Some Here Among Us by Peter Walker Page B

tombs.
    ‘Who’s over there?’ said Toby.
    ‘That must be JFK,’ said Race. ‘Is that JFK?’
    ‘That’s JFK,’ said Chadwick.
    ‘I’ve never been here before,’ said Toby, looking at the pillared mansion that rose above them.
    ‘Yes you have,’ said Race. ‘I used to bring you up here all the time.’
    ‘I don’t remember that.’
    ‘Well, you wouldn’t. You were two.’
    ‘What were we doing here?’
    ‘We’d just arrived in America. I used to come up here a lot.’
    ‘Why?’ said Toby.
    ‘I wanted to climb a hill.’
    ‘Homesick?’ said Toby.
    ‘I just wanted a hill to climb,’ said Race. ‘I suppose I needed a view. Chadwick brought us up here, and showed us this.’
    They looked out over the city which in that cold hour seemed both solid – the marble dome, the great obelisk – and as evanescent as foam on the long tilt to the continental horizon.
    ‘So what did you think?’ said Toby.
    ‘What did I think?’ said Race.
    He looked at the city.
    ‘I loved it,’ he said. ‘I looked at that and I thought there was something old and deep here, which also belonged to me. I can’t justify the feeling. And something good, which is always under threat. Internal, mostly. And dark red apples in America . . . I remember that too, when I first got here.’
    ‘Apples, huh?’ said Chadwick.
    ‘Very dark red,’ said Race.
    ‘What were you doing then?’ said Toby to Chadwick.
    ‘Me? I was at the State Department by then,’ said Chadwick. ‘Was I? No. Yes. I was an intern with Clark Clifford, then I went to State.’
    ‘Who’s Clark Clifford?’ said Toby.
    ‘Who’s Clark Clifford!’ said Chadwick. He took a step towards him.
    ‘Not the headlock!’ said Toby, dancing backwards.
    ‘Clark Clifford was a great American monument,’ said Chadwick. ‘In fact, the last time I was here we had just buried Clark Clifford down there.’
    They looked down the hill at the innumerable tombstones.
    ‘He’s there somewhere,’ said Chadwick. ‘He was in disgrace by then, but he was still a national monument. So he got an Arlington burial.’
    ‘In disgrace?’ said Toby.
    ‘Banking, some banking scandal. Don’t ask. Jesus! Bankers! In his eighties he was taken downtown and finger-printed. All the same, he was the man who got America out of Vietnam. That was the finest deed of his life, he told me.’
    ‘You actually knew him?’ said Toby.
    ‘I worked for him a couple of years – 1972, ’74. I was a nobody, an intern. He was the great insider, about 1,000 light years above me in Washington circles. But he used to talk to me sometimes late in the office. I told him I had seen him at a demonstration. I had been in the demonstration. “What was the demonstration against?” he said. “You,” I said. That made him laugh.’
    ‘What demonstration?’ said Toby.
    ‘Against Vietnam,’ said Chadwick.
    ‘Nineteen sixty-eight!’ said Race.
    ‘Sixty-seven,’ said Chadwick.
    ‘I’m sure it was ’68,’ said Race.
    ‘He’s a marine biologist,’ said Chadwick to Toby. ‘What does he know? It was 1967. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is: Clifford remembered it too. I told him where I’d seen him and he said: “I remember that!” He’d been to all these countries to raise more troops for the war and there were no demonstrations on the whole trip, but then he got to Wellington and there we were. Ten thousand kids standing in the rain. He remembered standing at a window and looking down at us.’
    ‘I remember that!’ said Race. ‘I remember seeing him at the window.’
    ‘ You were there?’ said Toby to Race.
    ‘We were both there,’ said Race.
    ‘You guys,’ said Toby.
    ‘He even made a joke about it,’ said Chadwick. ‘He said there were more people out that window than New Zealand had ever sent to the war. But it was an important moment for him, he told me. He looked down at the crowd and he saw the signs, and for the first time he thought