Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (12 page)

It couldn’t last. It really couldn’t. Common sense spoke out most firmly against it. And yet – yet it seemed to be going on for ever. This incredible rise and rise in the stock market, day after day, week after week. There had been no summer lull in Wall Street that year; in June Industrials had risen 52 points, in July another 25. Four to five million shares were traded on the Wall Street stock exchange daily. Endless new stocks were floated almost hourly.

Laurence Elliott, sitting at his desk in the fine building that was Elliotts Bank, on one of the endless stifling mornings that summer, reflected that Americans living in God’s own country as they did, with all its great bounty of freedom and opportunity, had lately developed another, more dangerous belief, that of an inalienable right to ever-increasing prosperity. They bought stock, they bought shares, they bought into investment trusts, and the value soared ever onwards and upwards, and they were no longer surprised or even grateful: that was simply what happened. Fortunes were made, if not overnight, then certainly over a few weeks; risk was no longer recognised, it was an out-dated, discredited commodity.

Laurence wondered what his father and indeed his grandfather, the founder of Elliotts, would have made of it all; what view they would have taken of this heady, greedy era, of the dizzy rise of borrowing both by individuals and corporations, the near hysterical railing against anyone who expressed even a hint of concern over the situation.

No less a person than Chairman Mitchell of the National City Bank had several times expressed anger at anyone who dared to question, never mind criticise, the rise in brokers’ loans – these were the most common cause for concern, and rising at a rate of $400,000,000 a month.

Laurence felt fairly confident that his father at least would have erred on the side of caution; on the other hand he had had a famously cool head, had ridden out the great crisis of 1907 in a joint venture with JP Morgan and several of the other great banks, pouring money into the stock exchange and persuading his customers to leave their money where it was, rather than rushing in panic to get it out. Jonathan Elliott was a legend still on Wall Street, twenty years after his death, even more so than old Mr Samuel, as he was known at the bank; he had had more vision, more courage, more capacity for lateral thought than any of his contemporaries. Had he lived, everyone said, there was no limit to what he would have achieved; but he had died of cancer at the height of his powers.

It was Laurence’s greatest regret now that he had been unable to know his father in his professional capacity. His grief at his loss at the age of twelve, his anger at his mother for marrying again only two years later, his bitter hatred of Robert Lytton his stepfather, his resentment at his younger brother for accepting that stepfather, his loathing for his small half sister, and his dreadful ongoing anger at the next pregnancy that had killed his mother – all these things, dulled only slightly with time, still left him railing against the fate which had deprived him of the chance to absorb at first hand the financial skills and near-genius that his father had possessed.

Nevertheless, he had inherited many of them; along with some of Samuel Elliott’s more cautious wisdom. Old timers on Wall Street admired him, said that they would both have been proud of him. What they also said, privately, was that they would not necessarily have liked him very much: if indeed they had liked him at all. A view with which Robert Lytton, who had experienced the not unmixed blessing of marrying Laurence’s mother, would have most wholeheartedly concurred.

Both Samuel and Jonathan Elliott had made happy marriages and enjoyed family life which had tempered, however slightly, their personal ambition. Laurence, absolutely alone in the world, cut off ruthlessly and at his own instigation not only from his brother but from his stepfather and half sister, nurtured a savage and almost obsessive professional ambition; success and the recognition of that success was his prime, indeed his only, concern. To see Elliotts Bank rising ever higher in the financial firmament, to observe his own personal fortune increase hugely year by year, to be marked as one of the most brilliant and ingenious minds on Wall Street, served for him as substitute for family, for friendship – and for love.

He was, at the age of thirty-three, unmarried and unattached. Women, endlessly attracted to him by his hard-etched looks, his patent sensuality, his superb physique, his dazzling dress sense, found themselves for the most part rebuffed. He was bored by young girls, however pretty, and was openly impatient with ambitious hostesses who sought his presence at their dinner tables and cocktail parties; he rejected any effort to be coerced onto charity committees, or into cultural circles, and went out of his way to inform the mothers of debutantes that he intended to remain single until he was at least forty, ‘and probably beyond that’.

When pressed by the braver souls among them for his reasons, he would reply by misquoting Oscar Wilde and saying that his own company amused him more than most other people’s. The only female company he courted was that of clever, married women bored by their husbands, but with no intention of actually leaving them; he had had several affairs with such ladies, and found them entirely satisfactory. Married women, he had been heard frequently to observe, were better in bed than their single sisters. They were less demanding emotionally and absorbed a great deal less time and trouble. ‘You can’t even buy them much in the way of gifts,’ he said in a rare drunken moment (Laurence Elliott liked to remain absolutely in control), ‘they can’t wear the jewellery, can’t use the cigarette cases, can’t even display the flowers; the most you can get away with is underwear. And I don’t mind buying that.’

And indeed Laurence Elliott’s married mistresses did always possess large quantities of camisoles, nightdresses and peignoirs from New York’s most exclusive stores and dressmakers; it was rumoured that jealous or suspicious husbands would rummage through their wives’ closets in search of such evidence: which was, after all, hardly conclusive.

Laurence did wonder from time to time if he was incapable of emotional commitment; and if he was, how much it mattered. Generally, he thought not at all; his only experience of love had been what he had felt for his parents, and particularly his mother, and it had failed him totally. He had only been quite a young boy when he had experienced that failure, but the hurt had never faded, indeed had increased savagely over the years. He saw no necessity and indeed had no great wish to risk his heart again. And until such time as he found the ideal woman – and he was increasingly sure that she did not exist – he was not prepared even to consider doing so.

After Adele had gone, Venetia rang for the nurse and told her to take Henry out in his pram. ‘It’s a lovely day, it will do him good.’

She was still very tired; tired and shocked. Shocked by the experience of childbirth, shocked by the extraordinary change in her own situation, in just a few months, shocked by the violence of her feelings for Henry, shocked perhaps most of all by the way her closeness to her sister had been affected.

She still loved her: far more than she loved anyone else – except Henry. But that there was an exception at all was quite literally astonishing. For the whole of her life, she had felt herself to be part of Adele and Adele part of her; no one else could begin to impinge upon that closeness. Even the intimacy of her relationship with Boy did not do that. Even after their marriage, it was still Adele she thought of every day, in relation to everything that happened to her, everything she did. She had looked at Adele after the wedding, as she helped her remove her wedding dress and change for the journey to Venice, where she and Boy were to spend their honeymoon, and smiled and said, ‘I don’t feel the least bit different, you know. I’ll write every day.’ And Adele had hugged her and said she would write back every day and the minute Venetia was back in London she would be round to hear about it; and exactly that had happened, they had missed one another dreadfully and the honeymoon in Venice had been, though delightful, certainly a little odd, and she had even tried to explain it to Boy, who had been good-naturedly baffled by it.

When she was back in London, their daily life of shopping and chatting and giggling did not seem greatly changed and very often if she and Boy were at home for dinner Adele joined them, and Venetia had to admit he was very good about it, never even implied he would rather they could be alone and besides, they got along extraordinarily well. Of course, Adele’s visits also served as a splendid excuse for his own absences from home, while he was at his clubs; and then, through the long dreadful hours of Henry’s birth, Adele had been with her almost until the end, holding her hand, comforting her, soothing her, spongeing her down.

Venetia had refused to have her mother as companion and she and Adele had never been closer. And then, then this astonishing thing had happened and Henry was finally born and put into her arms and she had looked at him, and every other love, every other emotion had simply been cancelled out as if it had never existed. The next day, of course, she felt different, more normal, more herself, but still with this great change, this switch of love. And she had had to tell Adele; she was too important to her not to. She had watched it hurt, had felt the hurt herself, and had known there was nothing whatever she could do about it.

The other shock had been Boy’s behaviour, his attitude towards her. She had learned quite quickly that love, as she understood it, was not what he felt for her. He was fond of her, he found her an amusing companion, a beautiful accessory, a clever hostess, he was very glad, as he frequently told her, that he had married her; but that was about as deep as his emotions ran. She often felt indeed that he regarded her rather as an agreeable pet: something he had bought (at quite a high price it had to be said) and kept in considerable style and comfort, but which he could replace with something very similar, another beautiful, socially accomplished creature, and hardly notice the difference. As her pregnancy advanced, he was kind to her, but increasingly detached; sexually considerate, affectionate, but often absent not only from the house but also her bed.

When she had taxed him with this, he had said (sweetly and very gently) that he felt that surely she must be pleased to have plenty of opportunity to rest undisturbed, she was clearly tired, not to mention uncomfortable, and he didn’t want to burden her with his attentions. Venetia said fretfully that actual attentions might be a burden, but she still wanted physical contact and comfort from time to time and she supposed he must be finding her unattractive; he kissed her and said that of course he didn’t, he loved her very much, and just wanted to be considerate. For a little while he did spend more time with her, but it didn’t last. She feared that she bored him, for he was formidably clever – indeed, when he was engaged with some intellectual argument with her parents, she found it almost impossible to follow – and so she tried harder to be amusing and better informed, reading the newspapers with some attention for the first time in her life, but it didn’t seem to make any difference, he was still frequently out in the evenings, often until very late.

She didn’t quite suspect him of actual infidelity, but jealousy of his friends and companions troubled her increasingly, and without Adele she would have been lonely. While she was not exactly bored, and running the large house in Berkeley Square was surprisingly time-consuming, she found it difficult, especially having to direct and discipline staff who were for the most part considerably older than she was. Boy found it necessary to criticise her in this department more than once; mortified, Venetia tried harder and actually turned to, and began to rely a great deal on her mother, who (she now realised) was a surprisingly good housekeeper. Her constant deference to Celia in the matter went a considerable way towards healing the great rift that had opened between them in the period before and immediately after she had married Boy.

Celia had arrived back from her mother’s house one terrible evening that Venetia would never forget, walked into her bedroom where she was lying down, struggling against a bout of prolonged nausea, without warning or even knocking, and asked her abruptly if she was pregnant. ‘And don’t lie to me, Venetia, it is absolutely pointless.’

Having established the truth and informed Oliver of it, she had astonished both the twins by telling Venetia there was to be no question of a marriage. ‘We will have the pregnancy terminated, these things can be arranged, I know an excellent man, perfectly safe, and we can put the whole thing behind us.’

Venetia had protested that she had no desire to put the whole thing behind her, that she would not even consider such a thing, ‘and nor would Boy if he knew about the baby. He will want to marry me, I know he will.’

‘Venetia,’ said Celia, ‘I very much doubt that Boy will want to marry you, and I certainly would not allow you to marry him. He doesn’t love you, and even more important, you don’t love him. You may think you do, but I can assure you that you do not. You don’t have the faintest idea yet, what love means.’

Venetia said she would marry Boy if she wanted to and that her mother couldn’t stop her; Celia told her that unfortunately, since Venetia was only eighteen years old, she had every right to do so.

An appalling row followed, to which Oliver was a wretchedly silent witness; at the end of it Venetia, her voice frail with misery, telephoned Boy and asked him to come to the house. ‘I’ve got something terribly important to tell you.’

Boy, who was nobody’s fool, arrived with a very clear idea of what the important thing was and shook her dreadfully by implying (although not actually saying so) that he shared her mother’s view that it might be better if the pregnancy was terminated while they had time ‘to get to know one another better’.

‘Of course I love you, my darling,’ he said, taking her hand and tenderly wiping her streaming eyes, ‘and of course it would be wonderful if we were married, I’ve thought about it a great deal, naturally, and about how happy we could be, but is a rushed wedding and a pregnancy really the best basis for beginning our life together? I’m not thinking of myself, of course it would be wonderful for me, but – well, you’re so very young, you deserve a little more time to enjoy yourself before quite so much – responsibility is settled upon you. I do agree with your mother in some ways, a little diplomacy might be the answer in the immediate future.’