I should have realized that this powerful example of epistolary seduction was as mysterious as his long silence, but I was too sick with relief to analyze Paul’s motives. I did allow myself the luxury of indignant rage (“How dare he think I’d drop everything the moment he crooks his little finger!”), but then all I could do was long for him with such a passion that I hardly knew how to stop myself from rushing aboard the first ship to New York.
VII
I arrived in New York on Saturday, the seventeenth of April, 1926, after a windy transatlantic voyage, and leaving Alan and his nanny Mary Oakes in their cabin, I staggered up on deck to inspect Paul’s city.
The weather was misty. I moved feverishly from port to starboard but could see nothing.
“Where is it?” I asked a passing sailor anxiously as I clung to the rail.
“Don’t worry, miss, it’s there—we’ve never lost it yet!” came the reassuring reply, and as I turned away from him the sun shone fitfully somewhere above us, the mist parted and I saw a series of towers, gossamer-thin and ethereal, etched delicately against the pastel morning sky.
I was astonished. I had imagined the tall buildings of New York to be solid, ugly and vulgar, and when I could summon none of my anticipated feelings of repulsion towards the city which had lured Paul from Mallingham, I felt curiously defenseless. It was my first warning that all was not as it seemed to be, and to smother my confusion I retreated below to find Alan.
I felt weaker and weaker at the thought of Paul. In Alan’s cabin I caught sight of myself in the looking glass, and my heart sank. How plain I was! How fat! Six days of gourmet cuisine on the high seas had produced regrettable results. Supposing Paul took one look at me and decided that all passion was lost beyond recall! I sweated at the prospect of such humiliation and felt so enervated that I could hardly drag myself back on deck.
“Where’s my daddy?” asked Alan. He was barely three years old, but he spoke clearly, enunciating each syllable like an adult. His dark eyes were bright with excitement, the wind ruffled his fine fair hair, and his little hand was locked tightly in mine.
“We’re not quite there yet. Look at all the tall buildings!”
“Um. … Mummy, it’s cold out here. I want to go inside again.”
I took him back to Mary, but when they set off for a walk around the public rooms I returned to my cabin. Dissatisfied with my makeup, I washed it off and began to apply it afresh, but my hands were shaking so much that my special non-smudge deep-garnet lipstick wandered disastrously over my upper lip. I poked around among my foundation creams, chose the wrong one, wiped it off, slapped another one on and upset the powder. My nose looked too big. I stared at it and in my distraction applied too much perfume. The cabin began to reek in a way which conjured up fevered images of Nell Gwyn selling cloves in a Chinese restaurant. In an effort to ward off utter despair I said to my reflection in the glass, “I’m going to win. I’m going to get him back. Back to Mallingham. Back to me.” And, struck by the resemblance of my mutterings to Coué’s famous incantation “Every day in every way I am getting better and better,” I laughed and felt braver.
By the time the ship docked I was on deck again, but although I peered down onto the quay the ship was so high that the people below were unrecognizable. Eventually the baggage was unloaded and we were permitted to leave, but once we were ashore all the passengers became enmeshed in the formalities of the customs inspection. Our baggage had to be found, opened and submitted to prying hands. Forms had to be stamped. Questions had to be answered. I felt sick and started to chew my nails. Alan became bored and announced he had to go to the potty.
“You’ll just have to wait, love,” said Mary sympathetically.
“But I don’t want to wait!”
Hell on earth, I decided, was undoubtedly being imprisoned in the customs hall of a foreign port with a three-year-old who wanted to go to the lavatory.
Our last bag was cleared. “Help you, ma’am?” offered a huge man who I dimly realized was a porter.
“Oh, please, please, yes,” I said, wildly, and we all set off for the distant barrier beyond which throngs of people were waiting to meet the passengers.
I strained my eyes for a glimpse of Paul but there was no sign of him. The swine! He had decided not to meet me after all. Oh, how dared he do this to me, how dared he!
“Where do you want to go, ma’am?”
I had no idea where to wait or even if I should wait at all. Despite the chilly weather I was sweating, and I was sure my makeup was already wrecked. There was a hole in my stocking. The crowd swirled around us. The noise was appalling.
“Make up your mind, lady!”
No sooner had he finished speaking than there was a diversion. Someone shouted, “Make way, there!” and someone else gave my surly porter a five-dollar bill. He almost swooned—I saw him rocking on his feet—and barely recovered in time to hear the curt order “Take the bags to the Rolls-Royce outside.”
“Yes, sir!”
I looked at the stranger giving the orders: His face was unknown to me, but when I looked past him I saw Paul’s bodyguard.
“Peterson!” I gasped, but as I rushed towards him he stepped aside and suddenly, magically, I was face to face again with the man I wanted—and the man I was determined to have no matter what obstacles might stand in my way.
Two
I
HE LOOKED MUCH OLDER. I was shocked to see how much he had aged. At fifty-two, when I had first met him, he had looked no more than forty; now, four years later, he looked the wrong side of sixty. His graying brown hair was sparser than ever, his face was thinner and the deepened lines about his eyes and mouth made him look haggard as if he had long been struggling beneath an intolerable burden.
Then he smiled. He had eyes which because of his fair complexion seemed darker than they really were, and when he smiled they blazed as if powered by some mysterious source of electricity. His mobile features, expressive enough to reflect a dozen lightning changes of mood, mirrored this flash of electrical excitement and charged up the power of his dazzling smile to a hypnotic intensity.
The years fell away. So did all my past fits of rage and resentment. In a moment of weakness I wanted to burst into tears, cling to him in an orgy of passion and, like a heroine abducted by Valentino, beg him to do whatever he wanted with me.
Surely no man had the right to reduce a woman to such groveling self-abasement! As I groped for common sense I wondered how I could ever have forgotten how attractive he was.
“Dinah!” exclaimed the brute in his light flexible utterly charming voice. “You look wonderful!”
“Oh, Paul!” How I despised myself! I could only gulp and gaze at him adoringly. In panic I tried to think of an intelligent remark. “It’s been a long time!” I gasped inanely. “Heavens, what a long time it’s been!”
“It sure has,” he said, and when he used that raw American phrase I knew that he too was temporarily incapable of urbanity.
He had just drawn me to him for a kiss when Alan said behind us in a clear cross little voice, “Mummy, I want to go to the potty.”
I laughed, Paul laughed and miraculously we both relaxed. “Alan darling—” I stooped over him with Paul’s hand still in mine—” this is your daddy.”
“Does he know where the potty is?”
“What admirable single-mindedness!” said Paul, stooping awkwardly to pat Alan’s head. “Mayers, show Master Slade and his nurse to the nearest ladies’ room, please, and then take them outside to the car. … This way, my dear.”
He remarked how blond Alan’s hair was. I said that it became even fairer in the summer. We marveled at this prosaic piece of information and he asked me if I had enjoyed the voyage. I chattered feverishly about the Berengaria and told him how wonderful the food had been. While this dreadful conversation was progressing we edged our way through the crowds and emerged into a dingy cobbled street which reminded me of Cruickshank’s sketches of Dickensian
London. Around me American accents rendered my mother tongue as incomprehensible as a foreign language, and when I looked past the grimy nineteenth-century tenements at the hard blue sky I was aware of the strangeness, the alien light and the power of a mighty civilization glittering with barbarism.
“Dinah, may I suggest you and Alan and I travel in the Rolls with Peterson while Mayers accompanies the nurse and baggage in the Cadillac. Didn’t you bring a maid?”
“Don’t be funny, Paul! It’s as much as I can do to afford a housekeeper, a nanny and a daily.”
Alan scrambled eagerly into the Rolls-Royce and sniffed the upholstery like a puppy. “Nice smell!” he said approvingly as I scrambled in after him. He turned to Paul and hesitated before hissing to me in a stage whisper, “What’s his name?”
“Darling, I told you he was—”
“Yes, I know he’s a daddy but what do I call him?”
“ ‘Papa’ would be nice,” said Paul as the chauffeur closed the door.
“Oh, Paul!” I said. “How Victorian!”
Our glances met. He laughed. “Yes,” he said, “nothing’s changed.”
“Oh Mummy, look!” cried Alan excited. “The man who’s driving the motorcar looks just like my golliwog!”
“Good heavens, darling, you mustn’t say that!”
“Why not? What’s wrong? I love my golliwog! Papa, how can I become black like that man driving your car?”
Paul embarked on the story of the leopard who could not change his spots, and the Rolls, leaving the docks, moved into a wide straight boulevard.
“This is West Fourteenth Street,” Paul added when the Kipling lesson had been concluded. “When we reach the intersection with Fifth Avenue we’ll turn north and start to ride uptown.”
I had been reading about New York. “Fourteenth Street was smart at one time, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but the center of New York has been moving steadily uptown for decades. In my young day lower Fifth Avenue was purely a residential street and the mainstream of commerce was along Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but now Fifty-seventh Street is the new ‘boulevard of trade,’ as they call it, and the residential area has moved north into an area which was once a slum. I can still remember the shanties on the very spot where I now have my home. …” And he went on talking about New York while I gazed at the buildings and Alan embarked on a new sniffing examination of the upholstery.
The time came to turn north, and as the Rolls swung into Fifth Avenue I saw the famous street stretching uphill as far as the eye could see.
“Look behind you,” said Paul, “and you’ll see the arch of Washington Square.”
I was soon trying to look in every direction at once. We passed the towering triangle of the Flatiron Building, the trees of Madison Square, the dome of Metropolitan Life, the huge department stores in the Thirties, the stone lions outside the library on Forty-second Street, and finally came to a halt in heavy traffic outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I leaned forward, craning my neck to peer at the Gothic spires, and as I heard the screaming horns and roaring engines around us the past of Europe blended with the cacophony of that American present and I was gripped with the most vibrant excitement and anticipation.
“I love it!” I said to Paul.
His eyes sparkled. “Welcome once again to my world, Miss Slade!” he said laughing, and added, flinging out his hand in a showman’s gesture, “And welcome to the Plaza.”
A baroque building soared above a magnificent fountain, and beyond the open space of the square I saw the trees of Central Park and the mansions of the rich marching north up Fifth Avenue.
“Heavens above,” I said weakly, “am I going to stay here?”
“Well, the hotel’s very convenient and I think you’ll find it comfortable.”
“Oh, I’m sure we shall manage very nicely!” I had forgotten his predilection for grand hotels. Adjusting my hat, I did my best to emerge graciously from the Rolls-Royce and glide up the steps into the foyer.
“It’s a palace, isn’t it?” said Alan impressed. “Mummy, is this like a fairy tale?”
It was. We were welcomed by people who bowed from the waist and spoke in hushed voices. A gilded lift conveyed us noiselessly to an upper floor, and we were escorted into a gargantuan suite which faced the park. Every room was filled with flowers; I had never seen so many orchids gathered together outside a conservatory, and when Paul slipped one of the orchids into my buttonhole I was so dazed by my surroundings that I hardly had the strength to thank him. I was still trying to recover when two waiters rolled in a trolley bearing a bucket of ice and a jar of caviar, while Mayers produced a bottle of champagne from a bag.
“We’ll let it chill for a few minutes,” said Paul as Mayers retired.
This time speech was quite beyond me. I gazed at the red velvet curtains which stretched from floor to ceiling, the golden carpet, the gilt fixtures, the Louis Quinze (could it possibly be genuine?) furniture. There was even a marble fireplace fashioned by some disciple of Robert Adam. Next door in the larger of the two bedrooms Alan cried, “Mummy, look!” and when I wandered over the threshold I found him clutching the largest toy bear I had ever seen. A round-eyed Mary Oakes had already collapsed on a striped satin chaise-longue.
“Look, Mummy! Look, Mary! Look how big he is!”
“What a lovely teddy, darling, but what do you say to Papa? Remember your P’s and Q’s.”
The bed could have accommodated four people with ease, and beyond the far doorway was a marble bathroom bedecked with mirrors. Backing away into the sitting room, I heard Alan thank Paul for his present.
“You like it? Good. Ah, there you are, Dinah! I’ve got a present for you as well.”
He handed me a box. It was dark blue, three inches square, and the lid was embossed with the words “TIFFANY & CO.” Opening the lid, I found a pair of earrings.
“I hope green’s still your favorite color,” said Paul.
I stared at the emeralds.
“Remember your P’s and Q’s, Mummy!” piped Alan.
“Little monster!” Smiling at him, I kissed the top of his head before turning to Paul. “Thank you, darling—for everything. What a wonderful welcome! I feel quite overcome. What can I possibly say?”
“Say nothing!” he advised, with an erotic alternative effortlessly implied in his extraordinary smile, and bent his head in a flash to kiss me on the lips.
As soon as my mouth was free I burst out laughing. “You exasperating man!” I exclaimed. “Keeping me on tenterhooks for three years and then sweeping me off my feet despite all my determination to remain rooted sensibly to the ground! Why am I so incredibly glad to see you again? I must be demented.”
“Have a little champagne, my dear, and let’s forget the past three years. May I offer you some caviar?”
Half an hour later he inquired if I still found him exasperating.
“I can think of no other word to do you justice!”
“Then I can see I shall have to take time to expand your vocabulary. Obviously you’d like the chance now to settle down, but I thought this evening we might have dinner together. I’ll call for you at—shall we say six-thirty?”
We said six-thirty. He left, patting Alan on the head again after shaking hands with the enormous bear, and I sank down on the sofa. In fact I was in such a state of exhaustion that it was not until I took off my emerald earrings half an hour later that it occurred to me to wonder what Paul was trying to buy.
II
Paul knew I was sensitive about receiving his money. He had given me presents in the past but nothing which had matched the extravagance of those earrings, and although he had offered to return Mallingham to me as a gift I had always insisted that I must buy back my home with my own hard-earned money. It was true that I had wanted him to own Mallingham temporarily in order to strengthen the bond between us, but my main reason in forcing the ownership upon him had been that I had wanted security. I had been hedging my bets. If I had
ended up a bankrupt my creditors could never have taken Mallingham so long as the title remained vested in Paul, and if the worst did come to the worst I knew Paul would always help me continue to live in my home. I hated the thought of being a kept woman, but I hated the thought of losing Mallingham even more.
However, since I was making ends meet and Mallingham was in no danger, I could afford to be sensitive about taking Paul’s money. For some time I fingered the earrings reluctantly, but then telling myself I was becoming neurotic in my fear of being “kept,” I thrust them into my jewel box and took Alan and Mary for a walk in the park. Although I reasoned that Paul owed me hospitality in return for the months he had spent as my guest at Mallingham, I was even beginning to feel uncomfortable about my paid Plaza suite, and when I started shying away at the sight of the orchids I knew I needed some fresh air.
“It’s a jolly odd sort of park, isn’t it?” I said to Mary later as we paused at one end of a small lake.
“Oh, it’s ever so foreign, Miss Dinah, all them nasty black rocks and no flowers and hardly any grass to speak of. My dad would weep if he could see that grass.”
We savored our homesickness together. Mary was nineteen, plump and rosy-cheeked. I hoped fervently she wouldn’t fall in love with an American, because Mrs. Oakes would never have forgiven me for inflicting her with a foreign son-in-law.
I was unsure how long we would stay in New York. Paul and I had never discussed the exact duration of my visit, but I had told my friends I would need two months to complete my investigation of the American cosmetics industry with a view to opening a salon in New York. “For after all,” I had said glibly when all my friends had deplored my decision to return to Paul, “one might as well combine business with pleasure.” Two months would take me until the middle of June, a sensible time to embark for home, since the weather would be becoming unpleasantly hot and Paul would be making his plans for his annual sojourn in Bar Harbor, and in two months I should certainly be able to judge whether there was any future in continuing our affair. If there was none then that, of course, would be that. No matter how much I hated the idea of defeat it would be suicidal to turn a blind eye to reality. But if some future existed I was confident I could lure him back with me to Mallingham. All I had to do was to be calm, detached and sensible as I followed my plan of action without the smallest deviation in strategy.
The Rich Are Different Page 31
