Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  After a pause she said levelly, “Sure. Okay. Why not?” and gave me a passable smile.

  So far, so good, but I was sweating with tension. It had never seemed more difficult to assume the role of playboy; and it had never seemed more unpleasant. The effort of continuing to speak in character was so great that I could hardly get the words out, but I managed to say smoothly enough at last, “You want to shower with me before we get dressed?”

  “You bet!” she said, and the slang sounded odd, making a mockery of her attempt to sound spontaneous and sophisticated.

  We stood looking at each other. She was still wearing my shirt. I had at some stage scrambled into my shorts, but now, groping again for the playboy image, I shed them carelessly and strolled toward the bathroom.

  She never moved. I walked right up to her, but she still blocked my path, and it was then that I realized she was as disoriented as I was—and just as trapped in a role she had no wish to play.

  I put aside all pretense. It was no conscious decision, but merely the overwhelming urge to be myself, and as I looked at her I knew I couldn’t just tear up my pass to a world which had been transformed.

  We never did get as far as the shower. Nor did we get as far as the aft bar for our phony celebration drink. We couldn’t even get as far as the bed. I stepped forward at the exact moment that she held out her arms, and as the light glowed softly behind us I slammed her hard against me and took her against the wall.

  V

  In the dawn light we began to talk.

  “Do you have a mistress in New York?”

  “No, I’m different there.”

  “So am I. I can’t live the way I really want to live.”

  “Who can? Freedom’s a grand illusion. We do what we have to do and there’s no escape.”

  “And what is it you have to do, Scott?”

  “I’d have thought that was obvious. I’m under a compulsion to make amends for my father’s failure and get to the top of my profession. No doubt any analyst would see my behavior as only too predictable.”

  There was a pause. Then she said, “Is it really that simple?”

  “Why should you say that?”

  “Because life so seldom is. What do you truly think of my father?”

  “Vicky, there’s no need for you to feel, as I’m sure Sebastian often felt, that I’m privately wrapped up in some titanic drama of revenge. The truth’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “But what is the truth?”

  I was silent. But then I said, “I wish I could tell you. I think I would tell you if I thought you would ever understand. Maybe one day …”

  VI

  Later, when the sun was streaming through the porthole and the sea was a pure translucent blue, she said, “And do you really have no time or energy for a personal life in New York?”

  “Is that so hard to understand?”

  “No, only too easy. I’m in much the same boat. The family life I’m obliged to lead leaves me no time or energy for a real life of my own. But I’m not fueled by ambition, as you are. I’m fueled by guilt.”

  I got up and went over to the porthole. It was suddenly impossible to speak.

  “I don’t think we do what we have to do,” she said. “I think we do what guilt makes us do.”

  I still couldn’t speak.

  “Sometimes you can’t just put your guilt aside,” she said, conscientiously explaining herself. “You want to but you can’t. It’s nailed to you and if you try to tear it out you bleed to death and innocent people suffer. So you go on doing what your guilt dictates you should do, and the only escape is to construct a sort of double life—to divide your personality in two. That’s a terrible burden too, of course, but it’s less of a burden than living daily with a guilt you can’t endure.”

  Speech was still beyond me. There was a hotness behind my eyes, a blurring of the vision.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You must think I’m talking garbage. Forget it.”

  “Vicky …”

  “It doesn’t matter. Come back to bed.”

  VII

  Later still, she was the one standing by the porthole and I saw that the skin below the line of her delicate tan was as pale as ivory.

  “We’re approaching Curaçao,” she said. “I guess now’s the time I have to face slipping back to my cabin in broad daylight in full evening dress. … What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m thinking you look as Maeve and Grainne ought to have looked but probably never did.”

  “Who the hell are they? No, don’t answer that, I’m not in the mood to be educated. Look, why don’t we go ashore together once the ship docks? I’m supposed to be lunching with the captain, but I’ll get out of that.”

  “No, I … won’t be going ashore.”

  Her eyes widened in disappointment. “Why not?”

  “I’m tired. I’m not Superman. I’ve got to have some rest. And Curaçao’s nothing special, just an island left behind by the Dutch on one of their off-days.”

  “Oh, but … Well, okay, if that’s the way you feel. Maybe I’ll rest too, and then this evening …” She paused.

  “This evening,” I said. “Yes. I’ll call you.”

  She smiled. I watched her dress. When she was ready, she didn’t touch me but merely blew me a kiss from the doorway.

  “Till later!” Her eyes glowed. She was radiant. I wanted to push past her, lock the door, and toss the key out of the porthole, but I didn’t. I was paralyzed by the conflict in my mind, torn between the dream of living a normal life and the reality of the compulsion to complete my quest, but as soon as I was alone I realized I had no choice except to pull myself together and face reality. The dream was over; I was a survivor and I had to protect myself; I had to escape home to Scott without delay.

  By the time we docked at Curaçao I had already made my arrangements with the purser, and soon after the gangway had been lowered I left the ship and set off on my return journey to New York.

  VIII

  In the first letter which I intended to leave for her I wrote: “My dearest Vicky: First I want to thank you for seducing me with such remarkable originality—how you would have delighted Chaucer! I can imagine him writing ‘The Wyf of New York’s Tale’ and greatly improving on ‘The Miller’s Tale,’ where all kinds of couplings took place under cover of darkness. If you can imagine Chaucer writing ‘The Investment Banker’s Tale’—or perhaps he would have called me ‘The Rich Lombard’—I hope you believe he would have described me as generously as he would undoubtedly have described you.

  “So much for the Middle Ages.

  “Unfortunately, since we have to live in the present, I see no way we can continue to act out our latter-day version of The Canterbury Tales. Having taken many cruises, I know very well that the reality which exists on board ship never survives the reality of the return to shore, so since our new relationship, enjoyable though it is, has no future, I see no point in extending it to the end of the cruise. Better to have a single memory of one perfect night than a painful recollection of the kind of emotional mess which I’m sure both of us want to avoid.

  “I wish you a safe trip home and the best of luck in the future, Scott.”

  It was only when I wrote his name that I realized I had been trying to write in his voice. I reread the letter and was struck at once not by the coldness, the priggishness, and the stylized intellectual detachment, though they were all present, but by the falseness which permeated the letter from beginning to end. What I had written had nothing to do with what was really going on in my mind.

  I folded the letter but realized I couldn’t send it. I tore it up. By this time the ship was within minutes of docking and my time was running out, but I knew I could not leave the ship without also leaving some word for her. Finally, since an explanation was impossible and an apology would have made me seem not only a coward but a heel, I wrote: “Vicky: I just have to cut this encounter short. I don’t want to, but I must. I
f we go on, I see nothing ahead of us but insoluble problems, so the only sane course has to be to stay uninvolved. But believe me when I say I’ll remember you always as you were last night when you made the myth of romance live, no matter how briefly, in reality.”

  I did not want to sign Scott’s name so I wrote no more. Sealing the envelope, I left it at the purser’s office for delivery, and tried not to imagine how she would feel when she opened the letter and found I had kicked shut the door she had so magically opened between us.

  IX

  I had a four-hour wait at the airport for the one direct flight to New York. As soon as my bags were checked, I bought some magazines, but when I tried to read them, I found it hard to concentrate. Eventually I set them aside and just sat thinking about her. I told myself the incident had been no more than a chemical reaction between two people who under bizarre circumstances had seen each other in an irresistibly attractive light, but I remained unconvinced that our meeting could be summed up so easily. I couldn’t understand why my discovery of her identity hadn’t destroyed the chemistry. How could I have continued to make love to her successfully once I knew who she was? In panic I tried to find a rational explanation of my behavior. I was beginning to feel as if my entire sanity was on the line.

  Her words echoed in my mind.

  “Do you have a mistress in New York?”

  “No, I’m different there.”

  She hadn’t even asked me what I meant. She had known I wasn’t Scott. She had recognized me as myself, and more important still, she had accepted me as I was. And I knew and accepted who she was, too. Not Cornelius Van Zale’s daughter or Sebastian’s ex-wife, or the harassed mother of all those noisy ill-behaved kids. This was a fellow survivor juggling with the double life. This was a fellow traveler tormented by the demands of self-discipline and driven by motives no one understood. This was the companion I’d always wanted to put an end to my isolation. This was the woman I’d long since decided I’d never be able to find.

  I couldn’t even regret that she was someone who knew Scott’s world so well. That only added to the understanding between us, because there was no need to explain Scott to her. She knew exactly who Scott was, so we were immediately beyond all the boring questions other women found they had to ask: Where do you live, what do you do, have you ever been married …? I thought of all those dreary questions and reveled in their absence. Then I remembered saying to her at some time during the night: “But Tony was the good-looking one—how could you possibly think I was more attractive than he was?” and she had said idly: “Yes, he was nice, but he was kind of boring, I always thought, like Andrew.” And amidst all my gratification I had suddenly thought how wonderful it was that she knew Andrew and Tony and that there was no need for me to embark on turgid explanations.

  So Vicky could ease the weight of my reserve merely by sharing so much of my background, and when I thought more about that background I saw yet another of Vicky’s advantages: she had no interest in how much money I made and what kind of life I could afford. Since she herself was rich, she could see me so clearly because my own wealth didn’t stand in her way. That fact alone was enough to make her very different from most of the women I met in the course of my travels.

  I found I wanted very much to see her again.

  I was on my feet in a second. I was wide-awake, yet obviously I was still living in a dream. I had apparently become entangled in a fantasy which bore no relation to the reality of my New York life, but I was appalled to discover that now it was my New York life which seemed a fantasy, while Vicky was the one reality in a confused, disordered world. I sat down again, forced myself to be calm. I was, of course, very disturbed. That was why I was having so much trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, and that was why my instinct for self-preservation was beating me back to New York, where Scott could reestablish his control over my life.

  Or was Scott a fantasy?

  No, Scott might be a myth, but he was still part of my reality, for unlike fantasy, myths were only different dimensions of the truth. That was why myths could be just as important as reality, and that was why in the most successful lives they were not in conflict with reality but complementing it, so that both myth and reality streamed side by side in time.

  I looked down at the magazine and saw the photo of Jack Kennedy. He had gone to Florida to make assurances that he was not “against business” and he was now on his way to Texas on a similar mission. That was the reality, but the myth was there too, streaming side by side through his life, the legend of JFK, the man who had followed his father’s ambition on and on and on to the very end of his dreams. One day, too, my myth and my reality would merge forever and I could begin to live as I really wanted to live, but first I had to complete my game of chess with Death; I had to outflank him and survive.

  Tonight I would be in New York. Tomorrow President Kennedy would be in Dallas, Texas. That was reality. But at the end of ambition’s road was light and life, and as I looked down once more at Jack Kennedy’s smiling face, I thought that Death had never seemed so far away.

  “Eastern Airlines announces the departure of their flight to New York. …”

  I forced myself to board the plane.

  “Can I get you a drink, sir?” said the pretty stewardess at my elbow.

  I wanted to reply but was too afraid I might order the wrong drink. I felt very tense. The man next to me had ordered a Scotch.

  “Some coffee, maybe?”

  As I nodded, it occurred to me that I was in an even worse state than I’d imagined, and that the sooner I reached New York the better. Scott would hold out the straitjacket, I would slip thankfully inside, and then there would be an end to all my dangerous delusions and a welcome return to sanity.

  The plane flew steadily on to New York.

  X

  As soon as I reached New York I started looking for him. I went to the men’s room and checked the mirror as I washed my hands, but I saw only my own face, shadowed with fatigue, and my own eyes, underlining my confusion to me. Later, when the cabdriver waited for instructions, I expected to hear Scott’s confident voice giving him the familiar address, but all I heard was my own voice saying worried: “Manhattan, Eighty-fifth and York,” as if I were a stranger and my one friend in town had failed to meet my flight.

  I saw the Manhattan skyline, looking oddly distorted by the new Pan Am Building, and the alteration of the familiar landscape dislocated the vertical structure of time and bent it into a curve in my mind. I saw the skyscrapers as giant dolmens arranged in patterns as sinister as any megalithic stone circle on the edge of Europe, and I knew I was moving into some macabre sacred grove where human lives were daily sacrificed to appease insatiable gods. For a second it seemed to me that the dolmens glittered with blood, but of course that was an illusion, the reflection of the setting sun on the glass windows.

  “Home sweet home!” cried the driver cheerily as the car sped over the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge.

  But this was no home of mine. I could no longer accept that my home lay among those bloodstained dolmens where my life was drained from me daily within the prison of Scott’s personality.

  “Okay, pal?” said the driver as he drew up outside Scott’s apartment building.

  I was so disturbed that I couldn’t answer him. Thrusting a twenty-dollar bill into his hand, I ran into the building without waiting for change and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. By this time I was panic-stricken, and as soon as the elevator doors opened I ran all the way down the corridor to the door of my apartment. The key slipped as I rammed it into the lock. I dropped it, picked it up, tried again. The door opened. Flinging it wide, I burst across the threshold.

  There was a musty smell in the apartment, as if someone had died and been efficiently embalmed. I closed the door. The sound seemed to echo and reecho through the dim, funereal rooms, but I didn’t stop to listen to it. I was on my way to the bathroom to check the mirror.

 
He wasn’t there. Blundering into the kitchen, I fixed him his favorite drink, a tall Coke on ice with a dash of concentrated lemon juice, but I was the one who drank the drink and I was the one who abandoned the empty glass in the kitchen. In the bedroom I dressed in his clothes, the dark suit, white shirt, and sober tie; I even took one of his favorite books from the living-room shelves, but it was I who sat down in the recliner, and it was I who waited and waited for the man who never came.

  The truth crept into my mind then, as I sat there dumbly with Piers Plowman in my hands. Scott wasn’t there and he wasn’t going to come back.

  Scott was dead.

  I was on my own.

  Chapter Four

  I

  I WAS IN THE bathroom again, but this time the mirror was blank. The shock of not seeing any reflection, even my own, was so violent that I found myself fighting for breath, but when I realized the hallucination had been triggered not by mental confusion but by physical exhaustion, this essentially sane diagnosis produced the required chemical reaction in my brain and I saw my own reflection in the mirror as soon as I stopped rubbing my eyes. I looked not only ill but also scared out of my wits, so I laughed to give myself courage and said aloud to my reflection, “What you need is a drink.”

  That made me feel more frightened than ever, so I shut myself in the bedroom, where there was no telephone directory to give me the number of the nearest liquor store, and picked up the pad and pen I kept by the phone on the nightstand. I thought if I behaved as much like Scott as possible and made a list of the chores that had to be done I might achieve some semblance of normality.