[1]
‘My
mirror-image,’ he said. ‘My other self.’
‘Just like one of those unpleasant döppelganger legends. Schiller, wasn’t it?’
‘Heine.’ He smiled, kissed me and eased his body from mine. I was in a satiated stupor and had lost all count of time. Probably I was very drunk.
‘God, I’ve missed you!’ he said as I pulled him back on top of me with my last remaining strength. Hundred-dollar bills were clinging to his damp back and entwined in my tangled hair.
‘What was it about me you missed most?’
‘I missed the way you made me laugh.’
‘Oh Paul!’ I bawled, suddenly overwhelmed by post-coital tristesse, and burst into tears.
‘You poor little girl, I should never have written – I should have cut myself off from you entirely and let you marry that nice boy Geoffrey Hurst—’
‘Don’t talk bilge, Paul. You’re all I want.’
‘No, we’ve missed each other in time, Dinah. You’re too young to cut the umbilical cord which ties you to Mallingham and I’m too old to begin again in another world.’
‘Rubbish! Here we are, together again just as we were in 1922, except that on this occasion I’m the one who’s travelled sideways in time! Anyway, how can you say we’ve missed each other in time when we have Alan? You’re being quite illogical, Paul, you really are.’
He offered no further argument and gave me his brilliant smile as he started to kiss me. For a while I hoped he would make love to me again but at last he rolled away, reached for his shirt and offered me some more brandy.
‘If I have a drop more to drink you’ll have to carry me out of here!’ I wondered vaguely if his recent nervous exhaustion had made him so pessimistic, but instinct told me that the subject of his illness was best avoided. If he really had been suffering from impotence the last thing he needed was to be reminded of it. ‘Paul,’ I said, turning to a subject which I hoped would be happier, ‘talking of Alan—’
He was buttoning his shirt. ‘Yes?’ he said politely as I paused. He did not look up.
‘For God’s sake, Paul!’ I burst out. ‘Why can’t you talk about him? We’ve spent a whole evening together and you’ve hardly mentioned his name!’
This time he did look up and when I saw the guilt in his eyes I was so startled that I gasped. ‘What is it?’ I said frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’
He groped for words. That too was as uncharacteristic as his pessimism earlier. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. Alan’s a fine little boy and I’m very pleased. I … have often thought of him during the
past three years … and wanted to see him … I’m afraid I’ve never been greatly at ease with small children but just because I’m not demonstrative you mustn’t think I don’t care.’
I relaxed. ‘Of course! I should have realized you’re not used to children. I understand.’
‘I’m better with adolescents. I have four young protégés at the moment …’ And as we dressed he talked of the boys he had gathered to his house in Bar Harbor the previous summer and how he planned to reunite them there in July.
‘Cornelius is the little one with asthma, isn’t he?’ I said, remembering Paul talking at Mallingham of his great-nephew. ‘The one you were always saying you’d have to do something about. Is he still a delicate child?’
Paul laughed. It was a great relief to see him recover his urbanity. ‘My dear, Cornelius is an eighteen-year-old young man with the face of an angel and a vampire’s trick of going straight for the jugular vein. You and Cornelius!’ he added, laughing again as he linked me with this unappetizing character in a way which I could only find offensive. ‘Such ambition!’
‘Thank you,’ I said coldly, ‘but I’m not interested in jugular veins.’
‘No, just in the concepts represented by this bank. My dear, it’s useless to deny it – I looked at your face when you first saw the great hall and I knew exactly what you were thinking! I stood in your shoes once and thought the same thoughts. Why are you so upset? Surely you’re much too intelligent to be jealous of Cornelius!’
‘Much too intelligent,’ I said tartly. ‘But I can’t help thinking you ought to have more sons, Paul – and daughters too – instead of all these peculiar protégés. We ought to found a dynasty! I often dream of being a little old lady surrounded by hordes of descendants at Mallingham, although who would have thought that I, of all people, would have such Victorian ideas on procreation!’
‘Anyone who knew how starved you’d always been of a normal family life. Did you have your Dutch cap checked after Alan was born?’
There was a silence. I felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water in my face. In the end I did not answer but smoothed the beads on my dress with shaking fingers.
‘Forgive me,’ he said at last. ‘I know you were joking, but I suspect you were also half serious and I think this is a subject on which we should be quite certain we understand one another. I don’t want any more children and I don’t want a repeat of the “accident” which conceived Alan.’
‘Then why don’t
you
assume the responsibility for birth control?’ I blazed. ‘God, men are so bloody selfish sometimes!’
‘I—’
‘Oh, all right, all right, all right! Good heavens, Paul, what sort of a fool do you take me for? I know damned well Alan’s conception nearly ended our affair. Do you think that after three years of waiting and three thousand miles of travel I’m going to ruin everything by making the same mistake a second time? Yes, I did have the bloody thing refitted and yes, I jolly well
am wearing it this very minute, and now please talk of something else before I slap you in the face. What goes on in my body is my affair and I don’t see why I should discuss it either with you or with anyone else.’
He ran his hand through his hair in a distracted gesture and looked so miserable that I took pity on him.
‘Paul, I’m sorry!’
‘No, it’s all my fault. Any talk about having children upsets me. I can’t help it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to explain to you—’
‘Well, I think I understand. You did tell me once you’d promised Sylvia that any other children you had would be hers.’
A great stillness descended upon his face. His eyes were so dark that they seemed black. Then: ‘We won’t talk of Sylvia,’ he said, and turned away abruptly towards the door.
I felt as if the floor had moved beneath my feet. I even looked stupidly at the carpet but of course it was I who had moved, not the floor. I had leant backwards against the edge of the desk, and as the silence lengthened I irrationally began to count the scattered bills.
‘I’d better take you home,’ he said. ‘It’s late.’
I found my tongue. ‘Hadn’t we better pick up all this money?’
‘My dear, I’ve no intention of grovelling around on the floor collecting bills! I’ll send Mayers down early tomorrow to clean up after us. Stop being so bourgeois!’
I laughed, linked my arm through his and walked with him through the great hall to the foyer. I was still thinking of Sylvia and feeling sick. I wished I had drunk less.
In the car he said he would find another place where we could meet, and when I asked if Mary, Alan and I could move into an apartment available on a short lease he suggested we might try an apartment hotel which could provide the amenities of hotel service with the informality of a private flat.
‘That sounds much more suitable,’ I agreed with relief. ‘Then Alan can have lemonade whenever he pleases and Mary can cook his boiled egg just the way he likes it and I won’t have to worry about his toys being strewn all over the sitting-room. I do love the Plaza but—’
‘I’ll keep your present suite so that we can meet there.’
The journey uptown seemed endless. I tried to imagine what Sylvia was like. Perhaps she was not middle-aged and well-corseted but young for her years, her face cunningly lifted, her body rigorously exercised, her clothes the most fashionable money could buy. I had pictured her in perfect country tweeds with a cashmere jersey and a faultless string of pearls before I realized that the woman I was visualizing was English.
But Sylvia Van Zale wasn’t English and I was a stranger in her world.
Unable to picture her I could only tell myself that Paul had a wife whom he respected too much to discuss with his mistress, and this unwelcome knowledge disturbed me as greatly as if I had missed a trick in a vital card game. At Mallingham it had never occurred to me that his reticence about his wife could have sprung from reasons other than indifference, but now I
knew I had been mistaken. Indifference and the most meticulous respect hardly go hand in hand.
I was still searching my memories of 1922 for clues when we arrived at the Plaza.
‘Will you come up?’ I said in a low voice after the length of his farewell kiss had pushed all thoughts of Sylvia from my mind.
‘Tomorrow, not tonight. I’ll call you,’ he said, but when he pressed my hand impulsively against his body I knew he was tempted. He laughed, releasing me. ‘It was a marvellous evening!’ he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling, and suddenly it was as if we were at Mallingham again and he belonged only to me. ‘You’re a wonderful girl, Dinah!’ he said, as he had said so often in the past, and as the uniformed commissionaire observed us blandly from the entrance we kissed for another five minutes before Paul let me go.
I watched his car disappear and at once I became aware of the cold night air, the lateness of the hour and my own isolation. With a shiver I ran into the hotel, but long after I had gone to bed I lay awake thinking of him driving home up Fifth Avenue to the wife he refused to discuss.
[2]
Later I made a renewed effort to be sensible. There was no reason why Paul should not be fond of Sylvia. They had been married for many years and she no doubt worked hard at the challenging job of being Mrs Paul Van Zale, a pillar of New York society. He could not love her or he would hardly have sent for me, and there was no reason why I should regard her as a threat just because he was gentleman enough to accord her some well-deserved respect. I was obviously being irrational and ought to be ashamed of myself.
I slept.
At half past five Alan began to bounce on my bed, but I was too deep in sleep to do more than groan. Finally he snuggled under the covers and fidgeted for ten minutes, but when that too bored him he pattered away to torment Mary. I told myself I should increase Mary’s wages, and sank thankfully into an oblivion which lasted until ten o’clock when the telephone rang.
Frowning to beat back the pain which hammered through my head I reached feebly towards the bedside table. My mouth felt as dry as a scorched leather.
‘Hullo?’ I croaked.
‘Miss Slade?’ It was not Paul. The shock made me forget my headache and sit bolt upright in bed.
‘Yes,’ I said, knowing I had heard that quiet voice before yet unable to identify it. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Welcome to New York, Miss Slade,’ said the stranger, and as his polished manners struck a chord in my memory I knew who he was. ‘This is Terence O’Reilly.’
I was
astonished. During my summer with Paul I had become so accustomed to his two ubiquitous aides-de-camp that I could still remember every feature of their faces, but although I had often chatted to the friendly bodyguard Peterson I had barely spoken a dozen words to O’Reilly. At first I had thought their positions were of equal importance, and it was only later that I had come to realize O’Reilly’s title of personal assistant was a euphemism. I had never managed to discover the full extent of his duties. Since all Americans except Paul had seemed alike to me, it had also taken me some time to realize that O’Reilly was in a different social class from Peterson, better educated, better spoken and better dressed. In spite of his Irish name he was the exact opposite of the ‘stage Irishman’ which the English find so comical and the Irish so insulting. He was one of those wintry people, cold, silent and rigorously conscientious, the sort of man who in a previous age would have enjoyed toiling in isolation in some chilly northern monastery.
‘Mr O’Reilly!’ I was so astonished that I hardly knew what to say. ‘What a surprise!’ I said lamely at last.
‘I’ve no doubt it is. Miss Slade, Mr Van Zale will be in Boston for two days next week and I was wondering if you’d care to have dinner with me while he’s away. I have some information which will be of interest to you.’
I wished my head was clearer. ‘What kind of information?’ I said warily.
‘For reasons of my own I’m on your side, Miss Slade, and I thought that as you knew no one else in America you might welcome a little support and sympathy. I assure you there’s nothing sinister about my offer of dinner although for reasons which I’ll explain when we meet I’d rather you said nothing about it to Mr Van Zale. Can I call for you at seven o’clock next Thursday?’
My curiosity overcame my doubts. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘That would be very nice. Thank you.’
It was only half an hour later after my second cup of coffee that I started to wonder what on earth was going on.
[3]
He was about Paul’s height but without Paul’s grace of movement. He had some dark hair, thinning at the crown but thick in front, and a pair of eyes which were a peculiarly glacial shade of green. It was difficult to guess his age but I assumed he was in his mid-thirties. Like many Americans he had wonderful teeth, very white and even, and when he smiled the taut muscles on his face relaxed enough to make him look attractive. I was just wondering why I had never previously thought him attractive when I realized I had never before seen him smile.
Even off duty he was flawlessly efficient. As soon as we stepped out of the Plaza a taxi was waiting and his voice was saying firmly to the driver: ‘The Village, please. Thompson and Bleeker.’ He held open the door for me, and the next moment the taxi was bouncing down Fifth Avenue past
the shop windows which by that time were as familiar to me as old friends.
It was to be my last night at the Plaza. Alan, Mary and I were due to move into a two-bedroom suite in an apartment hotel a block away, and we were all looking forward to the independence afforded by the tiny kitchen. A disadvantage was that the apartment was on the tenth floor, but since it was the only disadvantage I resolved I would have to overcome my fear of lifts. I did wish the Americans had curbed their mania for tall buildings when they had been running wild in Manhattan.