The Rich Are Different (95 page)

‘Hm,’ I said.

‘Anyhow, I’m going to be marking time in Milk Street until next June. Lewis and I agreed that it would be best if I gave Cornelius a few months to recover from the Emily business, and Roosevelt’s given us bankers a few months to make up our minds which way to leap. But Lewis will do the spadework in New York so that we can make a public announcement on the anniversary of Glass–Steagall next June, and then I’ll return to New York to pick up the reins again. Meanwhile …’ He suddenly ran down like a gramophone. ‘I thought … maybe … these next few months …’ He tailed off completely.

‘Hm,’ I said again.

‘Later,’ he said, skipping over the awkward few months he had in mind, ‘we could divide our time between England and America. You could open a branch of your business in New York. It would be wonderful for the kids, wonderful for us … Christ, Dinah, for God’s sake say something!’

‘I’m too frightened to speak. Go on.’

‘Well, I …’ He groped for words. ‘Maybe we never did know each other the first time around but I knew you well enough to realize now that you’re the one woman I’ll always want to come back to. I want to try again, Dinah. I want to accept you as you are because I know that unlike Emily you can accept me as I am. I love you, Dinah, and I’ll do anything to make things work, anything at all … say, are you crying?’

‘Steve, I’m so terrified of going down the wrong road again – I couldn’t bear to be hurt like that a second time—’

‘Honey, there’s no repeat performance scheduled, I promise you.’

‘But I’ve
got to think – you’ve had days to think about this and I’ve only had minutes—’

‘Sure.’ He stood up clumsily, edged his way around the table and enfolded me in a bear-hug. ‘When can I see you again?’

‘Saturday.’ That would give me forty-eight hours to sort out my most private fears.

‘Here?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Norwich. I’ll meet you at the station and take you to Mallingham to meet the twins.’

[5]

I summoned all my analytical gifts. I was determined to appraise the situation with logic, yet as I lay gazing vacantly into the darkness at two o’clock in the morning I only knew that I was a plain woman with a large nose and fat hips being pursued by six foot two inches of sexy successful American manhood, and my logic floated far beyond my reach.

With a sigh I left my bed and padded downstairs to brew myself a cup of tea. As I watched the kettle boil I told myself that I really had to be sensible. I was an old warhorse of thirty-two, and not a gay young filly of seventeen. This man drank too much. We had little in common beyond the world of business and to make matters worse we had sexual problems. Also any man who walked out on a perfect wife had to be regarded with extreme caution.

But he was gorgeous.

I started gazing vacantly into space again and only recalled myself when the steam threatened to levitate the lid of the kettle to remarkable heights. As I made the tea I started making excuses to myself. I had not yet heard his side of his marriage but it was obviously a classic disaster of marriage on the rebound. If he were happy with me he would probably be able to reduce his drinking, and although our sexual relationship would without doubt be awkward when we attempted to resume it there was no reason why we couldn’t straighten out our difficulties, particularly if he was as willing as I was to be honest. It was true he shared none of my intellectual interests but there was no law saying that two people had to have identical tastes before they could form a successful relationship. The worst problem, I thought, as I made a superhuman effort to regard him dispassionately, was his inclination to regard adultery as a way of life. My experience with Paul had taught me that there was nothing which upset me so much as infidelity – possibly because I was basically an insecure person, but I wasn’t concerned about my motive and I had no intention of making excuses for my old-fashioned attitude, particularly since I suspected Steve’s attitude was at heart identical to mine. I could well imagine his howls of outrage if I decided to sleep with other men. However, the plain truth of the matter was that I had no right to demand fidelity of him unless we were married, and I was almost sure that marriage with Steve would be a disaster.

I stared
into my murky tea and thought about marriage. I was well aware that I could profit from psycho-analysis on the subject, but I didn’t see why a psycho-analyst should get paid for doing something I myself enjoyed so much. In my teens I had wanted to get married because I had wanted to conform. In my twenties I had not wanted to get married because I had not wanted to conform. In my thirties I was so worn out by the strain of non-conformity that I was quite capable of marrying for all the wrong reasons. For example it was likely that I might marry Steve for the sake of the children, although it was my firm conviction that children were better off in a happy home run by one parent than in an unhappy home run by two.

The trouble was that I was convinced I would be unhappily married. I had no idea why. It was not enough to cite my father’s three disastrous marriages, because I wasn’t my father. It was certainly not enough to burble that marriage was a bourgeois institution; that was an amusing excuse but hardly a valid one, particularly since I had abandoned my Marxist leanings. It might be argued that I was frightened of men, but Paul had long since cured me of those sort of fears, and besides I liked men and got along well with them.

I drank two cups of tea and considered marriage from the point of view of an emancipated woman. That promise to obey was a bit offensive. The loss of one’s name was vaguely obnoxious. The thought that one had given the man the legal right to commit rape was, of course, monstrous. But so what? I wasn’t some poor fishwife in the East End who was chained to her husband through economic necessity. If my husband abused me I was one of the few women fortunate enough to be able to walk out and sue him into a repentant stupor. So it was nonsense to argue that I opposed marriage because I was an emancipated woman.

I gave up and returned to bed, but towards dawn I couldn’t help thinking that if I really loved Steve I’d marry him without a second thought.

But I certainly found him attractive. Those electric blue eyes …

I fell asleep and had such pornographic dreams that I awoke blushing.

‘I’m just off to my swimming lesson now, Mummy,’ said Alan at my bedside.

‘Alan … heavens, I’ve overslept! Why didn’t that nitwit Celeste wake me up? All right, have a nice time, darling—’

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘But Alan—’

The past came up to meet me. I was back with Alan in 1929 as I tried to explain to him that Steve and I had decided not to marry after all.

‘But he was going to be a new daddy for me – you promised – you said you’d be a mummy and daddy, married with wedding pictures just like everyone else …’ His white tense little face was upturned to mine. His dark eyes were bright with anger and pain. ‘Why can’t you be married, why not? Everyone else’s mummy’s married! If only you could get married then I wouldn’t have to be different any more …’

I wouldn’t
have thought it possible to experience such agonies of remorse. Paul had told me in 1922 that my attitude to unmarried motherhood had been naïve, but it was not until after Steve left and Alan broke down that I had any conception of the suffering I had caused to the person I loved best. Given my peculiar circumstances my unmarried motherhood was perhaps inevitable, but it was still unforgivably selfish. I make no excuses for myself. I had been wrong, blind, childish, stupid – and I had not only made the mistake once but was about to repeat it.

‘I don’t want them,’ said Alan when I had brought the twins home from the hospital. ‘Take them away.’ He never told any of his friends that he had a new brother and sister. Soon he stopped inviting his schoolfriends to tea, and the headmaster of the little school he attended in Kensington told me he was worried; Alan had become withdrawn, made no effort with his lessons and took no interest in games.

I made another effort to talk to him about the twins but he burst into tears.

‘Couldn’t you ask someone to adopt them? Couldn’t you give them away? Couldn’t you keep them at Mallingham so I didn’t have to see them so much?’

The dreadful questions went on and on.

‘They’re only babies, Alan!’ I pleaded. ‘They don’t mean to make you unhappy.’

He remained unconvinced and the indifferent school reports continued while I worried about him unceasingly. I wondered if he should change schools but thought it better not to disrupt him. I wondered if he would be too disturbed to go to prep school to live in the masculine atmosphere I could not provide. I wondered if he would become a homosexual. I wondered if he would develop his father’s epilepsy. No possibility was too lurid to be considered by me in my anxiety, but at least I didn’t have to wonder what kind of a mother I was. I knew I was a complete failure.

Yet I loved my children and in the few blissful hours I spent with them each week I knew guiltily that my own suffering had been worthwhile. It was only Alan’s suffering which I found intolerable.

After Steve had left me I did not expect sympathy or approval from either my clients, the press or London society so I cut myself off from them at once and lived like a recluse. Fortunately since Harriet had always shouldered the burden of the business entertaining this retreat was easy for me, and soon I found that in a life devoid of social activity I could devote more time to the children. I bought my new house in London and took my time furnishing it; we visited Mallingham regularly and enjoyed long weekends in the country; I had plenty of free evenings to catch up on all the books I had wanted to read, and occasionally Cedric and I would go to the talkies together. I never went to the theatre in case I saw someone I knew, but occasionally I would take Alan to an exhibition or museum on a Saturday morning. This secluded life was certainly not without its compensations, but at the end of two years I was bored stiff and sexually
frustrated. I had recovered from the brutal conclusion of my affair with Steve by that time, and was willing to look elsewhere.

There was no shortage of men. I met plenty through my work, but when I found I was consistently baulking at having another affair I realized that I had fallen into the old trap of comparing my new suitors unfavourably with my past lovers. Steve and Paul might have had their faults but they had both been exceptional men.

I suppose it was about that time that I started sending Steve photos of the twins. I still thought there was no possibility of a reconciliation and I never consciously believed I wanted him back, but if I’m to be completely honest I must admit I wanted to establish contact with him again – although I told myself that I did it for the twins’ sake, and for the purest possible motives. It’s really remarkable how human beings can deceive themselves when they put their minds to it.

He wrote surprisingly literate letters in a big bold handwriting on the bank’s very grand headed notepaper. We had two safe subjects, economics and the twins, and we stuck to them through thick and thin. He was dotingly sentimental about the twins, tough and shrewd about the economic disasters which were hitting both America and Europe. We did not talk of the past.

When he arrived in Paris in 1933 the letters continued but eventually he gave way to the temptation no American can resist and picked up the phone. We spoke about once a week after that, just casual conversations. Sometimes he carefully mentioned Emily and their two daughters and I expressed polite interest. Occasionally we made a joke and spent much time laughing about it. Eventually in August he used that fatal phrase: ‘Do you remember …’ And I knew that like me he had been thinking daily of the past.

‘Mummy, I don’t want to go to my swimming-lesson,’ said Alan’s voice, recalling me abruptly to the present.

‘Darling, we went through all this last night …’ I saw his mouth quiver and all my old guilt surged through me. I did so desperately want him to be happy. ‘Well, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to,’ I said in a rush. ‘Now darling, don’t cry because I’ve got a wonderful surprise for you. Someone very special’s going to join us at Mallingham this weekend, someone you’ve always wanted to see again. It’s – well, it’s Steve, Alan! He’s going to be working in London for a few months. Isn’t that exciting?’

There was a stony silence.

‘Alan?’ I said in dread as his mouth ceased to quiver and turned down ominously at the corners.

‘I don’t want to have anything to do with him,’ he announced firmly and marched off to his swimming-lesson without a backward glance.

I was so depressed I could hardly drag myself up to Mallingham but eventually I left London with Alan, my maid Celeste and Miss Parsons, the governess who looked after Alan so that Nanny could devote herself exclusively to the twins. When we arrived at Mallingham Nanny informed me
with suitable melancholy that the latest nursemaid had given notice. It was a fitting climax to a grisly day.

After lying awake all night I drank three cups of coffee, chainsmoked four cigarettes and drove off to Norwich looking like a fishwife. I wore an old skirt and jumper, my faded country mackintosh, a felt hat to hide the fact that my hair needed re-waving and the wrong kind of lipstick. Since I felt as much a mess as I looked I was convinced the renaissance of my affair with Steve was doomed to immediate collapse, but then he came bounding out of the station and exclaimed with all his old exuberence: ‘You look wonderful – so natural!’ and I began to feel better. I did mean to warn him about Alan, but he was too busy talking about his own children; he had left his two boys temporarily with Emily but had promised them he would send for them as soon as he had established a home in London.

‘Were they very upset?’ I asked worried, trying to picture the little boys I had known seven years ago.

‘Yes, but I told them I’d make everything come right,’ he said untroubled, and it occurred to me that although he was devoted to his sons he might not have the faintest idea what was passing through their minds. One of the paradoxes of his character was that although he was a clever able man he could be extraordinarily naïve about emotional relationships.