“There are only a few things you can do about inflation at the state level, but I’m going to do all of them. Carlos will brief you on details.
“As for the strike, I’m going to call one more conference with union leaders tomorrow. Don’t laugh. It might work this time.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
His eyes went out of focus, looking into his own mind.
“I can’t do what Carlos and Job want: shift the whole burden onto the President. The responsibility is mine, not his. I don’t want to break a strike by injunction. It’s a bad precedent. But how can I let this Barlovento blockade go on? If I do, people will starve in Barlovento next winter. That’s war. That could mean a little Vietnam on our own front doorstep. I’ll do anything to prevent that.”
This morning, listening to Job Jackman’s credo, Tash had begun to wonder if it was Jeremy Playfair’s credo, too. If it was, she could not work for him. Now, listening to Jeremy himself, she realized that he had his own credo. It was not Job’s. It was one Tash could respect. Job was evidently the tactician here, not the policy maker, perhaps not even the strategist.
“Anything else you want to know?”
“I can’t think of anything, thank you.”
Jeremy rose. “Back to the salt mines then. What’s on this afternoon, Carlos?”
“A flock of bills that just passed the legislature before it adjourned.”
“Important bills?” asked Hilary.
Carlos smiled. “Most people think the one abolishing capital punishment is fairly important.”
“But you don’t?” Job looked at Carlos quizzically.
Carlos shrugged. “I can’t forget the hard-boiled Frenchman who said: Que messieurs les assassins commencent!”
“You know I don’t speak French.”
“Let murderers do it first.”
“What else?” asked Hilary.
“There’s that bill cracking down on drug addicts,” said Carlos. “Jeremy is going to veto that.”
Job turned on Jeremy. “You’re making a double mistake: signing a bill to abolish the death penalty and vetoing a bill to crack down on drug addicts. Have you talked to Captain Wilkes about addicts? He’s had a lot of experience.”
“Wilkes is a post-dated Puritan.”
“He’s also an average voter. Better than a Gallup Poll any day. Jerry, the trick is to be liberal, but not too liberal. The middle of the road is where the votes are.”
“We’ve got a new law that cracks down on drug pushers,” said Jeremy. “One of the toughest in the country.”
“The man in the street wants to crack down on pushers and addicts both,” retorted Job. “He can’t distinguish between them.”
“But I can. Job, some day we’ll have preventive law-enforcement, as we already have preventive medicine. Until we do we just have to compromise as best we can.”
He gave good-bye to Jo Beth, nodded to Hilary and Tash, but paused when he came to his wife and took both her hands in his. “Take care of yourself, Viv. Promise!”
A glance from Hilary summoned Tash.
“It’s three o’clock already. These luncheons kill the afternoon. I’d never get any work done if we had them often. What do you say to tennis and a swim?”
“That’ll really kill the afternoon.”
“You make your own hours here as long as you get things done on time. You can bone up on Barlovento this evening quite as well as this afternoon.”
“I don’t have a racket or sneakers, and this skirt is narrow.”
“There are extra rackets for guests in the bathhouse. Sneakers and shorts, too.”
Tash, long out of practise, was easily beaten by Hilary, but she enjoyed stretching her muscles. Even more, she enjoyed the swim afterward in a borrowed suit.
When she came out of the bathhouse, she found Hilary had ordered iced tea for both of them.
“Would you like a sandwich or something?” she asked Tash. “It’s nearly six.”
“I couldn’t possibly eat anything after a late luncheon like that.”
“Neither could I. Let’s skip dinner and loaf here until the stars come out.”
After so many months of living in town, Tash found herself luxuriating in the flower fragrances and the long reaches of new-mown grass gilded by a late afternoon sun.
“Is all this taxpayers’ money?”
“A previous governor put in the tennis courts and the pool at his own expense. Jeremy pays for upkeep out of his own pocket. Like so many rich men in office, he is morbidly sensitive to any charge of freeloading, but then he can afford to be. It’s the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who takes the taxpayer for every penny, but as he would be the first to point out, he has to, doesn’t he?”
Walking back to the office wing through the soft spring night, Tash said: “Has Mrs. Playfair been ill?”
“What on earth makes you think that?”
“The way the Governor worries about her. Just now he said: ‘Take care of yourself.’ Monday he said: ‘Are you sure you’re not overdoing things?’ ”
“That’s just his way. I’m an old friend of the Playfair family. My mother used to know his mother. I’ve never forgotten his mother saying years ago: ‘Jerry was always such an affectionate little boy.’ That quality is rare in men.”
“You’re a pessimist.”
“Worse. A cynic. I believe in nothing, not even in the political future of Jeremy Playfair and that’s high treason around here.”
“Then why do you stay?”
“Because I love Jeremy. I can put it that way, because I’m old enough to be his mother. He has mana.”
“What’s that?”
“The thing most people think they’re talking about when they say charisma. It’s Greek, selective and artificial, the gift of divine grace, sought by faith and bestowed by ritual on a priest or sacred king.
“Mana is Polynesian, unselective and natural, unsought and unbestowed. Every living creature is born with some mana. How could it be otherwise when mana is the power that makes and sustains the universe?”
“A Polynesian Holy Ghost?”
“I tried to find out, but the dictionary I consulted said simply: The Holy Ghost. Obsolete. So now I’ll never know what the Holy Ghost is, or rather, was.
“Better stick to mana.
