Israel (77 page)

Ben-Gurion paused then; to Carl Pickman the little man looked very haggard indeed. “I know that what I'm asking is very difficult,” he admitted. “You are all important men, highly visible in American Jewish society. You probably endorse assimilation, for look how well America has done by you. But will America embrace the refugees? No. Will England or France or any of the Allied nations? No. Can we send them back to Germany or Poland? Of course not. There is, however, one country that calls out in welcome to these Jews without a home. That country is Palestine. We will put the healthy to work and heal the
sick. We will train them all to defend themselves so that what has just happened to the Jewish people will never happen again.”

“What is it you want?” Carl Pickman heard himself asking. “Is it money?”

“Money is always necessary,” Ben-Gurion admitted, “but I want none from any of you just now. I do ask that you keep in mind what we have discussed, that you talk among yourselves about these issues during the coming months. When the time is right, we will be in contact with you. Until then I ask that you keep our discussion confidential. The more enthusiastic among you may want to keep a list of potential recruits, but approach no one until things can be spelled out to you.”

At that point the meeting broke up into small clusters. Ben-Gurion circulated while Sonneborn's servants began to set out a cold buffet. Carl had always hated that point when the time for business had passed and he was expected to make small talk. Anyway, he had no appetite for cold cuts and cheeses after listening to Ben-Gurion's unsettling speech. He sought out his host and thanked him; Pearlmutter approached and offered to show Carl to the door.

“What do you think?” Pearlmutter asked him once they were alone in Sonneborn's hallway.

“I think we've been involved in some kind of conspiracy, and I don't like it one bit,” Carl muttered. “Old Henry Ford—damn him and his miserable Protocols of Zion—would have the last laugh if this meeting ever got to the newspapers.” He shivered.

“I think it's worse than that,” Wendell replied as they reached the door. “A little tame conspiracy is one thing.” He sighed morosely. “You know what? I think he's expecting us to break the law.”

*     *     *

On Becky's terrace that night she begged him to tell her everything. Carl tried to explain that it was confidential, but he did admit that Ben-Gurion had been there. Becky's lovely dark eyes went wide at that tidbit. She pestered him, and the night was sultry, and her perfume and silken dressing gown so intoxicating, and of course he could never deny her anything, so why even try?

After he told her, she led him to her bed and unwound her silky wrap, and there was nothing she denied him.

“Rebecca, you haven't heard a word I said,” Carl scolded.

“Of course I have,” Becky lied, then exploded with embarrassed laughter. “I'm sorry, darling.” She squeezed his arm as they strolled through Central Park. “My mind is still on this morning's headlines about the new Labour government in England. Oh, how I despise that man Bevin. He gets to be prime minister, and then he breaks his word and upholds the white paper. He has the gall to say that if the Jews get too pushy it'll lead to anti-Semitism—”

“My dear, I'm afraid you're obsessed with this Palestine refugee situation.”

“I am not.” She paused. “Sonneborn hasn't been in touch yet, I suppose?”

“Becky!” Carl led her toward a park bench. “I don't disapprove of your interest in the matter, but you are obsessed.”

“I'm sorry.” She leaned against him, resting her head on the velvet collar of his overcoat. “I appreciate how much the Pickmans have done for the needy all over the world, but to you personally the plight of the refugees
is impossibly remote. You've got to understand, Carl, that where I grew up, the goings-on in Palestine and the pros and cons of the various forms of Zionism were discussed as if the Mideast were part of the neighborhood. As a kid I walked past the Palestine Relief Collection Agency storefronts on East Broadway. I've moved away from there, but the old neighborhood is still a part of me.”

“I don't see how that can be more important to you than our relationship.”

“You don't understand.” She dug into her purse for a cigarette.

It was a fine fall afternoon, a Thursday. They'd left the store a little early in order to enjoy the foliage gone crimson and gold beneath autumn's cool caress. All of the hoopla of V-J Day—of Japan's will to fight being broken by America's secret weapon, the A-bomb—had begun to fade with summer. The soldiers had come home and the nation was gearing down for peacetime.

Not far from where they were sitting a few boys were playing catch. The blustery weather had fanned the youngsters' cheeks to a rosy glow. They laughed and shouted, and Becky and Carl sat stolidly on their park bench and pretended to watch. They always felt uncomfortable with each other when the differences in their upbringings and outlooks sprang up between them, when they realized that more separated them than the few miles between upper Fifth Avenue and the Lower East Side.

One of the boys playing ball threw wild and the eraser-pink spauldeen went off-course toward their bench. Carl caught it and pegged it back.

“Not bad,” Becky ventured.

“My dear girl,” Carl began, his green eyes glittering in the frosty sunshine, “the mere fact that I've never enjoyed the dubious pleasure of playing stickball in the slimy gutters of your nasty neighborhood—”

Becky, hugging him, threw back her head and laughed
richly. A cavorting Dalmatian, attracted by the sound, veered toward them. Its coal-black nose was wet and shiny and its breath puffed clouds. The dog rested its head momentarily in each of their laps and then bounded off. Its master tipped his hat to them as he ambled along the path.

“We've got a brace of Irish setters at the house,” Carl observed mildly, flicking doghairs off his coat.

“The house?”

“What I was asking you while you were off battling Mr. Bevin in Parliament was whether you'd care to spend this weekend in the country.”

“At your house?”

“Yes, of course. I would have asked you long before this, but my wife and daughters were there for most of the season. Now my children are back at school and my wife is in Atlanta.”

How odd, Becky thought. There was still so much about Carl and his world that she didn't know and never thought to ask about. He must think her terribly naive, but maybe it was her way of keeping him at arm's length. And isn't that an odd way to think about the man you take to bed, she chided herself. She was certainly very fond of him. He was physically attractive; he was a masterful, powerful man, and yet sometimes ingenuous.

Nonetheless, what she felt for him wasn't love. When she and Carl made love she felt warm and motherly toward him, and that was all she felt. She didn't know if that was her fault or his; maybe fault was the wrong word. She couldn't bring herself to ask advice on the matter; she would rather die than suffer the humiliation of discussing such private things with someone else.

Their relationship was common knowledge at work by now, but nobody dared to say anything. Anyway, nobody could snicker at her for being a kept woman; she was still more than earning her salary as Pickman's advertising manager. Last summer the women's magazines had
been running such articles as “Welcoming Home the Returning Veteran” and “How to Redecorate the Boudoir” and “Recipes to Convince Your Man that He's Not in the Army Now.” It was on the basis of those magazines Becky had scheduled her promotions for the store's restocked cookware assortments and the new, frilly decorating fabrics in Domestics. Her best idea, which had gotten Pickman's some newspaper publicity, was her ad offering a free pair of argyle socks to any serviceman who wore his uniform into Pickman's and bought a set of civvies. Their stock of suits was snatched off the racks in three days.

“Never underestimate the power of the word ‘free,'” Becky said when the business reporter for the
Times
interviewed her for the article. The next day there she was, quoted in black and white, just like a VIP.

She was making more money, although not nearly as much as if she'd accepted any of several job offers from Pickman's competition. She'd turned those offers down out of loyalty to the store and to Carl, who had given her the opportunity to prove herself. Her own staff and all the employees of Pickman's were like family to her, and she didn't need more money. She had enough for fine clothes and to buy a car as soon as they were available again.

“It would be fun to spend the weekend out of the city,” Becky said brightly, then laughed. “I don't know if it would, actually. I've never been.”

“Splendid. We'll leave tomorrow night after dinner. I'll telephone the housekeeper and have our rooms prepared.” He smiled excitedly. “We'll have great fun. We'll go riding.”

“You'll go riding,” Becky firmly corrected him. “I'll be waiting for you with the liniment.”

Carl smiled and patted her hand. “I'll drive. We'll take the roadster.”

*     *     *

Before the Depression there were hundreds of mansions along the Gold Coast, Long Island's north shore, Carl told Becky that Friday night as they drove along the Northern State Parkway. The more modest had been built by film stars, but the true castles belonged to the men who ruled the oil and railroads, the banks and the stock market.

The Vanderbilts and Morgans and Schiffs and Lehmans had built their estates and villas and chateaus out here and put up high, thick walls.

These men controlled the money, which meant they controlled the elected officials in Albany. They used their influence to get permission to incorporate their estates as villages, which allowed them to set their own rules regarding what constituted loitering and trespassing. The only police in the area were private guards.

Most important, there were no roads. Henry Ford might have put America on wheels, but without decent highways, what use was a car? The rabble could not penetrate Long Island.

“Robert Moses changed that,” Carl explained, his eyes on the road as they sped along through the night. Becky could not tell from his neutral inflection how he felt about that change.

“In the late twenties Moses solidified his political base,” Carl said. “In the thirties it was his shrewdness, determination and vision—and his ability to control public opinion—that crumbled those high thick walls and thrust public highways through the hearts of the grand estates.”

“It's a good thing, too,” Becky said.

“Is it? Or should I ask, was it? After all, it's pretty much over and done with now. The beginning of the end, as they say.”

“But Carl, there are so many people. I mean, the few can't shut out the many forever.”

Carl glanced at her. “You say that now, but what will you say when you're rich?”

“Oh, don't be a tease.”

“Well, never mind the future. It's the weekend we've got, and it'll be beautiful. Most everyone prefers the summer, but the fall in the country is my favorite time.”

“Mine, too,” Becky said, then very shyly added, “I'm glad we're doing this, Carl.”

He took his hand from the steering wheel long enough to caress her cheek. Becky leaned back against the leather seat and watched the markers along the parkway blur past.

Carl's roadster turned out to be a Cadillac convertible. It was black but otherwise identical to the one Benny Talkin used to drive. Seeing this onyx incarnation made Becky's heart falter. She prepared to welcome back her old friend, the blues, but this time the torch she'd been carrying for Benny all this while never flamed.

To her surprise she had to admit that her fling with Benny really was ancient history. She hadn't seen him since that rainy day a year ago.

Sure, it was ancient history, and now she found that the hurt had healed over, though there would always be a scar.

“It's not much farther,” Carl announced. He slowed the Cadillac and turned off the parkway onto a two-lane macadamized road. He was an excellent driver, and he handled this road's dark turns and twists as easily as the parkway's straightaways.

The Cadillac's high beams picked up a pair of stone posts flanking a turnoff. Becky managed to read a carved wooden sign proclaiming the place to be Salem Farm.

“After the town north of Boston,” Carl volunteered, “the site of the first Pickman's.”

Becky also noticed far more prosaic signs proclaiming No Trespassing, Private Property. Every day, it seemed, such warnings were applying less and less to her.

They came around a bend and caught their first glimpse of the house. Even in the dark the lines of the whitewashed
brick house were easily discernible, for every one of its tall, slender casement windows was ablaze with light.

“Oh, Carl—oh, my God.”

He chuckled at the catch in her voice as he brought the car to a stop in the cobblestoned front court. “It is rather impressive, lit up that way. I'm almost—” He winked, “—
almost
embarrassed to say it's our tradition to have all the lights on when the head of the family arrives. Those lights once burned for my father, and someday I hope they'll burn for my son.” He was looking at her so intently that Becky felt a shiver up her spine. Then he laughed. “Unless, of course, your great Robert Moses turns Salem Farm into a parkway rest stop. Come along, my dear. We've already kept Mr. and Mrs. Cody up past their bedtime.”

He came around to her side of the car and opened the door. As they walked up the flagstones, the massive oak front door swung open, spilling out bright, warm light.

“Welcome, sir,” Mrs. Cody cried out. She was a short, stout grey-haired woman in her sixties, dressed in a high-necked, long-sleeved dress, a cardigan and an immaculate white apron. Her husband, tall and thin, looked very much like a rough-hewn Franklin Roosevelt. He was wearing tan corduroy trousers, work boots and a black turtle-neck sweater. He shook hands with Carl in a grave and dignified manner.