Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  IV

  I went home and shut myself up in my bedroom for a long time. When I emerged it was dark, and I didn’t at first see the note that had been pushed halfway under the door. Stumbling over the envelope, I went back into the room to read the message inside.

  Alicia had written: “I thought I might stay with Andrew and Lori for a few days. Would this perhaps be best? Tell me what you think I should do.”

  I ran downstairs. She wasn’t there. In panic I ran back upstairs but found her in the television room. The television was off. She had a magazine in her hands, but it wasn’t open. An empty glass stood on the table, but there was no bottle in sight.

  “Don’t go,” I said. “Please.”

  “I just thought it might be easier—for a few days only.”

  “No. Please.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want a …” But as usual, the word “divorce” got stuck in my throat.

  “Of course not.”

  “Oh. I thought maybe … since he obviously thinks very highly of you …”

  “Oh, that’s all quite finished,” said Alicia. She opened her magazine and started to flick through the pages.

  “Since when?”

  “Sunday night. When I realized you knew. Then I called him and ended it. Of course. Naturally.”

  “But …” I struggled for words. She went on flicking through the pages of her magazine. “What did he say?” I asked at last.

  “He didn’t believe me. He thought I was imagining that you knew. Then he called me this afternoon to say he was wrong. He wanted to meet, but I refused. I saw no point in it. Then I had the idea that I might go away—from him, not from you. I wanted to make some gesture he would understand. But it doesn’t matter. I think he must understand now how I feel.”

  She stopped speaking, but I went on listening as if I could hear the explanation she had omitted. At last I said, “Well, I guess you’ll find someone else.”

  “After this? Are you mad? Do you think I’d ever want to go through the last forty-eight hours again?”

  “I’m sorry.” To my misery I saw that because of my selfish, stupid behavior I had cut off all her secret opportunities for happiness and had locked her once more into an empty marriage. I felt numb with shame as I realized she must despise me as much as Jake did.

  “We’ll get divorced,” I said in a rush. “It’s the only answer. Too much mess … and pain … not fair to ask you to endure it any longer.”

  “Oh, no!” she said fiercely; “No divorce! Not after all I’ve been through! If I lose you now, it’ll mean that I’ve been through all this for nothing, and I’m sorry, but I can’t accept that. If you try to divorce me, I’ll—”

  “I don’t want a divorce.”

  “Then why drag the subject up?” She tossed the magazine aside and rose to her feet. “I think I will go to Andrew and Lori after all,” she said. “I’ll go for a week, and when I come back, I don’t want to discuss this again ever, do you understand? We’ll just go on as we were and pretend this never happened. It’s better that way. People talk a lot of trash about how awful hypocrisy is, but they just don’t know a damn thing. Hypocrisy saves one’s sanity. It’s the shield you hide behind when the truth is too terrible to face. How many people really have the courage to live wholly in the truth? Not me, that’s for sure. And not you either. It’s easier to live with the way things ought to be, not to crucify yourself by living with the way things really are. Good night, Cornelius. I have to go to bed now. I’m very tired. Excuse me …”

  V

  I went to the library and sat alone there for a long while. I wondered whether to call Scott, but I had no desire to play chess and I could hardly talk to Scott about my personal life. Scott and I talked about either business or eternity, and there was no halfway house. I remembered Bede’s lighted hall and thought: It’s not so well-lit as Bede believed; the shadows get darker and darker as one moves toward the far end.

  I remembered the last of the Stuyvesants, dying alone after years of isolation in his Fifth Avenue mansion. But that wouldn’t happen to me. There would always be one person I could turn to no matter what happened. There would always be one person in the world who would keep the isolation at bay.

  I wrote “VICKY” on my notepad and drew a circle around the letters.

  I knew then that I had to get her back. I didn’t know what price I’d have to pay, but I didn’t care. I wanted Vicky back home in America with me, and no one, not even Sam Keller, was going to stand in my way.

  VI

  The Kellers were unable to join us at Bar Harbor that August, as Sam was pulling off an impressive business coup and needed Vicky with him to organize the important dinner parties, but I suggested that they return to New York in November for a family Thanksgiving.

  Vicky’s reply literally transformed my life. She wrote to say how wonderful it would be not to have to scour Fortnum & Mason for imported cranberry sauce and how she couldn’t wait to taste real American pumpkin pie.

  She was homesick at last.

  The tide was on the turn.

  When I next spoke to Sam on the transatlantic phone, he started talking about Germany again, but I shut him up.

  “I can’t think about that at the moment. I’ve got enough problems here trying to maintain our relationship with Reischman’s—I told you, didn’t I, about that godawful row I had with Jake as a result of all the anti-Semitic talk that got bandied around when Sebastian and Elsa announced their engagement?”

  “Christ, isn’t that papered over yet?”

  “It’s not paper we need, it’s cement. The rift’s a big one. I may even have to recall you to New York, Sam.”

  “But—”

  “Okay, stay in England, but just forget Germany for the time being. I don’t want to hear about it.”

  There was a furious silence. Then he started reminding me that I had promised to let him open a German office in 1956, but I interrupted him.

  “Vicky sounds excited about the prospect of coming home for Thanksgiving!” I said casually. “Is it my imagination, or has she been getting kind of homesick lately?”

  There was a pause before Sam said abruptly, “She only gets homesick when she’s depressed, and she only gets depressed as a result of pregnancy. It’s not unusual, the doctor says.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  There was another pause. I waited for him to mention Germany again, but he didn’t, and I realized then with enormous satisfaction that my suspicions had been correct. The balance of power had finally tilted back in my favor. I now had him exactly where I wanted him.

  However, before I could make any move to terminate his European idyll, Vicky called me from London. She was calling more often nowadays.

  “More exciting news, Daddy—I’m having another baby next summer! I hope it’s another girl, to keep Samantha company!”

  “Why, that’s wonderful news!” I said with alacrity, but I saw to my disappointment that I would have to postpone my final epic tussle with Sam until after the new baby was born.

  I didn’t want to upset Vicky when she was pregnant, particularly since she had become pregnant so soon after giving birth to Samantha. I remembered Sam’s talk of postpartum blues and felt anxious about her. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?” I said on an impulse. “Is everything okay?”

  “Of course! How could everything not be okay when I’m so lucky and have everything a girl could possibly want? Why, sometimes I lie awake at night just thinking over and over again how lucky I am!”

  I decided she would be luckier still if I could bring her back to New York for good, but I said no more in order to avoid burdening her with the worry of my approaching power struggle with her husband. Women shouldn’t be involved in their husbands’ businesses anyway. Women should stick to managing their homes and children, and I considered that I had a moral duty—a real moral duty—to protect Vicky fro
m the seamy world of power struggles so that she could go right on being the perfect wife and mother. I was beginning to think the one genuine triumph of my personal life was how well Vicky had turned out.

  I thought of Sam with a sigh, but I didn’t feel too sorry for him. Probably he would have hated the reality of living permanently in Germany. I knew he thought of himself as a German yearning to return to his native land, but I was prepared to bet that the Germans would have no hesitation in treating him as an American expatriate—which he would have been, of course; the Germans are no fools—and then disillusionment would have followed as inevitably as night follows day. In fact, by recalling Sam to New York I’d be saving him a lot of grief—or so I told myself, but of course I was well aware that Sam was hardly going to see my decision in that light. I would have to tread very carefully. The balance of power might well be tilting slightly in my favor, but Sam was a dangerous opponent, easily capable of bashing the balance back in his direction if I put a foot wrong in the negotiations. I was going to need all the diplomatic skill and all the bargaining power I could lay my hands on if I was going to succeed in hauling him home across the Atlantic; in fact, it was going to be the rockiest of rocky rides.

  Chapter Seven

  I

  THE FOLLOWING MAY VICKY gave birth to another daughter, who was named Kristin (an Americanization of yet another German name), and after the happy transatlantic phone calls had been exchanged, Sam wrote me a long memorandum from the Van Zale office in London. He said he had postponed his German plans long enough, and he suggested a three-week reconnaissance in Bonn in June, a conference in New York in September, and the opening of a German office in January 1957.

  I saw that he had decided to attack in the hope that I’d still be unwilling to force a showdown. I smiled sadly and shook my head. It was by this time abundantly clear to me that Vicky had had enough of Europe, and although she never said so, I sensed she was longing to come home.

  I wrote Sam the most exquisite reply. Ruefully I confessed that I had decided not to open a German office since I believed an additional branch would make Van Zale’s too unwieldy for me to supervise in the manner to which everyone had long become accustomed. With shameless enthusiasm I lauded him for his achievements in London. Then I stated I was planning a reshuffle at One Willow Street and wanted him home.

  His cable in reply read: “ARRIVING IDLEWILD 1430 HOURS WEDNESDAY TO DISCUSS FUTURE STOP SAM.”

  Wednesday was the next day. I sent a Cadillac to the airport to meet him but made sure it was last year’s model.

  He called from the Pierre. “Thanks for fixing me up with this wonderful suite!” he exclaimed, so skillfully acknowledging the lack of an invitation to Fifth Avenue that he neutralized the chill of my reception. “I’ll just catch up on some sleep, and then maybe we can meet for dinner this evening.”

  I really couldn’t let that pass. If I let him dictate the timetable of our confrontation a second longer, I’d be putting myself in a weak position.

  “I’ll see you here in half an hour,” I said, and cut him off.

  He was on time. Evidently he had decided it wasn’t worth the risk of antagonizing me further by being late.

  When he was ushered into my office I looked him up and down, much as a boxer might measure his opponent in the ring, and noticed details I had overlooked on previous rushed business meetings and busy family reunions. His dark hair was now quite gray, and the lines were deeper on his face. No doubt I too had aged, but fair people somehow weather the years better; my hair was a duller shade of yellow, but the silver strands were not noticeable at a distance, and although my face was lined, there were no pouches under my eyes and no slack flesh around my jaw. Regular exercise and no smoking had kept me in good condition despite my respiratory problems, and I had cut back the drinking that had followed my discovery of Alicia’s affair. Sam looked in bad shape, and as soon as we were seated after the ritual performance of an affectionate welcome, he had to light a cigarette to steady his nerves.

  Of course I knew approximately what was going to happen; the draft of the script had been hammered out long ago. Sam had been clever enough to set himself up in a position where he could tell me with truth that there were solid attractive reasons for the further expansion into Europe. He could have tried strong-arming me without bothering to set himself up in this persuasive position, but he knew me well enough to realize his best policy was not to beat me over the head to get what he wanted but to lure me gently on until I had no valid reason for refusing his demands. Obviously for Vicky’s sake he had to make some effort to handle me with kid gloves and avoid antagonizing me needlessly.

  One can lead a horse to water; twenty cannot make him drink. Having coaxed me to the water’s edge and demonstrated what a magnificent drink he was offering me, Sam would be justified in losing patience if I stubbornly refused to be a sensible horse and slake my thirst, and I could all too easily visualize him threatening to resign. What I found hard to visualize was him actually tendering his resignation. The weakness of his position was that he must surely be reluctant to quit; he wouldn’t want to upset Vicky by alienating me for good, and he wouldn’t want to diminish his sons’ prospects by cutting them off from the Van Zale fortune. If Sam threatened to resign and I called his bluff, I foresaw he would immediately be in trouble.

  I smiled to show him how confident I felt, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was still messing around with his unpleasant cigarette.

  “Let’s keep this strictly a business discussion, shall we?” he said, shaking out the match. “If we get personal, we always get overemotional.”

  Any business discussion could have only one result: he would be able to demonstrate with humiliating ease just how obtuse, irrational, and myopic I was being by refusing to sanction a German expansion. He would have the latest facts and figures at his fingertips, and within five minutes he would have made me look a complete fool.

  “Oh, hell, Sam!” I said in a good-natured voice. “Give me a break, can’t you? Change the record! I don’t want to hear your reasons for opening a German office—I know them all so well I probably recite them in my sleep! The British are finished, you say, they can’t work, they sit around drinking tea, they’ve been living in a fool’s paradise ever since Macmillan told them they’d never had it so good. But meanwhile the Germans are working like blacks, crawling out of the gutter, and pulling themselves up by the straps of their jackboots. The mark’s steadily rising. Soon the pound won’t be worth a plugged nickel. If I open an office in Germany now, I’ll make so much money I’ll be able to buy up England and turn it into a Coney Island East for tourists—oh, Christ, Sam, I could go on reciting this forever, but can’t we skip the crap and get down to what’s really bothering us? And what’s really bothering us, of course, has nothing to do with business.”

  “I refuse to get into an argument with you over Vicky.”

  “It looks as if you may have to. Let’s talk about the way things really are. I didn’t send you to Europe primarily to make money for Van Zale’s. I sent you there because Vicky had a problem back in 1952 and needed to take a break from America.”

  “That’s true. But—”

  “And now,” I said, sitting back in my swivel chair and rocking myself gently to and fro, “now Vicky’s got over her problem. Now Vicky wants to come home again. And why not? She’s had four years in Europe and it’s been a wonderful experience, but now she wants to see the Stars and Stripes flying everywhere instead of the Union Jack—she wants genuine Thanksgiving dinners and Walter Cronkite on TV and a charge account at Saks and an American accent for her children. And let me tell you something, Sam. I think she’s right. I’ve no patience with expatriates who think America’s not worth living in.”

  There was a silence. Presently Sam took off his glasses and polished them. “I hoped it wouldn’t have to come to this, Cornelius,” he said, and the sound of the name he never used signaled to me that he was picking up the gauntlet I�
��d flung down at his feet. “This is a sad end to a thirty-year-old friendship.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, knowing he was busy setting up the grand illusion that he intended to resign.

  “What the hell do you think?” he said, fencing with me, but I knew this was no fencing match. This was stud poker and we were tripling our stakes at each twist of the bidding. “Neil, I wonder very much if you truly know what you’re doing. To put it bluntly, you’re trying to bust up my marriage. I want to stay in Europe, and I have a right to expect my wife to support me in any decision that involves my career, yet you’re trying to muscle in, exploit Vicky’s temporary homesickness, and assert that we’ll all live happily ever after so long as Vicky comes home to Daddy! Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not prepared to take that kind of interference in my private life. If you’re not prepared to act like a sane, rational businessman by sanctioning the German office, I quit. My reputation’s very high in Europe and there are others who’ll back me if you won’t.”

  “And what are you going to say to Vicky?” I said lazily, still swinging to and fro in my chair.

  He just looked at me. Then he said, “That’s got nothing to do with you. That’s my business.”

  This refusal to face reality annoyed me. I stopped swinging in my chair. “In other words, you’re going to go right on making my daughter unhappy.”

  He sprang to his feet. “Look, pal—”

  “Sit down, Sam, for God’s sake, and let’s not get overheated about this.”

  “Shut up. I think it’s time you woke up and faced the cold hard facts of life. Vicky’s my wife. She loves me and she’s not about to leave me to run home to you. I’m the boss in my own home, and if I say we’re going to Germany to live, then we go to Germany to live. And if you cut yourself off from me, then you cut yourself off from her.”

  Of course he was only bluffing, but it was amazing how convincing he sounded. I began to feel uncomfortable. I was breathing evenly, but my hands were sweating and my mouth was dry. I had an overwhelming desire to terminate the interview so that I could relax in peace with my victory. I didn’t like living with this illusion that I could be defeated at any minute.