His mother had a new yellow dress. She must have saved up for it: she was proud, and would not allow the rich Peshkovs to buy things for her, only for George. She looked him up and down, in his academic robe and mortar board. ‘This is the happiest day of my life,’ she said. Then, to his astonishment, she burst into tears.
George was surprised. This was unusual. She had spent the last twenty-five years refusing to show weakness. He put his arms around her and hugged her. ‘I’m so lucky to have you, Mom,’ he said.
He detached himself gently from her embrace and blotted her tears with a clean white handkerchief. Then he turned to his father. Like most of the alumni, Greg was wearing a straw boater that had a hatband printed with the year of his graduation from Harvard – in his case, 1942. ‘Congratulations, my boy,’ he said, shaking George’s hand. Well, George thought, he’s here, which is something.
George’s grandparents appeared a moment later. Both were Russian immigrants. His grandfather, Lev Peshkov, had started out running bars and nightclubs in Buffalo, and now owned a Hollywood studio. Grandfather had always been a dandy, and today he wore a white suit. George never knew what to think of him. People said he was a ruthless businessman with little respect for the law. On the other hand, he had been kind to his black grandson, giving him a generous allowance as well as paying his tuition.
Now he took George’s arm and said confidentially: ‘I have one piece of advice for you in your law career. Don’t represent criminals.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re losers,’ Grandfather chuckled.
Lev Peshkov was widely believed to have been a criminal himself, a bootlegger in the days of Prohibition. George said: ‘Are all criminals losers?’
‘The ones who get caught are,’ said Lev. ‘The rest don’t need lawyers.’ He laughed heartily.
George’s grandmother, Marga, kissed him warmly. ‘Don’t you listen to your grandfather,’ she said.
‘I have to listen,’ George said. ‘He paid for my education.’
Lev pointed a finger at George. ‘I’m glad you don’t forget that.’
Marga ignored him. ‘Just look at you,’ she said to George in a voice full of affection. ‘So handsome, and a lawyer now!’
George was Marga’s only grandchild, and she doted on him. She would probably slip him fifty bucks before the end of the afternoon.
Marga had been a nightclub singer, and at sixty-five she still moved as if she was going onstage in a slinky dress. Her black hair was probably dyed that colour nowadays. She was wearing more jewellery than was appropriate for an outdoor occasion, George knew; but he guessed that as the mistress, rather than the wife, she felt the need for status symbols.
Marga had been Lev’s lover for almost fifty years. Greg was the only child they had together.
Lev also had a wife, Olga, in Buffalo, and a daughter, Daisy, who was married to an Englishman and lived in London. So George had English cousins he had never met – white, he assumed.
Marga kissed Jacky, and George noticed people nearby giving them looks of surprise and disapproval. Even at liberal Harvard it was unusual to see a white person embrace a Negro. But George’s family always drew stares on the rare occasions when they all appeared in public together. Even in places where all races were accepted, a mixed family could still bring out white people’s latent prejudices. He knew that before the end of the day he would hear someone mutter the word ‘mongrel’. He would ignore the insult. His black grandparents were long dead, and this was his entire family. To have these four people bursting with pride at his graduation was worth any price.
Greg said: ‘I had lunch with old Renshaw yesterday. I talked him into renewing Fawcett Renshaw’s job offer.’
Marga said: ‘Oh, that’s wonderful! George, you’ll be a Washington lawyer after all!’
Jacky gave Greg a rare smile. ‘Thank you, Greg,’ she said.
Greg lifted a warning finger. ‘There are conditions,’ he said.
Marga said: ‘Oh, George will agree to anything reasonable. This is such a great opportunity for him.’
She meant for a black kid, George knew, but he did not protest. Anyway, she was right. ‘What conditions?’ he said guardedly.
‘Nothing that doesn’t apply to every lawyer in the world,’ Greg replied. ‘You have to stay out of trouble, is all. A lawyer can’t get on the wrong side of the authorities.’
George was suspicious. ‘Stay out of trouble?’
‘Just take no further part in any kind of protest movement, marches, demonstrations, like that. As a first-year associate, you’ll have no time for that stuff anyway.’
The proposal angered George. ‘So I would begin my working life by vowing never to do anything in the cause of freedom.’
‘Don’t look at it that way,’ said his father.
George bit back an irate retort. His family only wanted what was best for him, he knew. Trying to keep his voice neutral, he said: ‘Which way should I look at it?’
‘Your role in the civil rights movement won’t be as a front-line soldier, that’s all. Be a supporter. Send a cheque once a year to the NAACP.’ The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was the oldest and most conservative civil rights group: they had opposed Freedom Rides as being too provocative. ‘Just keep your head down. Let someone else go on the bus.’
‘There might be another way,’ said George.
‘What’s that?’
‘I could work for Martin Luther King.’
‘Has he offered you a job?’
‘I’ve received an approach.’
‘What would he pay you?’
‘Not much, I’m guessing.’
Lev said: ‘Don’t think you can turn down a perfectly good job then come to me for an allowance.’
‘Okay, Grandfather,’ said George, although that was exactly what he had been thinking. ‘But I believe I’ll take the job anyway.’
His mother joined the argument. ‘Oh, George, don’t,’ she said. She was going to say more, but the graduating students were called to line up for their degrees. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk more later.’
George left the family group and found his place in line. The ceremony began, and he shuffled forward. He recalled working at Fawcett Renshaw last summer. Mr Renshaw had thought himself heroically liberal for hiring a black law clerk. But George had been given work that was demeaningly easy even for an intern. He had been patient and looked for an opportunity, and one had come. He had done a piece of legal research that won a case for the firm, and they had offered him a job on graduation.
This kind of thing happened to him a lot. The world assumed that a student at Harvard must be intelligent and capable – unless he was black, in which case all bets were off. All his life George had had to prove that he was not an idiot. It made him resentful. If he ever had children, his hope was that they would grow up in a different world.
His turn came to go onstage. As he mounted the short flight of steps, he was astonished to hear hissing.
Hissing was a Harvard tradition, normally used against professors who lectured badly or were rude to students. George was so horrified that he paused on the steps and looked back. He caught the eye of Joseph Hugo. Hugo was not the only one – the hissing was too loud for that – but George felt sure that Hugo had orchestrated this.
George felt hated. He was too humiliated to mount the stage. He stood there, frozen, and the blood rushed to his face.
Then someone began clapping. Looking across the rows of seats, George saw a professor standing up. It was Merv West, one of the younger faculty. Others joined him in applauding, and they quickly drowned out the hissing. Several more people stood up. George imagined that even people who did not know him had guessed who he was by the plaster cast on his arm.
He found his courage again and walked on to the stage. A cheer went up as he was handed his certificate. He turned slowly to face the audience and acknowledged the applause with a modest bow of his head. Then he went off.
His heart was hammering as he joined the other students. Several men shook his hand silently. He was horrified by the hissing, and at the same time elated by the applause. He realized he was perspiring, and he wiped his face with a handkerchief. What an ordeal.
He watched the rest of the ceremony in a daze, glad to have time to recover. As the shock of the hissing wore off, he could see that it had been done by Hugo and a handful of right-wing lunatics, and the rest of liberal Harvard had honoured him. He should feel proud, he told himself.
The students rejoined their families for lunch. George’s mother hugged him. ‘They cheered you,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Greg said. ‘Though for a moment there it looked as if it was going to be something else.’
George spread his hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘How can I not be part of this struggle?’ he said. ‘I really want the job at Fawcett Renshaw, and I want to please the family that has supported me through all these years of education – but that’s not all. What if I have children?’
Marga put in: ‘That would be nice!’
‘But, Grandmother, my children will be coloured. What kind of world will they grow up in? Will they be second-class Americans?’
The conversation was interrupted by Merv West, who shook George’s hand and congratulated him on getting his degree. Professor West was a little under-dressed in a tweed suit and a button-down collar.
George said: ‘Thank you for starting the applause, Professor.’
‘Don’t thank me, you deserved it.’
George introduced his family. ‘We were just talking about my future.’
‘I hope you haven’t made any final decisions.’
George’s curiosity was piqued. What did that mean? ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve been talking to the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy – a Harvard graduate, as you know.’
‘I hope you told him that his handling of what happened in Alabama was a national disgrace.’
West smiled regretfully. ‘Not in those words, not quite. But he and I agreed that the administration’s response was inadequate.’
‘Very. I can’t imagine he . . .’ George tailed off as he was struck by a thought. ‘What does this have to do with decisions about my future?’
‘Bobby has decided to hire a young black lawyer to give the Attorney General’s team a Negro perspective on civil rights. And he asked me if there was anyone I could recommend.’
George was momentarily stunned. ‘Are you saying . . . ?’
West raised a warning hand. ‘I’m not offering you the job – only Bobby can do that. But I can get you an interview – if you want it.’
Jacky said: ‘George! A job with Bobby Kennedy! That would be fantastic.’
‘Mother, the Kennedys have let us down so badly.’
‘Then go to work for Bobby and change things!’
George hesitated. He looked at the eager faces around him: his mother, his father, his grandmother, his grandfather, and back to his mother again.
‘Maybe I will,’ he said at last.