Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “Let me just get the drinks. I can promise you we all need them.”

  “Okay, but … wait, Jake, Alicia doesn’t drink Scotch.”

  “Oh, I do drink it nowadays, Cornelius,” said Alicia mechanically.

  Jake said at once, “You were drinking Scotch when I arrived. I assumed—”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Yes, I’d like another Scotch. Thank you, Jake.”

  “For Christ’s sake, why the hell are we all wasting time discussing Alicia’s drinking habits!” I was almost tearing my hair with exasperation. “Jake, what’s going on? Why were the police here? Has there been a robbery?”

  “No, Neil, it’s Sebastian. He’s in trouble. The police allege he beat up some woman on the Upper West Side.”

  I knocked back my Scotch, grabbed the phone, and streamed into action. “Middleton, get the police commissioner.” I depressed the phone and dialed another digit. “Schuyler, get my lawyers over here right away.” I hung up the house phone, got an outside line, and dialed the number of Sebastian’s apartment.

  “Hello?” said Sebastian laconically.

  “Sebastian, what the hell’s going on? Are the cops there?”

  “Yeah. They’ve made some crazy mistake. I’ve called my lawyer.”

  “Don’t say one syllable without him. I’m coming right over.”

  I hung up. The phone rang beneath my fingertips. “Yes?”

  “I have the police commissioner for you, sir.”

  “Put him through. Hello? Yes, this is Cornelius Van Zale. What the hell are you doing persecuting my stepson? … What? You know nothing about it? Then may I suggest you find out right away? My stepson’s name is Sebastian Foxworth, and some of your men are harassing him right now at one-one-four East Thirty-sixth Street, I repeat, one-one-four East Thirty-sixth Street. You get hold of your precinct captain and tell him I sue automatically in all cases of wrongful arrest.” I hung up. The phone immediately rang again. My personal lawyer was on the line.

  “What’s going on, Cornelius?”

  “How much does it cost to beat an assault rap?”

  Alicia bent over as if she were about to faint. Jake moved across to her automatically but then stood around like a tailor’s dummy as if he couldn’t decide what to do.

  “For Christ’s sake, Jake!” I snapped, interrupting my lawyer, who was giving me some unspeakable drivel about bribery. “Get Alicia onto the couch and ring for her maid, can’t you?”

  Jake obediently tried to make himself useful. I hung up on my lawyer and ordered a car to the door.

  “I’ll go over right away,” I said to Alicia, giving her a kiss. “Don’t worry, I’ll fix this, no problem. Jake, I’ll call you. Thanks for your help.”

  And I rushed over to Sebastian’s apartment to make good my promise.

  It was extremely awkward, since the injured woman, a West Side prostitute, had in her possession Sebastian’s wallet, which contained his driver’s license with the address still made out to his old Fifth Avenue home, but the woman turned out to be most reasonable when she saw the color of my money, and the police needed little encouragement to be persuaded that she had been hit by her common-law husband after he had discovered her with Sebastian. No one wants to waste time prosecuting a petty assault case when there are cases of murder, rape, and arson on the books waiting to be solved.

  When I was finally alone with Sebastian I said to him, “We may as well get what sleep we can now, but I want you in my office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and if you’re one second late, you’re fired.”

  “Okay,” said Sebastian.

  I looked at him. I never spoke, but after five seconds he stopped slouching against the wall, and after ten seconds he reddened and muttered, “Yes, sir.”

  I turned on my heel and left him.

  III

  He knocked on the door at nine o’clock, and rising from my desk, I took him into the other half of the double room where I worked. In Paul’s day the room that opened onto the back patio had been furnished as a library, while beyond the archway the far room had been used as an elegant sitting room where a few select people had gathered every afternoon to drink tea. I had dispensed with nineteenth-century tradition. The main room was now designed as an austere study, while the far room, as I had once heard a junior partner whisper, had become the chamber of horrors. This was the place where I fired people, clubbed them into line, or conducted interviews with clients who thought their long-suffering investment banker was in business solely to hold their hands while their paths automatically paved themselves with gold.

  “Sit down, Sebastian,” I said to my stepson, who was already unhealthily pale.

  He sat down awkwardly on the couch, while I remained standing before the fireplace, one hand resting on the bleak marble mantel.

  “Well?” I said abruptly.

  He cleared his throat. The sound reverberated on the ash-white ceiling and unadorned walls. The carpet in the room was steel-gray. Behind my shoulder the digital clock flickered scarlet, time’s lifeblood oozing away into infinity.

  “Well, Sebastian?” I said again as he struggled to compose himself.

  “Thanks for clearing up the mess, sir. I’m sorry you were involved. I apologize for all the trouble.”

  That was a long speech for Sebastian, but I made no acknowledgment. The silence lengthened. I never moved a muscle, but he began to shift on the couch.

  “I’m still waiting, Sebastian.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand …”

  “I’m waiting for your explanation.”

  “Oh.” He shifted again, trying to find a comfortable position, but as I well knew, the modern couch, backed only by a single teak rail, precluded all hope of comfort.

  “I want to know,” I said without expression, “why an intelligent young man, well brought up in a happy home with every conceivable advantage which wealth can provide, has to behave in this sordid and incomprehensible manner.”

  He said nothing. I felt my temper begin to rise. Moving so suddenly that he jumped, I abandoned the fireplace to position myself in front of the window. “Has it never occurred to you,” I said, “to date a nice girl, buy her dinner, take her to a movie?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d rather have dinner and go to the movies by myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like talking to stupid people.”

  “Then why don’t you date someone intelligent?”

  “Intelligent girls aren’t interested in me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m fundamentally uninterested in their brains, and they’re intelligent enough to find this insulting.”

  Conversation ceased. Sebastian, sitting on the edge of the couch, was glowering at the carpet. I was aware with exasperation that instead of crumbling into abject loquacity he was hardening into rebellious silence.

  Moving back to the fireplace, I prodded the screen gently with my toe.

  “Sebastian,” I said, showing him my back but watching him in the mirror, “you must, please, cooperate with me in getting to the bottom of this. Can’t you see that if we don’t solve this problem, it’s going to happen all over again? Now, just give me the facts. There’s no need to be afraid of shocking me, because I assure you I’m quite unshockable. Let’s start with the obvious question: why did you hit this woman?”

  Sebastian looked up. His dark eyes were hard with hostility. “Why don’t you try reading the Marquis de Sade?” he said.

  He had shocked me. Gripping the edge of the mantel, I told myself that this was Alicia’s son, that I had brought him up from the age of nine, and that he was—had to be—at heart a good, decent boy.

  “You mean,” I said slowly, “it gave you a sexual thrill to beat up this woman.”

  “That’s right.”

  My mind, fine-tuned to lies after twenty-five years of survival under trying circumstances, at once sensed a false note i
n his voice.

  “This is a pose, Sebastian,” I said coldly. “Please don’t waste my time like this. It can only deepen the contempt I already feel for your behavior.”

  He reddened and refused to look at me.

  Since severity was apparently leading me nowhere, I switched my mood, sat down beside him on the couch, and put an arm around his shoulder.

  “Look,” I said, “tell me the truth. I’m your father and want to help you.”

  “You’re not my father.” He got up and walked away.

  My fists clenched. I sprang to my feet, but before I could speak, he mumbled, “She said something stupid and I lost my temper. I hate stupid people.” He began to roam around the room, sometimes pausing to scuff up the carpet by shoving his heel into it. “She said I hurt her,” he muttered. “She said it as though I meant to hurt her. What annoyed me was that it was such a dumb thing to say. What was I supposed to do—shrink? And she said it at such a stupid time, just when I … And then she tried to pull away, and I got mad and god damned well shoved her away from me and she fell backward out of bed and slammed her head against the nightstand and her nose started to bleed and she started to scream and it was all so stupid, I wished I were a million miles away. I got away as quickly as I could, but in the fuss I left my wallet behind and as soon as she saw my Fifth Avenue address, of course she couldn’t resist trying to make something of it. … I’m sorry, Cornelius, but you can see how it was, it was all just a stupid accident and won’t happen again. You don’t need to worry about me, you truly don’t.”

  “But I worry about you very much, Sebastian,” I said before I could stop myself. I forgot my exasperation, forgot the chill of the interrogation room and the clinical choreography of power. I was with an unhappy young man who was my responsibility, and for his mother’s sake I had to give him all the help I could. Knowing he would shy away from any display of affection, I said carefully in my most reasonable voice, “I think you should try to form some sort of … socially acceptable relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I can’t believe you derive any”—I paused again for the right words—“sustained benefit from these very transitory episodes. I think you should look for an intelligent girl who attracts you physically, and then—after a trial period—propose marriage. You’re twenty-six years old and I think you should consider containing your very natural physical requirements in a structure which is regarded, both by convention and by modern sociology, as a suitable sexual framework.”

  “It doesn’t contain your physical requirements very well, does it?” burst out Sebastian. “And who are you to criticize me for going to whores?”

  I walked right up to him and struck him across the face.

  We were both trembling. I hated him for making me lose my temper when I had wanted only to be kind. He hated me for reasons which I preferred not to analyze but which probably sprang from the fact that I had deprived him of his mother when he was young. Now my apparent rejection of her gave him another cause for grievance.

  “Sorry, Cornelius, but—”

  “Be quiet!” I blazed. “Now, get this straight: I don’t go to whores. For the past six years I’ve had one mistress, and one mistress only, in order to spare your mother from an aspect of our marriage which she now finds distasteful. Now, you listen to me, and you listen well. If you want to get on in this bank, you’ll make some changes in your private life. I don’t pick my partners from maladjusted neurotics who are incapable of leading normal lives. If you’re set against marriage at present, you can certainly leave it till later—I’m not strong-arming you into proposing to the next girl you meet. But you damn well find a steady girl by the end of the year or you’ll be out on your ass looking for a job. Okay? Got that? Am I making myself quite clear?”

  He looked frightened. Of course he had no idea I was bluffing him. I could never have faced Alicia with the news that I had fired her son, but Sebastian did not understand my relationship with his mother, and he had grown up in a house where my word was law.

  “Yes, sir,” he whispered.

  “Right. Now, get the hell out back to your work.”

  He stumbled away, and I sank down exhausted in the nearest chair.

  It took me some time to recover from that scene with Sebastian, but when I reviewed it afterward I thought I had given him good advice. It would certainly do him no harm to go steady with a girl, and although I assumed he would always retain his preference for whores, I was practical enough to realize this was a trait I was unlikely to change. Some men preferred such women for some mysterious reason, which was perhaps part of the New York street directory which Freud had never reached—Queens, perhaps, or maybe Staten Island. I had never been to Staten Island and often thought vaguely that anything was capable of happening there.

  However, my most significant achievement was that I had clearly spelled out to Sebastian how important it was to present a normal domestic front to the world, and I presumed that eventually, perhaps when he was around forty, he would for the sake of his career pick a suitable woman to be his wife. Meanwhile, he remained a constant worry to me, but that was nothing new; I was used to that particular burden and had long since learned to live with it.

  With a sigh of resignation I heaved my anxiety aside, called Jake, and thanked him for looking after Alicia so well during the trauma of the previous evening.

  IV

  Sebastian dropped the bombshell on me two months later in June. He arrived on a Sunday at noon when he knew Alicia and I would be having lunch together, and informed us casually, without any warning or even a tactful preamble, that he was getting married.

  “Married!” Alicia and I were both transfixed. We were eating outdoors on the terrace, a large flowered umbrella shading our white wrought-iron table from the sun. Before us the garden stretched tranquilly to the distant tennis court. A sprinkler was watering the lawn, the birds were singing on the balustrade, and only the drone of traffic beyond the high brick wall reminded us that we were in the heart of a city.

  “Yes. Married.” Sebastian looked in the pitcher on the serving cart. “What’s this? Tom Collins?”

  “But, Sebastian …” Alicia rose to her feet, only to sink down again into her chair.

  “Is this a pitcher of Tom Collinses?” said Sebastian again.

  “No, lemonade.” I tried to make a speedy recovery. “Are we by any chance allowed to know the name of your fiancée?”

  “Elsa.” He turned to the nearest enthralled footman. “Bring me a Tom Collins, would you?”

  “Elsa?” Alicia and I repeated in voices loud enough to be heard in the Reischman mansion three blocks away.

  “Yes. Jake’s daughter. The fat one.” He found a spare plate and helped himself to eggs Benedict.

  I flicked my wrist at the servants, who reluctantly retreated indoors. Alicia looked wildly at me for help. Her eyes were a dull shocked green. I was so angry I could hardly speak. To calm myself I poured fresh coffee into my cup and picked up a soft roll. “I didn’t know you’d been dating Jake’s daughter,” I said in the friendliest voice I could muster. “How long’s this been going on?”

  “A couple of months. I’ve been taking her out every Friday night to a drive-in movie in New Jersey.”

  If he had told us he had taken her to the far side of the moon we couldn’t have been more amazed. We stared at him in stupefied silence.

  “I like New Jersey,” said Sebastian, drawing up a chair and dumping himself in it. “I like all the hamburger joints and the billboards and the plastic-looking shops on Route 22, and I like that bit of the turnpike when you go by all the oil refineries. It’s surreal. So are the road stops,” he added as an afterthought. “I like the way you drive and drive and the restaurants always produce identical food. It’s like a science-fiction movie.”

  “I see,” I said. “So you’ve only been seeing Elsa once a week.”

  “Hell, no, I’ve seen a lot more of her than that! She used to come downtown and meet me on
my lunch hour and we’d ride the Staten Island ferry together.”

  “Staten Island?” I shouted.

  Sebastian looked up from his eggs Benedict. “What’s wrong with Staten Island?” he said, astonished. “I like the way the ferry pulls out and you see the whole weird Manhattan skyline drawn up like a row of dinosaur’s teeth. It’s a great way to spend a nickel.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I suddenly realized I was speechless. “Uh-huh.”

  “Darling,” said Alicia, very white but regaining her immaculate self-control, “do the Reischmans know you’ve been seeing Elsa?”

  “Of course not! Why go looking for trouble? Elsa told them she was staying Friday nights with Ruth in Englewood.”

  Ruth was the Reischmans’ newly married elder daughter.

  “Staying … Friday nights …”

  “Sebastian, are you trying to tell us …?”

  “It’s okay,” said Sebastian comfortably. “Ruth swore she’d give Elsa an alibi—in fact, she said she only wished someone had been around to give her an alibi when she was looking for ways to bust out of her chastity belt. … Say, I wish to hell Carraway would bring my Tom Collins.” He looked crossly over his shoulder before attacking the eggs Benedict again.

  “Cornelius …” said Alicia faintly.

  I took charge of the situation. “You’re telling us,” I said, enunciating every word clearly to make sure there was no mistake in communication, “that every Friday night for the past two months—”

  “One,” said Sebastian. “The first month we were just friends, but after that, yes, we checked into a motel near the turnpike.” Abandoning his eggs Benedict, he laid down his fork and looked me straight in the eyes. “I did just as you told me,” he said. “I took your advice down to the last letter. I found an intelligent girl who attracted me physically, I took her out a number of times, and then—after a suitable trial—I proposed marriage. Wasn’t that just what you advised?”

  Carraway emerged from the house, his silver salver glittering in the sunlight. “Your Tom Collins, Mr. Foxworth.”