(1980) The Second Lady Read online

  ‘Steve Woods,’ Kilday corrected him.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Woods. He rewrote it completely and handed it back to you at your request. You handed the rewritten story in to the managing editor. He liked it, and he gave her a permanent job. When she read the story in print, she was amazed at what had happened to it. She asked you, and you levelled with her. You told her that her interview had been awful. You told her exactly what she had done wrong. You told her you had given it to Woods to rewrite. You pointed out how he had changed the story to make it acceptable. She was a quick learner. The next time, and in all the times after, she got it right. That’s Mrs Bradford’s version. Is it substantially correct?’

  Kilday had finished the last of his sandwich. ‘Umm, 1 suppose so, substantially,’ he said. He cupped a hand in front of his mouth, and behind it used a toothpick to clean the spaces between his teeth. ‘Only one thing wrong with it. That’s because I never told her the truth. There was no Steve Woods to rewrite it. He didn’t exist. If he had, I wouldn’t have showed it to him, wouldn’t have wanted him or anyone else to know how poorly she’d done with her first assignment. Didn’t want word getting out to the boss. No. The truth is I took her story home and rewrote it myself and handed it in. Never told her I did it. Didn’t want her owing me. Just wanted to be her friend. So she never knew I did it. Didn’t know then. Doesn’t know to this day. So that part’s no use to you. Can’t put that part in your book. Just telling you as one writer to another. Now forget it.’

  Curious fellow, Parker thought, drinking the last of his coffee. There weren’t too many of these don’t-want-no-credit people around any more.

  ‘I appreciate that,’ said Parker. ‘So, after the Salk story, she was on the staff. She did about three years of big-name interviews.’

  ‘Right. And one of the last was with a California senator named Andrew Bradford. That’s when it began for her.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’d like to hear about some of the other celebrities she interviewed before she got to Bradford.’

  ‘If you like,’ said Kilday.

  That moment, the cafe cashier came to their table. ‘Pardon,’ she said. ‘Is either one of you Mr Guy Parker?’

  Parker looked up, surprised. ‘I am.’

  ‘Call for you from the White House. Phone’s next to the register.’

  Puzzled, Parker put down his napkin, excused himself and crossed the room to the telephone.

  The voice on the other end was Nora Judson’s.

  ‘I had trouble finding you,’ she was saying. ‘Then I remembered you were going to have lunch at The Madison.’

  ‘With George Kilday. On the book.’

  ‘Can you cut it short? Billie would like to see you as soon as possible.’

  ‘But I’ll be seeing her in an hour anyway for our —’

  ‘No, that’s cancelled. Her schedule is too heavy. I mean, she’s leaving for Moscow tomorrow afternoon. There’s no time to work with you on the book today. But there’s something else she wants to talk to you about. If you can get right over — well, in fifteen minutes or so —’

  ‘Okay, I’ll try. It’s just that it’s been so hard to get together with Kilday -‘

  ‘See him another time. Please hurry, before everything piles up.’

  With that she hung up. Parker replaced the receiver on the phone and wondered what he could tell George Kilday. But, as it turned out, he did not have to tell him anything. When

  he returned to the table, Kilday was already standing, gathering up his cigarettes, matches, key ring.

  ‘I know,’ he said with mock exasperation. ‘The White House. Something important’s come up. It always does.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Parker, as he glanced at the bill and laid down some notes. ‘I’m glad you understand. You were being very helpful. Can we finish this another time?’

  ‘Whenever you’re ready, just call.’

  They went out together and stood in front of the hotel. The street was an oven. Nevertheless, Parker decided to leave his car and walk to the White House. He could make it in fifteen minutes. He wanted the interval to be alone in his head. As Kilday ordered his car, Parker thanked him once more and was on his way.

  Despite the heat, he walked rapidly in long strides. Across the street, two reporters emerging from the Washington Post building, hailed him. He saluted back but kept going. Several times, he caught his moving reflection in shop windows. What he saw of himself always surprised him. He looked so neat, so sure of himself, from the outside. This was deceptive. Inside he carried a tangle of anxieties and uncertainties.

  It sometimes surprised him that he had become a writer. Although he was good at it, no question. People always told him that he looked like a writer, whatever that meant. He was almost tall, just under 6 feet. He was thin, lanky, sinewy. No fat whatsoever. His thick black hair parted at one side, his brown eyes set deep above the high cheek bones, his nose slightly Roman, sensuous lips (the women always said), a dimpled jut of a jaw.

  Actually, there had never been a writer in his family. His father was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. His mother was a psychologist. Parker had gone to Northwestern University, had become involved in American history with the vague notion that he might teach one day. His avocation had been voraciously reading suspense and mystery novels. This had heightened his desire to lead a more active and exciting life. Early in the Vietnam conflict, someone had promised him a chance to get into

  army intelligence if he enlisted. Although he thought the American role in Vietnam immoral, he wanted an opportunity to act out his fantasies. He enlisted, went to officers’ training school, and graduated to an intelligence desk in the Pentagon. For a while it was intellectually stimulating, but finally a sedentary bore. Also, more and more, some of the war information he had been privy to had begun to aggravate his sense of decency. Vietnam was an outrage, and he was becoming outraged.

  He could not wait to leave the service, and-when he did he wanted to put distance between himself and the military automatons and what they were doing to thousands of yellow people a half a world away. With his meagre savings, Parker went to Europe, to be alone, to think, to find diversion. It was his first trip abroad, and he felt sheepish confining himself to the popular cities and sights - London, Paris, Rome. But then he realized that they were popular because they were among the most interesting places to visit in Europe, and he felt better about staying on the beaten path.

  When he returned to the United States, the Vietnam war had worsened and the protest movement was at its height. Some long-dormant activist sense in him was nudged, and automatically he made his way to San Francisco and joined an organization of the peace movement. The organization was lacking writers, so Parker began to write for it, mostly broadsides and pamphlets condemning the American government.

  By the time the war ended, Parker found himself in Chicago and in need of a job. A large private detective agency had placed an ad in a Chicago newspaper seeking young operatives. Parker applied, and because his army intelligence background looked good on paper, he got the job. At first he liked it. He rather fancied himself as a Dashiell Hammett in his Pinkerton phase. Indeed, there was a fair amount of legwork, shadowing, illegal entries, placement of electronic equipment, but mostly it was a lowdown, seedy business monotonously filled with mean divorce cases, locating runaway children, investigating small-time money swindles. To

  make it more romantic, he had casually begun to write about it. He had written three factual articles, and sold all three.

  Hearing of an opening in the New York bureau of the Associated Press, Parker dashed off a resume and submitted it along with photocopies of his three published articles. In a week he was summoned to New York for an interview. After a half-hour chat with a senior AP executive, he was hired on the spot and sent to Washington DC to write lightweight feature stories and weekend mailers that gave him by-lines instead of a living wage. But he was utterly fascinated by Washing
ton, and it showed in his stories, and soon the by-lines paid off.

  One day there was a long-distance call from a man named Wayne Gibbs. He had read any number of Parker’s feature pieces and had been favourably impressed. He was, he had said, an associate of Senator Andrew Bradford, who had just won the Democratic party nomination to run for President of the United States. Gibbs had a proposition for Parker. Could Parker fly into Los Angeles for the weekend, expenses paid? Parker could and did. The proposition was enticing. Supporters of Bradford wanted a book written and published about their candidate, a crisp, lively, easy-to-read biography of their nominee. A campaign biography to enhance their man’s image. They already had a publisher. Now they required a writer who could turn out the book fast. The money would be generous.

  To Parker, the money sounded attractive, but there was something else that sounded even more attractive. This was mainstream stuff. Until then, Parker had gone through many convolutions in his attitude toward his country, toward American democracy. In the army he had gone along, finally been revolted by what he saw. He had run away from it, gone abroad. He had returned, become a dissenter, lashing out at his government’s politics and corruption, wanting to topple the government. Then, at AP, seeing the government up close and more objectively, remembering the political sickness he had observed in Europe, he had come to the conclusion that, bad as it was, the democratic system in the

  United States was still the best one conceived by the minds of men and the best one around anywhere. This conclusion was neither juvenile nor seen through red, white and blue filters. It was pragmatic. It was mature. If people were meant to live together in a society, this system was the best one to live under. The trouble was that the fat, sluggish giant was so flawed, and no outsider could do anything about improving it except by voting, which in itself offered few choices. But here, in Los Angeles, he had been give a rare opportunity to cease being a helpless outsider and step inside closer, much closer, to the main machinery.

  Without giving it so much as a second thought, Parker quit the Associated Press and became a full-time political writer.

  Preparing the book, he had met Andrew Bradford three times, once for dinner with his wife, twice for superficial research interviews. The book itself was more or less a pasteup job. He liked Bradford immediately, a man just under his own height, sturdier built, graceful. Bradford was forty-eight years old. He possessed a finely chiselled, handsome face, sincere, serious, attentive, direct. A fleck of greying at the temples, horn-rimmed spectacles, a clipped manner of speaking, all enhanced his authority. He also had a brain devoid of clicheing and stereotyping, quick, original, much superior to what one would expect from a politician.

  Parker finished the book on time. It sold well at party rallies and banquets, and the paperback edition exceeded projected sales among curious independents. Parker’s stock was fairly high. He was no longer a party drone. He had some visibility. Wayne Gibbs kept him attached to the election committee to lend a hand in preparing press releases.

  The election came and went. After a nip and tuck beginning, the major polls had given Bradford a 6 per cent lead over his Republican opponent. Bradford won by 7 per cent. As President-elect, and before the inauguration, Bradford began to assemble his permanent staff. He remembered Guy Parker and the book. From San Francisco, he sent for Parker, just to be sure he was thinking of the right man. Before their

  interview was over, he hired Parker, and two months later installed him in the West Wing of the White House as one of three speech writers.

  That had been two-and-a-half years ago. Parker enjoyed his role. He was in the centre of the action, an invisible man behind the movers and shakers, but he was there. Then, overnight, he wasn’t there. Several prestigious New York book publishers, who were also party regulars, had suggested to the President that an autobiography by his wife might find a wide audience and enhance his own image as he headed toward reelection year. Billie Bradford had proved to be a colourful and enchanting First Lady. Somewhat reluctantly, a little embarrassed - she was only thirty-six years old - she consented to undertake the autobiography, on one condition. She wanted Guy Parker to work on it with her. At first Parker had resisted. He had regarded it as a demotion. To move from hard policy-making speeches for the leader of the free world to a frivolous, gossipy, tea-room confessional seemed a letdown. What convinced Parker that it was a good move was the half-million dollar share of the advance that would be his - and Billie Bradford herself. She was anything but frivolous, he learned fast. She was as serious as her husband, brighter perhaps, and never dull. She was a joy to be with. He respected her, adored her, and finally made the move from the West Wing to the East Wing with minimal resistance.

  And there had been a bonus. Parker was placed in an office next to Nora Judson’s office suite. She was the First Lady’s press secretary who also had a hand in her social life and public appearances. To be able to undertake so many lobs, and do them well, was a measure of the young woman’s energy and gifts. Parker guessed that she was about twenty-nine. He would have liked to regard her as a sex object. From her glossy dark hair, green eyes, pert nose, generous lips, to her bountiful breasts and shapely legs, she was a delight to the male eye. But the intellect was formidable. One rarely finished a sentence with her before she had concluded the task. She did things two at a time, to perfection. She

  could go from a press briefing to a hospital dedication to a state dinner without a fumble and without complaint. The problem had been her remoteness. She was always busy, or made herself busy, and she was otherwise a private person and preferred life that way. Parker had hinted at drinks or dinner together. She had ignored him. In five months he had not been able to penetrate the wall that separated their offices and persons. She had been correct. She had been pleasant. She had remained aloof. It was maddening, but her existence and nearness had been the bonus.

  Parker had been busy, too. Laying the groundwork for the First Lady’s much-touted autobiography had been a ten-hour-a-day occupation. The beginning of the assignment had been collecting material to read. He had located and read everything that had ever appeared in print on Billie Bradford. He had gone through a mountain range of newspaper and magazine clippings, making countless pages of notes. Then he had begun to travel outside of Washington, meeting and interviewing her relatives, friends, private school and college instructors, and classmates. He had even flown to California to spend two days with her father Clarence Lane, her sister Kit, her brother-in-law Norris Weinstein, and a nephew named Richie.

  At last, lately, with hundreds of questions to ask, he had got to the flesh of the book. He had begun to interview Billie Bradford herself. She had set up a daily routine. One hour, usually every afternoon, to reply to his questions into his tape recorder. He had found her professional, forthright, fun, and the work wasn’t work at all, except as he made it so in his absolute obsessive need for detail.

  And here he was, this steaming afternoon in late August, heading for another interview session with - but no, not another today. He remembered. Billie Bradford had just cancelled today’s session. She was too busy. This confused him, this cancellation, only the second one since they had begun. Yet Nora had made it clear the First Lady wanted to see him as soon as possible about something else. He wondered what else it could be.

  He had come out of Lafayette Park, crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, approached the guard house, routinely flipped open his wallet to display his White House identification card. He passed through, went up the curving driveway to the North Portico entrance. He reached the red-carpeted main stairway, and with a nod to the portrait of Herbert Hoover on trie landing, continued up the steps two at a time, past the portraits of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the top, he was greeted by the person of Nora Judson.

  ‘Did I make it in fifteen minutes?’ asked Parker, winded. ‘I hurried. I knew you couldn’t wait to set eyes on me.’

  ‘I was eaten up by worry,’ said Nora. ‘I was
afraid you’d been hit by a truck — or your big ego.’

  ‘What ego? It always shrivels in m’lady’s presence.’

  ‘We’ll talk about that some other time.’

  ‘Can we make a date?’

  ‘No,’ she said briskly, leading him toward the Yellow Oval Room. ‘Anyway, you’re right on time. Her press conference wound up ten minutes ago. The print media people have already gone. The television people are about through packing up.’

  ‘She really couldn’t keep our date?’

  ‘She already had a tight schedule, what with leaving for Moscow tomorrow afternoon. Then Ladbury arrived from London - he was supposed to have been here yesterday -and insisted on being worked in for a last fitting before the London Summit next week. So I had to shift everything around. She still has the layout for House Beautiful to do. We couldn’t postpone it again. She has to accompany the new French ambassador on his tour of the National Gallery. After that, Fred Willis insists on seeing her personally for a protocol briefing on the Moscow visit. Then she has packing to do. She won’t let Sarah do it alone.’

  ‘What does she want to see me about?’ Parker asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Nora. ‘She wanted five minutes with you after the press conference and before the fitting. Here we are.’

  They had arrived at the entrance to the Yellow Oval

  Room, then stood aside as three members of a network television crew emerged carrying their equipment. When they had gone, Nora started inside, followed by Parker.

  There was no one in the room except Billie Bradford. Her back was to them, her blonde hair down to her shoulders, as she reached for an arm of the sofa and slumped into it. Kicking off her shoes, she saw them.

  ‘Oh, Nora, I wondered where you were. Hello, Guy —’ She patted the sofa next to her. ‘Here.’

  Parker advanced and dutifully sat down. ‘Hello, Mrs Bradford -‘