Tenderness, page 42
‘You shouldn’t cry!’ he said softly.
But then she put her hands over her face, and felt that really her heart was broken, and nothing mattered any more.
He laid his hand on her shoulder, and softly, gently it began—
The call from the Bureau came that night at quarter to ten, as Harding read the banned book in bed. It had taken Hoover not even twenty-four hours.
It was Howard Johnson, from the Washington Field Office. The call lasted less than three minutes. Johnson’s voice was impersonal, impatient. He was chewing gum.
‘The Director just phoned,’ he said, ‘on a Sunday night.’
Senator Kennedy had phoned Hoover direct that afternoon, from somewhere out in California.
Harding was to turn in his badge, revolver, holster and manuals. No, he wasn’t to take them to Washington himself. There was a protocol. A Boston agent would be sent to the motel the following morning by ten. He was to have everything ready, including his motel receipts, up to but not including Labor Day. He’d be paid till the end of the month. The Bureau would not provide references.
As Johnson spoke, Harding saw her again as she first appeared that morning: the sluiced skin, her back breaching the wave, the knots of her spine.
It was pointless, but he said it anyway. ‘It was a misunderstanding.’
‘You were taking pictures of her as she swam. In broad daylight.’
‘I’m not that stupid.’ He scratched at the broken skin on his arm.
‘Well, Harding, it turns out the Senator’s wife isn’t stupid either. Far from it. Senator Kennedy said there were witnesses. He checked with both himself. They saw it all from just up the beach. You think about that, why don’t you? You think about how you fucked up an easy job I passed you on a silver platter.’
And that was it. Howard Johnson hung up.
Harding looked down to the book. His hand still held the novel open to the page he’d been reading before the faultline opened up in his life; the crazy, jagged boundary that divided everything into a Before and After. He’d expected a balling-out, sure – a reprimand, a formal warning.
Not this.
He felt limp, dazed, conscious only that his skin was burning.
On the page, a line swam up at him. ‘Then she felt the soft, groping, helplessly desirous hand touching her body’—
Hand.
His hands.
Of course his hands.
As a new agent, he’d been deemed of average appearance, ‘nondescript’, not memorable. ‘Nondescript’ had been used in his Bu-profile. It was an advantage when he applied to the Bureau.
True, his hands and arms sometimes drew attention, but he’d learned how to compensate, how to dress; how to stay, literally, under cover. Until the hearing back in May, that is. Until the surprise of her words in passing: ‘Bad luck to open an umbrella indoors.’
He’d been caught off guard by her that day. She’d had a disarming quality. Plus, he’d had to fumble with a camera hidden in an umbrella handle; it wasn’t as if there was a viewfinder. When he found the shutter-release, he’d clicked off a few shots, with no real expectation of getting anything at all. She’d scarcely paused on her way out of the hearing.
She was a person who noticed things. Details. He knew that about her now. They had that in common. He could see it in the way she organized the shoots when the press photographers turned up on Irving Avenue.
She’d remembered – his hands.
Of course she had. That morning on the beach, once they were clear of the water, he hadn’t let go of her hand, not till she was steady.
She’d said nothing. She knew how to maintain a cover too. She’d gone home with Mrs. Clyde and the nanny. Then she’d slipped away from the Kennedy family’s Labor Day weekend homecoming brunch to phone her husband – mid-morning West Coast time – to sound the alarm.
Harding was back on duty at Irving Avenue by one o’clock. She’d used the phone in her father-in-law’s ‘den’ to place the call, as if she suspected he, her ‘security man’, might be listening. Not that she knew about the bugs in her own place. But she now knew Agent Harding was, in her terms, a ‘spy’. That’s what she would have told her husband. She’d worked out he couldn’t be Secret Service. She never would have suspected the Bureau, which was a law enforcement agency after all. The only explanation would have been that he was a spy. A Communist spy. Jack was the front-runner in the Democratic race.
‘The Russians, they’re following us,’ she must have breathed into the phone.
Because of course it couldn’t be your own people.
She couldn’t have told her husband the entire story, not without revealing she’d secretly been at a hearing for a dirty book while he was on the trail, campaigning for every vote he could get in union halls and at county fairs. She would have told him only about the photos on the beach that morning, about the agent’s flimsy excuse – ‘Nature photos,’ the man had said. The spy. The Soviet.
She’d probably exaggerated that morning’s scene to ensure the result she needed. Harding wouldn’t blame her if she had. But if her husband hadn’t been told the full story, he’d certainly grasped enough. Kennedy had bypassed the Secret Service and gone straight to the Director himself, about an agent who was supposed to be Secret Service – any leading politician’s peace of mind in the world.
To Kennedy’s ears, his wife’s account would have made it clear that ‘Agent Harding’ belonged to Hoover; that the man in their flower bed and at their front gate was not just watching his wife; he was following her, with help of the highest kind. That meant the Bureau, and it meant Hoover was violating even the privacy of their home life, for Christ’s sake.
The conversation, coast to coast, must have gone something like that. The Senator would have wondered how much lower Hoover would go. Who wouldn’t have under the circumstances? But it was a question, thought Harding, someone like the Senator should never ask.
He didn’t want to know.
Kennedy might have threatened to expose Hoover’s dark maneuvers, but both men would have known he couldn’t threaten much. The Senator knew Hoover had plenty on him, going way back. Countless files stuffed full. Miles of tape. He knew because Hoover had made sure he knew – enough, and not more.
Still, it couldn’t have been a ‘comfortable’ conversation for the Director either. Even in his shock that night, Harding understood that much. Kennedy’s call that afternoon would have caught Hoover on the back foot, and that would have enraged him, particularly as the call had probably interrupted the Sunday ritual of his and Tolson’s backgammon game on Hoover’s veranda.
The Director’s rages were legendary. No quantity of his housekeeper Annie’s hot milk was ever going to appease Hoover in a tantrum. All that mattered was the fact that the Bureau’s cover was blown. A weakness had been exposed. A Bureau secret was out.
It was the only logical explanation for the speed of events; for Harding being fired at ten o’clock on a Sunday night on a Labor Day weekend at the order of the Director himself.
Never let the Bureau look bad.
That was the cardinal rule.
He went over it again: that wave knocking the two of them off balance; her feet churning in the current; that long, pounding heartbeat of time. Then her hand, underwater, gripping his, and the indescribable relief.
It had been a human bond. Fragile, but real.
And now it had passed.
She owed him nothing. Nothing at all.
When she’d first demanded the film in his camera, he’d wanted to confess to her then, about the hearing back in the spring. Not that he would have. Not that she wasn’t about to put two and two together for herself. She was way ahead of him as she left the beach.
They’d dragged themselves from the Sound. He’d noticed her fingers, pale and wrinkled as she withdrew her hand from his. She’d stood, choking and spluttering at the tide-mark. Her shoulders had heaved.
‘Are you okay? Mrs. Kennedy?’ Was she throwing up? Was it mild shock? She was shaking. When she turned to him again, she looked drained, and her expression had changed. She was wary, in a way she hadn’t been even at the G.P.O.
His brain had seized up as he’d looked at the loveliness of her, lovely in spite of the ordeal, in spite of her exhaustion, and he felt a dull pain in his chest; something swelling in his heart, in his lungs, as if it wanted out. Not desire or fear. Not pity or even his usual sense of shame. Tenderness maybe. A torrent of it.
In his bed, he saw again the concern that had come into her eyes as the rogue wave hit – your camera, your wonderful camera! – before she’d remembered she was furious with him, exposed, unnerved by his intrusion. How dare he take pictures?
That first soft, liquid expression in her eyes had stayed with him. He saw it now in the darkness behind his eyelids. He didn’t switch off the bedside lamp. The night was too empty, too great a chasm, to invite darkness in.
Sleep didn’t come, or when it did, it was a stupor; his brain shutting down against the scale of calamity he faced. No job, no family, no place to be, no purpose. The last thing his eyes registered that Sunday night was the hardback book, still open on the blanket to the page where the gamekeeper, Mellors, was speaking to Lady Chatterley
‘I could die for the touch of a woman like thee.’
Then his eyes closed, and he felt again her hand seizing hold. The shock of it. The force of it.
He couldn’t remember when he had last been touched, by anyone.
iii
Mrs. Clyde had Labor Day Monday off and had caught the bus into Boston to meet relatives. Caroline was playing with her pull-along ducks in the living-room, overseen by Nanny Maud. Soon, Jackie and Caroline would cross the lawns and join everyone in the Big House, for 10 a.m. breakfast with the family.
She was in shorts and an over-sized sweater, long-sleeved to cover the bruise on her arm where their resident ‘spy’ had pulled her to safety. Jack had assured her yesterday afternoon that the man wouldn’t be back.
She was on her way up the stairs to change when the bell went.
He spoke before she had time to protest. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Kennedy. I came to return your key. I understand you are to give it to my replacement when he arrives this morning.’
That was odd, she thought. She hadn’t realized Agent Harding had been given a house-key. It didn’t bear thinking about. His eyes met hers. He wasn’t wearing his dark glasses for once. Nor were his hands stuffed in his pockets as they usually were, and perhaps because of that, he looked a little taller.
He had a piece of folded paper in his hand. He was offering it to her. She didn’t understand. Was the key wrapped in it?
‘All fine, Mrs. Kennedy?’ called Maud from the living-room.
‘Thank you, Maud,’ she called back over her shoulder.
She took the folded-up offering. But it was only a sheet of stationery from a local motel, Pilgrims Motor Inn. There was no key at all.
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
Please don’t say anything. I am sorry to tell you, and to tell you in this manner, that your house, your telephone, and your patio are planted with listening devices: small microphones fitted with radio transmitters. I am unsure whether they are recording now or not. I am sorry about yesterday. It wasn’t as you feared, at least not then it wasn’t. I wasn’t taking pictures of you. But I was previously, as I think you now realize. If you would agree to walk me to my car, which is parked outside, I have something you should have. It might be a help to you. It’s all I can offer, to make amends. Then I will leave you in peace. I would be grateful if you would return this note to me now.
Sincerely yours,
Mel Harding
She searched his face. His eyes were cracked and red-rimmed. He hadn’t shaven. His clothes looked as if he’d slept in them.
Her features wrinkled with disdain. She folded the note, returned it to him and closed the door behind them. Damage-limitation. Nothing more.
She crossed her arms as she walked up her own front path. She couldn’t wait till this man was out of their lives. Perhaps he thrived on imagining he had some sort of hold on her and her family. Well, let him imagine all he liked. Yesterday, Jack had promised her he’d get the man fired, and he had done just that. The problem lay with the Bureau, her husband had explained. Fellow Americans. Not the Soviets. She’d hardly been able to take it in.
At the car, the man reached through the open window into the glove compartment and passed her a Manila envelope. She peered inside and saw a small paper sleeve, with a square negative inside. As it slipped out onto her palm, she looked up, blinking.
‘The New York hearing,’ he said. ‘At the G.P.O. Hoover has the print. I sent it to him after. I’m sorry – I have no excuse. As you can see, he doesn’t have the negative, but to be honest, that’s beside the point. I wish I could undo what I’ve done, but this is the most I can do now. Remember – you need to tell your husband he must have your house swept for bugs – light fixtures, telephones, sockets, switches and so on.’
Her lips parted but words didn’t come. Her sweater swam on her, and she looked cold in spite of the mild morning.
‘Surely you’re not serious,’ she said finally.
‘There are people in the Bureau who say the Director has the entire Department of Justice bugged, even the Attorney General’s private elevator. One family dwelling is not a challenge, Mrs. Kennedy, although’ – he looked embarrassed – ‘I can assure you they left the…private spaces untouched. Your husband’s people won’t find anything there to worry you.’ Then he nodded once, as if to say, I will bother you no further.
She felt her eyes filling – with the shock – and bent her head. She noticed his work-shoes, ruined by saltwater. Did the man not have another pair of decent shoes? His stray-dog quality irritated her. Repelled her even. ‘Shoo!’ she wanted to say to him. ‘Shoo! Leave us be. We have nothing more for you.’
The shoes were nothing of course compared to the loss of that beautiful camera of his. She shook herself slightly. Agent Harding. Mel Harding. That was the man’s name. He looked miserable – a sorry, shuffling thing – as he stood before her, under the weight of his belated regret.
Their stilted tableau seemed to require her to speak, to say something. ‘I hope your next position is more…straightforward,’ she managed to say. Shoo! Shoo now. On the picket fence between them, pearls of dew trembled on autumn webs. How fragile everything was – all their fates hanging on threads – and how low she felt.
He couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes or speak. This wasn’t how he’d rehearsed it in his head. A welter of grief and fear was pushing up behind the bones of his skull; a pressure behind the sockets of his eyes, as if his defenses had been stripped from him with his revolver, his holster and badge first thing that morning.
One of the family dogs in the yard of the Big House began barking riotously, and she jumped. Rabbits on the lawn must have set them off. She managed to extend her hand. The faster she brought things to a close, the sooner Mel Harding would disappear.
As her sleeve slipped back, he saw her wrist, ringed with a deep bruise, where he’d hauled her free of the current yesterday. He accepted the courtesy he knew he didn’t deserve, extending his hand – risking it. She took it, red and sore-looking though it was. She didn’t recoil. She shook his hand once, lightly, before turning.
Much of the time, he felt like a social leper, and here she was, the Senator’s pretty young wife. Not just pretty but nice. She was a nice person. She tried hard at whatever she took on. She was surprisingly shy. He’d recognized that in her. She didn’t find strangers easy. She wasn’t as confident as all those boisterous Kennedy sisters. She was a little unusual, even. ‘Fey’, his mother might have said.
Before she had taken more than a few steps, he made himself say it, because he wanted it said: ‘It’s a good book, Mrs. Kennedy. I’ – he felt his Adam’s apple bob in his throat – ‘I’ve been reading it. I hope…I hope it wins in court.’
She turned: a three-quarter profile shot. ‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘I do too – Mel.’
The morning light was filmy-white, a long exposure, all pearly radiance. He raised a hand, less in a wave than a gesture of goodbye. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy.’
She said it so quietly he almost missed it.
‘Jacqueline.’
Then she disappeared inside.
* * *
—
From a corner of a window in the entry hall, she watched him as he sat in the driver’s seat, his head bowed over the steering wheel. Finally, he swung his car around in the narrow road, skidding slightly on the sandy lip of a ditch, and drove off to she-didn’t-know-where. She’d wished him well. It was the most she’d been able to muster. But in her anger at his confession – and in her desire to sever their peculiar intimacy – she’d withheld from him one truth.
In the water yesterday morning, as he’d hauled her up, the situation had been more frightening than she’d wanted him to know. For the second time, on his ‘watch’, she had been reckless. First, when she’d attended the hearing in secret; then, yesterday, when she’d leaped for that damn camera of his.
On the beach, she shouldn’t have shown him her anger. She’d revealed too much. She should have simply bid him good-day, walked home and placed the call to her husband.
Perhaps none of it mattered now. Mr. Harding had been fired. He was no longer their problem. They’d never see him again.
How long had her panic underwater lasted? One minute? Two? She hadn’t been able to get her head up for air. It was a cold-sweat of a nightmare, an impossibility she couldn’t kick free of.
