Also by Ted Allbeury
Show Me a Hero
The Crossing
The Seeds of Treason
The Twentieth Day of January
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 the Estate of Ted Allbeury
All rights reserved.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The author has asserted his moral right in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988 [UK].
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 2017, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Granada Publishing, Great Britain, in 1983.
International Standard Book Number
ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82037-8
ISBN-10: 0-486-82037-8
Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications
82037801 2017
www.doverpublications.com
With love to Laurie Beaty, Headmaster, and the staff of St. Mark’s C. of E. Primary School, Tunbridge Wells, for caring for and teaching my two girls, Lisa and Sally, in the years that matter most.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Inaugural Address
20 January 1961
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
About the Author
1
Although Cambridge, Massachusetts, is only separated from Boston by the arbitrary meanderings of the Charles River, most people feel it has succeeded in preserving its separate ethos from the depredations of its large neighbour. Buildings, streets, houses, are on a more human scale. You can walk even the main Cambridge streets at a leisurely pace. It has the air of a nineteenth-century village inhabited by civilized and cultured people. With Harvard University at its centre to emphasize the point.
In one of the older houses the Symonses were holding a small party to celebrate the graduation of their son Anthony.
Arthur Symons was perhaps the most respected brain surgeon in Massachusetts. He was certainly the most financially successful. Amongst his medical contemporaries there was some argument from time to time as to how much his success was due to the rich girl he had married, and how much to his own undoubted charm. Charm is not a characteristic rated highly by surgeons. Unless they happen to have it. It is not too common an attribute among either the rich or the medical profession. But even Arthur Symons’s more acid critics would not deny that his charm was both real and natural.
Their son had an inferior version of his father’s charm, and he also lacked his father’s patrician good looks. The son’s best features were his dark brown eyes and their heavy lashes; the rest of his face was a little too smooth, a little too rounded. But the pretty girls hung on his words, and there was no doubt that he had a gift for words, and a soft molasses-brown voice that gave teenage girls a tendency to close their eyes when he spoke. In his case the charm was calculated and spurious. But useful nonetheless. And Tony Symons had one talent that was not shared with his father. He played the piano with a skill that made him constantly in demand at student parties and the like. Whatever style you fancied, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, Errol Garner or Ellington, Tony Symons could play it.
Just after midnight he slipped out of the white door that led to the small garden. He and the girl walked hand in hand across the lawn, keeping to the shadows and away from the floodlit shrubs and borders. Half an hour later they were in his apartment near City Hall Plaza. And ten minutes later they were both naked on his bed. It was only the second time they had enjoyed each other’s bodies but it was also only the second time he had dated her. The girl had been madly in love with him for months but the young man had eschewed all pleasures for the last four months until his final exams were over. He uttered no word, even during their love-making, which could possibly be interpreted as indicating that he loved her or was even “in-love” with her.
When it was over he lay beside her, feeding chocolates into her soft, sensuous mouth. She smiled up at his face and her hand reached down to excite him again, then frowned slightly as he moved his body out of reach.
She said softly, “Don’t you want to do it again?”
He nodded. “Later, maybe.”
She looked at the brown eyes. “Did you like it?”
“It was beautiful, honey. How about you?”
“It was fantastic, Tony. I’d like to do it all the time with you.”
“I think I’ve got to do my post-graduate at UCLA and that’s not going to give us much time together.”
She leaned up on her elbows. “But why? Why go to UCLA?”
“Garfield wouldn’t recommend me for post-grad at Harvard.”
“Why not?”
“God knows. I don’t think he likes me. Or maybe he doesn’t like my old man.” He smiled. “Anyway I think he’s got his eye on you. He’s a horny bastard. I think he’s jealous of me.”
“You mean he wants to sleep with me?”
“Yeah. He’s not the only one. I guess he knows he hasn’t got a chance, so he takes it out on me.”
“You mean if I let him do it to me he’d let you stay?”
“You bet he would, provided he knew that I’d put the good word in for him.”
“Shall I let him?”
“Of course not. He’s just an old goat.”
Her hand touched his face. “Let me, Tony. I’d do anything for you.”
She saw the dark sweep of his lashes on his cheek. Every girl on the campus envied him those lashes. When he looked back at her he said softly. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am.”
“Shall I tell him?”
“Yes.”
“When shall I say you’ll see him?”
“Anytime. Tomorrow. Let me get it over with.”
And Judy Powers was the first person he sold
