Читать книгу The Paris Herald - James Oliver Goldsborough - Страница 7

Ben Swart held the cold black metal phone against his ear and listened. He’d feared it, they’d all feared it, but knowing Jock Whitney he’d expected something to be worked out. Jock was a doer, a fixer, a macher in everything he did – business, horses, yachts, politics, women. The fight with the New York labor unions wasn’t something he hadn’t faced before. But it hadn’t worked out this time, he was saying, the words coming in short bursts through the cable under the icy Atlantic. He hadn’t faced this kind of adversary before, like Jap kamikazes, he said, people who want to die. “Suicidal, nihilists, anarchists…” and then came a big crack in the line and Ben didn’t catch the next word.

“What was that, Jock?”

“…never seen anything like…”

“You’re not coming through.”

“Communists, I said, goddamn communists set on wrecking everything.”

Ben waited for him to get his breath and go on. Jock Whitney was a man who measured his words and if he was calling the New York unions communist, then Swart, who knew something about communist unions, wasn’t going to disagree. The merger with the World and the Journal would have cost a thousand union jobs but would have saved a thousand others. Now the unions were out two thousand.

“Their goal was to destroy the Herald Tribune, pure and simple,” Jock said. “They hate anything that smacks of liberal Republicanism. They stomach Hearst’s right-wing crap and the left-wing Times, but print a newspaper that appeals to normal, middle-of-the-road Americans and they bring you down. I should have known. I saw the Reds at work when I was over there. Heighten the contradictions they call it. That’s why the German Reds supported Hitler. Conflagration leads to revolution. Insanity. You still there, Ben?

“I’m still here, Jock.”

“Anyway, Ben…” His voice faded again. “That’s not why…”

“Lost you again …”

“Listen, Ben, why don’t you just stop talking for a while. We’ll do this like telegrams. When I’m through talking, I’ll say stop. Then you can start stop.”

“Got it, stop.”

“We’re dead here, Ben, that’s what I called to say. We’re dead here but we’re going to try to hold on in Paris.” Again came the cracking, but this time Swart stayed silent, waiting for Whitney to continue. “Try, I said – nothing guaranteed. It’ll be hard for you for a while. You’ll get nothing from New York – no columnists, features, sports, stock tables, no more Washington bureau.” (crack, crack) “Do what you can with the wire services, freelancers, anything. Just hang on while I look for a partner for you. I’ve got some ideas. Keep your head up, stop.”

It took a minute for Swart to digest all that.

“Ben, I said stop. Are you still there, stop?”

“We’ll manage, Jock. Somehow we’ll manage, stop.”

Nestling the phone against his ear, Swart leaned back, feet atop the nineteenth-century oak desk that had been in the publisher’s office at the Paris Herald back to Bennett’s time on the rue du Louvre. He loved listening to Jock talk in that snooty accent cultivated from years of boarding schools, yacht races, and diplomatic cocktail parties. Through the door he saw the back of Martine Treuherz’s pretty neck as she typed something. He could tell she was listening, but since Jock was doing all the talking what would she hear? Down the way he could just see into Theo le Tac’s office, and the little Frenchman would already know what Jock was saying through his secret contacts.

“Oh, and Ben – one more thing. Walter thinks we should start thinking of pulling out of Paris.”

Swart was semi-tuned-out and focused on Martine’s neck and it was a moment before the words hit his cortex. Walter Thayer was Jock’s director of operations, chief negotiator, hatchet man, tough man to buck, but Jock had done it in sending Ben to run things in Paris over Walter’s objections.

“Say that again.”

“You heard me. Walter’s as sick of the unions as I am. He wants you to start looking around – Zurich, Munich, maybe Geneva, cities with good transportation and no communist unions. Send le Tac. Talk to the ministries. See what they offer.”

“Leave Paris? Did I hear you right?”

“Call it contingency planning. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Bennett is turning in his grave as we speak.”

“Times change.”

“You’d let the Times drive us from Paris?”

“Not the Times, goddamn it…the Reds! Anyway, even if we don’t go, it gives us leverage.”

Depressing, he thought, hanging up, standing up and looking from his fifth-floor window across to the Hotel California. Down on the street he spied a chic couple climbing out of a taxi and heading into the hotel bar. It was nearly five o’clock and Swart realized he could use a drink.

“Martine,” he called. “Come in and shut the door behind you.”

He wanted to tell her without le Tac overhearing – just in case he didn’t know everything already. Of course le Tac, an old Vichyite, hated the communists as much as Jock did, but le Tac was French and so better to let him wait. Martine was French, too, for that matter, but Martine was different.

“The Herald Tribune is folding.”

She showed nothing. It was what came next that interested her.

“In Paris we stay in business.” He waited a moment and added: “For now.”

The face remained impassive. She could sit through endless meetings with the comité de l’entreprise, which represented all departments at the newspaper, and give nothing away. With Martine, no one ever suspected anything. He decided against telling her anything about Walter Thayer’s latest brainchild. Was he serious – pull out of Paris after surviving eighty years and two world wars? Maybe not…gives us leverage, Jock said. Munich, Zurich, maybe Geneva.

“Pour me a scotch with a little seltzer, would you?”

She poured the drink and sat down across from him. He sat on the desk and looked down at his girl Friday. She had on the white angora sweater that shed a little and the skirt in green plaid with the big safety pin. He was so dumb the first time he thought you had to unpin it.

“I better go down and announce it before they hear it from the unions.”

“Go before six – before they head to dinner.”

The scotch felt good. He’d had an early lunch to be back in his office for Jock’s call and had eaten nothing since. The scotch, the safety pin, and his coming task helped lift his spirits. “I come over tonight?”

“I’m going to the theater tonight.”

“Oh.” He tried to hide his disappointment. “What’s on?”

“Molière–L’Avare.”

“Got a heavy date?”

“Not that heavy. Come over later if you like.”

They kept the damndest hours, the French. He finished his drink in a gulp and got up, frustrated. She looked wonderful in that angora but he didn’t want to hang about until whatever time five acts of Molière ended. Damn her! She knew Norma was out of town.

He checked the clock. “Gotta go. You coming? Tell le Tac, will you? No, come to think of it I’ll tell him myself.” When the time came le Tac would be in charge of finding a new site. Send him to Munich, Jock said. As an old Vichyite he’ll be right at home.

Three floors down Joe Marder looked with exasperation at the headline that had just crossed the copy desk:

U.S. SEES SOLUTION IN STRATEGIC HAMLET

“Jesus, Archer,” he cried, throwing the file back across the desk. “Whadaya doing, reviewing Shakespeare? Write a headline that someone can understand. What’s with you lately?”

Byron Hallsberg’s fluffy red beard tickled Sonny Stein’s bald head as he leaned over the editor. “Goddamn it, Hallsberg – stop!”

“Got the latest Sporting News for you. Cubs picked last.”

“So what else is new?”

For reasons no one, including himself, fully understood, Sonny Stein, from New York, was a Chicago Cubs fan. He was picking up the Sporting News to have a look when the siege started: Helen Lodge came through the door from the features department, bearing down on him; Frank Draper, in his ridiculous stentorian voice, shouted something at Dan McGillicuddy, slotman on the news desk, who was calling to Stein; Marder was chewing out Archer on the copy desk; behind Helen, Steve Fleming, the political reporter, was approaching with news about de Gaulle’s press conference; on the next desk financial editor Johnny Restelli was arguing about column space with Al Lodge, voices rising because Restelli was sick of Vietnam crowding out the business news.

Thinking things couldn’t get worse, Stein looked up to see Martine Treuherz in the doorway mouthing words he had no trouble reading: Ben’s coming.

Swart rarely came to the newsroom. Since the day they’d arrived together from New York three years before, he’d come down no more than a half dozen times. He knew everyone on the staff, made a point of it, but the thing Stein most liked about Swart was that he was an editor’s publisher, which is to say he left Stein alone to edit the newspaper. Swart didn’t even step onto the second floor on his way upstairs, always taking the elevator. His presence now could mean only one thing.

Martine held the door and there he was, natty in tweed and a two-tone, blue-white shirt and tie that fit the collar perfectly because it was Brooks Brothers silk. Stein and Swart were the same age but the publisher looked ten years younger. Blond hair versus baldness and rosiness versus pastiness was part of it and so was Stein’s chain-smoking. Following Swart, Theo le Tac slithered in and then came Martine. One by one people looked up, laid down their pencils, watched, and waited. This was it, they knew. Suzy and Gretchen came out of the library, copy boys crept in from the telex room, assistant editors from features and finance drifted over, even Maurice, the old-school French messenger who proudly did not understand a word of English, looked up from his racing form.

Next to enter, much to Stein’s surprise, was Eric Hawkins, editor emeritus, the little Englishman hired by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., May 7, 1915, the night the Lusitania went down. Hawkins became managing editor after World War I, holding that position until Jock Whitney bought the Herald in 1958. Hawkins still had a little second-floor office by the elevator but hadn’t entered the newsroom since the day he was replaced. His real office was across the street in the bar of the Hotel California, where daily he nursed his drinks, memories, and resentments.

Swart crossed the room and whispered: “New York’s folding; we’re not.”

Expressionless, Stein looked up into the publisher’s rosy face. Ben wore a faint smile. Sonny did not. He’d expected that after his little Paris sojourn he would return to New York as editor of the Herald Tribune, the newspaper that had given him everything. It looked like he might be in Paris longer than expected.

The madhouse hushed, only the clackety-clack of telex machines interrupting the silence. Stein sat on a corner of the desk, nearly on a level with Swart. Across the room old Eddie Jones trooped in wearing his yellow Herald sweater and sat down next to Eric. Eric and Eddie, the two old exiles, thought Stein. How did they find out, he wondered? If they knew, then the unions knew. Even as he held that thought, Stein heard the library door to the basement squeak, and there stood the enormous shape of Tonton Pinard, head of the union local, the communist CGT, come up from the pressroom to listen, though Tonton pretended to speak no English.

Swart, lanky frame leaning on the desk, looked out over the room. “I’ve just come from talking to Jock Whitney,” he began. “First the bad news: the New York Herald Tribune ceased to exist as of today, ending a tradition, as I’m sure you all know, going back to James Gordon Bennett, Sr., in 1835. It’s a black day in New York, and I have no hesitation at all”–Swart, too, had noticed Tonton Pinard and inclined his head slightly in his direction– “in saying that the Trib, as well as the World and the Journal, were killed by the New York unions. For the newspapers it was murder; for the unions, suicide.” He glanced at Stein. “We’ll have the story in tomorrow’s newspaper.

“Now the good news. Jock is neither selling nor closing the Paris Herald.”

They erupted in cheers. Swart glanced at Martine, who gave him a little nod and left for her date. Date with whom, he still wondered. Damn it! Why had he turned her down? She might have left before the fifth act. He should have asked.

“We will go on,” he said as the room quieted. “Maybe not quite the same as before for we’ve lost our parent, but we will go on. Jock is looking for another newspaper to partner with us,” in Munich or Zurich or Geneva he might have added but didn’t. “For a while we’ll be on our own, but the important thing is that we still have our job to do. We’ve still got the Times across town, no doubt thinking they’ve run us out of New York and now will run us out of Paris. They’ll be salivating at the news.”

“How do we know Jock isn’t talking to the Times right now?” asked Dan McGillicuddy, good copyeditor but great blob of a man who needed to lose a hundred pounds.

“Jock sell to the Times?” said Swart, “interesting idea.” A slight smile crossed his face as his eyes swept around the room, seeking eye contact, building tension, getting the timing right. “I’ve worked for Jock Whitney for fifteen years.” Pause. “Sell to the New York Times?” Longer pause. Then, vigorously: “He’d sooner burn in Hell!”

Again the cheer, this time not quite so loud, for there were doubters.

“Anyone but the Times,” muttered Joe Marder.

Across the room, Byron Hallsberg, legs up on his cigarette-scarred sports desk, sifted bony fingers through his red beard and called out: “Don’t want to be a party-pooper, Ben, but who’s going to get me the sports scores on time?”

“I’ve thought about that, Byron. I’ll be talking to the Associated Press about sports scores and late financial tables. The Times already beats us on stock prices because of their transoceanic teletype setting system. We can’t let it get any worse. The AP will have to push up their deadlines. It’ll cost, but we’ll do it.”

“Does Jock have any idea how long it will take to find a new partner?” asked Wayne Murray.

“He has some ideas, that’s all I know,” said Swart.

“Aren’t we losing money, Ben?” said Hallsberg. “Isn’t that what you tell us each time we ask for a raise? So who’s going to buy into a money-loser?”

Swart considered the question. He liked Hallsberg. Crazy as a loon, but utterly fearless. “Because we’re losing money doesn’t mean we’ll go on losing money.”

“So who’s he have in mind?” asked Dick LePoint.

Swart decided to probe. “I don’t know, Dick. Any guesses?”

“Wall Street Journal?”

“Jock wouldn’t turn this into a financial rag, would he?” said Hallsberg.

“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” said Swart. “The Journal’s been trying hard to get into Europe. It’s not news they tried to buy us awhile back. Jock wouldn’t sell. Doesn’t like the Bancrofts.”

“Those stock tables sell newspapers,” said LePoint, news editor and the only man on the Herald to wear an ascot.

“Yeah, but to whom?” said Hallsberg.

“Who cares?” said LePoint.

“I care,” said McGillicuddy. “Stock tables aren’t news. We do news. Let the Journal do stocks.”

“What if there are no takers?” asked Martha Gates, the best headline writer.

Swart missed the question. “What was that, Martha?”

“What if no one wants to buy into this money-losing proposition?”

“Ah, yes,” said Swart. “What if there are no takers?” He thought about it for a minute. “Well, then, I’d have to say that James Gordon Bennett, Jr., lying across town in Passy Cemetery, will roll over in his crypt, knowing that the Paris Herald was beaten by the hated New York Times.”

Swart found himself staring at Eric Hawkins and Eddie Jones at the far end of the room, the editor emeritus and the newsboy. Eddie wouldn’t care who bought into the Herald, but Eric would. Swart reminded himself to drop in for a drink with Eric at the California. “Whadaya think, Eric?” he called to him. “How about the Brits? Think they’d like a piece of the action?”

Surprised, Eric sprang up like he’d been called on in a classroom. “Don’t see how that would solve your problem, Ben,” he said, hint of a smile on his face. “I believe Byron was talking about baseball scores, not cricket.”

It got a laugh, relieving the tension.

“How about you, Eddie?” called Swart. “You want to wear a sweater with Paris edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer on it?”

Jones’s reading glasses balanced on the end of his broad brown nose as he stared, silent and expressionless, at Swart. No one expected him to answer.

“Just joking,” said Swart. “I have no idea who Jock’s talking to. I’d guess it has to be East Coast to keep the time difference to a minimum.”

“That means Baltimore, Boston, or Philadelphia,” said LePoint.

“And New York if you include the Journal,” said Swart.

“Sounds like the Journal to me,” said Hallsberg. “Hey Draper – wait till the boys in the Lincoln Brigade find out you’re working for Wall Street.”

Draper, who’d joined the Lincoln Brigade to fight against Franco and was known as the man who never laughed, suddenly laughed.

“Who’s going to find out?” said McGillicuddy. “Frank’s the last one alive.”

“What about the Washington Post?” called Suzy de Granville from the library.

Immediately all eyes shot toward Suzy, though Dick LePoint’s eyes got there first. More than one copyeditor had tried to make it with Suzy but after LePoint moved in things were settled. Most of them sensed that a leggy blonde like Suzy deserved a guy in an ascot, even if she was from Altoona. LePoint was twice her age but she seemed to like that, might even have set her sights for Sonny himself had not Connie Marshall been around. Beautiful, elegant, and aloof, Suzy had come to Paris in search of the noble roots implied by the de in front of her name. Suzy shared the library with Gretchen Kilic, petite but muscular dancer whose main distinction was that she never, whatever the weather, wore anything on her legs, claiming the elements were good for them.

For some reason no one had thought of the Washington Post. The Post was run by a wealthy, ambitious widow whose sole motive in life, rumor had it, was to make the Post better than the New York Times. That meant not only transforming it from a local to a national newspaper but competing with the Times internationally as well. The Times operated thirty-five foreign bureaus at an average cost of $1 million per bureau. Saigon alone cost $10 million a year. Was Katharine Graham ready to spend that much?

“Why not?” said Suzy as the room waited for her. “Washington’s on the East Coast – sort of.”