“Hi,” Gregory muttered.
The pretty brunette who had answered the door had opened it three, maybe four inches and left the chain on the hook. The young woman was wearing a rubber glove on the hand holding the door ajar, her cheeks were flushed and she had about her a breathless, slightly perturbed bloom.
“I’m Gregory Sullivan,” the man said hopefully but this obviously rang no bells with the woman inside the house whom he judged to be in her very early twenties.
“Oh. I haven’t seen Miranda since I’ve been staying with Mister and Missis Fleischer,” the woman apologised in an unmistakably musical Southern lilt.
“I was in the city so I thought I’d say ‘hello’ to Aunt Molly and Uncle Harvey,” Gregory explained. “I teach High School across the Bay in Sausalito during the week. I like to drive over to the big city every two or three weekends, you know, to take in a show or a ball game…”
The young woman in the door was in a visible quandary.
“I always stay over with Aunt Molly and Uncle Harvey,” Gregory added.
This made up the doorkeeper’s mind.
The portal swung open and she stepped aside to allow the man admittance.
Desperately, she pulled at her gloved hands.
“I’m Darlene,” she blurted, sticking out a hand which had grown moist with perspiration inside its protective rubber house glove. “Darlene Lefebure.”
She was hot and bothered, having spent the last two hours dusting and polishing and generally cleaning; Mrs Fleischer — Darlene had not yet summoned the courage to call her heaven sent mother goose ‘Molly’ — had said, quite emphatically in fact, she did not have to pay her way or ‘any of that nonsense; you are our guest and it is lovely to have you under our roof’, but Darlene did feel very beholden and helping around the big house especially when her benefactors were not around to stop her, went a long way to assuaging her troubled conscience. A sweet old black lady, Mary, came in most days but she had rheumatic joints and she and Mrs Fleischer talked and laughed and drank coffee most of the time she was in the house. Darlene had not figured out exactly how that worked but she knew Mrs Fleischer paid Mary the full rate regardless of whether she got around to doing any cleaning or chores. Mrs Fleischer had explained that a couple of the neighbours’ kids came round when things got ‘too much’ for her and ‘it’s good for them’ to earn a ‘little extra pocket money’.
Darlene had been clutching a mop in her free hand which she now laid down carefully next to the soapy bucket just inside the door.
“Mind where you step, I’ve been…”
Gregory made a theatrical attempt to tip toe across the wet floor.
Instinctively, Darlene giggled.
“Where are you from?” He inquired now that the ice had been broken.
“Tupelo Mississippi first, then Jackson, Alabama,” the woman replied, lowering her eyes. “That’s a way south of Birmingham,” she added. “Mister and Missis Fleischer took me in when I had some trouble. I think that was Miss Sullivan, your sister’s doing. I haven’t seen her since I got here. I feel bad about that. She did her best to help me but I was catty on account of her and Dwayne going together on the night of the war…”
Darlene practically clapped her hands to her mouth.
I didn’t mean to say that!
Too late.
“Dwayne?” Gregory asked, smiling mild curious amusement that turned to instant concern as the first tears trickled down the young woman’s face.
“I’m sorry. You’ve got to forget I said that. Please?”
The man was a chaos of emotions.
This was all his fault and Darlene was quite the most beautiful girl he had met in…
His whole life, actually.
And the first thing he had done was make her cry!
Afterwards, he honestly did not know how it had happened.
One second he was shifting guiltily on his feet and she was…upset.
And the next moment she was in his arms sobbing inconsolably on his shoulder and he knew, he just knew, that this, whatever this was…was meant to be because if felt right…
Chapter 18
Of all the things that Miranda had imagined might be behind her unexpected telephone summons to attend the Office of the Governor of California on a Sunday she had not anticipated that it would be to meet the Vice-President of the United States of America. She was still trying to make sense of the events of that morning as she sat alone in her shared office on the first floor of the Capitol Building.
She had expected Lyndon Johnson to be taller than he actually was; she looked him pretty much in the eye in that moment before her courage fled and she smiled the debutante smile that she had sworn never to smile again.
‘Miranda is Ben and Margaret Sullivan’s girl,’ the Governor had explained by way of introduction as he led Lyndon Baines Johnson down the relatively short line of senior state staffers, civil servants and political aides.
‘Goodness,’ the Vice-President had smiled. There was a definite twinkle in his eye. ‘You are the spitting image of your mother, Miss Sullivan,’ he observed like a proud grandfather on the day of his granddaughter’s graduation from college.
‘Miss Sullivan has only recently joined my staff but she had already done good work liaising with the Party down in San Diego and with the Mayors of Oakland and San Francisco, not to mention with the Office of the California State Attorney General on behalf of my office in matters where the civil rights of bona fide members of the NAACP and Dr King’s movement were being infringed by certain government agencies.’
This prompted a significantly raised eyebrow from the Vice-President, whose craggy physiognomy briefly reflected the fact that his mind had just switched from third to fourth gear.
And then he had moved down the line.
Normally, once a dignitary got to the end of the reception line he, or more rarely, she, was hustled off and was not seen again until he, or she had concluded his, or her business with the Governor and his inside circle. However, that day Vice-President Johnson and Governor Brown had walked back up the line and claimed the floor in the middle of the room.
Miranda had honestly not realized that she had been admitted to the Governor’s ‘inner circle’ until that moment.
‘I will keep this short and sweet,’ the Vice-President had prefaced. ‘The Federal Government has let California down in the last year. We can belly ache about the reasons why forever and a day,’ he went on, ‘but the thing you need to know is that the President hears you. The President will be coming to the West Coast soon to listen personally to your grievances and to address the urgent needs of the West Coast states. I do not propose to, in fact, I will not apologise for all the things that have gone wrong in the last year. Let’s face it, after the war we were all so surprised we were still alive that it was a while before any of us understood just how much had changed. None of us in DC have a magic wand or some supernatural second sight that enables us to see into the future; the Administration did what it thought was the best for all our people. I freely admit to you now that events have proved that we made a lot of bad calls.’