The Rich Are Different (17 page)

‘This isn’t like you, Paul,’ she said. ‘You always turn to your work when you’re upset and do a dozen things at once to take your mind off your troubles. Why are you shutting yourself up here as if you’re afraid to go out?’

I told her. Caught between my grief and my shattered self-confidence my drugged composure crumbled and I broke down.

My mother said three words: ‘Remember your father,’ and suddenly I heard him declare to the specialist as we were leaving the consulting room: ‘There’s nothing wrong with this boy that a good game of tennis won’t cure!’ I knew then what I had to do.

I summoned my young partner Steven Sullivan. I trounced him in
straight sets on the tennis court. Then scraping up a nerve I hardly knew I still possessed I stopped cowering at home and walked the six miles downtown through the crowded streets to the bank.

I felt better after that. I even did a little work before my chauffeur drove me home, and the next day when Jay too returned to the office I felt strong enough to face him.

Our rooms were side by side on the ground floor at the back of the building. Originally there had been one enormous room like a double-drawing-room, but thick folding doors had been inserted into the archway by Lucius Clyde when he had become joint senior partner with Jay’s father, and Jay had restored the doors when his firm had merged with mine.

When he heard me arrive that morning he knocked before slowly pushing back the doors and stepping into my half of the room.

‘Sorry we couldn’t talk at the funeral,’ he said, groping for words. ‘I guess we were both too upset.’

‘Yes.’

He closed the doors and we were incarcerated with our suffocating grief and intolerable memories. My hand went instinctively to my pocket for my medication.

‘Don’t be too hard on me, Paul,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I realize you blame me, but—’

‘No.’ I wanted only to terminate the interview and abort the tension which threatened me.

‘—but oh God, I’ll never get over this, never—’

I mentally gave him a year to recover. One cannot replace a daughter but one can always replace a wife.

‘—yet grief can draw two people together, can’t it? I know we’ve never been truly close, but perhaps now—’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘—I hope we can become better friends – for her sake …’ His mawkishness was unforgivable. He even thrust out his hand in a rush of emotion and I, seeing no alternative, took it in mine. The hand he offered was large and thick-fingered, the back of it dotted with black hair. As I pictured it resting on Vicky’s white skin I wanted to vomit.

‘No hard feelings, Paul?’

‘No hard feelings, Jay,’ I said, and thought: I’ll ruin you, I’ll crucify you, I’ll tear you apart until you wish you’d never set eyes on my daughter …

He left the room and finding the nearest basin I began to wash the hand he had held. I washed it over and over again, but by that time I hardly knew what I was doing for I was back once more in my cherished past with Vicky and she was exclaiming with all her spellbinding radiance: ‘Wonderful news, Papa! I’m going to have a baby …’

[1]

‘You’re
going to have a baby,’ I said to Dinah Slade.

As the past merged with the present the drawing-room in New York dissolved into the sandhills above the Brograve Level, and the young woman with the violet eyes blurred into a plain girl with tear-stained cheeks. I rubbed my hand across my eyes as if I feared the transition of time was an illusion, but it was real. I could hear the thudding of the waves on the dark sands and when I looked up the gulls were wheeling in the clouded sky. A gust of wind made the grass flick like a lash against my arm. Shivering I reached for my shirt.

‘Don’t be cross, Paul,’ wept the girl. ‘I’ll never ask you for anything, I swear it – I know it’s all my fault because I didn’t tell you I was a virgin—’

I leapt to my feet. ‘Don’t try to pretend this is the accidental result of one isolated occasion!’

‘But Paul—’

‘I’ve had enough of your lies! You’ve been lying to me at least once a month in order to pretend there was nothing wrong with you, and you’ve been lying to me by insisting you always used the device the doctor gave you to protect yourself. This was no accident! You planned this from the beginning because you’re stupid enough to believe that by having an illegitimate child you’ll have a guaranteed source of affection. My God, what a fool I’ve been!’

I grabbed my blazer and walked away from her down the dunes. Suddenly I became aware of the dull ache building behind my eyes but when I stopped to search for my medication I could not find it. I panicked, then forced myself to remain calm. I must have dropped the phial in the hollow when I had shed my jacket. Should I go back or should I go on and hope for the best? Fear swept over me. My glance raked the flat fields of the level and saw nowhere to hide if I felt ill. I realized I was pacing up and down so I made myself stand still, but I continued to rub my eyes and the back of my neck in short sharp compulsive movements of my hands.

‘Paul!’

I spun round. She was stumbling down the sandhills with my medication in her hand. ‘You dropped something—’

I grabbed the phial, swallowed three pills and rammed the phial into my blazer pocket.

‘I have to be alone,’ I said. The pills took half an hour to work and anything might happen while I waited. Also they were no guarantee against a recurrence of my illness; they merely lengthened the odds. ‘Wait for me by the mill, please.’

‘I’ll wait here if you like.’

‘My God, can’t you do as you’re told?’ I blazed, frightened to death by this time, and saw her flinch before she turned away.

Retreating to
the sandhills I flung myself down out of sight in the tall grass and immediately felt better. By the time my medication started to work I was wishing I had not taken such a heavy dose, for the tension had already left me and the pain had faded from behind my eyes.

I was so sleepy from the drug that I could hardly drag myself back to Horsey Mill, but I managed it and found Dinah waiting miserably by the staithe. We travelled back to Mallingham in silence, and on our arrival I went to bed and slept for three hours.

When I awoke I felt ill but that was the aftermath of the pills. I drank some water, washed my face and decided I was capable of rational thought. After pausing long enough to marshal my well-worn arguments I went downstairs to confront her in the library.

She had sought escape from reality in a mystery novel. As she uncurled herself from the window-seat she dropped the shawl she was clutching like a small child and regarded me fearfully.

‘I apologize for my abrupt behaviour,’ I said with as much civility as I could muster. ‘I realize I was very rude but I had had a considerable shock. Now my dear, let’s try to discuss this news rationally without getting too upset. You do realize, of course, that it’s quite impossible for you to have this child?’

Half an hour passed most unpleasantly. I spoke fluently, I employed a forensic skill which any leading trial lawyer might have envied, I deployed both low cunning and high intrigue, I flattered, pleaded, bullied and cajoled.

I got nowhere.

The trouble was, as I was slowly forced to admit, that Dinah did not react like a normal woman who found herself pregnant out of wedlock. It was no use me stressing that a wedding ring would not be forthcoming because Dinah had no interest in wedding rings. Neither was it any use stressing that my lawyers had more than enough muscle to kill an affiliation order stone dead with dire results for the mother’s reputation; Dinah had no interest in legal action, and said at once she had no intention of suing me. When I told her I could arrange an abortion with the maximum of secrecy, she merely looked at me in amazement and said: ‘No, thank you.’

Wearily I turned to the moral arguments. She was having a child for all the wrong reasons. It was sheer selfishness to have a child out of wedlock. A child deserved two parents, not one.

‘Better to have one loving parent than two who don’t give a fig,’ said Dinah.

‘What about the stigma of illegitimacy?’

‘Oh Paul, how Victorian!’

I was suddenly very angry. ‘You just don’t know what you’re doing!’ I exclaimed, jettisoning my role of calm, wise, supremely rational counsel. ‘You have no right to do this!’

‘Oh yes, I have!’ she shot back at me. ‘It’s my body and I can do what I
like with it – I don’t need anyone’s permission to have a baby! Anyway you always told me you’d refuse to accept responsibility for an illegitimate child, so why are you now trying to interfere? You forswore all your rights! Now leave me alone and stop trying to dictate to me!’

I was dumbfounded. I felt like a knight who had ridden into battle with a shining new lance to meet an opponent who had not only seized the precious lance but had proceeded to add insult to injury by flagellating him with it. In shock I floundered around amidst half a dozen arguments, rejected them all and ended by staring at her in infuriated silence.

‘This is the end of our affair,’ I said at last.

‘I don’t care!’ she cried, but her lip trembled.

I saw my chance and took it. It was a dirty chance, like hitting a man below the belt, but by that time I was so desperate I could hardly afford to be chivalrous.

‘It’s also the end of our business relationship,’ I said shortly. ‘I don’t accept pregnant women for clients.’

She rushed up to me, her eyes glittering, her face crimson with rage, and before I realized what was happening she had slapped me hard on each cheek.

‘You bastard!’ she screamed at me. ‘You swore to me that whatever happened between us in private our business relationship would be unaffected! How dare you make such promises when you had no intention of keeping them!’

She rushed out of the room without giving me a chance to reply but I dashed after her. My face was still tingling with the marks of her hands and I was conscious of the most extraordinary mixture of emotions jostling for front place in my mind. To say I felt confused would hardly begin to convey my rage, guilt, mortification, affronted pride, battered honesty and dire suspicion that she had been justified in hitting me.

We raced up to her bedroom. She tried to slam the door in my face but I shoved my way in and caught her as she tripped and fell.

‘Dinah—’

‘You brute, get out of my house!’

‘It’s mine,’ I said. ‘Remember?’

‘Oh, you – you – you—’

Words failed her. I started to make love to her on the threadbare Indian carpet.

‘Paul, don’t … please … I love you so much … if you’re going to go away for God’s sake go now and don’t put me through any more—’

‘No one’s putting you through anything. You’re setting out along the road to disaster all by yourself and it seems there’s nothing I can do to stop you.’

We made love. After we had crawled on to the bed to recover she said in a small voice: ‘Do you accept my decision, then?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I deplore it. But I’m beginning to accept the fact that I can’t alter it.’

‘If you
could give me just one good reason why I shouldn’t have the baby …’ Her voice trailed away.

There was a long silence. I realized this was my last chance but all I could say was: ‘I’ve stated my reasons at length. My daughter—’

‘It must have been terrible for you that she died in childbirth, but Paul, I don’t have Vicky’s medical history and I’m strong as an ox!’

I was silent. The seconds ticked by. We were very close, she lying on her side and propped up on her elbow, I sprawled against the pillows.

‘What is it, Paul? Is there something else? Something you haven’t told me?’

I thought of the pity in Elizabeth’s eyes and felt cold. At last I said slowly: ‘When I married Sylvia I promised her that any child I had would be hers. I never promised her fidelity, but I did promise her that and I like to think that when I make a promise I keep it.’

‘But if she can’t have children, doesn’t that revoke your promise?’

‘I don’t want children.’

‘If that’s true, why did you ever trust me to practise birth control when I told you frankly I saw nothing wrong in having an illegitimate child?’

Silence fell again. With shock I realized that my throat was aching with useless emotion, and I at once stood up and walked away.

I went down the corridor to the bedroom where my valet and I both pretended I slept each night, and sat on the edge of the bed. Later Dinah came to sit beside me and slip her arm through mine.

‘You do want it, don’t you, Paul?’

‘I can’t concede that,’ I said, not looking at her, ‘but I do concede that I’m fully responsible for what’s happened. For my wife’s sake I can’t acknowledge the child officially, but if you wish I’ll send you money for his support.’

‘There’s no need for that if you support my efforts to start my business.’

‘You know I will. I’m sorry I threatened you like that; it was unworthy of me. As I’ve already said, I like to keep my promises.’

She kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘Promise me you’ll come back to Mallingham, Paul. I know you’ll have to return to New York eventually, but promise me that when you go you won’t forget all about me.’

‘To forget would be a mental impossibility!’

We kissed with increasing passion for some minutes. At last I made myself say: ‘I’m glad you still realize that I’ll one day have to go back to New York.’

‘One day. Yes.’

‘I’ll never leave my wife, Dinah.’

‘I accept that.’

I immediately wanted to leave my wife and never return to New York again. After allowing myself a smile at the contrariness of human nature, I seriously wondered for the first time where my seductive journey sideways in time was leading me.

That night I lay awake considering my position. It seemed that I had two
possible courses of action: either I could cut off the affair immediately and return to America before matters got any further out of hand, or I could go on, indulging myself to the hilt on the assumption that any fiery love affair was bound to burn itself out within six months. On the whole I favoured the second option. To leave now would be exceedingly painful for both of us and might even result in the prolongation of a relationship which would otherwise have died a natural death, but if I went on we would have our pleasure, achieve the appropriate degree of satiation and part peacefully, still the best of friends. I tried to estimate when we would reach the point of satiation. September? We would have known each other three months by that time, and I seldom wished to extend an affair longer than that. However, Dinah was an exceptional girl. I extended the affair till October. Apart from natural satiation the baby would be muting our relationship by that time, for she would be uninterested in intercourse and I would be uninterested in her figure. I have never been one of those men who find pregnant women irresistibly erotic.