The Rich Are Different (20 page)

I had to go on. The prison gates swung wide before me but it was I myself who stepped inside and threw away the key.

I looked at Hal. I looked at O’Reilly, and suddenly I saw myself as the world must have seen me in recent months, a middle-aged man making a fool of himself with a girl young enough to be his daughter and ignoring his work to moon around some rural waterways in a nickel-and-dime sailboat. No wonder Stewart and Greg Da Costa had thought I had grown soft and vulnerable! My resolve hardened, my will toughened and all my old instincts for survival reasserted themselves.

‘We leave at once for New York,’ I said curtly to O’Reilly, and had the satisfaction of seeing his jaw sag before I strode from the room.

[4]

In the hall the hammer-beamed ceiling soared above me. I had to stop. It was quiet in the house, and at last, unable to bear the weight of the silence, I ran upstairs to her room.

She was sitting motionless on the edge of the bed, and when I saw her shoulders were hunched as if to ward off some attack I saw what I had subconsciously realized all along, that I had made the wrong decision when I had decided to stay with her. If we had parted at the end of July the farewell would have been painful but endurable; I would have returned to New York, hired her a business manager and arranged that she should be thoroughly occupied with her business. Now she had nothing and it was hard to imagine her coping with a business until after the baby was born. How could I ever have believed that the affair would burn itself out and leave us free to part in peace? The affair was not extinguished but exacerbated, our emotional desire had become an addiction and the pangs of withdrawal would without doubt put us both through hell. I felt sorry for myself, I felt even sorrier for her, and all the time I was cursing myself for having mishandled the episode of Dinah Slade from its lively original beginning to its sticky, drab, appallingly conventional end.

‘You’re going, aren’t you,’ she said.

‘Yes, I must. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, you always said you’d have to go one day. How soon will you have to leave?’

‘I’m leaving
now, Dinah. As soon as Dawson has packed my clothes.’

‘Oh.’

I sat down beside her. Neither of us spoke. After a long time she began to cry.

I started kissing her. After a while I heard myself say: ‘Come with me to America.’

‘Oh yes!’ she said without thinking, and then fearfully: ‘Oh no …’ As she glanced around at the walls of the room I almost saw her backing away into the security of the womb which Mallingham represented to her. ‘I want to,’ she said muddled, ‘but I can’t … not yet … I don’t think I could bear to be alone and pregnant in some foreign city, and here at least I have my home … friends … Mrs Oakes—’

‘I understand.’

‘But I could come later!’ she said in a rush. ‘When I’m not pregnant – yes, that’s it! I could bring the baby to America to see you.’

I pressed her against my breast again so that whatever expression crossed my face was invisible to her.

‘Paul—’

‘Yes?’

‘If I did come to America … when I come … I couldn’t share you with your wife. That would be against all my principles, but there’s no difficulty, is there? I mean, if it’s just a marriage of convenience – if she really is only a glorified social-secretary-cum-housekeeper—’ She paused.

‘I can’t help thinking,’ I said, almost too distraught to know what I was saying, ‘that this is an extraordinarily inappropriate time to discuss my marital affairs.’ And I started kissing her again.

When O’Reilly came tapping at the door I was in the worst imaginable state, half-dressed, sexually exhausted, emotionally annihilated and hardly fit to travel three yards, let alone three thousand miles.

‘Go away!’ I bawled at O’Reilly like a small child.

He went away but I knew that on the other side of the Atlantic the Da Costa brothers would not. Crawling off the bed I reached for my clothes.

‘We must talk of practical matters,’ I said hazily as I groped for my shirt. I hardly knew what I was saying. ‘When you write to me at One Willow Street, mark the envelope with my initials and not with any words like “Private and Confidential”. Then the letter will be sure to reach me. Don’t worry about money – I’ll arrange something with Hal. Now about Mallingham—’

She at once sat up and pushed away her tears. ‘Don’t try and convey it to me out of guilt or pity, Paul,’ she interrupted strongly, ‘or I shall start to feel like a paid-off mistress. The task of buying Mallingham back from you will be an incentive for me. Don’t try and deprive me of it.’

‘Very well, but I’m not carting all those legal documents back to America – the abstract of title alone would sink the ship. I’ll take the actual deed of conveyance and you can keep the rest under your pillow. Are you really sure you don’t want me to transfer the ownership to you? It’ll be some
time before you make any money, and I don’t expect you to work until the baby’s born.’

‘Oh? I’m to lie on a chaise-longue all day, I suppose! Really, Paul – how Victorian!’

Quite unable to continue dressing I abandoned my clothes and sank down weakly upon the bed.

‘Oh Paul, don’t go – please – stay here – don’t go away—’ All her strength had vanished and her face was once more awash with tears.

‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Oh Christ. Oh hell.’ This outburst was most unlike me as I consider it grossly uncivilized to reel off a string of even the milder expletives in the presence of a woman.

‘Oh, how could I – please, please forgive me!’ wept Dinah, mistaking my despair for exasperation. ‘I was so absolutely determined to be brave and gay and unsentimental—’

‘Were you? How sickening! I don’t think I could have stood that,’ I said frankly, and by some miracle all grief was erased as we laughed together again.

When I had finished dressing she said dry-eyed but incoherent: ‘What can I say? There must be something, must be, but I can’t think – everything’s hurting so much – no words—’

‘How about “
Ave atque vale
”?’

She shuddered. ‘So final!’

‘For Catullus, but not for us.’ I leant over the bed to give her a last kiss. ‘Take care of yourself. Forgive me. We’ll meet again.’

The next thing I knew I was stumbling down the passage. At the head of the stairs I paused to listen but there was no crying, only the silence of desolation, and I groped my way downstairs into the hall.

They were all there, watching me.

‘Well, come on!’ I shouted, in such a haze of misery that I could hardly speak. ‘What the devil are we all hanging around for?’ And leaving them gaping at the ruins of my urbanity I pushed past them outside to the motor car.

[5]

The ship sailed from Southampton the next day.

I stayed in my suite, ordered a series of light meals which I could not eat and started drinking Scotch. Since an undistorted mind has always seemed to me the greatest possible blessing I hated to resort to such a measure but I found the effects of hard liquor were more acceptable than the foggy aftermath of my medication. I missed Dinah unbearably, of course; but my state of mind was more complicated than mere bereavement. I felt disorientated again as if I were adrift in a vacuum, and my confusion was heightened because the further we sailed from England the more convinced I became that I had made the mistake of a lifetime. I should have stayed at Mallingham. I had been happy, my health perfect, my mind at peace. I
belonged in Europe so why was I now leaving it behind? I felt hopelessly out of tune with America, as if it housed a culture I could not begin to understand, and when I compared Europe with its beauty, history and eternal fascination to the cheap glamour and abrasive vitality of my native land, I could no longer understand what I was doing, heading westward into a succession of monotonous sunsets.

The ship was due to dock on the afternoon of November the tenth, and with a fatalistic almost morbid curiosity I struggled out on deck to watch my two worlds collide.

We were going through the Narrows as I stepped outside and gripped the rail. It was a beautiful afternoon, crisp and cold, and the waters of the Inner Bay were a clear ice-blue. They were there still, all the famous landmarks, the Whitehall Building, the Adams Express Company, the two-fold mass of Equitable Life, the Singer Building like a giant lighthouse with its cupola, and most magnificent of all, the Woolworth Building shining white and subtly spiritual in its resemblance to a modern Cathedral. For a second I closed my eyes as if I could not believe nothing had changed, and when I looked again I was aware only of the extraordinary originality of the view. I saw a hundred boats and a thousand spires; I saw the shining towers of my town glinting wickedly in the sunlight like a row of predatory teeth; I looked into the jaws of New York City.

It was then that the miracle happened. Perhaps I had always known it would. I was travelling sideways in time again, slipping effortlessly back into the furrow where I truly belonged, and when I looked again at that city it was beautiful to me, its soaring towers cyphers of a world where nothing was beyond man’s reach, its gilded spires symbolic of all that man could achieve. My pulse quickened, and my pulse was the pulse of New York, quick, terse and vibrant with vitality. My two worlds collided, spun apart as I watched, and now it was Europe which was ugly to me, Europe which was corrupt, ripe with decay, bound to memories which would never be reborn, turned inward on itself as it sank back into its war-torn, decadent past. As the illusion of romance fell from my eyes and I once more reached out to grasp reality, I knew I was no longer a refugee in a culture where I would remain for ever alien, no longer an immigrant racked by ambivalence as I floundered between two worlds, no longer a traveller seduced by a dream which would have robbed him blind of all ambition.

I was a New Yorker who had come home to New York.

The ship’s horn blasted in my ears and as I watched the tugs chugging towards us my confusion evaporated and my mind became brilliantly clear. Long-delayed decisions streamed through my consciousness. Deal with the Da Costa brothers. Shake all my partners out of their doze. Whip the office into shape. Dazzle everyone who thought I was either senile or dead by throwing a ball of extravagant proportions. Do something about Mildred’s boy. Talk to Elizabeth about Bruce’s Bolshevist leanings. Buy Sylvia a belated anniversary present at Tiffany’s. Hire a man who would set Dinah up in business …

I sighed
yet again as I thought of Dinah. Of course I would see her again one day. And Mallingham … It was unthinkable that I might not see Mallingham again.

The tugs were pushing us towards the pier, and as I leaned over the rail to watch them puffing with exertion, New York towered above me and I was drawn back into its mighty shadow.

The truth was that Europe was bad for me and it would be a disaster if I saw Mallingham again. And the really brutal truth was that I would be not only a fool to prolong my emotional relationship with Dinah but selfish as well. I knew nothing could come of such a relationship. What right did I have to keep her dangling, sustained by her loyalty to me, until I chose to resume our affair in New York? The affair could drag on for years and she, not I, would be the loser. It would be different if she were an older woman sophisticated enough to regard the affair with mere casual enjoyment but she was very young, she had admitted she was in love with me, and I could offer her nothing but an extended diet of pain, anger and humiliation. If I really cared for Dinah – and I knew I did care very deeply – would it not be kinder to cut her loose from me by telling her as soon as possible that our affair could not be resumed? She would still suffer, but in the long run she would suffer less. Of course it would be very pleasant for me to have Dinah available whenever I wanted her in the future, but after six months of altering her life beyond recognition I decided it was time I thought of someone other than myself.

The ship docked. The linehandlers were busy fastening the cables, and when I heard the hum of the city I knew I was home.

I thought of the child. It would probably die, but if it lived … That was hard. I gripped the rail tightly. Perhaps Dinah would marry when she discovered how difficult it was to be an unmarried mother, and perhaps if it were very lucky the child might have that nice boy Geoffrey Hurst for a father. It seemed the best I could hope for.

Perhaps one day I might … I tried to cut off the thought but it was difficult. I remembered how Vicky had looked at the age of four when I had been reunited with her, and the ship’s rail blurred before my eyes.

‘The captain says we can be first off the ship, sir,’ said O’Reilly’s voice behind me.

I walked off the ship into the chaos of the customs hall but naturally I did not have to wait. Dawson would be taking care of the bags.

I took a deep breath. My decisions had been made. Now all I had to do was implement them. Squaring my shoulders I flicked the dust from my cuffs, straightened my tie and then wearing my most charming smile to conceal my monumental guilt, I walked down the customs hall to confront my wife.

1922–1925

[1]

The
Cunard liner
Aquitania
reached New York on Friday afternoon, and I was at pier fifty-four in the North River to meet Paul when he emerged from the customs hall and smiled right into my eyes, just as he always did when he had something to hide. He looked remarkably well, very lean and tanned, and as he swept off his hat to wave it at me I saw his scanty brown hair was much fairer, as if he had spent long summer days beneath an alien sun. He was immaculately dressed, and knowing that every stitch of his clothing would have been made in England I thought how ironic it was that he would never have been mistaken for an Englishman. The English have a casual understated way of being well-dressed. Paul was much too smart, much too well-groomed.

I saw all the heads turning as he walked towards us and from a distance of fifty feet I felt the familiar pull of his magnetism. He had a way of walking that suggested he could cross a marble floor in hobnailed boots without making a sound, and such was his athlete’s elegance that it was easy to believe he was as tall as the six foot he always claimed to be. He was as sensitive about that missing inch and a half as he was about his thinning hair, and although some people thought him vain I knew his sensitivity merely arose from his hatred of imperfection.