‘Yes, Paul.’
‘It’s very important that we establish our business relationship right from the start and that it exists independently of our personal relationship – whatever that relationship may be. I certainly hope we can improve on last night’s fiasco, but if this proves impossible you should know that I won’t withdraw my financial backing. I keep my business and my pleasure in watertight compartments, and although they may occasionally stand side by side they never mix. As far as business goes I shall treat you exactly as I treat all my other protégées – and how do you suppose I treat my protégées, Miss Slade?’
‘Brutally?’
‘Sensibly. I don’t give second chances. I don’t tolerate failure. And I don’t give free rides. If you use your brains and work till you drop we can do business. If not you’re on your own. Do you have any further questions?’
‘No, Paul.’
I rang the bell. ‘O’Reilly, take Miss Slade to her desk and see she has all the stationery she requires. Good-day, Miss Slade.’
‘Good-day, Mr Van Zale,’ she said subdued, and then just as I was thinking I had put the fear of God into her she winked at me before O’Reilly showed her from the room.
[2]
The reports were on my desk at six. I read them on the way home to Curzon Street and without comment handed them to O’Reilly to file. The report on her proposed business reflected her ignorance of the world of commerce, but I was more convinced than ever that her ideas were promising. That day I had looked still further into the burgeoning chaos of the cosmetics industry and it seemed obvious that any smart operator, large or small, stood a chance of extracting gold from such a largely unworked mine. The time was right for a mass-market in cosmetics, as right as it was for a mass-market in automobiles, radios and phonographs. Warpaint for women, canned noise and gasoline-powered mechanical horses! ‘What a century!’ I said in disgust to O’Reilly as we went home that night. ‘“O
tempora! O mores!
”’ But O’Reilly, whose memories of the nineteenth century were necessarily dim, merely looked at me politely and refrained from
comment. I could well imagine him thinking how tiresome the older generation could be.
Dinah’s other report displayed her talents to better advantage. By the time I had finished reading her summary of Mallingham’s attributes I was convinced her property was an inspired combination of the Garden of Eden, the Promised Land and all seven wonders of the ancient world. Not even the most dynamic salesman offering a share in the kingdom of heaven could have matched the selling impact of Dinah’s purple prose.
‘Today’s Tuesday, Mr Van Zale,’ said Miss Phelps as I paused for my usual session in the library with my domestic correspondence.
‘I am aware of that, thank you, Miss Phelps.’ I was still thinking of Dinah’s paean to Mallingham.
‘The day you write to your wife, Mr Van Zale.’
‘Quite, Miss Phelps. “My dearest Sylvia …”’ I dictated two elegant paragraphs and when Miss Phelps could no longer keep up with me I yawned and picked up
The Times
. The obituary column stared me in the face. Flinging down the paper I began to prowl around the room.
‘Yes, Mr Van Zale,’ said Miss Phelps at last.
‘“… I have every hope that I shall be home in time to celebrate our anniversary, but since my partners seem to be incapable of deciding who should come to England to relieve me at the London office, it is possible – unlikely but possible – that I may be delayed here until July. I know you find it hard to be at ease in Europe but should you wish to join me for a short time …” No, omit that, Miss Phelps. Say: “Since you dislike Europe and since it’s unlikely that I shall be here much longer, I see no point in asking you to join me, although of course if you wish to do so …” No, omit that too, Miss Phelps. Omit everything after the word July. Simply say: “All our old friends here continue to inquire after you and provide daily reminders of our tiresome separation. All my love, darling, as always …” etcetera. No, don’t type that last sentence, Miss Phelps, I’ll write it by hand.’
As I went upstairs to change for dinner I decided I would have to try to explain to Dinah about the relationship I had with Sylvia. She would be much too young to understand, but perhaps if I repeated the information often enough she would eventually believe I had no intention of discarding my wife. I wanted to be fair to Dinah, and I thought it essential that she should have no false illusions about me. Fortunately, since Sylvia had no false illusions about me whatsoever, I did not have to bother her in the name of honesty with the saga of Dinah Slade. Sylvia was well accustomed to the Dinah Slades of this world and paid no attention to them.
I thought of my mother saying to me ten years ago: ‘Thank God you’ve at last managed to marry someone well-bred!’ but I cut off the memory before it could lead me further into the past. I had to be firm with myself. If time could be imagined as a corridor, I had to wall up the passage behind me and look straight ahead to the hallway, but this, as I well knew, was easier said than done. The view ahead contained nothing but dreariness,
while at the corridor’s end … No, that vista was really too depressing. It was no wonder I kept looking back into the past.
Again I dwelt on the concept of time, and again I toyed as I had so often before with the possibility of a fourth dimension. If that dimension existed – if there were no single straight corridor but an infinite number of parallel furrows in the ploughed field of eternity – then perhaps I could both escape my past and discover a better future. All I had to do was to move from one furrow to another. How attractive it was to think of travelling sideways in time instead of droning onwards in that same appalling groove! Yet how did one move from one furrow to another, and what guarantee did one have that the next furrow would be any better? And did a fourth dimension in time really exist beyond the world of semantics?
I found my questions as unanswerable as ever, but at least I could tell myself that the immediate future was not without promise. Dinah Slade was really a splendid diversion to my troubles, and besides I was becoming exceedingly anxious to see her promised land.
[3]
‘I know America is a classless society,’ said Dinah as we drove out of London early on Saturday, ‘but would you consider yourself some kind of aristocrat?’
‘America is by no remote stretch of the imagination a classless society,’ I said, ‘and yes, certainly I’m an aristocrat. I realize, of course, that by your standards I’m nothing but an unwashed upstart, but I do have a modest family tree.’
My chauffeur was at the wheel of a long immaculate dark green Lanchester Forty, and Dinah and I were lounging in the back. I was, I considered, admirably dressed for my weekend in the country. It was a little late in the year for tweeds so I wore a pair of new grey sporting flannels, a soft shirt and an Oxford blue blazer. My front strand of hair, bewildered by my boater, was clamped sulkily to the top of my head, and my feet reclined in luxury in a pair of shoes which had been delivered the previous morning from Jermyn Street. I had already decided before leaving the house that I looked smart enough to pass for forty.
Beside me Dinah wore her shabby grey skirt, a yellow blouse and a mackintosh which looked as if it had been left over from the war. Apart from the chauffeur we were alone in the car. Peterson, O’Reilly and Dawson my valet were following behind with the luggage in the Rolls-Royce.
‘I didn’t think Americans cared about family trees,’ said Dinah as we glided through the ugly suburbs of North London towards the meadows of Essex.
‘There are many different kinds of American. My kind cares.’
‘But what is your kind? I’m sorry, but after all you
are
a foreigner and I can’t seem to attach you to any sort of familiar background.’
‘How nice to find you’re as insular and snobbish as all the best socialists! I was raised among the Anglo-Saxon protestant hierarchy of the Eastern
Seaboard, a sect known as the Yankees and bearing a vague bastard resemblance to the English. They hide their ruthless pragmatism behind a social code which includes such masterly maxims as: “Be loyal always to your class,” and: “Do business with anyone but go yachting only with gentlemen.” They are clever and industrious and when rich and powerful can be extremely dangerous. They are a small elite minority who run America, and they run it through the great investment banks of Wall Street which control the country’s capital.’
‘Banks like your bank?’
‘Banks like my bank. I’m afraid, my dear, that I’m just another Yankee capitalist arch-villain hiding behind my venerable Dutch name.’
She asked me about my family, so I told her how Cornelius Van Zyl had sailed to America from Scheveningen in 1640 to become a citizen of Nieuw Amsterdam.
‘Subsequent Cornelius Van Zales were large landowners in what is now Westchester County,’ I added, ‘and intermarried with the British to such an extent that I fear I’ve inherited nothing Dutch but my name. This explains, of course, my natural inclination to villainy while always pleading for fair play and good sportsmanship, and my natural inclination has been reinforced a hundredfold by having been born a New Yorker.’
She wanted me to describe New York, but I merely told her that it was like a European city which one could never quite identify. ‘How strange it is to think of it now,’ I said, glancing at the Essex fields, ‘far out there in the west, roaring along in its separate furrow—’
I stopped. It was then that I first suspected I had begun my journey sideways in time.
The sun shone steadily, and although I still found the air cool Dinah periodically took off her hat and hung out of the window to let the breeze stream through her hair. The Lanchester was running faultlessly and whenever we passed through a village the inhabitants gaped at its splendour. I wished I could have dispensed with the chauffeur and driven the motor car myself, but in view of my health that was out of the question.
The countryside was pleasant but not spectacular, and the fields were as neat as fields can only be in land which has been farmed for a millennium. We passed through quaint villages and mellow market towns, unimportant since the end of the Middle Ages when England had turned from Europe to face the New World, and the sight of so many Georgian houses, thatched cottages and Norman churches slowly infiltrated my consciousness until I felt not only the weight of the past but a dislocation in the conventional structure of time.
‘Ten miles to Norwich!’ exclaimed Dinah as we flashed past a signpost.
Opening the map I saw the ancient roads converging on Norwich like the spokes in an old-fashioned carter’s wheel. King’s Lynn, Cromer, East Dereham, North Walsham, Great Yarmouth, Bungay and Ely – my glance travelled around the rim of the wheel and lingered in the east where the famous Broads of Norfolk formed two hundred miles of waterways between
Norwich and the sea. I had already circled Mallingham in red. It lay south-east of Hickling between Wroxham, Horsey and the marshes.
‘You’re very isolated out there,’ I said to Dinah as she too glanced at the map. I had not been to that part of Norfolk before although when Sylvia and I had spent two years in England during the war we had occasionally visited friends near the Suffolk border. I had always wanted to go to Norwich but it’s a city off the beaten track and not one of those convenient places which one can visit on the way to somewhere else.
‘All of North Norfolk is a backwater,’ Dinah was saying, echoing my thoughts. ‘It’s the end of the road and the tides of progress always seem to expire before they reach us. In fact parts of the Broads are probably much as they were centuries ago – except that in the old days the Broads were larger. There’s a most interesting account written in 1816 …’ and she began to talk about Broadland history while I tried to imagine a corner of the civilized world lucky enough to escape the twentieth century.
We reached the outskirts of Norwich.
‘Where’s the Cathedral?’ I said, alarmed, peering up at the mound on which the Cathedral should traditionally have stood and seeing only a squat plain castle.
‘Halfway down the hill … There! Nice, isn’t it?’ said Dinah with infuriating British understatement, and sighed contentedly.
A spire soared behind the massive walls of the Close. Grey walls shimmered beyond a cobbled courtyard. Groping for my camera as instinctively as the crassest of American travellers I leapt out of the car as soon as it had stopped and hurried to the gateway to stare at the medieval architecture.
‘Shall I show you around?’ offered the native at my side.
Feeling exactly as a lost pin might feel at the sight of a magnet I led the way swiftly into the Cathedral Close.
‘I say, you’re walking fast!’ puffed Dinah at my side. Even Peterson had to lengthen his stride to keep at the appropriate distance from me.
I reached the gateway and the magnet became hypnotic in its intensity. I was no longer a pin but a lemming, and as I crossed the cobbled forecourt my foot seemed barely to touch the ground. I did not understand my massive excitement; it was beyond analysis, but I knew that something of importance was about to happen to me. Reaching the porch I paused beneath the stone carved long ago by nameless craftsmen.
‘Paul, wait! Don’t leave me behind!’
But my hand was on the iron bolt and the small rectangle cut in the massive door yielded beneath my touch.
I entered the Cathedral. The choir was rehearsing the strange, unorthodox English hymn ‘Jerusalem’, and while the sun streamed through the stained glass far above me I heard the disembodied voices soar in an eerie reflection of William Blake’s mystical vision.
I moved forward. The arches towered above my head, and in a flash the past, present and future revolved in a kaleidoscope as I was displaced from my furrow in time.
I felt
horribly disorientated. As I shut my eyes Dinah’s voice said quickly behind me: ‘Paul?’ and I reached for her hand as if her presence were the one familiar landmark in an alien world.
The choir stopped. I could hear the choir master talking faintly. The air of unreality evaporated and I felt better.