Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “And then came the end.”

  “Yes,” said my father. “Then came the end.”

  “It came a week ago, didn’t it? When he returned to the office after his vacation.”

  “Yes. He tore up my myth and flung it in my face. It was as if Scott, the Scott I’d known for years, had died and someone violent and dangerous had taken his place. It was the violence which shocked me most. He controlled it, of course, but it was there, it was obvious, as obvious as the fact that he hated me. I can’t describe to you how I felt then. I didn’t know how I was going to get to the end of the interview. I didn’t see how I could survive till the end.”

  “But you did, didn’t you? You pulled yourself together, tied Scott up, and prepared to airmail him to Europe!”

  “What else could I have done? I couldn’t have fired him or he’d have turned Reischman’s into a hatchet to swing in my direction. I couldn’t have kept him in New York—I’d never have had a moment’s peace. All I could do was try to insulate myself for a while so that I could reorganize my defenses.”

  “Daddy …”

  “Yes?”

  “Daddy, you won’t fire him, will you, as soon as you can risk doing so? I mean, despite all that’s happened, you wouldn’t … couldn’t …”

  “I can’t fire him before 1968. There’s a written agreement.”

  “But even after 1968 … Daddy, if you care anything for Scott at all …”

  “Of course I care for him. He’ll always be my boy, whatever happens. I told him so before he left.” My father had begun to look at me very warily. “I’m beginning to think you haven’t faced up to the implications of Scott’s hostility to me.”

  “Yes, I have! He may be hostile, but he’s not basically concerned with you. His main aim is to get the bank in order to ‘make his father live again,’ as he puts it, and so long as you give him what he wants, I don’t think you’ll find him hostile. On the contrary, I think you’ll find then that he’ll at last be able to forgive you and be reconciled.”

  After a pause my father said, “I’m sorry, Vicky, but that’s just sheer feminine romanticism.”

  “No, it’s not! How dare you say that! What an insulting thing to say!”

  “Has it never occurred to you that he might want to wipe me out, change the bank’s name to Sullivan’s, and make sure my grandsons never cross the threshold of Willow and Wall?”

  “What an idiotic suggestion! And what a typically masculine fantasy, chockful of power and aggression!”

  “Okay, okay,” said my father rapidly, “don’t let’s get upset over this. We’ve both been doing so well. Now, sweetheart, don’t you worry about anything—I know you’re fond of Scott and this is highly disturbing for you, but just relax, I’ll work something out here, you’ll see. Scott and I just need a little time to cool off, that’s all, but eventually we’ll establish a new modus vivendi, and everything’ll work out fine … if he’s sensible. My one dread is that he’ll try using you to double-cross me.”

  “You would think that, wouldn’t you? Another fantasy!”

  “I agree he’s made no attempt to do so up till now, and I can assure you that’s been a very big relief. Naturally, as soon as I heard he’d involved himself with you, I couldn’t help thinking—”

  “Father,” I said, “get this straight: when Scott first slept with me, he didn’t even know who I was.”

  My father boggled. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Just what I say. My God, have you still not grasped the fact that I’m not the fairy-tale princess of your dreams?” I said, in a fine rage again by this time, and it was then that we had our first honest conversation about my disastrously mismanaged past.

  V

  “Poor Sam,” I said. I was calmer now, my voice remote and detached. “That marriage was a disaster for him, wasn’t it, as well as for me. He was so unhappy already, and I only made him unhappier. What a wasted life, he had, longing for all those dreams which never came true, but I guess he’d have been no happier with Teresa. … Daddy, whatever happened to Teresa in the end? I often wanted to ask but never quite had the nerve. I liked her when I met her at the exhibitions.”

  My father looked astonished, but all he said was, “She shacked up with some rich Mexican and went to live in Acapulco. She now paints pictures in the style of Diego Rivera. They’re terrible. I won’t exhibit them.” He stared gloomily at the rain streaming down on the highway.

  By this time we were traveling in his Cadillac, the new orange one, with the bodyguard sitting in the front seat beside the chauffeur and the two aides following in a cab. My father was holding my hand and I was too lightheaded to care; I had eaten nothing all day except the olives from my martinis.

  “I’ve told you far more than I should have,” said my father. “The more I talk about it, the more clearly I can see what an unforgivable role I played in promoting your first marriage. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “Daddy, you couldn’t be more wrong. Don’t you think that after fourteen years I have the right to know why Sam decided to marry me?”

  “Yes, but you must feel so angry!”

  “On the contrary, my predominant feeling is one of huge relief. I’ve sorted it all out at last. I don’t have to feel angry anymore.”

  “I don’t think I understand. You mean …”

  “I mean now that I know that the marriage was obviously doomed from the start, I’ll find it much easier to come to terms with its failure. I won’t have to keep agonizing over its memory and saying: ‘Maybe if I’d done this,’ or ‘Maybe if I’d done that.’ I can just say: ‘It would have failed anyway, no matter what I might have done,’ and that’ll be that.”

  “No more guilt?”

  “No. Sadness, yes. But no guilt. I’ll be able to remember Sam now and think of the happy times. For years I’ve been trying not to think of him because I’ve been too afraid of what I might remember.”

  There was a silence as the car drove on through the rain, but eventually my father said, “Vicky, I wish we could now discuss you and Scott as sensibly and dispassionately as we’ve just discussed you and Sam. Tell me, what exactly did you mean just now when you said—”

  “I don’t think you’d really like to know, Daddy,” I said, withdrawing my hand abruptly. “Not really. I know we’ve just spent some time discussing my total failure to become a replica of Aunt Emily, but nevertheless—”

  “How very glad I am now,” said my father, “that you’re not a replica of Emily!”

  “But I thought that was what you always wanted!”

  “Yes, but it was all a mistake, like wishing occasionally you were a boy. I can’t think how I could have been so stupid. If you’d been a boy, just imagine where we’d be now! You’d be bossing me around, trying to strong-arm me into an early retirement and generally giving me hell, and I’d be white-haired, ready to sink into an early grave! Christ, I feel weak at the thought of it. What a lucky escape I’ve had! How incredibly fortunate I’ve been!”

  The car began its approach to the Midtown Tunnel.

  “Am I to understand,” I said cautiously, “that this hymn of thanksgiving means you like me just the way I am?”

  “Yes, but the big question now is, can you say as much for me? God knows what you must think of me after all this frank talking. I guess I can’t possibly expect you to feel the same way about me anymore.”

  “Maybe not, but would that be such a bad thing? Our previous relationship doesn’t strike me as being any great loss, based as it was on illusions and platitudes.”

  “But at least you loved me!” said my father, determined to be maudlin. If his despair hadn’t been so obviously genuine, I might have succumbed to the temptation to push this sentimentality aside with a couple of tart comments, but instead I said patiently, “I loved the man I thought you were, just as you loved the girl you wanted me to be. We were both of us loving people who didn’t exist, and what’s so great about that? I’d rat
her have a genuine relationship with a real person, not a fantasy link with a figment of my imagination.”

  “But how can you ever accept me as I am?” said my poor father, somehow managing to sound both pathetic and exasperating, very old yet curiously childlike, world-weary but naive.

  “Daddy,” I said, “if you’ve got the guts to accept me as I am, why shouldn’t I have the guts to accept you as you are?”

  The car plunged into the tunnel, and the quality of sound in the car changed. We looked at each other warily in the dim artificial light.

  “What do you truly feel, Vicky?”

  “I don’t know. I just hated you this morning after I discovered how damaged Scott was.”

  “Yes.”

  “But to tell the truth, I feel too confused now to indulge in a simple straightforward hatred. All these honest conversations should have helped, shouldn’t they, but I think I just feel more mixed up than ever. Where does that leave us?”

  “Well,” said my father shyly, like some reticent student philosopher proposing a revolutionary new theory, “perhaps we might manage to be friends.”

  “That ought to be impossible. Why do I have this terrible suspicion that you may be right?”

  “Because nothing’s impossible if you want it badly enough,” said my father.

  The car shot out of the tunnel into the wet shining streets of Manhattan.

  “I don’t know whether I can be friends with you,” I said, taking his hand in mine again. “I don’t know whether parents and children can ever be friends in the accepted sense of the word. There’s nearly always too much love and hate going on. But perhaps we can make a better job of just coexisting.”

  “How magnificently pragmatic!” said my father admiringly. “I think we shall have a very successful coexistence.”

  VI

  He refused to go back to Wall Street.

  “I don’t want to keep you from your work,” I said.

  “Forget the work. You come first.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You’re not. You’re starting to cry again.”

  We went up to his triplex and sat in the library, that beautiful airy room full of glass and space-age furniture which gave it a resemblance to the set of a science-fiction movie. Central Park floated below us in a misty haze. It was still raining.

  My father mixed me a martini which tasted like four parts of vermouth to one part of gin, and served it in a liqueur glass. I was so exhausted that I didn’t even have the strength to complain. I merely accepted the glass thankfully as he sat down beside me on the couch.

  “I’d still like to be convinced that Scott didn’t engineer this affair of yours,” he said. “I know it’s none of my business. I know I mustn’t pry. But I’m just so anxious for you to put my mind at rest. I wish I could persuade you that I’m quite unshockable.”

  “This would shock you. It even shocked me after I’d done it. That’s why I don’t want to tell you. I’m not afraid of offending your nonexistent sensibilities. I’m afraid of being ashamed all over again, except I’m not ashamed, not really, I’m glad it all happened the way it did, I’m glad I took the initiative into my own hands.”

  “Vicky, you’re driving me crazy with all these hints and allusions! Either tell me or don’t tell me, for God’s sake!”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you. I’m too exhausted to care. I’ll tell you everything, and if you don’t like it, just remember that it was you who asked for it.”

  I embarked on the saga of my Caribbean cruise. Predictable exclamations such as: “My God!” and “Christ!” and “You didn’t!” emanated regularly from my father.

  “Well?” I said wearily when I faced him at last and saw his expression. “Are you ready to disinherit me?”

  “Was I looking horrified?” said my father. “I was only thinking of all those wasted vacations on my private yacht. I could have been on a cruise ship being seduced by pretty women!”

  I laughed, then started crying, then decided to laugh again. “Daddy, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “There, there, sweetheart …”

  “Now, don’t spoil it! God, I hated that cruise. It wasn’t funny really, Daddy. It was a disgusting atmosphere on that ship, with everyone aboard running around and copulating like animals.”

  “Disgusting,” said my father.

  I looked at him suspiciously, but he was poker-faced.

  “It was!” I said defiantly.

  “Am I arguing?”

  “Hypocrite!”

  My father patted my hand soothingly. “Okay, you’ve convinced me that Scott didn’t initiate the affair. But how soon did he try to take advantage of this new relationship?”

  “He didn’t. At first he thought it was a disaster. In the end it simply became an obstruction to his ambition, and I had to be cut out of his life.”

  “If he felt that, why did he persist in continuing the affair once the cruise was over?”

  “He realized I was the one woman in a million for him, just as he was the one man in a million for me.”

  “Vicky, listen to yourself! Spare me, please! That’s the kind of line Alicia lives for in her daytime serials!”

  “I can’t help that. I’m just stating the facts. You asked me a question and I gave you a truthful answer. If it’s too romantic for you, that’s your problem, not mine.”

  “It just seems …”

  “As a matter of fact it’s got very little to do with romance and more to do with the facts of life.”

  “Sex, you mean? Are you trying to tell me Scott shot you a line about some kind of problem and then said only you could solve it?”

  “I did solve it.”

  “Well, I’ll be … You mean he was impotent?”

  “Oh, Daddy, you haven’t understood anything!”

  “Some malformation of the genitals perhaps …”

  “Of course not! He was just the same size as Sebastian, which was most extraordinary, because I always thought—”

  “Wait a minute,” said my father. “I don’t think fathers and daughters ought to talk about this kind of thing. Hasn’t this conversation wandered a little far from the point?”

  “I was only trying to explain—”

  “Okay, you explained. Now, tell me exactly what Scott said to you about me.”

  I summarized Scott’s long confession after the clash with Kevin at the Four Seasons. “That’s why I know for a fact that he’s not as hostile as you seem to think,” I said defiantly. “He never said anything about erasing the name Van Zale and keeping Eric out of the bank.”

  “Vicky, that’s a very naive remark for a woman of your intelligence.”

  “And that’s a very cynical remark, even for a man who prides himself on his cynicism! Wake up, Daddy—be rational! Come down out of those cynical clouds! I wish I could convince you that Scott would never harm me by harming my family. If only we could marry—”

  “Marry! Who said anything about marriage?”

  “I did. I want to marry him. He’s the only man in the world, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You’re not serious,” said my father. He had gone very white. “You can’t be serious. I was given to understand this was just a casual affair.”

  “A casual affair? Well, I guess you were entitled to think that after listening to my account of its bizarre beginning, but Daddy, I told you Scott was the one man in a million for me!”

  “Yes, but that was just sex. For God’s sake, Vicky, what’s come over you? I don’t believe you’re in love with him. You can’t be!”

  “Daddy, I’m hopelessly, horribly and wholly in love with him! Do you think I’d want to marry him if I wasn’t?”

  “But …” My father was struck dumb for a moment. Then he stammered, “But Scott’s not interested in marriage! You’ll never get what you want there!”

  “Oh?” I said. “But didn’t you just tell me that anything’s possible if you want it ba
dly enough?” Tears began to stream down my cheeks again, and I gave up trying to check them. “Daddy, I can’t help it, I’m crazy about him, I know it should be no good, but I can’t accept that, I know how damaged he is but I think I can cure him, I think I can fix the damage somehow. God, if I thought it would do any good, I’d run after him, I’d go to London to live with him, I’d even leave the children—”

  “I’m dreaming this conversation,” said my father. “It’s not happening. It’s a nightmare. I’ll wake up in a moment, or maybe you’ll wake up and reassure me you haven’t gone clean out of your mind. Did you really say you’d even leave the children?”

  “Yes, but if Scott thinks there’s a chance I’ll live with him without the children, he’ll never marry me. That’s why I stood firm when he tried to persuade me to go to London with him. Also, I thought that if I stood firm he’d give way, but … he didn’t. Oh, Christ, he didn’t. He called my bluff and left me. I was so sure he wouldn’t, so sure that in the end he’d choose me, but he didn’t—he couldn’t … crippled … couldn’t help himself … not his fault …” I broke down altogether and could say no more.

  My father gave me a handkerchief, patted me on the shoulder, and sat like a statue at my side until I was more composed.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered at last. “I must pull myself together.”

  “Right,” said my father, and the brutal note in his voice made me jump. “You must. Face the facts. He’s left you. You’ve backed a losing horse! That man’s never going to marry anyone. As far as he’s concerned, you’re just a good lay.”

  “No!” I screamed. “That’s not the way it is, it’s not!”

  “Yes, Vicky, that’s the way it is, although I see no way of proving it to you except to say okay, you go ahead, you go to London and live with him and get him clean out of your system. I’ll take care of the kids. It wouldn’t be for long anyway—the affair would be burned out inside of six months. We could invent some story for the kids so that they’d never know, and then you can come back easily when it’s all over and pick up the threads of your normal life again.”