Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  If I’m ever to get anywhere with Vicky, I’ve got to try to sort out this muddle and make sense of it. Think, think, think.

  Obviously Vicky was originally scared to death by the thought of sex; our Romeo-and-Juliet scene at Bar Harbor proved that, and in the light of my new knowledge, I’m now beginning to think that she spent her adolescence terrified that she might grow up like her mother. That would explain why she married young, why she was a virgin when she married, why there’s never been any kind of hint that she wasn’t one-hundred-percent faithful to Sam. Girls as pretty as Vicky have lots of opportunities, but Vicky’s been too scared to take advantage of any of them. Maybe when she caught me with my pants down at Bar Harbor (roughly speaking) she had hysterics not because she was horrified by the sight of my unattractive adolescent body but because, on the contrary, she found the experience riveting and was terrified this meant that she was evolving into a junior version of her mother, the ogress.

  Yes, this is an attractive theory for explaining the early Vicky, but it hardly explains the present-day Vicky, who’s now far away from Bar Harbor, virginity, and teenage anxiety about sex. I think she got over this fear of her sexuality by channeling her sex drive toward marriage. For Vicky at that stage, marriage was the only answer. With her mother in the front of her mind, she must have thought: extramarital sex is horrific and condemns me to eternal damnation, but marital sex is fine, marital sex is okay, marital sex means I can relax and enjoy myself. Cornelius probably spelled that out to her once. I can just hear him saying it. I’ll bet Vicky wasn’t the only one in that house on Fifth Avenue who was terrified she’d turn out like her mother.

  We still haven’t figured out why she’s determined to regard her mother as an ogress, but let’s forget that for now; let’s put Vivienne aside for a moment and think of Cornelius. Of course it goes without saying that Vicky’s father-fixated, but most girls are in one way or another, and it needn’t necessarily spell disaster. Anyway, marrying a father figure probably helped her come to terms with the malign effects of that particular situation, because she would have had the chance to act out and neutralize all those theoretical (and maybe nonexistent) Oedipal fantasies. God, Oedipus has had a bad press! Freud did a real hatchet job there. Poor Oedipus. For Christ’s sake, how the hell was he to know Jocasta was his mother when he hadn’t seen her since he was a baby? What lousy luck some guys have …

  “Sebastian,” says Vicky, “these silences of yours are so unnerving. What are you thinking about now? No, don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re thinking I’m nuts.”

  “That’s right. I’m delighted you’re nuts. I don’t like normal people. Normal people are usually boring and dumb. If there were more abnormal people like us around, the world would be a far better place.”

  She laughs. “But I’m not abnormal, Sebastian!”

  Oh, yes you are, Vicky, but you can’t admit it. You’re abnormal in the best possible sense, you’re original, you’re different, you’re not dumb, boring, and run-of-the-mill. That’s why I like you so much. That’s why I love you. And that’s why I’m going to do my very best to extricate you from this prison of normality where you’ve been locked up so unjustly for so long.

  Where had I got to before I started getting so worked up about Oedipus? I seem to have reached the horrible conclusion that Vicky’s marriage to Sam Keller was probably for the best. It enabled her to come to terms with her sexuality and it allowed her to work off her father complex. So everything in the garden should have been lovely. Except, of course, it wasn’t. I think the first year was all right, though. Anyone could see she was in the seventh heaven of marital bliss then, so the sex must have been fine at first. So what happened? What went so very, very wrong?

  “You’re not listening, Sebastian!” Vicky’s saying crossly. “I said I’m not abnormal!”

  “All right. Maybe abnormal’s the wrong word. How about ‘unconventional’?”

  “What can be more conventional than being a wife and mother? Anyway, I don’t want to be unconventional. We’ve all got to conform, haven’t we, if we’re going to fit into society and do well in life? And I want to do well in life. I want to be a success, not an embarrassing failure.”

  “The most successful thing you can do in life,” I say, “is to figure out who you are and then be yourself. It’s a big mistake to try to be someone you’re not. It’s the equivalent of murder—you’re murdering your true self. That’s no road to bliss. That’s the road to depression and despair.”

  Her eyes widen. I’ve reached her. Finally she blurts out, “But supposing you don’t like your true self? Supposing it’s socially unacceptable?”

  “Well, if you go around breaking the law, I agree you’ve got a problem, but assuming you’re a law-abiding citizen with a reasonable level of intelligence and a tolerably humane outlook, why the hell shouldn’t you like yourself? If other people criticize you and make you think you’re no good, why should you automatically assume they’re right? What gives them the right to lay down the rules anyway? What gives them the right to judge you? And just who the hell do they think they are?”

  She thinks. We’re silent for a time, but at last she says, “I’m not even sure if I know my true self. Sometimes I think I don’t know who I really am. But I know the way I ought to be, and that way’s the easy way, Sebastian, it’s all safe and clearly marked out, and I know the people I love will approve of me if I try to live up to their expectations.”

  “No, Vicky,” I say gently. “That way’s not the easy way. That way’s the way that’s nearly killed you. Anyway, to coin one of our father’s most well-worn maxims, I’m not interested in the way you ought to be. I’m interested in the way you really are.”

  September 7, 1958. Alfred is one. He crawls very fast, with his head lowered like a miniature bull, but he can’t walk yet. He knows who I am. He smiles when he sees me, and since I’m not demonstrative I guess no one can figure out why he should be so pleased, but Alfred knows I always understand what he wants.

  Alfred and I communicate.

  Alfred is dark-haired and large like me. He sits gloating at the one candle on his birthday cake, his pale blue eyes misty with dreams of future triumphs. Elsa cuddles him, all the Reischman relations coo nauseatingly, Mother looks as if she’s about to burst with pride.

  Leave him alone, all you stupid people. Can’t you see he wants to dream a little?

  Vicky’s at the birthday party with all the kids. Eric and Paul are trying to murder each other, as usual. Too bad they never succeed. Little Postumus sleeps. Newborn babies are so smart.

  “Sebastian …”

  It’s Vicky, looking desperate. Kristin’s been sick on the carpet, Samantha’s throwing a tantrum, and the boys are crashing around in the nearest toilet. No sign of Nurse. She’s either passed out or walked out, and who can blame her?

  “Sebastian, I can’t cope!” No tears, just a tense brittle gaiety, the lull before the storm.

  “Go to the bathroom beyond the master bedroom and lock yourself in.” I hook Mother out of the crowd of Alfred worshipers. “Mother, do you still love children?”

  “Darling, what an extraordinary question! Of course I do!”

  “Then take charge of your husband’s granddaughters.”

  That fixes Kristin and Samantha. Taking a deep breath, I locate the boys, seize them by the scruffs of their little necks, and threaten to beat the hide off them unless they shape up. Children like to be yelled at occasionally. It’s good for them. They gaze at me openmouthed, and I realize nobody’s ever spoken to them like that before.

  Vicky’s going to have trouble with those boys. Cornelius will probably pull himself together to perform his surrogate-father act when they’re past puberty, but right now he’s too much the doting grandfather to be any use.

  I bang on the bathroom door. “Vicky! All clear!”

  “Oh, God!” She staggers out, no hysteria, just genuine laughter. Lightly touching her arm, I draw her fart
her into the master bedroom.

  “Sit down for a moment and relax.”

  “And to think this is only Alfred’s first birthday!” She sinks down on the edge of the bed. “How are we going to survive the others? Is Elsa livid at all the damage?”

  “I don’t care about Elsa.” I sit down with her on the edge of the bed. At once she shifts away.

  “It’s okay,” I say before I can stop myself. “I’ll wait.”

  “Sebastian, I don’t want to get like this. …”

  “Okay.”

  “I just don’t think I could ever bear to go to bed with anyone again.

  “Sure.”

  She sits there in a lilac dress, her lovely breasts full and lush. I wonder if she’s nursing Postumus.

  “Was it really bad with Sam?” I say. I know I shouldn’t ask, but I just can’t help myself. Although I want to have the patience of a saint, I’m only a human being a long way from canonization.

  “It was terrible at the end,” she says, fighting back her tears.

  “Okay at first?” I say, taking no notice of her tears as usual. Vicky has enough people slobbering over her when she cries.

  “Yes, it was nice. I loved Sam. He was so sweet, so kind, so understanding …”

  I grit my teeth but somehow manage not to grind them. Meanwhile she’s mastered her tears, but I give her my handkerchief anyway as a friendly gesture.

  “That was why it was all so awful,” she says, staring down at the handkerchief. “I loved him, yet at the end I couldn’t bear him near me. … Oh, I feel so guilty, just thinking about it! Why couldn’t I love him properly anymore? What went wrong?”

  I have a revelation, but it’s not a mystical flash of intuitive brilliance. It’s the result of commonsense logic. I’m trying to reconcile her picture of sweet, kind, understanding Sam with the tough self-centered machine I remember, but I’m having trouble. Human beings are often complex but Jekyll-and-Hyde types, who keep two distinct personalities in watertight compartments, are mercifully rare. Sam may well have kept the sweet, kind, understanding side of his nature under lock and key as soon as he crossed the threshold of One Willow Street, but do I really believe he stopped being a tough self-centered machine as soon as he crossed the threshold of his own home?

  No.

  “How could you possibly go on loving someone who treated you so selfishly?” I demand. My revelation expands. I can now grasp the whole panorama of her marriage at a glance. I feel weak, though whether from horror, relief, or sheer mental effort, I’m not sure. “Just think, Vicky—think of all those years of exile you endured in order that he could pursue his ambitions, all those philosophy classes you never went to in order to attend to his needs, all those pregnancies you endured to boost his ego …”

  But it’s no good. I’m going too fast and too far and she can’t handle that kind of panorama, not yet. She has to believe in this mythical figure, Saint Sam, because she feels so guilty about her failure to be the model wife and she wants to punish herself. As soon as I mention the word “pregnancies,” she starts to say, “I love my children, Sebastian.” At least she can still console herself by pretending she’s the model mother.

  “Yes, I know you love them, Vicky,” I answer, and think: You love them as I love my mother—genuine devotion encased in a constant nagging exasperation, like toothache. I want to ask her how many of those children she really wanted and how far they make her feel either happy or fulfilled, but I can’t. I’ve gone too far already and it would be dangerous to tear down all these illusions at once. The illusions are necessary to her at the moment; they’re her crutch as she hobbles down the road to recovery, and you don’t take an injured man’s crutch away from him. You just help him along until he’s ready to throw the crutch away himself.

  I’ve no illusions about motherhood. Maybe that’s because I’m a man and can view the subject without getting emotional, but no, men often get more emotional on the subject than women (back to poor Oedipus). Maybe it’s because my mother wasn’t around much when I was young, so that I grew up not taking her for granted and walking all over her but seeing her with enough detachment to realize how damned lucky I was to be the son of a woman who really wanted to be a mother. There are plenty of those women around, and they should be encouraged to have as many children as they like. What shouldn’t be encouraged is motherhood for motherhood’s sake.

  You don’t have to be a social worker with personal experience of deprived children to realize there will always be women who should never be mothers—and I’m not just talking about the impoverished alcoholic child-beaters at the bottom of the social ladder. When I was growing up, I saw all too clearly that some of my mother’s richest friends treated their offspring as something to be exhibited, like a new mink coat, and then sent back to the nursery for storage. I appreciated my own mother then. I wasn’t a fool and I knew when I was well off.

  I hated it when Mother tried to explain to Andrew and me once why she left us for Cornelius. She got so upset and it was so unnecessary. Just because she was temporarily deranged, it didn’t mean that she stopped loving us. Anyone could see she always loved her children. It was so obvious. Poor Mother. I guess one day I ought to say to her how much I appreciate the way she’s always been such a loving, caring mother, but I never will because (a) Mother would cry and I couldn’t stand it, (b) I’d be sure to sound repulsively mawkish, and (c) as the result of (b) I’d feel like throwing up. How goddamned difficult the mother-son relationship is—but then, the truth is, any parent-child relationship is fraught with difficulty and that’s why no one, no one, should take on parenthood until he knows exactly what’s involved and honestly feels he can handle the responsibilities.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without the children,” says Vicky, leaning heavily on those psychological crutches of hers, but the next moment she unexpectedly has a timid try at standing upright without them. “But the awful thing is that I don’t know what I’m to do with them, either. I just don’t know how I’m going to manage on my own—that’s why I keep putting off making any big decision about the future.”

  “Very sensible. You need lots of time.”

  “I certainly need something. I feel so inadequate. Daddy keeps saying cheerfully: ‘Never mind, sweetheart, at least you don’t have to worry about money,’ but that doesn’t make things easier. It just makes things different.”

  “Money solves a lot of problems and creates a whole lot of new ones to take their place.”

  “Yes. Of course I know I’m terribly lucky not to have to worry about money. I know I’m terribly lucky to be able to afford help with the children. But the more employees I have, the more complicated life seems to become, and also—God, I hate to admit this, because it sounds so feeble, but it does happen to be the truth—also I just don’t know how to run a household. Sam always organized everything, you see. He and his secretary and his aides were always around to pay the bills, hire and fire the staff, make all the big decisions. Daddy says I can have secretaries too, as many as I want, but he’s missing the whole point. I hate all those people milling around under my nose, I hate them all thinking I’m so feeble and stupid, I hate not even being able to sneeze without someone looking on. …”

  “It must be hell. I’ve often wondered how on earth Louis XIV survived at Versailles.”

  “I feel I want to simplify my life, not complicate it, but how can I simplify it with five children? At first I thought the easiest thing was to live with Daddy because it cut out all the awfulness of setting up an independent household, but now I’m not so sure that was the right thing to do. I just can’t take life in that house on Fifth Avenue anymore. I don’t know why. It’s not your mother. Alicia and I get along surprisingly well nowadays. I think the problem must be Daddy, although don’t ask me to define it, because I can’t. He makes me feel claustrophobic—as if I’m all laced up in a straitjacket. Can you understand what I mean?”

  “Christ, Vicky, it’s the story of
my life! Look, let me tell you what I think. Stay based at Fifth Avenue for a while longer—you mustn’t take on too much too soon or you’ll crack up. But don’t stay at Fifth Avenue all the time. Get yourself a little apartment—maybe around Sutton Place—somewhere with a view of the river. You need a place where you can be you—not just Sam’s widow or Cornelius’ daughter or the kids’ mother. You need to think. Thinking’s very important. Anyone with brains needs to be alone to think occasionally. Then, when you feel stronger, you can tackle this mammoth task of setting up an independent household for yourself and the kids.”

  “Oh, how clearly you see everything, Sebastian! What a good idea! But I don’t think I’ll tell Daddy. He’d be hurt. He wants me to stay at Fifth Avenue until I remarry. Sometimes I think he talks about all those secretaries and staff I’ll need in an independent home just to scare me into staying with him.”

  “Vicky, you must definitely—and I mean definitely—have an apartment where you can lead some kind of life of your own. I’ll find one for you, if you like. Then when I’ve signed the lease you can help me pick out the furnishings.”

  Her eyes brighten. “I’d like that,” she says wistfully. “I wanted to furnish the house in London by myself, but Sam said we had to have the top interior decorator to make sure it was done right—” Her voice trails away. Then suddenly she says, “I was very unhappy in Europe at the end. You were right just now when you said I was exiled. London was fun at first, but I was terrified of going to Germany. I’m no good at languages … I was afraid of letting Sam down … disappointing him …”

  “Did Sam never ask you,” says my voice, “whether you wanted to go home? When you said dutifully, ‘Gee, Sam, I want whatever you want,’ did he never once sit down beside you and say, ‘Look, what do you want? And where do you want to live?’ ”