Eight
I
THE FILES WERE LARGE boxes with spines covered with red leather and labeled with gilt lettering. The width of the spines betrayed that the boxes were not books. All the volumes I had seen of the works of Cicero and Catullus had been mercifully slim.
Caressing the Catullus file, I savored the prospect of a detailed analysis of Miss Slade’s machinations, but postponing the pleasure I first opened the file containing Paul’s correspondence with Vicky. I had no intention of giving it more than a passing glance, but I was immediately struck by the atmosphere within. Unlike a normal file, where the most recent letter lay at the top, this file began with Vicky’s first letter and proceeded steadily through the years to her last The material was arranged with exquisite attention to detail; there were photographs mounted on thick black paper and labeled in white ink; there were press clippings, each one trimmed and mounted like the photographs; there was even the program for the ball Paul had given Vicky on her coming out. It was the record of a life, Paul’s private memorial to his daughter, and when I saw the time and trouble he must have lavished on the project I was moved.
Without a second thought I started to read.
After ten minutes I realized I was deeply bewildered, so I stopped. Vicky’s correspondent was a stranger to me. This man wrote sugary romantic prose laden with preposterous sentiment. This man couldn’t be Paul.
Incredulously I checked the signature on his letters, but I saw only the initials “MTC” which Elizabeth Clayton had already identified. With increasing discomfort I read on. Vicky sounded very bright and gay, but Paul could only ramble on about Prince Charming, True Love, Happy Endings and how he had wanted Vicky to have them all. I could not understand why he had encouraged Vicky to hold such unreal expectations of life. I could not understand how he had allowed himself to palm off such sentimental romantic junk on his daughter.
I could not understand.
Greatly disturbed, I poured myself another brandy. Later I remembered I hadn’t finished the file, so I glanced through to the end and read the notice of her death. Again I was moved. After reading her happy letters I was aware of a bereavement I had never experienced at her funeral, and I felt that at last, years after her death, I had truly come to know her.
I tried to stop myself from wondering if I had ever truly known Paul, and in an effort to block the thought from my mind I took the Catullus file and walked out of the building into Willow Street.
I made no effort to open the file in the cab. My mind was too full of memories, and when I arrived home I thought not of Miss Slade but of Alicia.
Sending my aide out to pay the cab driver, I tried to cross the hall but my nerve failed me. I slipped upstairs instead, groped my way to my room and sat numbly on the edge of my bed in the darkness.
She found me twenty minutes later. I heard the tap on the panel and saw the light from the hallway as she opened the door.
“Cornelius?”
I turned on the bedside light. The glare hurt my eyes. I was still shielding them when she sat down beside me.
We were silent, but when I summoned the courage to look at her I saw at once that she knew.
She was wearing a pale-green silk dress, and her dark hair was swept up smoothly above her ears. She wore diamond earrings but no other jewelry, and when I saw how pale she was I felt sorry for her. Poor Alicia, trying to think of the best thing to say, trying to cope with a truth too intolerable to face, mumps, just a kid’s disease, so stupid, so unnecessary.
“How did you know?” I said. My voice sounded casual, almost careless, and my hands were steady as I rested them on my knees.
“I saw Dr. Wilkins a month ago.” Her monotone was steady too but quiet, barely more than a whisper. “I was suspicious. I remembered that horrible complication when you had mumps, and after my doctor told me there was no reason why I shouldn’t have more children I called Dr. Wilkins for an appointment. He told me that without giving you a physical examination he couldn’t be sure, but he said there was a strong possibility you were—that you couldn’t have more children, because both … because everything had been affected. He said that even so you’d been very unlucky because you might still have suffered no permanent damage if the orchitis had been less severe.”
The medical term seemed as pristine and clinical as the walls of Dr. Glassman’s examination room. I felt detached, as if she were talking about some unfortunate case history which had no connection with me.
“I told Dr. Wilkins I didn’t understand,” she said. “I said nothing seemed to be wrong, quite the reverse—imagine me saying that to Dr. Wilkins! But I didn’t feel embarrassed, because he was so nice—and kind too, I never thought Dr. Wilkins could be that kind. He started talking about ducts blocked by fibrous tissue and I felt so stupid because I still didn’t understand. I said there was always fluid and he said yes, but it would be empty, because nothing—or not enough of anything—could get through the ducts. It was all so difficult to understand because I’ve never been any good at anatomy, I’m not even sure what goes on in my own body. Isn’t it strange how you live with your body year after year and never really know how it works?”
All I could say was, “You’ve known for a whole month?”
“No, I didn’t know because Dr. Wilkins said he couldn’t be sure. I did wonder if I should tell you what he’d said but you had already volunteered to have an examination and so I decided to say nothing just in case everything was all right. Besides, I didn’t really believe it could have happened. I suspected, but I couldn’t believe.”
“I’ve always suspected too,” I said, “but I couldn’t believe it either. The physical appearance didn’t bother me; I told myself it was irrelevant since we didn’t have any sexual problems, but there were recurring symptoms which I never told you about—occasionally I still get that same goddamned pain. Several times I almost stopped at the Forty-second Street Library on the way home from work so that I could look up mumps in a medical dictionary, but I never did. It was so much easier to tell myself I was fit and that nothing could possibly be wrong.”
It was so difficult to say what had to be said next that I stopped. We sat together on the edge of the bed, not touching each other, and the silence lengthened.
Finally I said without looking at her, “I know how much you want more children. I know how much it means to you. I want you to be happy. If you think you could be happier with someone else, of course I shall quite understand.”
She never hesitated. To my dying day I shall always remember how she never even paused to draw breath.
“I wanted your children, Cornelius,” she said. “No one else’s. I could never be happy with anyone but you, and besides … don’t you really remember those promises I made to you when we got married?”
I could not speak, but as I reached out to her blindly she reached out to me and the gesture we had first made long ago at Sylvia’s party was repeated. Once more our hands clasped and interlocked, and once more our lives streamed forward together in their single irreversible tide.
II
I am not a romantic. I loved Alicia and could not imagine living without her, but I was unsentimental about marriage and knew that it was only on the silver screen that the hero and heroine walked away into the sunset to live happily ever after in a problem-free paradise. Therefore when I tried and failed to make love to Alicia I accepted the disaster stoically and waited till she was asleep before padding downstairs. On the hall table the Catullus file lay like an opiate to offer me an escape into another world, and closing the door of the library I sat down at Paul’s desk.
At once I felt his presence again. I hesitated, and although there was nothing to hear or see I felt stifled. I went to the window, but the catch had jammed and as I wrestled with it in panic I felt exactly as if a prison door had slammed shut behind me.
I paused, sweating, and from the photograph frame on the desk Paul’s eyes met mine. I knew then what had happened. Pau
l’s life was mine at last. I had broken down the door into the past, but instead of finding a psychic escape into limitless freedom I had found only a dead end. I was not liberated by Paul’s personality but imprisoned by it, and when I remembered Sylvia talking of the demons who had died with him I knew they were resurrected in my own body.
I thought sickeningly of Bar Harbor, of Paul talking about his impotence, feeling less of a man because of his epilepsy, turning away from his wife who knew the truth and proving himself at last with another woman.
I twisted frantically in my prison. I no longer wanted to prove that Alan Slade was no relation of mine. I wanted to prove Paul had had a son, I had to prove he was different from me after all, I had to know that there was a point when our parallel lives diverged.
I ripped open the Catullus file.
I saw the envelope at once. It was marked simply “DINAH,” and the absence of an address suggested he had planned to deliver it by hand. I was about to break the seal when I saw the photographs, and putting the envelope aside I carefully followed Master Alan Slade from extreme infancy to the age of three.
He was fair-haired and his eyes were probably dark, though it was hard to be sure. He had a small pert bright face, but although I could see no resemblance to Paul I was sure, as I examined the last pictures of the two of them playing together on a beach, that he was Paul’s son. Paul would hardly have been holding the child so affectionately if there had been any doubt in his mind.
Paul had always been so undemonstrative. I knew that better than anyone else.
Pushing aside the photographs clumsily, I turned to the earliest correspondence and soon found the classical quizzes which Elizabeth had described.
“What did Pythagoras and the Druids have in common?”
“Elementary, my dear Catullus. They both believed in the transmigration of souls (for Druids see Caesar’s ‘De Bello Gallico’).”
“Who was brought to trial for stealing a Sicilian cheese?”
“Someone in one of those bawdy concoctions of Aristophanes. ‘The Frogs’?”
“ The Wasps,’ my dear Lesbia, The Wasps.’ …”
Flicking through the quotations and allusions, I came across more photographs and found myself in an alien land. There was a lake, rather reedy, a sloping lawn, the glimpse of a sailboat. Another picture showed a windmill standing by a narrow canal, and the sails of the mill were dark against a pale sky. I was in England, in the county of Norfolk, and when I saw the next photograph I knew I was at Mallingham.
I was staring at pebbled walls, a dark mossy thatched roof and long slim windows. Ivy grew around the front door, and the untidiness offended me. I turned back to the correspondence.
A quarter of an hour later I was still reading. It was an entertaining correspondence, witty, bright and studiously devoid of any awkward emotion. Paul had shown his usual skill at keeping her at arm’s length—until he had decided he wanted to see her. His letter tempting her to America was a masterpiece of romantic nonsense, but Miss Slade had fallen for it and said yes, she would certainly visit him in New York. The next letters were concerned with details of travel arrangements, and the last, written by Miss Slade, said she was very much looking forward to seeing him again.
Evidently there had been no correspondence between them once she had arrived in America; the phone and their frequent meetings had sufficed. It occurred to me to wonder what had happened to all the photographs he had undoubtedly taken of her. I realized he might have destroyed them in an attempt to forget her at the end of 1922, but I thought it would have been only human nature for him to keep one. I was just stacking the quizzes which I had not bothered to finish when something fluttered past me to the floor.
I was face to face with her at last. It was extraordinary how commonplace she looked. Her dark hair was disheveled and her dark eyes looked surprised, as if the camera had caught her unawares. Beneath her large nose her wide mouth was smiling as if she were a schoolgirl who had escaped from some convent and was reveling in her unfamiliar freedom.
I was about to prop the photograph against the inkwell when I saw the envelope marked “DINAH” again, and this time I broke the seal.
“My darling …”
I stopped and checked the other letters. They all began “My dear Lesbia.” I glanced at the date at the top of the page. July the twentieth, 1926. Paul had apparently planned to deliver this last message in person but for some reason the letter had been filed instead, possibly only minutes before he was killed.
My darling,
I couldn’t sleep when I got home, so I decided to write this letter to give you on board ship. But if you keep the promise I shall extract from you, you won’t be reading this until your ship is steaming out to sea and then you’ll know that this letter isn’t a mere cheap ruse to keep you in America.
All I wish is for you to believe what I told you tonight. I love you. I’ll marry you. I’ll do anything you want. …
I stopped reading again. It took me a full minute before I could nerve myself to continue.
I do love Sylvia and I shall always be in her debt, but all I want is to spend the rest of my life with you at Mallingham. I know for years I’ve tried not to face the truth, but I have neither the strength nor the will to fight it any longer, and the truth is, of course, that we were meant for each other …
I stopped a third time. I felt sickened by the cloying clichés, physically ill. I turned the page with a trembling hand.
… and could make each other happy. I know you want more children, but I doubt if I have long to live and once you’re a widow you’ll still be young enough to increase your family with someone who can’t transmit any sickness to your children. You see? Even now I can still scrape together a little cool common sense! But now I know my cynical pragmatism is useless to me and my deliberate detachment from others has led me into an emotional desert. I want my true self back again, Dinah, and only you can restore it—my youth, my faith, all my old ideals …
I was overcome with shame for him, horribly embarrassed. An old man sinking into his dotage, talking nonsense, crying for his lost youth. … It was repulsive.
… so I shall retire from the New York office, and whether you accept me or not I shall settle in England. I want to see Alan grow up. How nice it would be if he became an Oxford don! Now at last I can understand why my mother wanted me to enter academic life and how horrified she was when I was drawn into banking. I don’t want Alan to follow in my footsteps. I want him to be happy, and I know he’d be better off without the burden of my wealth and position. Only a young man like Cornelius can shoulder a burden like that without being crushed by it, and I don’t want Alan to grow up like Cornelius.
Everything stopped. Slowly the world which had revolved around Paul for as long as I could remember began to disintegrate. An era came quickly to an end and keeled forward into an open grave. I turned the page.
I feel guilty about Cornelius [my great-uncle had written with his characteristic emotional detachment]. He works hard, he hero-worships me, he’s well-behaved, civil and obedient—yet I remain lukewarm. Ironically I suspect that this unadulterated loyalty which I should find so flattering is in fact symptomatic of the fatal flaw in his personality. He would indeed be loyal to me under any circumstances—no scruple would deter him, no law would stand in his way, no social tradition would carry any weight with him whatsoever. Despite my immoralities, which I admit are considerable, I have always had a very keen sense of right and wrong and have suffered accordingly from guilt. But no such suffering will trouble Cornelius because he has no true concept of right and wrong. He’s not immoral but amoral, and try as I will I can’t think of him as a son.
In fact if the truth be told, he’s very much the son of his father, a tough ruthless little man who despite his fanatical churchgoing habits was quite one of the most un-Christian men I’ve ever met. However, I have to admit he was devoted to Mildred and mild as a lamb in her presence. Strange how these mav
ericks who can conduct business so unscrupulously are often devoted family men—and I shall look forward to proving the validity of that observation if you’ll only allow me to live with you again at Mallingham!
My darling, take your time to think about what I’ve said and do not, as you did tonight, reject me out of hand. I know the discovery of my illness must have been a great shock to you, but I can’t believe you don’t still love me when I love you so much. Remember—I’d give up the world for you.
All my love, darling, now and always,
PAUL
It was the only letter he had written by hand and the only letter he had not signed “Catullus.”
I sat looking at his signature for a long time.
After a while I got up and began to walk up and down the room. My mind was confused, my thoughts disjointed. I felt as if someone had died.
A long time later—I’m not sure when it was—I realized I was looking through the photographs again. I searched and searched, not knowing what I was looking for, and then I saw her face and I took the picture in my hands and I got up again and began to walk up and down, up and down, and all the time I looked at her face and after a while I realized what I had at heart always known, that she was a destroyer, that she had destroyed my respect for Paul, destroyed my sister’s marriage, destroyed all my hopes of coexisting amicably with Steve. She would destroy the bank too if she acquired too much power, I could see that clearly, and more clearly still I could see she wanted to destroy me because I was the one man who would always stand in her way.
Sweeping the photos into the file, I tried to close the lid but the hasp refused to fasten. Something was jammed against the spine, and when I had pulled out the quizzes I found that a long brown envelope had wedged itself at a contorted angle to prevent the lid from lying flat.
I glanced carelessly inside and saw some kind of document. All legal papers have the same smell, but this document was different from the normal legal brief. This document had a foreign picturesque appearance.
The Rich Are Different Page 73
