Chapter 2

At the same moment that Bonar Deitz had entered the House of Commons, Brian Richardson strode into the outer office of the Prime Minister's suite where Milly Freedeman waited. The party director's face was set grimly. In his hand was a sheet torn from a teletype. Without preliminary he told Milly, 'Wherever the chief is, I need him - fast.'

Milly gestured to the telephone she was holding. She mouthed silently the one word 'Washington'. Her eyes went up to the clock upon the wall.

'There's time,' Richardson said shortly. 'If he's in the House, get him out.' He laid the teletype on the desk in front of her. 'This is Vancouver. Right now it comes first.'

Milly read quickly, then, putting the telephone down on its side, wrote a hasty note. Folding the note and teletype sheet together she sealed them in an envelope and pressed a buzzer. Almost at once a page boy knocked and entered. Milly instructed, 'Please take this quickly and come straight back.' When the boy had gone, she picked up the telephone again and listened.

After a moment, covering the mouthpiece, Milly asked, 'It's pretty bad, isn't it - the way things came out in court?'

Richardson answered bitterly, 'If there's another way of making the Government look stupid, vicious, and fumbling all at once, I haven't thought of it.'

'Is there anything can be done - anything at all?'

'With luck - if the chief will agree to what I want - we can salvage about two per cent of what we've lost.' The party director dropped into a chair. He added glumly, 'The way things are, even two per cent is worth saving.'

Milly was listening to the telephone. 'Yes,' she said. 'I have that.' With her free hand she wrote another note. Covering the mouthpiece again, she told Richardson, 'The President has left the White House and is driving to the Capitol.'

He answered sourly, 'Hooray for him. I hope he knows the way.'

Milly noted the time: 3.30.

Brian Richardson got up and came close beside her. 'Milly,' he said, 'the hell with everything. Let's get married.' He paused, then added, 'I've started my divorce. Eloise is helping.'

'Oh, Brian!' Suddenly her eyes were moist. 'You pick the strangest times.' Her hand still cupped the telephone.

'There is no time - no right time ever.' He said roughly, 'We have to take what we can get.'

'I wish I were as sure as you,' she told him. 'I've thought about it; thought so much.'

'Look,' he urged, 'there's going to be a war - everybody says so; and anything can happen. Let's grab whatever's left and make the most of it.'

'If only it were that simple.' Milly sighed.

He said defiantly, 'We can make it that simple.'

Unhappily she answered, 'Brian darling, I don't know. Honestly, I don't know.'

Or do I know? she thought. Is it that I want too much: independence and marriage - the best of both, surrendering neither one? It couldn't be done, she knew. Perhaps independence had been something she had had too long.

He said awkwardly, 'I love you Milly. I guess I told you, and it hasn't changed.' He wished he could express the deeper things he felt. For some things it was hard to find the words.

Milly pleaded: 'Can't we, just for a while, go on as we are?'

Just for a while. That was the way, he thought, that it always was and would be. Just for a while, and sooner or later one of them would decide the time had come to end.

'I guess so,' he said. He had a sense of losing something he had never really possessed.