‘That’s so mean!’
‘It’s called tough love.’ She looked at Gerry. ‘I’m done here.’
He said: ‘I’ll spend a few more minutes with Pippa.’
Pauline stared at him for several beats, then walked out of the room.
She went to the Lincoln Bedroom. This was the one she used if she had to come to bed late or get up early and did not want to disturb Gerry’s sleep, which was quite often.
Why did she feel let down? Pippa had been defiant, so Pauline had spoken firmly to her. Yet Gerry had stayed behind, no doubt to soften the impact of Pauline’s reprimand. They were not in accord. Was this new? When they first got together she had been struck by how much they thought alike. But now that she reflected on the past she realized that they had often been at odds over Pippa.
It had started before she was born. Pauline had wanted to give birth in the most natural way possible. Gerry wanted his child to be delivered in a state-of-the-art maternity ward with all the high-tech equipment known to medical science. Pauline had had her way, initially, and Gerry had gone along with all the plans for home birth; but then when the contractions became severe he had called an ambulance, and Pauline had been too distressed to fight her corner. She had felt betrayed, but in the thrill and the challenge of caring for a new baby she had never confronted him about it.
Were they disagreeing more these days? Certainly this tendency to blame her for what went wrong seemed new.
A couple of minutes later he came in, saying: ‘I thought I might find you here.’
She said immediately: ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Comfort Pippa?’
‘Undermine me!’
‘I thought she needed a little tender loving care.’
‘Look. We can be strict or we can be indulgent, but the worst thing is to be divided. Mixed messages will just bewilder her, and a confused child is an unhappy child.’
‘Then we must agree in advance how we plan to deal with her.’
‘We did! You said we had to stop her smoking dope, and I said okay.’
‘That’s not how it was,’ he said with irritation. ‘I told you that Ms Judd wanted her to stop, and you decided to make that happen. I wasn’t consulted.’
‘Did you think we should let her carry on?’
‘I would have liked to discuss it with her, rather than just give her a command.’
‘She’s getting too old to obey us or listen to our advice. All we can do is warn her of consequences. And that’s what I did.’
‘But you scared her.’
‘Good!’
Outside the door a voice said: ‘Dinner is ready, Madam President.’
They walked along the Center Hall to the Dining Room, at the west end of the building next to the kitchen. There was a small round table in the middle and two tall windows looking over the North Lawn with its fountain. Pippa came in a minute later.
As Pauline took her first mouthful of breaded shrimp, her phone rang. It was Sandip Chakraborty. She stood up, stepped away from the table, and turned her back. ‘What is it, Sandip?’
‘James Moore got wind of the postponement of our resolution,’ he said. ‘He’s on CNN now. You might want to take a look. He’s hitting this hard.’
‘Okay. Stay on the line.’ She said to the others: ‘Excuse me for a minute.’
Next door to the Dining Room was a small room known as the Beauty Salon, though Pauline did not use it as such. However, it had a TV and she went in and turned it on.
Moore was in a basketball arena filled with his fans. He stood on a stage with a microphone in his hand and spoke without notes. He was wearing cowboy boots with pointed toes. Behind him was a backdrop of stars and stripes.
He was saying: ‘Now, how many of the good people in this room could have told President Green not to put her faith in the United Nations?’
The camera panned across the audience, most of them dressed casually, with ‘Jimmy’ on their Tshirts and baseball caps.
‘Oh!’ said Moore. ‘All of you have your hands up!’ They laughed. ‘So what we’re saying is that anybody here could have set Pauline straight!’ He came all the way downstage and looked into the auditorium. ‘I see some little kids here in the front with their hands up.’ The camera quickly moved to the front row. ‘Well, maybe even they could have told her.’ He was like a stand-up comic, with all the pauses in the right places.
‘Now, if you choose to make me your president . . .’ There was a long round of applause for the modesty of if you choose. ‘Let me tell you how I will speak to the president of China.’ He paused. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t take long.’ Pause for laughter.