“That is why the few tenuous links we do have with the Communist Chinese must be maintained, why the lines of communication, scant as they are, have to stay open. The Chinese, for their own good and the good of all mankind, must cure themselves of their paranoia, and they cannot possibly do that in isolation and ignorance.”
He was asked if the current meeting had been his idea, a question he’d already answered several times in the last two weeks, but he patiently answered it again: “No. Kwong Lan Quey requested it, in his last letter to me. He did not say what purpose he wished the meeting to serve, but he did say that the request was not an official act and was not made at the instruction of his government.”
This conference was taking longer than the one at Kennedy. It wasn’t that it was covering more ground, but that extra time had to be taken for translation between French and English of everything that was said. Evelyn, watching Bradford’s face, saw that he was getting tired and she moved forward to put a hand on his elbow. When he turned his head she said softly, “Uncle Joe would tell you to stop now.”
He considered revolt, she saw it in his face, but then she saw him also remember that an airport press conference was nothing to risk one’s health for. He nodded, and faced the reporters again, saying, “One more question, ladies and gentlemen, and I think that will be all.”
The last question was, “Given that yours is only one voice, and that the number of voices reaching China are few, what is the likelihood of this Chinese paranoia ever being cured?”
“Well, it must be,” Bradford said. “That is the next major world goal, and I insist I am not being melodramatic when I say that our future depends on our reaching that goal. I don’t mean what type of future we will have, or our children will have, I mean whether or not we will have any sort of future at all. China is a global power, an industrial nation with a huge land mass, vast untapped resources, and one-quarter of the entire world’s population. She is also a nuclear power, and from what Chinese politicians and scientists have been saying since the early sixties, she is the only nuclear power with no true understanding of just how lethal nuclear power really is. She is also an isolated power, with scant practice in the arts of diplomacy and very little reason to like or trust Caucasians. It’s an explosive combination, quite literally. Either we break through China’s isolation, her pride, her mistrust and her paranoia, or the day will come when a Chinese tantrum destroys us all.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Spoken in English.
Bradford smiled at the man who had said that. “Thank you,” he said, and Evelyn saw that he was still smiling when he turned away to take her arm and walk with her to the waiting car.
iv
At first, when he walked into the room, Evelyn thought it was Howard, and she thought, Has he really come traipsing across the Atlantic with his endless manuscripts? But then she saw that it wasn’t Howard after all, but his older brother Edward, Sterling’s other son, a man of about forty, attached to the permanent U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Paris. Edward was a bit heavier than Howard, a bit softer, with a bit less hair, but they could almost have passed for twins.
“Hello, Evelyn.” He came across the hotel room, hand outstretched, a broad smile on his face. He was as sunny as Howard was sour, as optimistic as Howard was cynical, and as unflappable as Howard was panicky. And yet, he never gave an impression of shallowness or silliness. He was a man both cheerful and thoughtful, a rare combination.
“Hello, Uncle Edward.” She was always pleased to be in Edward’s presence, and had been looking forward to seeing him during their stay in Paris. “I haven’t seen you for almost two years.”
“During which,” Edward said, holding her hand, “I have grown ten years older and you have grown three years younger. What is it that keeps the Lockridge women so beautiful?”
“The flattery of the Lockridge men,” she said, laughing. She had been born a Holt, and she had married a Canby, but within the family she was a Lockridge woman, through her mother. The sense of family held by the Lockridges, their unconscious division of all the world into Lockridges and Outsiders, Evelyn occasionally found depressing, but even this was a cheerful manifestation in Edward. She said, “Bradford isn’t here. He’s gone to the first meeting.”
“Yes, I know.” Edward winked and laid a finger beside his nose, being one of the few men alive who could actually make that gesture without looking stupid. “There’s intrigue afoot,” he announced, his voice hushed. “Brad called Janet and said you were moping around the hotel, and we were slyly to do something about it. So I’ve been sent to come take you away to Carrie Gillespie’s. Janet will meet us there.”
“I’m not moping,” Evelyn said, though she knew she had been. She’d been sitting at the window, looking out at the rooftops and the bits of traffic she could see, worrying about Brad in one way and Dinah in another, and if that wasn’t moping, what was it? But moping isn’t something one can admit to, so she said, “Honestly I’m not. I was even thinking of doing some shopping this afternoon. We only got in last night.”
“Shopping, in Paris, on a Saturday? You must be joking.” Edward waggled a finger at her, another gesture at which he was uniquely adept. “On Monday,” he said, “you and Janet will do the Galeries Lafayette from top to bottom. It’s a shopping spree Janet has been looking forward to since we first heard you were coming.”
Evelyn laughed and shook her head, saying, “Galeries Lafayette is closed on Monday, I remember that from last time.”
“Then on Tuesday. On Monday you’ll have your hair done. But today—” he pointed a finger at her “—today you come with me to Carrie Gillespie’s.”
The thought was cheering — Edward himself was cheering — but a moping mood is hard to break. Evelyn spread her hands helplessly, looking down at herself. “I’m not dressed. I’d have to change.”
There was a newspaper in Edward’s suitcoat pocket, jutting up against his elbow, and he now plucked it out and waggled it in the air. “The exact reason,” he said, “I brought along Le Monde. Take all the time you want, I read French as slowly as ever.”
The mope abruptly dissolved, like salt in water. Evelyn smiled and said, “I’ll be ten minutes.”
v
Carrie Smith Gillespie was what is known as a character. She had all the money she would ever need, so when her husband George had died four years before she’d moved permanently to Paris, to this spacious airy apartment on Boulevard Anatole France, overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, where she’d determined to set herself up as a hostess in the grand manner, with a salon that would be second to none. The desire was a bit old-fashioned, but the strength of Carrie’s personality kept it from being foolish. And if her guests ran heavily to American diplomats and lightly to European artists and intelligentsia, it was still a reasonable facsimile of what she’d had in mind. Better, in a way, since this way her guests tended to speak in a language she understood, her French being next to nonexistent.