The Rich Are Different (98 page)

‘Curious how you’re so partial to Americans,’ commented Geoffrey, facing my fate with the same stoicism I had summoned to help me accept his marriage, but he was friendly to Steve and even went so far as to tell me he preferred Steve to Paul. Considering he had loathed Paul I hardly found this a compliment, but at least it encouraged me to send him a wedding invitation.

I was sorry not to see him at Caxton Hall.

Alan wore his best grey flannel suit with his new school tie, Edred wore a sailor-suit and Elfrida wore her favourite blue party dress with the pink smocking and sash. Nanny was dressed in black and carried a prayer book. Amidst a hushed dignified atmosphere which reduced even the round-eyed twins to silence, I ceased to be Miss Dinah Slade and became the fourth Mrs Steven Sullivan.

‘I did it!’ I said dazed to Steve afterwards as he kissed me. ‘I actually did it!’ The gold ring on my wedding finger was almost hidden by the enormous diamond he had given me to celebrate our engagement. ‘I’m really married … with a husband …’ I looked up at him to make sure he was there.

‘You see how easy it was?’ he said laughing.

Speechless with happiness I clutched his arm and smiled foolishly at the photographers who were waiting for us outside. The story of a notorious romance which had blossomed into respectability was obviously destined for attention in the popular dailies, and I looked forward to rising from the
pages of the
News of the World
to a paragraph in the
Daily Mail
. Perhaps by the time I died I might even qualify for an obituary in
The Times
.

The next hurdle was our reception for three hundred at Claridges. Originally we had planned a small party, but once we started inviting our clients the list had burgeoned with great speed. I worried about whether such a celebration of our quiet wedding was in the best of taste, but Steve swept my doubts aside by insisting that we’d earned the right to throw a party. I supposed we had, but when we entered Claridges I quailed at the ordeal awaiting me and wished we had retreated immediately for the honeymoon.

Two glasses of champagne later I was enjoying myself so much that I even forgot to worry about the children. Alan had departed with his governess for the British Museum, and since Nanny had had one of her ‘turns’ after the ceremony, the nursemaid Clara was left to struggle ineffectually with the twins. They had a wonderful time stuffing themselves with sausage rolls, shoving caviare down each other’s necks and shamelessly preening themselves in front of anyone who made the mistake of saying how adorable they were, but after my third glass of champagne I could regard even the twins with tranquillity.

The party roared on, but eventually a small sticky hand clutched my sleeve. ‘Mummy,’ said Elfrida. ‘Edred’s been sick behind a curtain.’

We rescued Edred and mopped him up.

‘Mummy, I want to go home now.’

‘Yes, I do too, Mummy.’

‘All right, darlings. Let’s find Clara and put you all in a taxi.’ We dispatched the twins and looked at each other.

‘Time to go!’ said Steve and I nodded thankfully.

For our wedding night we withdrew no further than the most luxurious suite of the Savoy, but at eleven o’clock the next morning we were boarding the Golden Arrow en route to the French Riviera.

[4]

‘So I finally succeeded in kicking Paul out of bed!’

‘All the way across the Mediterranean to North Africa!’

We laughed. I was stupefied by my happiness. The sun shone brilliantly on the splendours of Monte Carlo and the world floated past me in a sensuous haze.

‘Time to extend the dynasty?’

But I had lost my desire to emulate Queen Victoria. I was no longer obsessed with the idea that numerous children would guarantee me affection, and all that concerned me was that I should have enough affection for however many children I chose to have. ‘Maybe I should be content with what I’ve got,’ I said to Steve. ‘I seem to have made such a mess of bringing up Alan and the twins never listen to anyone except Nanny … But I would like another little girl,’ I added impulsively, unable to resist the prospect of married motherhood.

‘And why
not? Don’t forget you’ll have me to help you with the kids now,’ said Steve encouragingly, so I threw away my Dutch cap with relief and we did our best to bring home a permanent souvenir of our honeymoon.

Nothing happened. It was maddening. However, I was in such a state of bliss that nothing could depress me, and when I eventually returned to the office I found my attention kept wandering from my work.

‘I want to retire to Mallingham and do nothing but knit, give birth and lactate,’ I said dreamily to Harriet.

‘Darling, are you feeling quite well?’ said Harriet concerned. ‘You don’t sound yourself at all.’

‘Where’s all that famous ambition which won Paul’s heart?’ Geoffrey asked me later when he came to dinner.

‘Resting,’ I said serenely. ‘I feel like England – I’ve won the war, survived the aftermath and now I’m in my pacific stage. All I want to do at present is to lead a quiet, tranquil life and turn my back on all the blood and thunder.’

But unfortunately tranquillity had no part to play in the future Cornelius Van Zale had planned for me, and the very next day he achieved the bloodiest coup of his singularly bloodthirsty career.

[1]

I was just filing a nail and wondering if I were pregnant when the phone rang. I was in my office above Grafton Street. We had bought the house next door to our original house two years ago, and my office was no longer above the salon which had now expanded to the upper floors. I had the large front room on the first floor of our new acquisition, and although I had at first found the high Georgian ceiling chilly I had softened the severity of the room’s proportions with a judicious mixture of antiques. In a desperate attempt to escape from the rococo atmosphere of the salon I had acquired a Georgian mahogany pedestal library table which I used as a desk, some Queen Anne ‘hoop-back’ chairs and a matching pair of walnut bureaux bookcases attributed to Coxed and Woster. Cedric said I should have ‘gone modern’ but I couldn’t abide the new functional designs of the Bauhaus School.

After I had finished signing the letters I had dictated that morning I glanced at the sales figures. I still had my upper-class clientele but now my products had percolated through to the middle classes and I had just negotiated a distribution agreement with one of the better chains of chemists which covered the suburban market in the south. My current campaign was
to launch a line of multi-coloured lipsticks. Lipsticks had done so well in the three traditional shades of dark, medium and light that I thought the time had come to give the customers more choice, and when my male salesmen argued against the idea at the sales conference I pointed out that of the three types of customer, blonde, redhead and brunette, each type favoured a wardrobe consisting on average of two or three ‘becoming’ colours. Lipstick, I reasoned, should no longer be bought simply to match one’s complexion. It should be considered as an essential part of a woman’s costume. Seven new lipsticks were now in production and Cedric and I were engaged in a fierce battle to name them. Cedric favoured naming them after film-stars but I said this was too vulgar and suggested lush Italian names like Francesca and Venetia. Cedric snorted, and the battle continued with everyone from Harriet to Steve offering names ranging from the exotic to the banal.

I jotted down a note to ask Cedric if the sales representative for the North-East could be falsifying his figures, rearranged one of the roses which Steve had delivered to me daily, and was just toying absent-mindedly with my nail file when the phone jangled, making me jump.

‘Your husband, Miss Slade,’ said my secretary.

Nobody at the office seemed capable of calling me Mrs Sullivan. ‘All right. Hullo?’ I said. ‘Steve?’

‘Dinah, how busy are you?’ There was a hard tense edge to his voice. ‘Can you come over to Milk Street right away? There’s something goddamned odd going on at Willow and Wall.’

I was flattered that he had chosen to involve me in his work, but I was also astonished. Although I privately hoped that when he was sole senior partner I might have the opportunity to learn about banking at last, I had told Steve in all sincerity that I was willing to shelve my plans indefinitely. I knew he had to be thoroughly secure before he could accept me working alongside him and I had also faced the possibility that such a degree of security might never come. The sudden invitation to Milk Street not only took me aback but frightened me with its hint of disrupted plans, disorganized defences and a brutal bolt from the blue.

Telling him I would leave Grafton Street immediately I hurried over to the City.

They were expecting me at Van Zale’s. I was shown immediately through the dark Dickensian interior past the clerks to the back room where Steve worked. He had thrown out the heavy Victorian furniture, but the modern cocktail cabinet and functional sofa made me pine for the nineteenth century. On his desk stood photographs of me and the children.

He kissed me and offered me a drink. I knew he had been drinking heavily because his face was flushed.

‘No, I won’t have anything,’ I said. I never drank during business hours. ‘What’s all this about?’

He had telephoned America at four o’clock. It was not one of the days when he had his regular call booked, but that day was the anniversary of the
Glass–Steagall Banking Act and Lewis had planned to make a public announcement about the bank’s future and the formation of the new bank, the Van Zale Manhattan Trust. Lewis and Steve had been in detailed correspondence for some months. Everything had been organized and settled.

‘So I call One Willow Street,’ said Steve. He was drinking his whisky neat. ‘I want to find out how the press conference went, but all I find out is that Lewis is taking a long vacation in Florida and that no partner is available to speak to me. No one goes to Florida in June. All the partners don’t rush out to lunch or go into purdah at high noon. I raise the roof. I get cut off.’ He dumped an empty whisky bottle in the wastepaper basket, pulled another bottle from the cocktail cabinet and refilled his glass. ‘I place another call. I’m still waiting.’

There was a silence. ‘But what could possibly have happened?’ I said nervously. His extreme tension had affected me and I was sitting on the edge of my chair. I had never seen him in such a state. He resembled the favourite in a boxing match who had bounced confidently into the ring only to find his opponent already poised to knock him cold.

Before he could answer my question the phone rang and he gestured to the extension which he had had installed when he and Hal Beecher had worked together in that room in 1929.

‘Pick that up.’

We both reached for our receivers. Since Steve’s private line was being used the call did not come through the switchboard, and I heard the murmur of great distance beyond the erratic waves of static.

‘Mr Sam Keller in New York is calling Mr Steven Sullivan in London—’

‘My God,’ said Steve to me, ‘they’ve actually called me back. That means Sam’s been briefed. Sullivan speaking,’ he added sharply to the operator.

‘Go ahead, Mr Keller.’

For once the transatlantic telephone reception was clear. I heard a stranger’s voice, deep and charming, saying leisurely: ‘Hi Steve! Sorry no one was around to take your call earlier, but—’

‘All right, Sam. Cut the crap and give it to me straight. I want the whole story in twenty seconds flat.’

‘Sure, Steve, sure. Well, first of all let me say that there’s absolutely no cause for alarm but there’s been a little rearrangement here. Lewis has decided to take an early retirement. Now, Steve, I can’t go into detail on the phone about Lewis’s problems, but they were kind of substantial, if you follow me, and in the end he was the first to suggest that for the good of the firm he should retire.’

Steve was sweating. I saw his knuckles gleam white as he gripped the phone. ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘who’s in charge now at One Willow Street?’

‘Well, that’s just it, Steve. The Lewis disaster put us all in a difficult spot, and—’

‘God damn it, Sam, answer me! Who—’

‘Cornelius. He’s decided to stay here, Steve. In the circumstances he felt it was his moral duty.’

There was
an absolute silence before Steve said: ‘Get him. I want to talk to him. Put him on the line.’

‘Gee, he’s not here right now, Steve, but he sent you his compliments and—’

‘Who’s going to head the new bank?’

‘Martin. As a matter of fact it’s all worked out wonderfully well. Cornelius and Martin always got along, and Martin has the stature to head a new commercial bank. He’s taking with him the two partners you and Lewis planned to send with Cornelius, and the other partners are staying here, just as you arranged. Of course Cornelius will have to appoint some new partners, but—’

‘Cornelius can’t do one damn thing without my approval. He’s violating the articles of partnership.’

‘Well, of course he wants to work with you, Steve! Of course he does! But actually I think you’ve forgotten the written agreement in which you authorized the hiring in your absence of replacements for the three partners who were to go to the Van Zale Manhattan Trust.’

‘That agreement was with Lewis!’

‘Lewis assigned his powers under that agreement to Cornelius.’

‘That’s illegal!’

‘No, Steve. Pardon me, but we checked with Dick Fenton. Because of the wording of the agreement and the scope of the articles of partnership—’

Steve said what the Van Zale lawyer could do with himself. The flush had faded from his face and he was white. Wiping the sweat from his forehead he emptied the whisky in his glass before he spoke again. ‘You can tell your pal I’m getting the first ship to New York.’

‘That would be great, Steve. We’d sure like to see you. But don’t get too mad just because Cornelius wants to follow in his great-uncle’s footsteps – you know what a mystical feeling he’s always had for Paul. And anyway Cornelius really wants to be friendly with you about all this. In fact he was saying to me only this morning: “Gee Sam,” he said, “isn’t it wonderful that we’ve got Steve pulling the Milk Street office to its feet again?” And he’s right, Steve. We’re so lucky to have you there, and now the European economy’s improving maybe we can open a German office at last.’