The Rich Are Different (46 page)

I almost wept at the thought of seeing someone sympathetic. Thanking him I rang off and went to have a bath.

I did feel better once I was dressed. Alan and Mary were still out so I left a note for them before taking a taxi to Terence’s flat.

The town-house in which he lived stood on a pretty tree-lined street west of Washington Square, and his spartan flat occupied the whole of the top floor. The modern furniture was cool and expensive, like a model room in an exhibition, and the living-room was not only spotlessly clean but immaculately tidy. His pictures were ruthless modern abstracts and there were no photographs, no bric-à-brac, no clues to the past.

‘Let me introduce you to the genuine American martini cocktail,’ he said, offering me a glass of pale liquid. ‘I think you’ll find it soothing.’

I also found it made me garrulous and after only one sip I was pouring out every detail of the disaster. He listened without interruption and when I had finished he offered me a cigarette without comment.

‘Terence, for God’s sake say something!’

‘Finish your drink and I’ll fix you another. He did imply, didn’t he, that the future was going to be different?’

‘That was just to soften me up.’ I felt miraculously placid, able to voice painful truths without feeling any pain. ‘I say, this is a jolly nice drink, isn’t it!’

He refilled my glass.

‘I think I understand the situation now,’ I murmured, still marvelling at my composure. ‘He loves me best, I’m sure of that, but he’s shackled to her because she’s one of those women who build their entire existence around their husbands with the result that they have no lives of their own. If he left her she’d just wither away, like a Victorian heroine, and he’d blame me when he inevitably ended up feeling guilty and miserable.’

‘Trash. She’d survive. And once he’d left her she’d go to bed with me and like it.’

‘Well, I concede you may know Sylvia better than I do, but I know Paul. He’s not going to leave her. He’s a Victorian and not only true to his double standard but morally bound by it. He’s devised this incredibly old-fashioned game in which he’s allowed to have any number of mistresses so long as he never breaks the cast-iron rule which demands he stays married to his wife, and if you think he would ever break that rule you don’t understand what being a Victorian’s all about. Paul may be immoral by conventional standards, but he’s not amoral. He has a rigid moral code and he’s never going to embrace the twentieth century by deviating from it. You won’t find Paul trying to manoeuvre a quick divorce! You won’t find Paul walking out on a perfect wife! And you certainly won’t find Paul risking a trip to England and falling in love with Mallingham again!’

I stopped. We stared at one another. His green eyes were dark with some emotion which I could not identify but found deeply disturbing.

The doorbell rang.

‘Oh!’ I was so startled that the liquid jumped in my glass. ‘Who’s that? Are you expecting someone?’

‘Not a soul. Relax and stay right where you are.’ He moved out into the hall to open the front door.

‘’Lo, Terence!’ said Bruce Clayton’s voice. ‘Excuse me for stopping by
unannounced but I’ve got someone here who wants to see you again. We’ve just had brunch at the Brevoort and we thought we’d stroll across Washington Square to see if you were home.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’re both welcome – Christ! What are
you
doing back in town?’

‘Just paying my annual call on Mr Paul Cornelius Van Zale.’ A tall dark man wandered casually past Terence into the living-room. He had a hard jaw, heavy-lidded eyes and a flat, battered, vaguely sinister face. When he saw me he stopped, raised a thick eyebrow and allowed the lids to droop lazily over his yellowish brown eyes. ‘Why, hullo there!’ he drawled sociably. ‘We haven’t met, have we? My name’s Greg Da Costa.’

‘Dinah!’ exclaimed Bruce before I could register any emotion whatsoever. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Weeping on Terence’s shoulder,’ I said. ‘I’ve just had the most awful row with Paul.’ It occurred to me that I was dangerously light-headed. With growing suspicion I looked down at my martini.

‘Paul who?’ said Greg Da Costa.

‘As far as we’re all concerned there’s only one Paul,’ said Bruce. ‘This is Dinah Slade, Greg. She’s in New York as Paul’s guest.’

‘You mean this is the latest victim? Welcome to the club, sweetheart!’

‘I’m nobody’s victim,’ I said abruptly. ‘Terence, I think I’d better go now.’

Terence looked as though he agreed with me, but before he could speak Da Costa said with a surfeit of well-oiled charm: ‘Hell, don’t run away – what’s the rush? I can tell you all kinds of things about your pal Paul!’

Terence stepped instantly between us. ‘Dinah’s too modern to enjoy past history, Greg. How’s Stew? Don’t tell me you came to New York without your brother!’

Da Costa’s face seemed more battered than ever. ‘Stew’s dead.’

‘Dead?
My God! How the hell did it happen?’

‘He took a slug at one of those private detectives Van Zale has keeping watch over us and the goddamned dick drew a gun and cracked him over the head with it. They got him to hospital but his skull was smashed and he never came out of the coma. That’s why I’m here. I figured Van Zale owed me compensation, and I hit town yesterday evening so that I can see him in person tomorrow.’

‘It was planned obviously,’ said Bruce tensely to Terence. ‘The man provoked Stewart into attacking him – probably on Paul’s orders.’

‘That’s nonsense!’ I cried horrified. ‘Bruce, how could you even think such a thing!’

‘Have a martini, Bruce,’ said Terence, ‘and wise up. You’re showing about as much delicacy as an elephant on eggshells. Dinah, if you want to go I’ll come downstairs and find you a cab.’

‘I’m with Bruce on this,’ said Da Costa. ‘Someone should tell this little girl the facts of life. Say, talking of Van Zale, Bruce tells me he’s been sick as
hell lately and you guys in the entourage are having a tough time keeping the facts under wraps—’

‘Dinah,’ said Terence, ‘I’m sure you’ve no interest in hearing the latest gaudy rumours about how your friend’s suffering from everything from acne to cancer of the brain. Let’s go.’

‘He’s stringing you along, sweetheart!’ called Da Costa after me as we escaped downstairs. ‘What’s the big game, Terence?’

We emerged into the street.

‘What on earth—’ I began incredulously but he cut me off.

‘I’m sorry about that, Dinah.’ He sounded genuinely distracted. ‘I don’t know how much Mr Van Zale’s told you about the Salzedo affair, but—’

‘Oh, that! Yes, I know Jason Da Costa blew his brains out and his sons went around afterwards making mad accusations against Paul. Obviously nothing’s changed! But Terence, I wasn’t going to ask about Greg Da Costa. I was going to ask what on earth someone so nice as Bruce is doing in his company.’

‘Yes, Bruce is a nice guy.’ He sighed and added with reluctance: ‘I’m afraid the truth is that he’s irrational on the subject of Mr Van Zale – he always has been, ever since I first met him at Harvard, but lately for some reason the irrationality’s become more marked. I tend to humour him on the subject because I’ve realized he can’t help himself. He’s all mixed up about his mother.’

‘Oh God!’ I felt too exhausted to grapple with Freudian theory but fortunately at that moment a taxi came around the corner.

‘Will you be all right?’ said Terence, flagging down the car. ‘Sorry our conference got wrecked like that – I’ll call you later and we can fix another.’

‘I think we’d already said all there was to say.’

‘You can’t mean you’re going to give up and go home!’

‘It’s either that or ditch my self-respect. Oh, what does it matter to you anyway! Whether I go or stay he’ll never leave her.’

I was in such a morose mood by that time that I forgot to thank him for the martinis, and after being borne bumpily uptown by a surly driver my mood had hardly improved. Trailing into the apartment hotel I was in such a haze of gloom that I did not at first hear the desk-clerk calling my name.

‘Letter for you, Miss Slade!’ he called a second time.

I was thinking of Paul and wondering if I could live like a nun until he was able to swear he no longer slept with Sylvia. But no, that would never work because he would never weaken; I had no choice but to slink home without him, although perhaps I could salvage some pride by staying to the end of my allotted time in New York in order to produce the cosmetics survey I had promised my friends. But no, that would save my face but probably not my sanity, and I simply had to leave while I still had the mental strength to turn my back on him.

Feeling utterly devoid of all strength I opened the envelope and dragged out the message inside.

‘My dearest Lesbia,’ Paul had written, recalling all our past classical
correspondence. ‘I’ve taken Alan and Miss Oakes to our Plaza suite for lunch to make amends for interrupting their breakfast this morning. Will you please join us? Repentantly, CATULLUS.’

‘Oh God,’ I said as my knees threatened to buckle. I wished I had refused the second martini. ‘Oh Lord.’

‘Oh, and these are for you too, Miss Slade,’ smirked the deskclerk and from beneath the counter he produced a sheaf of red roses.

‘Oh no!’ To my despair I saw there was a card. Knowing my only hope was to tear it up unread, I ripped it open without hesitation.

‘
Da mi basia mille
…’

I was quite unable to cope with all the numerous kisses the poet had demanded from his Lesbia, and stumbling into my flat I shoved the roses in water and collapsed on the sofa. I did try tearing up the card but it made no difference. By that time my longing had become unbearable, and after saying ‘Oh
hell
!’ very loudly three times, I changed into a crêpe de Chine frock, set my Milan hat at its jauntiest angle and with a sinking heart set off to the Plaza.

[5]

They were all sitting around a table in the suite, and Alan and Paul were swapping nursery rhymes. Alan, covered in chocolate from ear to ear, was sitting on Paul’s knee while Mary was sitting pink-cheeked and upright in front of an empty glass of champagne. The fourth member of the party, the bodyguard Peterson, was lifting the bottle of champagne out of the ice-bucket to offer her a refill. Mary liked Peterson. I saw them eye each other approvingly as Alan piped: ‘“Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie, kissed the girls and made them cry!”’

‘Detestable Georgie Porgie!’ I said. ‘Brute, monster and sadist!’

‘“There was a little girl,”’ said Paul unperturbed, ‘“who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good she was very, very good, but when she was bad—”’

‘“—she was HORRID!”’ squeaked Alan triumphantly.

Peterson rose to his feet. ‘Miss Oakes, can I take you and Master Alan for a stroll in the park?’

Mary went pinker than ever and said she was sure that was very kind of him. Alan was detached from Paul, mopped with a napkin and led away chanting, ‘Boys and Girls Come Out to Play’.

The door closed. Paul’s eyes began to sparkle. ‘From Catullus to nursery rhymes!’ he said laughing. ‘What a long way we’ve come in four years!’

I managed to say: ‘I’m going back to England, Paul.’

‘My dear, of course you are! And what right have I to dissuade you? After all, you’re not my wife! I can’t give you orders or expect you to accede meekly to my wishes! But before you rush back to England let’s at least drink a little champagne together and toast your departure in style!’

‘I’m not going to bed with you, you know.’

‘Of course
not.’ He flicked some crumbs away elegantly with his napkin, stood up and slipped his arms around my waist.

‘I don’t care how many red roses you send. I don’t care how many reams of Catullus you quote. So long as you’re living with another woman I can have nothing more to do with you. It’s a matter of principle.’

‘I absolutely believe in matters of principle,’ said Paul, guiding me gently towards the bedroom.

‘If you think I’m just another feeble female incapable of saying no to you—’

‘A wilted Victorian heroine? Not quite your style, my dear!’

‘Well, dash it, Paul, what do you expect of me?’ I shouted frenziedly as he closed the bedroom door and started to unbutton my frock. ‘I’m jolly well not going to let you have your beastly cake and eat it! Why should you live with us both at once?’

‘I don’t want to live with you both at once.’

‘Then just what
do
you want?’

‘I want to see Mallingham again one day,’ he said, drawing us down together on to the bed. ‘I want to see the sun shining on the deserted beach at Waxham and to feel the wind blowing over the reeds of Horsey Mere and to sail across Mallingham Broad to the most perfect house on earth.’

Tears streamed down my face.

‘Ah, Dinah!’ he exclaimed with all his most passionate and romantic enthusiasm. ‘Can’t you understand how often I dream of going back? Sylvia must come first with me now, just as you came first in 1922, but when the opportunity comes to me again do you really think I could ever turn my back on another chance to travel sideways in time?’

‘But Paul, you’re simply not facing reality – it’ll never work out and we’ll all be the losers!’

‘This is the only reality I care about right now,’ he said, pulling me to him.

‘But I’m losing, losing, losing—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’ve won, Dinah. You’ve won.’ And then as his flesh slid smoothly against mine I forgot all my compromised principles in the ecstasy of my Pyrrhic victory.

[1]

Some time at the end of the afternoon I said to Paul: ‘I shall still go home at the end of June, you know,’ and when he answered: ‘I know you’ll have to go one day and I accept that,’ I wondered if he meant what he said any more than I did. We might have believed intellectually in what we said but
emotionally we believed something else. The sane logical side of my mind told me that he had promised nothing, yet despite this I was wholeheartedly convinced he would return to Mallingham for an extended visit. The spectre of Sylvia receded. The sane logical side of my mind still told me he would never leave her but now I no longer listened because I was once more convinced that when he returned to Mallingham he would never be able to tear himself away. Like Paul I had lost touch with reality and just as he believed in all honesty that he could repay his debt to Sylvia while still being fair to me, so I told myself once again that Sylvia was of no significance, a woman who as little more than an unpaid social secretary could not hope to hold Paul for much longer.