Public Secrets Read online

  Afterward her father had carved a big Christmas goose. When gluttony had made her sleepy, she had curled up in front of the fire and had listened to the music.

  It had been the best day of her life. The very best. Until this one. The sound of a car roused her. Pressing her face against the window again she peered out. With a screech, she leaped off the seat.

  “Johnno! Johnno! They’re here.” She went flying down the hallway, her shoes clattering on the wood floor that had been painstakingly refinished and polished.

  “Hold on.” Johnno stopped scribbling the lyrics that had been playing in his head to catch her on the run. “Who’s here?”

  “My da and Bev and my baby.”

  “Your baby, is it?” He tugged on her nose, then turned to Stevie who was experimenting with chords at the piano. “Shall we go welcome the newest McAvoy?”

  “Be right along.”

  “I’m coming.” P.M. stuffed the last of a tea cake into his mouth before he rose from the floor. “Wonder if they managed to get out of the hospital without being mobbed.”

  “The precautions Pete took makes James Bond look like a piker. Two decoy limos, twenty burly guards, and the final escape in a florist truck.” With a laugh, he started down the hall with Emma in tow. “Fame makes beggars of us, Emma luv, and don’t you forget.”

  She didn’t care about fame or beggars or anything else. She only wanted to see her brother. The moment the door opened, she pulled her sweaty hand from Johnno’s and shot down the hall.

  “Let me see him,” she demanded.

  Brian bent over, shifting the blanket from the bundle in his arms. For Emma, the first sight of her brother was love. Unconditional, all-encompassing. It was so much more than anything she’d expected.

  He wasn’t a doll. Even as he slept she could see the gentle flutter of his dark lashes. His mouth was small and moist, his skin thin and delicately pale. He wore a little blue cap over his head, but her father had told her that he had hair as dark as Bev’s. His hand was curled in a fist, and she touched it, gently, with her fingertips. Warmth, and the faintest of movements.

  Love burst through her like light.

  “What do you think?” Brian asked her.

  “Darren.” She said the name softly, savoring it. “He’s the most beautiful baby in the world.”

  “Got that pretty McAvoy face,” Johnno murmured, feeling foolishly sentimental. “Nice job, Bev.”

  “Thanks.” And she was glad it was done. None of the books she had read had prepared her for the exquisite, draining pain of childbirth. She was proud to have brought her son into the world naturally, though it had been touch and go during those last hours. Now she wanted nothing more than to settle down and be a mother.

  “The doctor doesn’t want Bev on her feet much for the next few days,” Brian began. “Do you want to go up and rest?”

  “The last thing I want is to get into another bed.”

  “Come on in and sit then, and Uncle Johnno will fix you a nice cup.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “I’ll go up and put the baby down.” Brian grinned at the way P.M. stood back and gawked. “He doesn’t bite, old man. He doesn’t have teeth.”

  P.M. grinned and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Just don’t ask me to touch him for a while.”

  “Entertain Bev. She really had a rough go of it. We’ve got a nurse coming in this afternoon, but I don’t want her doing anything strenuous in the meantime.”

  “That I can handle.” He wandered back toward the parlor.

  “We’ll put the baby to sleep,” Emma announced and kept one hand on the edge of the blanket. “I can show you how.”

  They started up the stairs with Emma leading the way.

  The nursery had been finished with frilly white curtains and rainbows painted on the pale blue walls. The bassinet had a skirt of snowy Irish lace dotted with satin ribbons of pink and blue. An old-fashioned pram stood in the corner guarded by a six-foot teddy bear. An antique rocker waited by the window.

  Emma stood beside the bassinet as her father laid Darren down. Once the little cap was removed, she reached in to carefully stroke his downy black hair.

  “Will he wake up soon?”

  “I don’t know. I get the feeling babies are pretty unpredictable.” Brian crouched down beside her. “We have to be very careful with him, Emma. He’s so helpless, you see.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to him, not ever.” She put her hand on her father’s shoulder and watched the baby sleep.

  EMMA WASN’T SURE she liked Miss Wallingsford. The young nurse had pretty red hair and nice gray eyes, but she rarely allowed Emma to touch baby Darren. Bev had interviewed dozens of applicants, and was well satisfied with Alice Wallingsford. She was twenty-five, of good family, and had excellent references and a pleasing manner.

  In the first months after Darren’s birth, Bev was so tired and moody Alice’s services became invaluable. More, she was another woman to talk with about things like teething, breast-feeding, and diets. Bev was as determined to gain back her willowy figure as she was to be a good mother. With Brian closed up writing songs with Johnno, or in meetings with Pete about the next recording, she struggled to make the home she wanted so badly for them.

  She listened when he spoke of things like war in Asia, race riots in America, but her world centered on whether the sun would shine warm enough to take Darren for a stroll. She taught herself how to bake bread and tried her hand at knitting, while Brian wrote songs, and spoke out against war and bigotry.

  As her body returned to normal, her mind eased. For Bev, this was the sweetest time of her life. Her son was chubbily healthy, and her husband treated her like a princess in bed.

  With Darren at her breast and Emma at her feet, she rocked in the chair by the nursery window. There had been rain that morning, but the sun was out now, and bright. She thought that by afternoon she could take the baby and Emma for a walk in the park.

  “I’m going to put him down now, Emma.” Bev shifted her blouse to cover her breast. “He’s fast asleep.”

  “Can I hold him when he wakes up?”

  “Yes, but only when I’m with you.”

  “Miss Wallingsford never lets me hold him.”

  “She’s just being cautious.” Bev smoothed the blanket over Darren before she stepped back. He was nearly five months old now, she thought. Already she couldn’t imagine her life without him. “Let’s go down and see about baking a nice cake. Your da loves chocolate cake.”

  Knowing she had to be satisfied with that, Emma followed her out. Alice paused in the hallway, holding fresh linens for the nursery.

  “He should sleep awhile, Alice,” Bev told her. “His tummy’s full.”

  Yes, ma’am.

  “Emma and I will be in the kitchen.”

  An hour later, when they’d taken the cake out to cool, the front door slammed. “Your da must be home early.” Bev automatically fluffed her hair before she hurried out of the kitchen to greet him. “Bri, I didn’t expect you until … what’s wrong?”

  He was dead pale, his eyes red-rimmed and bleary. He shook his head as if to clear it as Bev held out her hands to him. “They’ve shot him.”

  “What?” Her fingers clamped down hard on his. “Who? Shot who?”

  “Kennedy. Robert Kennedy. They’ve killed him.”

  “Oh my God. Oh sweet God.” She could only stand and stare, horrified. She remembered when the American president had been killed, and the shocked world had mourned. Now his brother, his bright, young brother.

  “We were rehearsing for the album,” Brian began. “Pete came in. He’d heard it on the radio. None of us believed it, not until we’d heard it ourselves. Goddammit, Bev, just a few months ago it was King, and now this. What’s happening to the world?”

  “Mr. McAvoy …” Alice started down the stairs, her face as white as her apron. “Is it true? Are you certain?”

  “Yes. It should be just a nightmare, but
it’s true.”

  “Oh, that poor family.” Alice wrung her apron in her hands. “That poor mother.”

  “He was a good man,” Brian managed. “He would have been their next president. He would have stopped that bloody war, I know it.”

  It disturbed Emma to see tears in her father’s eyes. The adults were much too involved with their own grief to notice her. She didn’t know anyone named Kennedy, but she was sorry he was dead. She wondered if he had been a friend of her da’s. Maybe he’d been a soldier in the war her father always talked about.

  “Alice, fix some tea. Please,” Bev murmured as she led Brian toward the parlor.

  “What kind of a world have we brought our children into? When will they understand, Bev? When will they finally understand?”

  Emma went upstairs to sit with Darren and leave the adults to their tears and tea.

  They found her there, in the nursery, an hour later. She was singing one of the lullabies Bev often sang at bedtime while she rocked Darren.

  Panicked, Bev started in, only to have Brian catch her arm. “No, they’re fine. Can’t you see?” It eased some of the rawness inside him to watch them. Emma rocked with her feet dangling far from the floor, and the baby carefully supported in her arms.

  Emma looked up and smiled beautifully. “He was crying, but he’s happy now. He smiled at me.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek as he gurgled. “He loves me, don’t you, Darren?”

  “Yes, he loves you.” Brian moved over to kneel in front of the rocker and wrap his arms around both of them. “Thank God for all of you,” he said as he held out a hand for Bev. “I think I’d go mad without you.”

  BRIAN KEPT HIS family closer during the next weeks. Whenever possible, he worked at home, and even toyed with the idea of adding a recording studio onto the house. The war in Southeast Asia preyed on his mind. The horrible and useless fighting in his homeland of Ireland tore at him. His records soared up the chart, but the satisfaction that had rushed through him in the early days paled. He used his music both as a projection of his feelings and a buffer against the worst of them. His need for family kept him level.

  They were sanity, he was certain.

  It was Bev who gave him the idea to take Emma to the recording studio. They were about to lay the first tracks for their third album. An album Brian considered even more important than their debut. This time, he had to prove that Devastation wasn’t a fluke, nor a pale imitation that was clinging to the coattails of groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones. He had to prove to himself that the magic, which had dimmed so during that last year, would still be there.

  He wanted something unique, a sound distinctively their own. He’d shuffled aside a dozen solid rock numbers he and Johnno had written. They could wait. Despite Pete’s objections, the rest of the group was behind him in his decision to pepper the cuts with political statements, down-and-dirty rebel rock, and Irish folk songs. Electric guitars and penny whistles.

  When Emma walked into the studio, she had no notion she was being allowed to witness the making of music history. To her, she was spending the day with her da and his mates. It seemed like an enormous game to her, the equipment, the instruments, the tall glass room. She sat in a big swivel chair, sipping a Coke straight from the bottle.

  “Don’t you think the tyke’s going to get a bit bored?” Johnno asked as he fiddled with the electric organ. He wore two rings now, the diamond on one pinky and a fat sapphire on the other.

  “If we can’t entertain one little girl, we’d best pack it in.” Brian adjusted the strap of his guitar. “Anyway, I want to keep her close awhile. Jane’s making noise again.”

  “Bitch,” Johnno said mildly, then picked up a glass of Coke liberally laced with rum.

  “She won’t get anywhere this time either, but it’s a nuisance.” He cast a quick look at Emma and saw she was occupied with talking to Charlie. “She’s trying to say she was tricked into signing the papers. Pete’s handling it.”

  “She just wants more money.”

  With a grim smile, Brian nodded. “She won’t get more out of Pete. Or out of me. Let’s have a sound check here.”

  “Hello there, Emmy luv.” Stevie stopped beside her to poke a finger into her belly. “You auditioning for the band?”

  “I’m going to watch.” She stared up at him, fascinated by the gold hoop he now wore in his ear.

  “That’s fine, then. We always do better with an audience. Tell me something, Emmy.” He bent down close, whispering. “Truth and nothing but. Who’s the best of this lot here?”

  It had become a standard game by this time. Knowing the rules, Emma looked up, then down, then side to side. Hunching her shoulders, she bellowed, “Da!”

  It earned her a snort of disgust and a lot of tickled ribs. Struggling not to wet her pants, she squirmed to the back of the chair.

  “It’s illegal in this country to brainwash children,” Stevie said as he joined Brian.

  “The kid has taste.”

  “Right, all bad.” He took his Martin out of its case and ran loving fingers down the neck. “What’s on first?”

  “We’ll lay down the instrumentals on ‘Outcry.’”

  “Saving the best for first.” With a nod, Stevie sped through some experimental chords. “Let’s get to work, mates.”

  Of the four, Stevie was the only one who had grown up with real money, in a true house with a garden and two live-in servants. He was used to the finer things, expected them and was easily bored with them. He’d fallen in love with the guitar, and had made his proper parents rue the day they had given it to him.

  At fifteen, he’d formed his own band. Stevie and the Rousers. It had lasted six months before bitter infighting had broken it up. Undaunted, he’d formed another, then another. His natural, flashy talent with the guitar had drawn many hopefuls to him. But then they’d looked to him for leadership that he’d been innately incapable of providing.

  He’d come across Brian and Johnno at a party in Soho, one of those candlelit, smoke-and-incense-choked gatherings his parents were terrified of. He’d been attracted immediately to Brian’s intensity about music, and Johnno’s caustic, careless wit. For the first time in his life, Stevie had joined instead of formed. He’d followed Brian’s lead with relief.

  There had been lean days, grubbing in pubs begging for a chance to play. There had been heady days spent writing songs and creating music. There had been women, gloriously sweaty acres of them ready to fall on their backs for a fair-haired man with a guitar in his hand.

  There had been Sylvie, the girl he had met on their first gig in Amsterdam. Pretty, round-cheeked Sylvie with her broken English and guileless eyes. They’d made love like maniacs in a filthy little room where the roof leaked and the windows were coated with grime. He’d fallen in love, as much as he believed himself capable. He’d even entertained ideas about bringing her back to London with him, setting up house in some cramped cold-water flat.

  But Sylvie had gotten pregnant.

  He remembered when she’d told him, her face pale and her eyes full of hope and fear. He hadn’t wanted children. Good Christ, he’d only been twenty. His music had come first, had had to. And if his parents had discovered he’d fathered a child with a Dutch cocktail waitress … It had been lowering to realize that no matter how far he’d run, how much he’d protested, what his parents thought had still mattered so much.

  Pete had arranged for an abortion, discreetly, expensively. Sylvie, with the tears flowing down her cheeks, had done what he’d asked. Once she had, she had walked out of his life. Until she had gone, Stevie hadn’t realized he’d loved her even more than he’d believed himself capable.

  He didn’t want to think of it, hated to remember it, and her. But just lately it had begun preying on his mind. It probably had to do with Emma, he thought as he glanced over and saw her sitting flushed and delighted in her swivel chair. His child, whatever it had been, would have been about her age now.

  The da
y in the studio was fun for Emma. So much fun her only regret was that Darren wasn’t there to share it. Watching her father and his friends play now was different from seeing them in the theaters and auditoriums across America. There was a different energy here. She didn’t understand it, but she felt it.

  On tour, Emma had begun to see them as a unit, like a body with four heads. The picture that made in her mind made her laugh to herself, but it seemed a true one. Today, they argued, and swore, joked or just sat silently during playbacks. She didn’t know the meaning of the technical terms being tossed back and forth—didn’t need to. She amused herself when they huddled together, or was amused by them when they took a moment to tease her. She ate gobs of greasy chips and bloated her belly with Cokes.

  During a break she sat on P.M.’s lap and bashed away at the drums. She said her name into one of the mikes and heard her voice echo through the room. With a spare drumstick in her hand, she dozed in the swivel chair, her head pillowed on the faithful Charlie. And she awoke to her father’s voice, soaring in a ballad of tragic love.

  Spellbound she watched, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and yawning into Charlie’s fur. Her heart was too young to be touched by the lyrics. But the sound reached her. She would never hear the