Spearfield's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’ll have to leave. Our government does everything the Americans ask.”
    â€œDo you think I should write the story, Pierre?”
    It was his turn to hesitate, then he nodded. “It should be written by someone. This is my country—I don’t think we should be the victims of both the Communists and the Americans.”
    He bowed and went across the restaurant to his wife. As she ate her dinner, for which she now had no taste, Cleo looked across at them sitting stiffly opposite each other like strangers. Then she saw Madame Cain’s hand slide across the table and press her husband’s. It was only a small gesture, one that Cleo had seen dozens of times in restaurants in Sydney; but this time she wanted to weep. She bent her head, feeling the tears in her eyes.
    â€œSomething wrong?” said Tom.
    â€œI’m feeling female, sentimental and compassionate.” She looked up at him and wiped her eyes with her napkin. “A cynic like you wouldn’t understand.”
    He looked at her, then across at the Cains, then back at her. “I can understand people still being in love after twenty or thirty years. My folks still are. Only thing is, they’ve been luckier than those two over there. When things are like they are with the Cains, maybe all they have is each other. I don’t think they have any kids.”
    It was almost as if she were looking at him for the first time. She had seen him virtually every day since she had been here and she had appreciated his company; though he talked about wanting to take her to bed, he had never made a physical pass at her; he had never come at her as strongly and bluntly as some of the other men with time on their hands in Saigon. Sometimes his cynicism annoyed her, but it was no worse than that of most of the other correspondents; God knows, in a year’s time, if she stayed here that long, she might be just as bad. She knew nothing of what he sent back to the chain of newspapers in the American Mid-West. She realized all at once that she knew nothing at all about him, that behind the withdrawn eyes was a total stranger.
    â€œWho are you, Tom? What are you?”
    He smiled, sipped his wine. “A Budweiser boy with pretensions maybe, I don’t know. I’m American provincial, right out of the mould. My dad’s people and my mother’s, too, came down the Wilderness Road out of Kentucky into Missouri nearly one hudred and fifty years ago. Dad’s a farmer, not a big one, but we’ve always lived comfortable. The farm’s outside a little town called Friendship in south-west Missouri and about the only excitement it’s ever known is when a tornado goes through every couple of years or so.”
    â€œYou came straight from there to here ?”
    â€œNo. I went up to the University of Missouri, did journalism. I got a job on the Kansas City Star. I left there after a year and went to New York and the New York Times gave me a six months’ trial. At the end of it we parted company with no hard feelings on my part and no feelings at all on theirs—I was just another hick from the sticks who hadn’t made it. After that I just drifted—I even went to Europe for a year. Maybe that’s what I really am, a drifter. A newspaper bum. There are a lot of us. You only have to look around here in Saigon. A guy down at JUSPAO told me there are over 600 accredited correspondents in ‘Nam. There’s got to be a pretty fair number of bums amongst them, guys just chasing a story, any story.”
    â€œI don’t think you’re like that. I mean, you’re not out here just chasing a story.”
    â€œWhy am I here?” He was smiling, but the eyes were darkly watchful.
    â€œThe same reason I am. You wanted to know .”
    He put his big bony hand on hers. “I could love you, Cleo old girl.” He was still smiling and now the eyes had lightened. “Even with all your