The Rich Are Different (41 page)

‘But were you very ill? What was the matter?’

‘It was nothing, just exhaustion forcing me to rest for a couple of
months, but I’m better now.’ He smiled and gave me a kiss. ‘As soon as I saw you,’ he teased, ‘I sloughed off my nineteenth-century chains and felt twenty years younger!’

I kissed him back.

‘Sutton Place, sir,’ said the chauffeur after the car had been stationary for over a minute.

‘Thank you, Wilson,’ said Paul, springing out of the car with all his old alacrity. ‘Peterson, you’d better come up with us. It’s probably quite unnecessary but I’d hate to be assassinated by some Bolshevik at this particular moment because it would be so very tiresome for Miss Slade.’

We entered the gleaming foyer of a tall block of flats and I was led reluctantly into a lift with an amazing array of numbers on the panel.

‘I have the penthouse here,’ explained Paul as the lift attendant closed the doors. ‘It’s on the twenty-eighth floor and the views are really very fine.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said, trying not to think of twenty-eight floors receding beneath me. As soon as the lift stopped I rushed out before it could plummet to the ground.

Peterson stepped past me to unlock the door and when he moved inside, switching on the lights, I followed him across the threshold.

‘Paul!’ I had seen the view. ‘My God, what a sight!’ I exclaimed, as Peterson finished his inspection and left us alone in the flat.

Later I discovered that the building stood on the extreme east side of the city and that the windows of the living-room faced both south down the East River and west into midtown Manhattan. The skyscrapers stood facing one another like an army of monsters poised for conflict, and their glowing windows and floodlit spires gave the sky an unearthly glow. Despite the darkness I felt I could still clearly see the radiant steel and shining glass of those miracles of construction, and as I stood by the window it seemed to me that I saw a country barely touched by the disillusionment which the war had brought to Europe, a world still gripped by the nineteenth-century delusion that all scientific achievement led to progress while all progress led to the improvement of mankind. For the first time I understood why America had entered the war so reluctantly and retreated afterwards into isolation. America lived in a different world, a world of shining optimism, boundless achievement and unblemished hopes. The tortured failures and writhings of Europe would have seemed not only boring but irrelevant; I was reminded of a rich man who will not leave his castle because he is both embarrassed and annoyed by the crude spectacle of the poor man suffering at his gate.

‘I suppose America will never be invaded or occupied,’ I said slowly. ‘It’ll never suffer as the European countries have suffered.’

‘No country is impregnable from disaster,’ said Paul, ‘and not all disasters come complete with bombs and bayonets. Think of Roman Britain. The trouble didn’t begin when the Saxons decided it was an amusing place to visit. The trouble began when something went wrong with the economy and the cities became unmanageable.’

‘But what
could possibly go wrong with the American economy?’ I said amazed.

‘There’s a lot wrong with it already.’

‘But the stock market! I thought—’

‘That’s our rich golden façade,’ he interrupted, making a gesture which included the brilliant city lights with the market, ‘and at present few people care to look beyond it. But the boom only applies to certain sections of the market. Agriculture’s depressed. The government is essentially impotent and growth is unstable … Do you remember Tennyson’s Kraken?’

‘The monster that no one knew about? The one who awoke and rose out of the depths?’

‘How gratifying that your knowledge of Tennyson has improved!’ He paused to take some glasses out of a cabinet. ‘Tennyson’s Kraken’s sleeping peacefully on Wall Street,’ he said presently. ‘He’s an economic version of Frankenstein, designed by the investment bankers for a public in love with a roulette wheel, and one day he’s going to wake up and breathe fire in all directions … Why, how like Cassandra I sound! I must stop at once. Do you want to take a look around? The bedroom has a fine view to the north and east.’

The bedroom looked as if it had been designed by Casanova with help from an Arabian sheik. Hidden lighting illuminated the most incongruous feature of the room, an eighteenth-century ceiling inset with exquisite miniatures of cherubs.

‘My God, Paul!’ I called, amazed. ‘This looks just like an Angelica Kauffmann ceiling!’

‘It is,’ he said, appearing in the doorway with the brandy glasses. ‘There was a house called Cullom Park for sale in 1919, just before I left Europe, and when no one bought it I arranged for this particular ceiling to be shipped over here before the house could be demolished. Why are you laughing?’

‘Because it was such a typically American thing to do and I never think of you as being typically American!’

‘I fail to see your point. The ceiling was very fine. I saved it. I see nothing humorous in the situation,’ he said shortly, and walked out.

My heart thudded with fright. ‘Paul—’

‘If you don’t like it we’ll go somewhere else,’ he said, drinking his brandy rapidly.

‘I do like it! I was laughing in admiration – admiration of your American resourcefulness!’

‘No, it would be better if we went somewhere else. This is the wrong atmosphere. I should never have brought you here.’

I protested further but when he insisted on going I followed him in silence to the lift.

We waited in the hall by the shaft but I could think of nothing to say. I was too conscious of his tension, and in terror I saw the evening turned sour, our reunion ruined, our affair cut off before it could be renewed. I
made frantic efforts to guess what was going on in Paul’s mind but soon decided I would have had a better chance of understanding a series of Etruscan hieroglyphics.

The lift came. I had to think of a solution before we reached the ground floor and he made some excuse to abandon the evening. The doors of the lift closed. I looked wildly around for inspiration and when my glance came to rest on Paul I saw the deep lines about his mouth and remembered that he had been ill.

Memory returned with the force of a punch between the eyes. I saw my father hobbling back into my stepmother’s room too soon after a debilitating attack of gout and growling in frustration the next morning: ‘Damn it, it’s no fun being fifty-five!’ For at least half an hour I had been obliged to listen to a boring dissertation on the recurring problems of middle-aged men, and I was still trying to remember how my father had cured himself (his cures had become increasingly bizarre) when the lift reached the ground floor.

‘Well,’ said Paul stiffly, ‘we may as well return to the Plaza.’

I saw the memory floating past and pounced on it. My father had locked himself up with his current mistress in the belfry of Mallingham church and had made love among the bells. Obviously the remedy was to be thoroughly original with a touch of the spiritual.

‘Oh Paul!’ I said, trying to sound disappointed yet soothing. ‘The night’s so – so—’ Could I really say ‘so young’? I could and did. Desperation will occasionally drive me to excessive lengths. ‘Don’t let’s go to the Plaza just yet!’ I said winningly. ‘After all there’s plenty of time later for all that sort of thing, and just now there’s only one place in all New York that I really want to see. I know it sounds absurd but could we motor down to Wall Street to see the bank? I’ve been looking forward for years to seeing where you make your millions and dictate the economy, and I don’t think I can control my curiosity a single hour longer. Oh Paul, do let’s go! It’s not impossible, is it? Surely nothing’s impossible in New York!’

He swung to face me. I saw the stillness in his eyes before he gave me his special smile.

‘I’d be the last person ever to tell
you
,’ he said laughing, ‘that something’s impossible!’ And walking over to the car where the chauffeur was dozing and Peterson was smoking a cigarette, he told both men they were dismissed for the evening.

They stared at him open-mouthed.

‘But sir,’ stammered Peterson, ‘if you’re going for a walk—’

‘I’m not going to walk. I’m going to drive.’

The chauffeur’s head jerked up. Peterson blanched. ‘But sir! Sir, I’ll drive you if you want Wilson to go home—’

‘Do you want me to fire you, Peterson?’

‘No, sir, but—’

‘Then do as I say and go home.’

The two men backed away in silence as we scrambled into the car. ‘The
hell with them!’ said Paul as he pushed the starter on the floor with his foot and the engine roared exuberantly into life. ‘The hell with everyone! All right, Dinah, close your eyes and say your prayers – we’re off to Willow and Wall!’

I clutched my seat as the car shot forward. ‘Paul, have you ever driven a car before?’

‘I drove all the time before the war – when motoring was a true adventure! I lost interest later when automobiles became so predictable.’

Howling to the left the car plunged down another of New York’s wide straight boulevards before careering to the right into a side-street.

‘We’ll go down Lexington and across Twenty-Third to Broadway,’ said Paul as we shot underneath two overhead railways. ‘Scared?’

‘No, no. Does this car fly or am I merely imagining you’re trying to take off into the air?’

He roared with laughter as the car screeched into Lexington Avenue and at least three different taxis blared their horns.

We seemed to find Broadway more by luck than judgement but after that we had an uneventful run down to the bottom of the island. When I realized we had left the midtown traffic and were entering a business district which was deserted at night I even stopped cowering in my seat and began to enjoy the journey. I was just gazing at the surprisingly rural sight of a large graveyard surrounding an old church when Paul swung the car to the left and we plunged into the deep shadows of a narrow winding street.

‘That was Trinity Church representing God,’ he said, ‘and here’s Wall Street representing Mammon. Since this is New York you’ll have no trouble guessing which is the better patronized. Now’ – he slowed the pace of the car – ‘there’s the Stock Exchange, and that Greek structure over there is the Sub-treasury—’

‘What’s that very grand white palace on the corner down there?’

‘One Willow Street. How flattering that you should have totally ignored the House of Morgan which we’ve just passed! Now let me see – how does one stop this car? Perhaps if I turn off the engine I’ll be able to find the brake.’

I screamed but he was teasing me and we halted exactly in front of the flight of steps which led up to the pillared entrance. A night watchman met us at the outer doors.

‘How many floors of this building belong to the bank?’ I whispered as I tiptoed into an oval hall where marble pillars rose to meet some remote shadowed ceiling.

‘All of them, naturally. On the top floor we have the telephone operators, the mail room, the partners’ dining-room and the kitchens. On the fourth floor we have the tax experts, the economists and the advertising department, and below them on the third you can find the railroad section, all foreign operations and the municipal department. The partners’ private offices, the conference room and the library are on the second floor, and on the first – the ground floor, as you would say in England – are the syndicate
operations and the senior partner’s office – also the senior clerks and securities analysts who since the merger have taken over the great hall. And talking of the great hall, come over here and watch as I turn on the lights.’

I stood between two pillars as the switches clicked, and as if by magic the Renaissance sprang to life before my eyes. I was in a palace on the brink of a vast brilliant chamber. Huge clusters of lights blazed above us. Long slim windows soared above oak-panelled walls. The dim oils of sombre portraits reminded me again of a long gallery in some post-medieval mansion. Beyond the waist-high wooden wall which rose in front of us, a number of mahogany desks slumbered like heraldic animals on either side of a wide aisle.

I stared at the scene for a long time before I became aware that Paul was watching me. I looked at him. My thoughts were too primitive to be expressed in words, but I knew he could see into my mind and effortlessly decipher what he saw.

He smiled.

Still without speaking we moved down the long aisle, and beyond the doors at the far end we entered another hall where a staircase with wrought-iron banisters curved to the floors above.

A moment later I found myself in a double chamber of graceful proportions. One room was furnished as a library while the other, which I could only dimly see beyond the archway which divided the chamber, appeared to be a reception room of some kind. The word ‘drawing-room’, conjuring up images of twittering Victorian ladies, would have been inappropriate, even banal, in such surroundings.

We still said nothing.

I stared at his Attic vase, his Rembrandt, his leather-bound first editions and his flawless collection of eighteenth-century English furniture. The only anomaly in the room was the carpet. It was thick, lush and modern. It was also the colour of American money.

Instinctively I knelt to touch it, and as I ran my fingers deep into the rich pile I heard Paul turn the key in the door.

The quality of our silence changed. I felt the electrical excitement spiralling between us and knew we were locked into some irreversible pattern of wealth and power.

Turning abruptly he removed one of the prints from the wall, opened the safe behind it and pulled out a wad of money. When he fanned the notes apart, as a gambler might show a winning hand of cards, I saw they were all crisp new one-hundred dollar bills.

‘The finishing touch to our decor!’ he said.

I started to laugh. He laughed too, and suddenly his hand shot upwards and the bills rained down on us like confetti.

‘Oh, Paul, Paul …’ I could laugh no longer. I was already diving deep into the rising water of our eroticism, and the next moment when he was beside me on that soft sinuous carpet I felt his mouth closing powerfully on mine.