. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, took up their positions at the foot of the ramp, waiting to greet the President. A chain-link fence kept back a crowd of two thousand.
The aircraft door opened. There was a suspenseful pause, then Jackie Kennedy emerged, wearing a Chanel suit and a matching pillbox hat. Right behind her was her husband, Maria’s lover, President John F. Kennedy. Secretly, Maria thought of him as Johnny, the name his brothers occasionally used.
The television commentator, a local man, said: ‘I can see his suntan all the way from here!’ He was a novice, Maria guessed: although the television picture was monochrome he failed to tell his audience the colours of things. Every woman watching would have been interested to know that Jackie’s outfit was pink.
Maria asked herself whether she would change places with Jackie, given the chance. In her heart Maria yearned to own him, to tell people she loved him, to point to him and say: ‘That’s my husband.’ But there would be sadness as well as pleasure in the marriage. President Kennedy betrayed his wife constantly, and not just with Maria. Although he never admitted it, Maria had gradually realized that she was only one of a number of girlfriends, maybe dozens. It was hard enough to be his mistress and share him: how much more painful it must be to be his wife, knowing that he was intimate with other women, that he kissed them and touched their private parts and put his cock in their mouths every chance he got. Maria had to be content: she got what a mistress was entitled to. But Jackie did not have what a wife was entitled to. Maria did not know which was worse.
The presidential couple descended the ramp and began to shake hands with the Texas bigwigs waiting for them. Maria wondered how many of the people who were so pleased to be seen with Kennedy today would support him in next year’s election – and how many were already planning, behind their smiles, to betray him.
The Texas press was hostile. The Dallas Morning News, owned by a rabid conservative, had in the past two years called Kennedy a crook, a Communist sympathizer, a thief, and ‘fifty times a fool’. This morning it was struggling to find something negative to say about the triumphant tour by Jack and Jackie. It had settled for the feeble: STORM OF POLITICAL CONTROVERSY SWIRLS AROUND KENNEDY ON VISIT. Inside, however, there was a pugnacious full-page advertisement paid for by ‘The American Fact-Finding Committee’ with a list of sinister questions addressed to the President, such as: ‘Why has Gus Hall, head of the US Communist Party, praised almost every one of your policies?’ The political ideas were about as stupid as could be, Maria thought. Anyone who believed that President Kennedy was a secret Communist had to be certifiably insane, in her opinion. But the tone was deeply nasty, and she shivered.
A press officer interrupted her thoughts. ‘Maria, if you’re not busy . . .’
She was not, evidently, since she was watching television. ‘What can I do for you?’ she said.
‘I need you to run down to the Archives.’ The National Archives building was less than a mile from the White House. ‘Here’s what I need.’ He handed her a sheet of paper.
Maria often wrote press releases, or at least drafted them, but she had not been promoted to press officer: no woman ever had. She was still a researcher after more than two years. She would have moved on long ago, were it not for her love affair. She looked at the list and said: ‘I’ll get on it right away.’
‘Thanks.’
She took a last glance at the television. The President moved away from the official party and went to the crowd, reaching over the fence to shake hands, Jackie behind him in her pillbox hat. The people roared with excitement at the prospect of actually touching the golden couple. Maria could see the Secret Service men she knew well trying to stay close to the President, hard eyes scanning the throng, alert for trouble.
In her mind she said: ‘Please take good care of my Johnny.’
Then she left.
*
That morning, George Jakes drove his Mercedes convertible out to McLean, Virginia, eight miles from the White House. Bobby Kennedy lived there with his large family in a thirteen-bedroom white-painted brick house called Hickory Hill. The Attorney General had scheduled a lunch meeting there to discuss organized crime. This subject was outside George’s area of expertise, but he was getting invited to a wider range of meetings as he became closer to Bobby.
George stood in the living room with his rival Dennis Wilson, watching the TV coverage from Dallas. The President and Jackie were doing what George and everyone else in the administration wanted them to do, charming the socks off the Texans, chatting with them and touching them, Jackie giving her famous irresistible smile and extending a gloved hand to shake.
George glimpsed his friend Skip Dickerson in the background, close to Vice-President Johnson.
At last the Kennedys retreated to their limousine. It was a stretched Lincoln Continental four-door convertible, and the top was down. The people were going to see their president in the flesh, without even a window intervening. Texas governor John Conally stood at the open door wearing a white ten-gallon hat. The President and Jackie got into the rear seat. Kennedy rested his right elbow on the edge, looking relaxed and happy. The car pulled away slowly, and the motorcade followed. Three buses of reporters brought up the rear.
The convoy drove out of the airport and on to the road, and the television coverage came to an end. George switched off the set.
It was a fine day in Washington, too, and Bobby had decided to have the meeting outside, so they all trooped through the back door and across the lawn to the pool patio, where chairs and tables had been set out ready. Looking back towards the house, George saw that a new wing had been built. It was not finished, for some workmen were painting it, and they had a transistor radio playing, its sound a mere susurration at this distance.
George admired what Bobby had done about organized crime. He had different government departments working together to target individual heads of crime families. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics had been gingered up. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had been enlisted. Bobby had ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate mobsters’ tax returns. He had got the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport those who were not citizens. It all amounted to the most effective attack ever on American crime.
Only the FBI let him down. The man who should have been the Attorney General’s staunchest ally in the fight, J. Edgar Hoover, stood aloof, claiming there was no such thing as the Mafia, perhaps – George now knew – because the Mob was blackmailing him over his homosexuality.
Bobby’s crusade, like so much that the Kennedy administration did, was disdained in Texas. Illegal gambling, prostitution and drug use were popular among many leading citizens. The Dallas Morning News had attacked Bobby for making the federal government too powerful, and argued that crime should remain the responsibility of local law enforcement authorities – who were mostly incompetent or corrupt, as everyone knew.
The meeting was interrupted when Bobby’s wife, Ethel, brought out lunch: tuna sandwiches and chowder. George looked at her with admiration. She was a slim, attractive woman of thirty-five, and it was hard to believe that four months ago she had given birth to their eighth child. She was dressed with the understated chic that George now recognized as the trademark of the Kennedy women.
A phone beside the pool rang and Ethel picked it up. ‘Yes,’ she said, and she carried the phone on its long lead to Bobby. ‘It’s J. Edgar Hoover,’ she said.
George was startled. Was it possible that Hoover knew they were discussing organized crime without him, and was calling to reprimand them? Could he have bugged Bobby’s patio?
Bobby took the phone from Ethel. ‘Hello?’
Across the grass, George noticed one of the house painters behaving oddly. He picked up his portable radio, spun around, and started running towards Bobby and the group on the patio.
George looked again at the Attorney General. A look of horror came over Bobby’s face, and suddenly George felt scared. Bobby turned away from the group and clasped his hand over his mouth. George thought What is that bastard Hoover saying to him?
Then Bobby turned back to the group eating lunch and cried: ‘Jack’s been shot! It might be fatal!’
George’s thoughts moved with underwater slowness. Jack. That means the President. He’s been shot. Shot in Dallas, it must be. It might be fatal. He might be dead.
The President might be dead.
Ethel ran to Bobby. All the men jumped to their feet. The painter arrived at the poolside, holding up his radio, unable to speak.
Then everyone began talking at the same time.
George still felt submerged. He thought of the important people in his life. Verena was in Atlanta, and she would hear the news on the radio. His mother was at work, in the University Women’s Club; she would hear in minutes. Congress was in session, and Greg would be there. Maria –
Maria Summers. Her secret lover had been shot. She would be grief-stricken – and she would have no one to comfort her.
George had to go to her.
He ran across the lawn and through the house to the car park in front, jumped into his open Mercedes, and drove off at top speed.
*
It was just before two in the afternoon in Washington, one in Dallas, and eleven in the morning in San Francisco, where Cam Dewar was in a maths class, studying differential equations and finding them hard to understand – a new experience for him, for until now all school work had been easy.
His year in a London school had done him no harm. In fact, the English kids were a little ahead, because they started school younger. Only his ego had been damaged, by Evie Williams’s scornful rejection.
Cameron had little respect for the hip young maths teacher, Mark ‘Fabian’ Fanshore, with his crew cut and his knitted ties. He wanted to be the pupils’ friend. Cameron thought a teacher should be authoritative.
The Principal, Dr Douglas, stepped into the room. Cameron liked him better. The school’s leader was a dry, aloof academic, who did not care whether people liked him or not as long as they did what he told them to do.
‘Fabian’ looked up in surprise: Dr Douglas was not often seen in classrooms. Douglas said something to him in a low voice. It must have been shocking, for Fabian’s handsome face paled beneath his tan. They talked for a minute, then Fabian nodded and Douglas walked out.
The bell rang for the mid-morning break, but Fabian said firmly: ‘Stay in your seats, please, and listen to me in silence, all right?’ He had the odd speech habit of muttering ‘All right?’ and ‘Okay?’ with unnecessary frequency. ‘I’ve got some bad news for you,’ he went on. ‘Terribly bad news, in fact, okay? There has been a dreadful event in Dallas, Texas.’
Cameron said: ‘The President is in Dallas today.’
‘Correct, but don’t interrupt me, okay? The very shocking news is that our President has been shot. We don’t yet know if he’s dead, all right?’
Someone said: ‘Fuck!’ out loud but, astonishingly, Fabian ignored it.
‘Now I want you to keep calm. Some of the girls in the school may be very upset.’ There were no girls in the maths class. ‘The younger children will need reassurance. I expect you to behave like the young men you are and help others who may be more vulnerable, okay? Take your break now as usual, and look out for alterations in the school timetable later. Off you go.’
Cameron picked up his books and walked out into the corridor, where all hope of quiet and order evaporated in seconds. The voices of children and adolescents pouring out of classrooms rose to a roar. Some kids were running, some standing dumbstruck, some crying, most shouting.
Everyone was asking whether the President was dead.
Cam did not like Jack Kennedy’s liberal politics, but suddenly that did not matter. If Cam had been old enough, he would have voted for Nixon, but all the same, he felt personally outraged. Kennedy was the American President, elected by the American people, and an attack on him was an attack on them.
Who shot my President? he thought. Was it the Russians? Fidel Castro? The Mafia? The Ku Klux Klan?
He spotted his younger sister Beep. She yelled: ‘Is the President dead?’
‘Nobody knows,’ Cam said. ‘Who’s got a radio?’
She thought for a moment. ‘Doctor Duggie has one.’
That was true, there was an old-fashioned mahogany wireless set in the head’s study. ‘I’m going to see him,’ Cam said.
He made his way through the corridors to the head’s room and knocked on the door. Dr Douglas’s voice called: ‘Come!’ Cameron went in. The head was there with three other teachers, listening to the radio. ‘What do you want, Dewar?’ said Douglas in his customary irritated tone.
‘Sir, everyone in the school would like to listen to the radio.’
‘Well, we can’t get them all in here, boy.’
‘I thought you might put the radio in the school hall and turn up the volume.’
‘Oh, did you, now?’ Douglas looked about to issue a scornful dismissal.
But his deputy, Mrs Elcot, murmured: ‘Not a bad idea.’
Douglas hesitated a moment, then nodded. ‘All right, Dewar. Good thinking. Go to the hall and I’ll bring the radio.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Cameron.