The Rich Are Different (70 page)

‘That’s wonderful!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’m crazy about kids!’ And I kissed her heartily on the lips.

Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I knew you’d understand,’ she said. The tears streamed down her face.

‘Honey, don’t cry—’

‘But I’m so happy!’

‘—because everything’s going to be fine! We’ll get married just as soon as I can get a divorce.’

She looked doubtful. ‘Oh, you don’t have to do that, Steve. I know Caroline’s just the sort of wife a man in your position should have, and I couldn’t be that sort of wife to you.’

‘I don’t want a wife like Caroline!’ I stared at her. ‘Are you nuts or something? You love me, don’t you?’

‘Darling, of course I love you – I’m having your child! But all that matters to me is that you’re pleased about the baby and that you’ll be able to share him with me when the time comes. It’s sweet of you to want to marry
me, but I don’t think it would work out very well. You’d want me to give up my career and I’d resent losing all my independence.’

‘That proves it,’ I said. ‘You
are
nuts. Have I ever once suggested that you should give up your career?’

‘No, but—’

‘Then why should I change the moment I put a wedding band on your finger?’

‘Listen, Steve darling. Don’t lose your temper. It’s not that I don’t love you and can’t appreciate the wonderful compliment you’re paying me. It’s just that marriage is’ – she fumbled for the word – ‘irrelevant to my way of life. You see, when all’s said and done, marriage is just a bourgeois institution for people who live conventional lives.’

‘Crap.’ I was really angry. ‘I don’t know why you’re scared of marriage but don’t give me that garbage about it being a bourgeois institution. Like it or not it’s an institution of the world we live in, and if you can’t face up to the world we live in you’re in bad trouble and so’s that baby. Have you ever asked Alan how he feels about being illegitimate?’

‘Well, I … well, the truth is …’

‘You’ve never discussed it with him? My God, Dinah, you’re going to have trouble with that boy!’

‘But he’s still so young! How could I possibly explain—’

‘Yeah, you’re so damned mixed up you couldn’t even explain yourself to yourself, let alone to anyone else!’ I got up abruptly and walked down the dunes to the beach.

She came after me, and when I saw she’d been crying I took her in my arms.

‘Forgive me, honey. I’m sorry.’

‘I will marry you, Steve, I will, I want to—’

‘Of course you do. I don’t see your problem. There are all kinds of marriages – we’ll just tailor one to suit us. You won’t be locked up in solitary confinement with a husband who beats you every night.’

She managed to laugh. We kissed.

‘I hope this won’t be bad for your career,’ she said worried. ‘People don’t mind so much about divorce nowadays, but it’s far less acceptable here than in America.’

‘Honey, the one thing the British would never accept would be if I knocked up their favourite Lady of Mystery, Miss Dinah Slade, and then settled down cosily with my wife in Mayfair and tried to live happily ever after. A second divorce won’t be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, but I’ll get over it and so will the British. Incidentally, how long does it take to buy a divorce over here? Are they expensive?’

This amused her, just as I’d intended, but unfortunately it turned out to be no laughing matter. The New York State divorce law is one of the narrowest in the Union and in English law too I had no grounds for divorcing Caroline. In fact according to the smartest divorce lawyer in London the only way my marriage could be terminated immediately would be for Caroline to divorce me for adultery.

Somehow I
found it difficult to imagine Caroline meekly asking a judge to cede me to Dinah. I began to feel worried, but since the next step was obviously to delay Caroline’s departure I sent her a cable which read:
REGRET BUT MUST ASK YOU TO POSTPONE DEPARTURE STOP CANCEL VOYAGE AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS STOP STEVEN
.

When I returned to the Ritz that evening I found with a shock that Caroline had already cabled:
REGRET BUT MUST POSTPONE DEPARTURE STOP HOSPITALIZED FOR OPERATION STOP NOTHING SERIOUS LOVE CAL
.

That put me in a tough spot. Since she was ill I could hardly tell her our marriage was finished. That would be hitting a fellow when he’s down, as the English say – not the sporting thing to do at all.

I was still wondering what the hell my next step should be when a letter arrived from my brother Luke. ‘Thought you ought to know,’ he scrawled, ‘that Caroline’s operation turned out to be bigger than expected and the doctors say she must convalesce for about three months before attempting to join you in Europe. Don’t ask me what the operation was because Caroline wouldn’t tell me and seemed to think it was kind of crude of me to ask. It’s something to do with those internal organs women have …’

‘So I said to the doctor,’ wrote Caroline in a letter which arrived the next day, ‘“if you don’t tell me the truth I’ll sue you. Was it benign or not?” So the doctor said no, it wasn’t exactly benign but it didn’t matter because they got the whole thing out. So I said: “My God, you mean I’ve just had cancer of the womb?” and he said: “Yes, but your recovery is progressing well and your prognosis is excellent.” So there we are. Of course if I’d known beforehand that I had cancer I’d have screamed for you to come home, but now it’s all over there doesn’t seem much point, does there? However, darling, although I don’t want to be hysterical I must admit it
would
be nice if you could come back for a visit …’

‘I’ll have to go,’ I said very upset.

‘She knew you’d say that,’ said Dinah.

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Jesus, Dinah, the woman’s just had cancer!’

‘I know, and I think that’s a very brave letter and I admire her very much and I hope she lives till she’s a hundred. But look at it this way, Steve. Caroline must know about us. If she doesn’t read the gossip columns herself she’s bound to have half a dozen kind friends who are burning to tell her what you’ve been getting up to. So naturally, since Caroline isn’t going to give you up without a fight, she’s going to do her damnedest to lure you back to America.’

I was on the brink of having a row with her but I controlled myself. Pregnancy is notorious for making women irrational and it wasn’t surprising that she should be jealous of Caroline.

I fired off a cable to Caroline’s doctor demanding a full confidential report by return mail, and followed it with a second cable to Luke asking
him to buy up half a florist’s shop and have it delivered to Caroline in hospital. Then I tried to figure out a solution which would be fair to everyone.

Caroline’s doctor reported that while the surgery appeared to have been successful the possibility of a recurrence in future couldn’t be overlooked. He recommended that Caroline stayed under his supervision till Christmas.

It was August by that time. I could return to New York, have a heart-to-heart talk with Caroline, get myself divorced for adultery, whisk back to England, marry Dinah and live happily ever after. Or I could stick around in England, welcome my illegitimate child when it entered the world and negotiate a slow, painful, long-distance divorce from Caroline.

I chewed it over. Whichever way I looked at the situation I had to admit I was in a mess, and finally I told myself I was in such a mess that I might as well go all the way and do the honest, decent thing.

I had to see Caroline face to face. It was no good cowering in England and sheltering behind a barrage of lawyers. I had to talk to her, explain the way things were and negotiate the end of the marriage personally with all possible tact and consideration.

I felt good after making that decision – rather as if I’d been to church after a long absence. However, then it occurred to me that I didn’t want to wipe Caroline out by a surfeit of decency. If I now materialized promptly at her bedside she might look so sick that I wouldn’t have the heart to tell her any bad news. I had to wait till she was fit enough to yell abuse at me in her usual style and convince me how impossible it was to stay married to her.

Scraping up all my diplomacy I wrote to Caroline and said I’d certainly return for a visit but for business reasons it was vitally important for me to stay in London till mid-September. I said I had been helped to this difficult decision by a letter from her doctor saying she was heading for a full recovery. Then I wrote to Luke and asked him to deliver the other half of the florist’s shop.

Dinah was relieved that I’d restrained myself from dashing to the sickbed but she wanted me to forget all about returning to America to see Caroline face to face. Remembering her experience with Paul I had every sympathy for her attitude but I wasn’t going to allow myself to be swayed by it.

‘I’ve got to think of Scott and Tony as well,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to see them and explain to them what’s going on. I’m sorry, Dinah, but you must let me work this out with my family.’

She at once said she understood but I could see she was becoming increasingly strained as my departure drew nearer. The climax came in early September when the doctor told her she was anaemic and ordered her to bed for a week. She lay limply on the pillows in a wonderful Parisian negligée and looked very white and sad and brave, like a lady in one of those old-world romances who hasn’t long to live.

I cracked on the third visit. ‘Oh hell, Dinah,’ I said wildly. ‘I can’t leave you like this!’ So I put off my visit home till November. By that time I really did think that Dinah needed me more than Caroline did. Luke wrote and
said Caroline looked just great and was even making bridge-dates again, but Dinah looked as if she could have a miscarriage at any minute and fade away afterwards on a chaise-longue.

I told myself I had to get my priorities right, and I began to think I should stay with Dinah after all until the baby was born. We could adopt the baby later to make him legitimate – maybe I could even adopt Alan too. Once we managed to marry everything would fall into place.

‘Have you told Alan about the baby?’ I asked Dinah.

‘No, I’m waiting for the right moment,’ she said but when the right moment never seemed to come I went ahead and told him myself.

‘Will you still play with me afterwards?’ said Alan.

I told him I would.

‘Once you and Mummy are married will we be a family?’

‘You bet.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Please tell Mummy not to let the baby out until you’ve married her,’ he said finally. ‘To be a real family you’ve got to get married first. Mummy has to wear a white dress. You’d better explain it to her.’

‘Sure. No problem,’ I said, and immediately knew I had to get to New York in double-quick time to negotiate a divorce.

I was still wondering if I dared broach the subject again to Dinah when three thousand miles away on Wall Street the market started to swing.

[2]

It had staggered in March. There had been a panic followed by a tide of selling but everyone had calmed down and the set-back had been described as a ‘technical correction’. By September the market had not only recovered but was breaking all records, and everyone was laughing at bankers like Paul Warburg and my own partner Martin Cookson who continued to forecast that doom was just around the corner. I took a middle view. I didn’t think there would be a huge crash but I did think there would inevitably be some form of decline. The bond business had been suffering seriously for more than a year because the investors preferred to buy stocks, and this showed that the public was more interested in capital gains than in safety and income. This was not only bad news for investment bankers but bad news for those who hoped for a stable market.

However I felt less worried about the financial situation after I had read the report of the Investment Bankers Association which had been holding its annual convention in Quebec. The verdict was that the securities business would continue to prosper and stock prices would climb to new heights. The ragged behaviour of the market since early September was dismissed with a flourish, and the Eighteenth Convention of the I.B.A. duly closed on a note of buoyant optimism.

The date was the eighteenth of October, 1929.

The very next day the market started to fall. Speculative issues plunged
badly, and although I cabled Luke to start building some defences around Van Zale Participations I had no reply until after the weekend. He and his family had gone upstate to visit friends.

On Monday the twenty-first the market plunged again. My broker cabled me to ask if I wanted to sell any items in my extensive portfolio, and that evening I booked a telephone call to Lewis in New York.

Transatlantic calls are impossible. There’s nearly always bad static on the line – assuming the line’s open – and it’s so hard to hear what the other party says that conversation’s limited, to say the least. But I picked a lucky moment for my call that night and by a miracle I could hear stuffy old Lewis clearly enough to picture every pompous notch of his Hollywood profile.

‘Relax, Steve! No need to worry … Yes, it’s been one of the busiest days in the history of the stock exchange and there’s no doubt the market’s had another bad break but this is still just a technical correction.’

I barely slept that night and booked another call to One Willow Street the next morning. I had to wait hours and finally I sent a cable instead. Back came a cable saying everything was fine and that the market was holding its own. Charles Mitchell of National City Bank had arrived back that day from Europe and pronounced the situation to be ‘fundamentally sound’. One of the great gods of Wall Street had spoken. The panic had now been officially laid to rest.

The next day six million shares changed hands, a busy day’s trading by any reckoning, but when I heard that two and a half million of those shares had changed hands in the last hour before closing I knew that some nightmare event was just around the corner.

I cabled my broker and told him to sell everything he could.