The Rich Are Different (35 page)

In the end I said only the simplest words. I told him that it was all right and that we were alone in our bedroom.

‘What bedroom?’

‘The bedroom at the cottage. Bar Harbor.’

He sat up. His eyes, dark with confusion, glanced briefly around the room.

‘I’ll get you a glass of water,’ I said.

When I returned he had not moved, and I suddenly noticed that his trousers were stained and that water was seeping on to the floor. I had been so busy watching his face for some sign of consciousness that I had noticed nothing else.

‘Would you like to be alone for a minute?’ I said. ‘I can go and sit on the window-seat at the top of the stairs, and when you want me you can just open the door and call.’

He nodded. His face, devoid of all vivacity, was so blank that he did not look like himself at all but like someone I barely knew. The pain was beginning to show in his eyes.

I left the room and waited a long time. It was very difficult not to go back, tap on the door and ask if he was all right, but I knew I had to wait until he was ready for me. It was over an hour before he opened the door and looked down the corridor to the stairs.

‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘are you still there? You shouldn’t have waited all this time. I’ve been asleep.’

‘That’s all right.’ I stood up, smoothed my skirt and walked towards him. For a moment he watched me before he turned to disappear into the bedroom. ‘Do you feel better now?’ I said as I followed him inside.

‘Of course. You weren’t foolish enough to send for a doctor, were you?’

‘No.’

The room was immaculate. He had cleaned everything up, changed his suit and covered a cut on his cheekbone with a strip of plaster.

‘Well now,’ he said, ‘where were we? I think we were talking about O’Reilly.’

I saw at once that despite his normal tone of voice he was so disturbed that it was difficult to look at him without flinching.

‘We don’t have to talk about that now, Paul,’ I said steadily. ‘O’Reilly’s not important at present and neither is Miss Slade. We’re the ones who are important, you and I. I know you must hate me knowing, but you needn’t. I understand everything much better now. I’m only sorry I didn’t know from the beginning because if I had I wouldn’t have made you endure all those awkward discussions about having children.’

‘You would never have married me.’

He spoke as if there could be no doubt whatever about it, and although I at once repudiated the statement as strongly as possible I saw he could not believe me. I was appalled. I had never before thought much about the
difficulties of epileptics, but now I realized with shock that their sufferings extended far beyond their seizures.

At that point his air of nonchalance, which must have cost him so much to assume, dissolved distressingly before my eyes.

‘Oh my God,’ he said, sinking down on the bed and giving way to utter despair. ‘If Jay could see me now!’

‘This was at the bottom of your whole relationship with Jay, wasn’t it?’

‘He knew,’ he said, squeezing his hands together until the knuckles shone white, and those two simple syllables at once suggested unimaginable horror and shame. ‘It gave him power over me. He put me through hell and enjoyed it. After that I could never rest until my power equalled his … and surpassed it …’ He stopped.

‘Everything Stewart and Greg said was true, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. It was all true, all the unspeakable things. And even my worst nightmares are coming to life. This is the second attack I’ve had in a month, Sylvia.’

‘How often does it happen?’

‘I was well for over thirty years. Then after Vicky’s death it came back. It was just once but always afterwards I was afraid … Then after Jay died there was another seizure, but Europe … I was well there and for some time afterwards. But this is the third attack I’ve had during the past year. The other two times I managed to be alone.’

‘Is there much warning?’

‘Directly before the attack I have half a dozen seconds but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. However, long before the aura I can usually tell when I’m in danger and then I do everything I can to head off an attack. I’ve been very near an attack at least a dozen times since Jay died but mostly the attacks have never happened – sometimes I think I merely imagine I’m close to one because I’m so afraid of it happening. It’s difficult to tell.’ He rubbed his eyes nervously with his hand as if to erase the memory. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like. You’re always wondering when it’s going to happen again, wondering where you’ll be, who’ll see you, who’ll find out, who’ll talk, who’ll laugh, who’ll sneer behind your back and say you’re insane. But my form of the illness has nothing to do with insanity—’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘—and that’s what makes it all the more unendurable, to have a quick, sharp, clear mind and yet be unable to stop it exploding, careering out of control—’

‘Yes.’

‘Those seconds of hallucinations – that terrible moment when you know you’re going to disintegrate – and in such a disgusting, repulsive,
uncivilized
manner … I’ve only to think of it and I feel unspeakably debased. I’ve never been able to tell anyone, never. Occasionally someone like Jay has found out, but—’

‘And Elizabeth?’

‘Yes. She was revolted. I could see. She was always so fastidious.’

‘But surely—’

‘Oh
yes, she tried to hide it, but I felt so humiliated, like some sort of animal …’ He broke off again. ‘I can’t talk about it any more.’

‘I have only one more question. What can I do to help you avoid these attacks?’

He gave me a thin smile. ‘You already do all you can. Sex helps.’ He winced as if the blunt words offended him but when he spoke again I realized he was only afraid they had offended me. ‘I mean that the times when we make love are very important.’

‘Yes.’ I wanted to communicate to him that he could be as blunt as he wished so long as he told me the truth. ‘I understand – or at least I think I do. Anything which helps you relax is important.’

‘Every case is different. What helps me may be of no use to others.’ He started to talk about his father’s triumph in transforming him into a sportsman. ‘I always assumed that my physical fitness was responsible for my remission,’ he said, ‘but perhaps that was merely a coincidence. However it certainly seemed to help when I was a boy, and later when I was a man and discovered women …’ He gave his thin tired smile again. ‘If I were in the mood to make jokes I could say I found sex the best sport of all. But it hardly seems the right moment for jokes, does it?’ He stood up and began to roam around the room. I longed to beg him to sit down but I knew that would annoy him. Presently he said: ‘I have to rest. You’d better cancel all our engagements for the next week, and whatever happens I’ll stay here and not allow myself to be dragged back to New York.’

I was greatly relieved. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t see a doctor?’

He looked bitter. ‘There’s nothing they can do. They know so little.’ As I watched he started to clench and unclench his fists in his agitation. ‘I’ll be all right. I’ve cured myself before and I’ll cure myself again. I just need a little time, that’s all.’

We were silent for some time but at last he sat down beside me on the bed and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘I suppose it’s useless to hope this won’t make a difference to us.’

‘It’ll make a great difference, yes. Now I shall find it so much easier to accept your infidelities – it’ll even make it easier for me to understand your attachment to Miss Slade. You were ill after Jay’s death and she helped you get better.’

His arm tightened around me. After a pause he said in a low voice: ‘I don’t know why I became drawn into such a foolish correspondence with her – no, that’s not true. I do know. Whenever I become exhausted with my New York life I think of her more often. She’s part of a romantic illusion – escaping to Europe, recapturing my lost youth, all those abominable middle-aged fantasies … I despise them, I don’t believe in them, yet occasionally I can’t resist indulging myself with them. But I’m still a realist, Sylvia. You’re my reality, New York is my reality, and I know that even when I’m writing silly letters to Dinah Slade.’

‘Does she know about your illness?’

‘Good God, no!’ His
arm slipped from my shoulders. He began to twist his hands together but I covered them with mine.

‘Don’t, Paul. Everything’s going to be all right.’

‘Of course. But what the devil am I going to do with O’Reilly? I can’t possibly fire him. He knows too much about me.’ And at last I heard the full story of the Salzedo affair.

He talked for an hour. For a long time I managed to conceal my distress, but when he said: ‘And O’Reilly knows I lied to the grand jury,’ I gave an exclamation of despair.

‘I’m a fool to be telling you all this,’ he said at once. ‘I can see this is shocking you far more than my illness.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but if you at last feel you can talk to me about it, that must be for the best. Paul, I’ve always felt able to cope with our marriage so long as I thought you were being honest with me. I could stand the truth; it was the lies which were undermining my feelings for you. I wanted to turn to Terence because I felt you’d duped me and made nonsense of the trust I had in you.’

‘I’ll have to get him out of the house,’ he said, wringing his hands again. ‘I’ll promote him. There’s nothing else I can do.’ He turned to look at me. His face was white with strain and his dark eyes were feverish. ‘You’ll stand by me?’

‘Yes. If we can be honest with one another.’

‘But my illness—’

‘What difference can that possibly make to me? You’re still Paul.’

He looked at me as if he would like to believe what I said but dared not for fear he had misunderstood. Knowing instinctively I must show no trace of a pity he would only find humiliating, I leant forward and kissed him passionately on the mouth.

His response was painful in its fervour. I saw he had finally allowed himself to believe I might love him despite his illness, and although every instinct I possessed urged me not to make love to him when he was still in a state of exhaustion, I said nothing. If he thought I was rejecting him our relationship would never recover.

I did everything I could but when his failure became intolerable to him he rolled away from me without a word and began to dress. His face was very still. He did not look at me, and after saying he was going for a walk before lunch he left the room without a backward glance.

I was alone. I had the terrible feeling I had lost him for ever, just as Elizabeth had lost him nine years before, and burying my face in the pillows I sobbed until I lay limp with exhaustion. Our troubles seemed endless. The desolation stretched ahead of me as far as the eye could see.

[3]

He stayed well while we remained at Bar Harbor, but when we returned to New York he had another seizure. Again we were alone together, discussing
household matters before his departure to the office, but the recurrence after such a brief remission terrified him and he became obsessed with the fear of collapsing in public. That was when he went back to the doctors. He saw the most famous specialists and was tested for a multitude of illnesses, but the doctors diagnosed only the epilepsy and there was nothing they could do. He was told to live quietly, avoid the pressures of the business world and take only moderate exercise so as not to overtax his strength. He was also exhorted to take his medication regularly but Paul hated the drug he was prescribed and said it deadened his wits, rendered any exercise an effort and made him feel unwell. He had never taken the drug regularly before for any prolonged length of time.

‘But you should at least try to do what the doctors say!’ I pleaded with him, but he said it had been his father, not the doctors, who had cured him long ago. With great courage he abandoned his pills and began a rigorous routine of exercise. I saw his mind focus on his health in a mighty effort to subjugate his physical weakness, and soon contrary to the doctor’s expectations he began to improve. He returned to the office, he permitted me to arrange a few social engagements, and in late October he tried to make love to me for the first time since that disastrous morning at Bar Harbor.

The second failure was very difficult for us both. At Bar Harbor he had said later that day: ‘When I’m better everything will be well,’ and because this statement had seemed both obvious and sensible I had recovered quickly from my despair. But the second failure, occurring when he was physically fit and rested, shattered me almost as much as it shattered him. We tried to discuss it but could not. He found he had nothing to say, and I have never been one of those outspoken women like Caroline Sullivan who can discuss such matters as easily as they discuss the weather.

The rift between us widened. I was just wondering if I had ever felt so unhappy when Paul had his next seizure.

He was swimming in the pool, and had it not been for Peterson’s strength and speed in pulling him from the water he might well have drowned.

Terence had long since been promoted but his replacement Herbert Mayers rushed to my room to tell me the news.

‘No one must know about this. It’s not to be discussed,’ I said strongly when I reached the pool, and Peterson, white-faced, said: ‘Yes, ma’am,’ while Mayers added without expression: ‘Of course, Mrs Van Zale.’

I tried to deny to myself that it would only be a matter of time before the rumour was spreading over New York.

‘Why don’t we go away for a while?’ I suggested to Paul. ‘Have the captain sail the yacht down to Florida and then we can join the ship at Fort Lauderdale. It’s not the rainy season in the Bahamas, is it?’

‘Nobody goes to the Bahamas at this time of year,’ he said desperately. ‘Everyone will say I’m having a nervous breakdown if I go away so soon after that long absence from the office in September. I refuse to run away from New York now.’

But he
did. We spent November idly cruising in the Bahamas, and again he began to improve although we had separate cabins and he never once suggested we slept together. When we stopped at Nassau he spent three evenings ashore on his own, but I did not mind that and only hoped that the unknown women who spent time with him managed to restore his confidence. Yet when we left Nassau he did not approach me. The sun shone, the exquisite cays shimmered in the sparkling sea, but they were remote from us. I felt as if we were seeing them through barred windows, and eventually, realizing there was no alternative, we returned with reluctance to New York.