Edge of Eternity (90 page)

Cam's letter to Nixon got a reply from one of the campaign team, John Ehrlichman, suggesting a meeting. Cam was thrilled. He wanted to work in politics: maybe this was the beginning!

Ehrlichman was Nixon's advance man. He was intimidatingly tall,
six foot two, with black eyebrows and receding hair. “Dick loved your letter,” he said.

They met at a fragrant coffee shop on Telegraph Avenue and sat outside under a tree in new leaf, watching students go by on bicycles in the sunshine. “A nice place to study,” Ehrlichman said. “I went to UCLA.”

He asked Cam a lot of questions. He was intrigued by Cam's Democratic forebears. “My grandmother was editor of a newspaper called the
Buffalo Anarchist,
”
Cam admitted.

“It's a sign of how America is becoming more conservative,” Ehrlichman said.

Cam was relieved to learn that his family would not be an obstruction to a career in the Republican Party.

“Dick won't speak on the Berkeley campus,” Ehrlichman said. “It's too risky.”

Cam was disappointed. He thought Ehrlichman was wrong: the event could be a big success.

He was about to argue when Ehrlichman said: “But he wants you to start a group called Berkeley Students for Nixon. It will show that not all young people are fooled by Gene McCarthy or in love with Bobby Kennedy.”

Cam was flattered to be taken so seriously by a presidential campaigner, and he quickly agreed to do what Ehrlichman asked.

His closest friend on campus was Jamie Mulgrove, who like Cam was majoring in Russian and a member of the Young Republicans. They announced the formation of the group, and got some publicity in
The Daily Californian,
the student newspaper, but only ten people joined.

Cam and Jamie organized a lunchtime meeting to attract members. With Ehrlichman's help, Cam got three prominent California Republicans to speak. He booked a hall that would hold two hundred fifty.

He sent out a press release and this time got a wider response from local newspapers and radio stations intrigued by the counterintuitive idea of Berkeley students supporting Nixon. Several ran stories about the meeting and promised to send reporters.

Sharon McIsaac from the
San Francisco Examiner
called Cam. “How many members do you have so far?” she asked.

Cam took an instinctive dislike to her pushy tone. “I can't tell you that,” he said. “It's like a military secret. Before a battle, you don't let the enemy know how many guns you've got.”

“Not many, then,” she said sarcastically.

The meeting was shaping up to be a minor media event.

Unfortunately, they could not sell the tickets.

They could have given them away, but that was risky: it could attract left-wing students who would heckle.

Cam still believed that thousands of students were conservative, but he realized they were unwilling to admit it in today's atmosphere. That was cowardly, but politics did not matter much to most people, he knew.

But what was he going to do?

The day before the meeting he had more than two hundred tickets left—and Ehrlichman called. “Just checking, Cam,” he said. “How's it shaping up?”

“It's going to be terrific, John,” Cam lied.

“Any press interest?”

“Some. I'm expecting a few reporters.”

“Sold many tickets?” It was almost as if Ehrlichman could read Cam's mind over the phone.

Cam was caught in his deception and could not backtrack. “A few more to go and we'll be sold out.” With luck, Ehrlichman would never know.

Then Ehrlichman dropped his bombshell. “I'll be in San Francisco tomorrow, so I'll come along.”

“Great!” said Cam, his heart sinking.

“See you then.”

That afternoon, after a class on Dostoevsky, Cam and Jamie stayed in the lecture theater and scratched their heads. Where could they find two hundred Republican students?

“They don't have to be real students,” Cam said.

“We don't want the press saying the meeting was packed with stooges,” Jamie said anxiously.

“Not stooges. Just Republicans who don't happen to be students.”

“I still think it's risky.”

“I know. But better than a flop.”

“Where are we going to get the bodies?”

“Do you have a number for the Oakland Young Republicans?”

“I do.”

They went to a pay phone and Cam called. “I need two hundred people just to make the event look like a success,” he confessed.

“I'll see what I can do,” the man said.

“Tell them not to speak to reporters, though. We don't want the press finding out that Berkeley Students for Nixon consists mainly of people who aren't students.”

After Cam hung up, Jamie said: “Isn't this kind of dishonest?”

“What do you mean?” Cam knew exactly what he meant, but he was not going to admit it. He was not willing to jeopardize his big chance with Ehrlichman just for the sake of a petty lie.

Jamie said: “Well, we're telling people that Berkeley students support Nixon, but we're faking it.”

“But we can't back out now!” Cameron was scared that Jamie would want to cancel the whole thing.

“I guess not,” Jamie said dubiously.

Cam was in suspense all the next morning. At half past twelve there were only seven people in the hall. When the speakers arrived Cam took them to a side room and offered them coffee and cookies baked by Jamie's mother. At a quarter to one the place was still almost deserted. But then at ten to one, people started to trickle in. By one the room was almost full, and Cam breathed a little easier.

He invited Ehrlichman to chair the meeting. “No,” said Ehrlichman. “It looks better if a student does it.”

Cam introduced the speakers but hardly heard what they said. His meeting was a success, and Ehrlichman was impressed—but it could still go wrong.

At the end he summed up and said that the popularity of the meeting was a sign of a student backlash against demonstrations, liberalism, and drugs. He got an enthusiastic round of applause.

When it was over he could hardly wait to get them all out the door.

The reporter Sharon McIsaac was there. She had a crusading look, reminding him of Evie Williams, who had spurned his adolescent love. Sharon was approaching students. A couple declined to speak to her; then, to Cam's relief, she buttonholed one of the few genuine Berkeley Republicans. By the time the interview was over, everyone else had left.

At two thirty Cam and Ehrlichman stood in an empty room. “Well done,” said Ehrlichman. “Are you sure all those people were students?”

Cam hesitated. “Are we on the record?”

Ehrlichman laughed. “Listen,” he said. “When the semester ends, do you want to come and work on Dick's presidential election campaign? We could use a guy like you.”

Cam's heart leaped. “I'd love to,” he said.

•   •   •

Dave was in London, staying with his parents in Great Peter Street, when Fitz knocked on the door.

The family were in the kitchen: Lloyd, Daisy, and Dave—Evie was in Los Angeles. It was six, the hour at which the children had used to eat their evening meal, which they called “tea,” when they were small. In those days the parents would sit with them for a while and talk about the day, before going out for the evening, usually to some political meeting. Daisy would smoke and Lloyd would sometimes make cocktails. The habit of meeting in the kitchen to chat at that hour had persisted long after the children grew too old to have “tea.”

Dave was talking to his parents about his breakup with Beep when the maid came in and said: “It's Earl Fitzherbert.”

Dave saw his father tense up.

Daisy put her hand on Lloyd's arm and said: “It will be all right.”

Dave was consumed with curiosity. He knew, now, that the earl had seduced Ethel when she was his housekeeper, and that Lloyd was the illegitimate child of their affair. He knew, too, that Fitz had angrily refused to acknowledge Lloyd as his son for more than half a century. So what was the earl doing here tonight?

Fitz walked into the room using two canes and said: “My sister, Maud, has died.”

Daisy sprang up. “I'm so sorry to hear that, Fitz,” she said. “Come and sit down.” She took his arm.

But Fitz hesitated and looked at Lloyd. “I have no right to sit down in this house,” he said.

Dave could tell that humility did not come naturally to Fitz.

Lloyd was controlling intense emotion. This was the father who had rejected him all his life. “Please sit down,” Lloyd said stiffly.

Dave pulled out a kitchen chair and Fitz sat at the table. “I'm going to her funeral,” he said. “It's in two days' time.”

Lloyd said: “She was living in East Germany, wasn't she? How did you hear that she had died?”

“Maud has a daughter, Carla. She telephoned the British embassy in East Berlin. They were so kind as to phone me and give me the news. I was a minister in the Foreign Office until 1945, and that still counts for something, I'm glad to say.”

Without being asked, Daisy took a bottle of Scotch from a cupboard, poured an inch into a glass, and put it in front of Fitz with a small jug of tap water. Fitz poured a little water into the whisky and took a sip. “How kind of you to remember, Daisy,” he said. Dave recalled that Daisy had lived with Fitz for a while, when she was married to his son, Boy Fitzherbert. That was why she knew how he liked his whisky.

Lloyd said: “Lady Maud was my late mother's best friend.” He sounded a little less uptight. “I last saw her when Mam took me to Berlin in 1933. At that time Maud was a journalist, writing articles that annoyed Hitler.”

Fitz said: “I haven't seen my sister or spoken to her since 1919. I was angry with her for marrying without my permission, and marrying a German, too; and I stayed angry for almost fifty years.” His discolored old face showed profound sadness. “Now it's too late for me to forgive her. What a fool I was.” He looked directly at Lloyd. “A fool about that, and other things.”

Lloyd gave a brief, silent nod of acknowledgment.

Dave caught his mother's eye. He felt that something important had just happened, and her expression confirmed it. Fitz's regret was so deep it could hardly be spoken, but he had come as near as he could to apologizing.

It was hard to imagine that this feeble old man had once been swept by tidal waves of passion. But Fitz had loved Ethel, and Dave knew that Ethel had felt the same, for he had heard her say it. Fitz had rejected their child and now, after a lifetime of denial, he was looking back and comprehending how much he had lost. It was unbearably sad.

“I'll go with you,” Dave said impulsively.

“What?”

“To the funeral. I'll go to Berlin with you.” Dave was not sure why he wanted to do this, except he sensed it might have a healing effect.

“You're very kind, young Dave,” said Fitz.

Daisy said: “That would be a wonderful thing to do, Dave.”

Dave glanced at his father, nervous that Lloyd would disapprove; but there were surprising tears in Lloyd's eyes.

Next day Dave and Fitz flew to Berlin. They stayed overnight at a hotel on the west side.

“Do you mind if I call you Fitz?” Dave said over dinner. “We always called Bernie Leckwith ‘Grandpa,' even though we knew he was my father's stepfather. And as a child I never met you. So it feels, like, too late to change.”

“I'm in no position to dictate to you,” said Fitz. “And anyway, I really don't mind.”

They talked about politics. “We Conservatives were right about Communism,” said Fitz. “We said it wouldn't work, and it doesn't. But we were wrong about social democracy. When Ethel said we should give everyone free education and free health care and unemployment insurance, I told her she was living in a dream world. But now look: everything she campaigned for has come to pass, and yet England is still England.”

Fitz had a charming ability to admit his mistakes, Dave thought. Clearly the earl had not always been this way: his quarrels with his family had lasted decades. Perhaps it was a quality that came with old age.

The following morning a black Mercedes with a driver, ordered by Dave's secretary, Jenny Pritchard, was waiting to take them across the border and into the East.

They drove to Checkpoint Charlie.

They went through a barrier and into a long shed where they had to hand over their passports. Then they were asked to wait.

The border guard who had taken their passports went away. After a while a tall, stooped man in a civilian suit ordered them to get out of their Mercedes and follow him.

The man strode ahead, then looked around, irritated at Fitz's slowness. “Please hurry,” he said in English.

Dave remembered the German he had learned in school and improved in Hamburg. “My grandfather is old,” he said indignantly.

Fitz spoke in a low voice. “Don't argue,” he said to Dave. “This arrogant bastard is with the Stasi.” Dave raised an eyebrow: he had not previously heard Fitz use bad language. “They're like the KGB, only not so softhearted,” Fitz added.

They were taken to a bare office with a metal table and hard wooden chairs. They were not asked to sit, but Dave held a chair for Fitz, who sank into it gratefully.

The tall man spoke German to an interpreter, who smoked cigarettes as he translated the questions. “Why do you wish to enter East Germany?”

“To attend the funeral of a close relative at eleven this morning,” Fitz answered. He looked at his wristwatch, a gold Omega. “It's ten now. I hope this won't take long.”

“It will take as long as necessary. What is your sister's name?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“You say you wish to attend the funeral of your sister. What is her name?”

“I said I wanted to attend the funeral of a close relative. I did not say it was my sister. You obviously know all about it already.”