Edge of Eternity (13 page)

George had last seen Maria Summers in a doctor’s office. The wounded Freedom Riders had been turned away from the nearest hospital, but eventually they had found people willing to treat them. George had been with a nurse, having his broken arm treated, when Maria had come to say that she had got a flight to Chicago. He would have got up and thrown his arms around her if he could. As it was she had kissed his cheek and vanished.

He wondered if he would ever see her again. I could have fallen hard for her, he thought. Maybe I already did. In ten days of non-stop conversation he had never once felt bored: she was at least as smart as he was, maybe smarter. And although she seemed innocent, she had velvet brown eyes that made him picture her in candlelight.

The Commencement ceremony came to an end at eleven-thirty. Students, parents and alumni began to drift away through the shadows of the tall elms, heading for the formal lunches at which graduating students would be given their degrees. George looked out for his family but did not see them at first.

However, he did see Joseph Hugo.

Hugo was alone, standing by the bronze statue of John Harvard, lighting one of his long cigarettes. In the black ceremonial robe his white skin looked even more pasty. George clenched his fists. He wanted to beat the crap out of that rat. But his left arm was useless and, anyway, if he and Hugo had a fistfight in the Old Yard, today of all days, there would be hell to pay. They might even lose their degrees. George was already in enough trouble. He would be wise to ignore Hugo and walk on.

Instead he said: ‘Hugo, you piece of shit.’

Hugo looked scared, despite George’s injured arm. He was the same size as George, and probably as strong, but George had rage on his side, and Joseph knew it. He looked away and tried to walk around George, muttering: ‘I don’t wish to speak to you.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ George moved to stand in his way. ‘You watched while a crazed mob attacked me. Those thugs broke my goddamned arm.’

Hugo took a step back. ‘You had no business going to Alabama.’

‘And you had no business pretending to be a civil rights activist when all the time you were spying for the other side. Who was paying you, the Ku Klux Klan?’

Hugo lifted his chin defensively, and George wanted to punch it. ‘I volunteered to give information to the FBI,’ Hugo said.

‘So you did it without pay! I don’t know whether that makes it better or worse.’

‘But I won’t be a volunteer much longer. I start work for the Bureau next week.’ He said it in the half-embarrassed, half-defiant tone of someone admitting that he belongs to a religious sect.

‘You were such a good snitch that they gave you a job.’

‘I always wanted to work in law enforcement.’

‘That’s not what you were doing in Anniston. You were on the side of the criminals there.’

‘You people are Communists. I’ve heard you talking about Karl Marx.’

‘And Hegel, and Voltaire, and Gandhi, and Jesus Christ. Come on, Hugo, even you aren’t that stupid.’

‘I hate disorder.’

And that was the problem, George reflected bitterly. People hated disorder. Press coverage had blamed the Riders for stirring up trouble, not the segregationists with their baseball bats and their bombs. It drove him mad with frustration: did no one in America think about what was
right
?

Across the grass he spotted Verena Marquand, waving at him. He abruptly lost interest in Joseph Hugo.

Verena was graduating from the English department. However, there were so few people of colour at Harvard that they all knew one another. And she was so gorgeous that he would have noticed her if she had been one of a thousand coloured girls at Harvard. She had green eyes, and skin the colour of toffee ice cream. Under her robe she was wearing a green dress with a short skirt that showed off long smooth legs. The mortar board was perched on her head at a cute angle. She was dynamite.

People said that she and George were a good match, but they had never dated. Whenever he had been unattached, she had been in a relationship, and vice versa. Now it was too late.

Verena was an ardent civil rights campaigner, and was going to work for Martin Luther King in Atlanta after graduation. Now she said enthusiastically: ‘You really started something with that Freedom Ride!’

It was true. After the firebombing at Anniston, George had left Alabama by plane with his arm in plaster; but others had taken up the challenge. Ten students from Nashville had caught a bus to Birmingham, where they had been arrested. New Riders had replaced the first group. There had been more mob violence by white racists. Freedom Riding had become a mass movement.

‘But I lost my job,’ George said.

‘Come to Atlanta and work for King,’ Verena said immediately.

George was startled. ‘Did he tell you to ask me?’

‘No, but he needs a lawyer, and no one half as bright as you has applied.’

George was intrigued. He had almost fallen in love with Maria Summers, but he would do well to forget her: he would probably never see her again. He wondered whether Verena would go out with him if they were both working for King. ‘That’s an idea,’ he said. But he wanted to think about it.

He changed the subject. ‘Are your folks here today?’

‘Of course, come and meet them.’

Verena’s parents were celebrity supporters of Kennedy. George was hoping they would now come out and criticize the President for his feeble reaction to segregationist violence. Perhaps George and Verena together could persuade them to make a public statement. That would do a lot to ease the pain of his arm.

He walked across the lawn beside Verena.

‘Mom, Dad, this is my friend George Jakes,’ said Verena.

Her parents were a tall, well-dressed black man and a white woman with an elaborate blonde coiffure. George had seen their photographs many times: they were a famous interracial couple. Percy Marquand was ‘the Negro Bing Crosby’, a movie star as well as a smooth crooner. Babe Lee was a theatre actress specializing in gutsy female roles.

Percy spoke in a warm baritone familiar from a dozen hit records. ‘Mr Jakes, down there in Alabama you took that broken arm for all of us. I’m honoured to shake your hand.’

‘Thank you, sir, but please call me George.’

Babe Lee held his hand and looked into his eyes as if she wanted to marry him. ‘We’re so grateful to you, George, and proud, too.’ Her manner was so seductive that George glanced uneasily at her husband, thinking he might be angered, but neither Percy nor Verena showed any reaction, and George wondered whether Babe did this to every man she met.

As soon as he could free his hand from Babe’s grasp, George turned to Percy. ‘I know you campaigned for Kennedy in the presidential election last year,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you angry now about his record on civil rights?’

‘We’re all disappointed,’ Percy said.

Verena broke in. ‘I should think so! Bobby Kennedy asked the Riders for a cooling-off period. Can you imagine? Of course CORE refused. America is ruled by laws, not by mobs!’

‘A point that should have been made by the Attorney General,’ George said.

Percy nodded, unperturbed by this two-person attack. ‘I hear the administration has made a deal with the Southern states,’ he said. George pricked up his ears: this had not been in the newspapers. ‘The state governors have agreed to restrain the mobs, which is what the Kennedy brothers want.’

George knew that in politics no one ever gave something for nothing. ‘What was the quid pro quo?’

‘The Attorney General will turn a blind eye to the illegal arrest of Freedom Riders.’

Verena was outraged, and irritated with her father. ‘I wish you had told me about this before, Daddy’ she said sharply.

‘I knew it would make you mad, honey.’

Verena’s face darkened at this condescension, and she looked away.

George concentrated on the key question: ‘Will you protest publicly, Mr Marquand?’

‘I’ve thought about it,’ said Percy. ‘But I don’t think it would have much impact.’

‘It might influence black voters against Kennedy in 1964.’

‘Are we sure we want to do that? We’d all be worse off with someone like Dick Nixon in the White House.’

Verena said indignantly: ‘Then what
can
we do?’

‘What’s happened in the South in the past month has proved, beyond doubt, that the law as it stands is too weak. We need a new civil rights bill.’

George said: ‘Amen to that.’

Percy went on: ‘I might be able to help make that happen. Right now I have a little influence in the White House. If I criticize the Kennedys, I’ll have none.’

George felt Percy should speak out. Verena voiced the same thought. ‘You ought to say what’s right,’ she said. ‘America is full of people being judicious. That’s how we got into this mess.’

Her mother was offended. ‘Your daddy is famous for saying what’s right,’ she said indignantly. ‘He has stuck his neck out again and again.’

George saw that Percy was not to be persuaded. But perhaps he was right. A new civil rights bill, making it impossible for the Southern states to oppress Negroes, might be the only real solution.

‘I’d better find my folks,’ George said. ‘An honour to meet you both.’

‘Think about working for Martin,’ Verena called after him as he walked away.

He went to the park where law degrees would be presented. A temporary stage had been built, and trestle tables had been set up in tents for the lunch afterwards. He found his parents right away.

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.’