Chapter 22
"My speech... where on earth is my speech" Albert paced frantically around his study mumbling to himself. "I'm pretty sure I saw the damn thing an hour ago, where has it gone?" he raised his voice irritated.
George opened the heavy, mahogany door and walked into the room. Albert ignored him, still shuffling papers on his desk and pulling out drawers.
"Ah, Albert, here you are... are you ready then, the Mayor's limo will be here in about fifteen minutes."
Albert turned towards him frowning and obviously bad-tempered.
"Yes, I'm ready... well no, I can't find the wretched speech... as if the ground has opened up and swallowed it!"
"What is all this noise" said Candy pleasantly as she entered the study dressed in a delightful black evening gown. "Is there something the matter?"
George answered for Albert "it's his speech, he seems to have misplaced the papers."
Candy's eyes opened wide and seemed genuinely baffled when she replied "what do you mean misplaced, his speech is in the breast-pocket of his suit, I put it there myself about an hour ago."
Albert raised his head to look at her as if struck by a sudden realisation, then fumbled with the jacket of his suit hastily "of course... right you are, it is here, thank God! Why didn't you say anything!"
Candy rolled her eyes but was cheerful when she replied "but I did sweetheart, and you actually thanked me for my proactive thinking... I think it may have slipped your mind..."
George intervened tactfully "well, it is an extremely significant occasion so it is natural to be a bit...ahem... forgetful."
Albert seemed suddenly unsure of himself "I must confess to both of you that I am not looking forward to this event tonight."
Candy walked towards him; she smoothed out non-existent creases on his suit and straightened his bow-tie.
"Oh Albert, Albert... my wonderful and ever so humble husband..." she looked up at him smiling and continued to pet him tenderly.
"Tonight's ceremony is a great honour for the unwavering dedication you have shown both to the business and the charities we support, ever since you took over the reigns of this family. You should be very proud of what you have achieved and if there is one person in the world who deserves some praise, then you are definitely the one."
Albert looked at her miserably though he was touched and grateful for her encouraging words. He kissed her lightly.
"You always know how to say the right thing. Come on then" he sighed and started to walk towards the door "I take it the car that has just parked outside is here for me."
"We'll be driving right behind you, your Aunt has already left and will be waiting for us there with Archie, Annie, and the others" said George. He patted Albert on the shoulder as he was passing him on his way out of the room.
"Candy is right, you will do just fine."
(***)
"...and yet, again and again we find ourselves asking the same question: Where are those leaders who have the necessary scientific competence, the vision, the common sense, the social consciousness, the qualities of leadership and the persistent determination to convert the potential benefactions into real benefactions for mankind in general and for the poor and disadvantaged in particular?
It is, it is said, Ladies and Gentlemen, easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is standing up and taking action. Tonight we are celebrating the fact that someone in our own community stood up and took that action. Tonight we are celebrating enthusiasm, commitment and sheer hard work. You know, enthusiasm is often neglected as a force. Yet without it there would be few achievements. Enthusiasm, you see, sets fire to the imagination. It asks "What if?" and "If I did...?" and the results depend on the answer to those questions.
Tonight then we are here to honour a fellow citizen who asked those questions and committed himself to finding the answers. We are here to say Thank You to the man who wouldn't take "No" for an answer, who brushed aside petty politicking and the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice, to fight for the greater common good. Even his enemies have to admit him an excellent communicator and judge of talent and character, a man who is systematic, orderly, energetic, solicitous of the opinion of others but decisive, intent upon goals and the consistency of particular actions with them. We are honouring a man among us who worked late into the night and early in the morning, tirelessly over the years, facing multiple obstacles and setbacks, even vehement opposition some times, to follow a personal dream. A dream that this great city, Chicago, could become a greater one. A city where all its people have the opportunity to thrive economically, where every child can have an education and achieve its full potential, where every citizen has access to the medical care they need, where a strong sense of community exists and keeps our city prosperous and safe.
There are still many who believe this to be such an impossible dream, a mere figment of a romantic's fancy, a project too grand, almost unthinkable to ever get off the ground – and maybe there is truth in that. I, myself, was reluctant to accept that it is possible to overcome years of indifference, neglect and broken hopes. And no, I am not proud of this weakness of spirit, Ladies and Gentlemen, but it just goes to show the sheer magnitude and difficulty of this ambitious endeavour. Having witnessed firsthand, however, the outstanding work, passion, dedication and integrity of all those involved in and working for the Ardlay Foundation, I can only say that yes, although the goal is tough and may forever stay elusive, there must be, no, there can be nothing to stop us aiming higher and higher in trying to make our world a better place for ourselves and future generations.
Ladies and Gentlemen... we live at a time where one machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. And yet, no machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. Tonight, I find myself in the most privileged position of presenting the Andrew Carnegie medal for extraordinary services to our City, to its most committed philanthropist, Sir William Albert Ardlay!"
The audience burst out in loud, enthusiastic applause, Candy and George clapping the hardest. Albert took his place in the podium and greeted the large crowd with a subtle obeisance, a hint of scarlet creeping in a swift diagonal across his cheeks. He turned first towards the assemblage of dignitaries on his right, then forward to address the sea of faces awaiting eagerly his words.
"Mr Mayor, Esteemed Board of Councillors, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you wholeheartedly for the warm welcome.
I rise to my feet on this occasion with a due sense of the honour that has been accorded me, if not a little fear, and -I hope- a fitting sense of unworthiness. For neither the inception nor the achievements the Mayor has already so kindly spoken about would have been possible without the extraordinary vision and infallible support of my beloved wife, Candice, my family and the many exceptional people who work for the Ardlay Foundation, often without appreciable reward or acknowledgement.
To me, they are the true heroes of all we are trying to achieve, the real stars of tonight's celebration. As for this special award, I hope it will be given, in the future, to others cut from the same cloth. I am pleased and grateful to accept it now, but I take it in their names and in their trust.
It will come as no surprise to anyone here tonight to hear that this incredible journey, which I continuously remind myself is only the beginning, has been the result of witnessing poverty, hopelessness and injustice, both personally during the period I was suffering from amnesia but mostly through the experiences of the people I have come to know through my travels and in my personal life.
And yes, it is fair to also say that at times, the task of setting up this large organisation felt tiresome and laborious, tense and straining, the goal almost unconquerable, even futile. Again and again I had to seek fresh inspiration from the words of my favourite poet, Aeschylus just to keep us from giving up. He wrote:
"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
The work we endeavour to do in the Ardlay Foundation has opened my eyes to the multiple facets of despair and hopelessness that blight our society and the great need for further sacrifice and reform to give our city the opportunity to progress and flourish in the future.
Ladies and Gentlemen, there are so many unspoken dilemmas facing us today - in an increasingly infantilised world where so much seems to be split into good or bad, correct or incorrect, acceptable or unacceptable, where complex ideas are chopped up for public consumption like food chopped up for a child, where so much is hygienic, attainable, safe, sugared, assimilable, digestible, pasteurised, homogenised and sanitised, in such a world our appetite has never been greater for the complex, the ambiguous, the challenging, the untamed, the sharp, the peculiar, the surprising, the dangerous, the ambitious, the difficult, the untameable, the elusive, the unsafe and the unknowable.
It takes little more than seeing the absolutely dramatic change in the lives of our fellow citizens, those frequently described as unapproached and unapproachable, who have benefited directly or indirectly from the support provided by our foundation. Our driver is not the – occasionally adulated – expression of gratitude, welcome though that is too, but witnessing time and again the return of hope in the eyes of those who have had very little to hope for.
I firmly believe that to apply any other test - to deny a man his hopes because of his colour or race, his religion or the place of his birth - is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonour the dead who gave their lives for this country's freedom.
Thus I implore you, Ladies and Gentlemen – we cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to enjoy free education, to help every family find jobs at a decent wage, to have access to healthcare they can afford, to get a retirement that is dignified. And we ought not and we cannot and we must not wait another twenty months before we get a government's bill to address these burning issues. We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone. So I ask you to join me in working long hours - nights and weekends, if necessary – to make sure that we keep the momentum going.
I don't make that request lightly. For from the window of my office where I sit, I see the problems of our city as clearly as anyone; I hear the outraged conscience of our fellow citizens, the grave concern of our nation, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts. And this applies to all of us, each and every one of us here tonight, and out in the streets of Chicago and further afield in a wave of urgent plea that encompasses our whole country.
For universal and lasting peace can only be established if it is based upon social justice. Who are our enemies? Poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbour. And I want to believe, no, I very much believe with all my being that these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we can overcome.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. There are all these discussions around us about whether believing in the power of a free market to be a force for good can be translated into a fair reality. To these questions I answer yes, its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched but we need to remember that without a watchful eye, it can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favours only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our neighbours, and our nation; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
And in the moments of profound darkness and frustration, this will be the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
I look into my young son's eyes and wish that one day, he will be able to tell his children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and justice and delivered it safely to future generations.
In our hands, my fellow citizens and friends, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. Now the trumpet summons us again in a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation" - a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
And we choose to fight against these enemies. We choose to fight them not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
Ladies and Gentlemen, esteemed fellow Citizens. Not long ago, cruel destiny denied me the pleasure of seeing my dearest nephew, Alastair Cornwell, grow old. As many of you will know, he volunteered to go to the War, joining the French air force, and it was over a glorious sunset in the vastness of the Mediterranean sea that we lost him forever.
A day doesn't go by when I don't think about him, about all the things he wanted to do, all the kindness, love and laughter he had to share. Amidst the few of his belongings that were returned to us, was his diary. If tonight some of you are wondering what it is that drives mine and my beloved wife's determination to leave no stone unturned until our city, our society becomes a better place, a fairer place, a place where there is opportunity available to all, regardless of race or creed, status or wealth, age or sex, it is the deep pain we still feel over Stear's untimely death; a constant reminder of the futility of fighting and the pointlessness of turning a man against another man. The last entry in his diary, as if written by some uncomfortable premonition, reads as follows:
"With a single stroke of a pen the world went to war. We wandered into the killing fields with minds full of yearning for the thrill of the fight, the thrill of taking another life without consequences. It took only hours, after thousands fell beside me that I realised we were not fighting for our own glory, but the future of what we stood for. This fight was no longer about the kill or the lust. It was for humanity, it was for our children, it was for our right to live. I fought, I fell, remember me."
(***)
"I don't understand, where are we going?" Albert tried to see outside the car's window in the darkness but curtains of opaque rain limited his vision to just a few yards.
"Did we miss a turn, Michael?" he asked the car's driver.
Candy placed her hand on his;
"No, sweetheart, this is the right way. We are not going home, we are going to Lakewood."
He looked at her confused. Candy continued.
"I thought that after such a long and intense evening, it would be better for us to escape to a place we both love, away from the lights and noise of the city."
He seemed delighted although momentarily hesitant, but Candy spoke again before he could articulate his thoughts.
"Don't worry, Aunt Elroy will come with Anthony tomorrow before lunchtime, she has promised him a big big surprise... his very own pony..." a glittering, infectious smile immediately formed in her face and he couldn't help it but smile too.
"Archie and the family will also join us, and you guys have the rest of the weekend off to go fishing, horse-riding or hunting, whatever you please. Tom will be waiting for you up at the cabin and then... well, it's up to you to decide on your 'boys only' adventure."
She didn't leave him time to absorb the plan or even express his deep gratitude for her thoughtfulness.
"But tonight..." she pushed shut the divider between their seats and the driver's to give them some much wanted privacy.
The silent protest that wavered on his lips immediately faded as she moved closer and snuggled up to him. His strong arms enfolded her in a gentle but firm embrace.
"Tonight, all I want is to be with you, my love. Just the two of us" she murmured while leaning over and kissing him passionately.
He reciprocated fervently and held her tight, almost frightened to let her go and break the spell of emotion between them.
"You were absolutely amazing at the award ceremony, do you know that?" she looked up at him, her eyes two overflowing pools of adoration.
A faintly quizzical look came into his incisive stare. He traced her burning cheek with a tender finger.
"Candy, do you really think that anyone was fooled about who is the real driving force of all the good work done by the Ardlay Foundation? Apart from the formalities and the speeches that were directed to me through the virtue of my family's name and the fact I am a man, there wasn't a single soul in there tonight who doesn't know that you are behind every worthwhile initiative and every success along the way."
She blushed, both too humble and too keen to soak in his appraising words. Albert went on;
"You saw for yourself how people flocked around you during the dinner party tonight, I had trouble finding you most of the time."
He kissed her again and looked deeply into her bright eyes.
"I am so proud of you, Candy. I am so grateful to have you by my side. You make me a better man every day we spend together and all the awards in the world cannot compare to the happiness I feel being with you."
(***)
Admiring for the thousandth time what an amazing body Albert had beneath his clothes was matched only by the ardent look in his eyes when he undressed her. Feeling the heat and warmth of his body pressed against hers, allowing him to take the lead, show her how much she could feel, how fast, was equally thrilling, as was doing the same for him in return. Until at last they were one, moving recklessly toward the same ecstatic goal, soaring ever higher, ever deeper, their unleashed passion disturbed only by sudden sprays of rain, like volleys of sharp arrows, rattling gustily against the bedroom windows.
...
The vast sweetness of silence pervaded the night and wrapped them in a mantle of content; like a song painted on the clouds, fluttering fragrance in ether's eons, echoing with words blessed, melting in the soft glory of the dark sky, love's message with strings eternal...