After some time spent deciphering the archaic language I deduced that in the summer of 1922 that part and parcel of land known as Mallingham Hall in the parish of Mallingham in the county of Norfolk had been conveyed by certain people acting on behalf of Master Percy Slade to Mr. Paul Cornelius Van Zale, banker, of Number Six Milk Street in the City of London for the sum of four thousand five hundred pounds.
I checked the envelope for the inevitable papers relating to the conveyance later to Miss Slade, but the envelope was empty. I reexamined every item in the file, but there were no other legal papers and no reference to the ownership of Mallingham. Absent-mindedly I wandered to the cabinet where I kept my various private papers, extracted my copy of Paul’s will and read it from end to end.
I sat thinking, idly fanning myself with the will as I reconstructed the past. He had bought the place for her when she was broke, and he had obviously planned to give it back to her, but she had skillfully used his ownership of her property to keep all his sentimental memories alive. However, since he had omitted Mallingham from his new will in 1926 he must have been on the verge of conveying the property to her at the time of his death.
That explained why Steve had been chasing the file; I could well imagine an agitated Miss Slade exhorting him to find the conveyance which betrayed that Paul was the owner of her home. What I still failed to understand was why my lawyers had treated Mallingham as if it didn’t exist, but then I saw that the issue had remained submerged because all the relevant documents had been suppressed. The Van Zale lawyers in London would have the correspondence relating to the 1922 sale, but the deeds would have been handed over to Paul, and no doubt when Miss Slade had continued to live at Mallingham before and after his death the London lawyers had assumed he had conveyed the property to her through some other legal channel. Meanwhile the lawyers in New York either were ignorant of the transaction or else had wrongly believed that Paul had already divested himself of the estate through a conveyance involving the London lawyers. It would have been the obvious assumption to make when no deeds relating to Mallingham were found among Paul’s papers. In fact, on further reflection I thought it was hardly surprising that the paltry little manor house, so insignificant in comparison with the rest of Paul’s real estate, should have been lost in the testamentary shuffle.
There were no prizes for guessing who had the rest of the documents—and who had suppressed them. I wondered why she had never approached me, laid her cards on the table and offered to buy the place for herself. It was almost as if she had known I would have seized the chance to pay back some of Sylvia’s suffering with interest, almost as if she had known we were to end up not merely rivals but enemies, but that was fanciful. Back in 1926 no one could have known that. Yet it was almost as if someone had warned her against me. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she had avoided me like the plague, but there was no denying she had never communicated with me, and now there she was, still living at Mallingham, still acting as if she owned it, still demonstrating that possession was nine tenths of the law.
I made a mental note to get my lawyer to check the statute of limitations, though I didn’t see how any such statute could run in her favor while she was deliberately concealing the true facts of the case from the legal owner. However, there was no doubt that she had decided she could well afford to play a waiting game.
And so could I.
I smiled. It was two o’clock in the morning, but my talent for long-range planning was in full flower. Mallingham had never previously been of any significance to me, but now I saw that it had become exactly the weapon I needed. I would use my ownership of Mallingham to destroy the destroyer. Nothing could be neater. And nothing could be more satisfying.
However, it was important to get my priorities right, because that was always the key to successful long-range planning. First Lewis and absolute control of the bank in New York. Then Steve. The London office was ultimately subject to the headquarters at Willow and Wall, and once the New York office was under my thumb he would find himself outflanked. And then …
I picked up the photograph of Miss Slade. The dark eyes, still luminous with surprise, stared at me as if making some private challenge, and the wide smile prompted me to smile wryly in return.
“Someday, Dinah,” I whispered softly to her. “Someday …”
PART SIX
Dinah: Winning
1933-1940
One
I
STEVE TELEPHONED IN THE early evening. I was in the bedroom of my new house in Chesterfield Street, which I had bought following the twins’ birth when we had overflowed my pied-à-terre in Eden Mews. I liked living in Mayfair. I could stroll to work across Berkeley Square, and the park was so convenient for Nanny. My house was only a stone’s throw from the Curzon Street house which Paul had rented in the summer of ’22.
I was filing my nails, listening to Reginald King and his orchestra on the wireless and wondering if I had reminded Cedric to harangue the salesmen about the special properties of the new facial mask. My memory was not as good as it had once been. I wondered whether to blame advancing age, too many cocktails or the increasing number of details which required my attention at the office, and I was just deciding that it was once more time to delegate authority to my subordinates when the telephone rang.
I did wait for Wetherby to answer it, but deciding the caller was Geoffrey, I picked up the receiver of the extension by my bed.
“Hullo?”
“Hello, Dinah,” said Steve. “Guess who?”
“Oh, Lord,” I said, “I can’t bear parlor games before dinner. What a clear line this is! You sound as if you’re just down the road.”
“I am,” he said. “I’m back at the Ritz.”
“Good God!” Belatedly I realized that no international operator had heralded his appearance. “Why didn’t you let me know when we spoke last week that you’d be coming to London? How long are you here for? Is Emily with you?”
“No, she’s in Paris. I’ve left her.”
“You’ve what! My God, you American bankers are a barbarous crowd! Haven’t you any idea how to treat women beyond sleeping with them, getting them pregnant and leaving them in the lurch? It’s so beastly immoral! Honestly, I think it’s time someone spoke out in defense of the women you, Paul and Cornelius seduce and abandon!”
“Hell, Dinah, there are two sides to everything—”
“Yes, and I’d like to hear Emily’s! I’ve a damned good mind to ring her up and ask her to stay!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
“All right, you monster, I suppose you want me to hold your hand while you sob on my shoulder. Look, can I phone you back later? I’m just going out to dinner.”
“Who with?” he said at once. “Anyone I know?”
“Yes, Geoffrey Hurst.”
“Oh, old Geoffrey!” He made no effort to disguise his relief. “How’s he doing these days?”
“Very badly,” I said coldly. “His wife was killed last month in a car accident. I’m helping him recover from the shock.”
There was a brooding silence. At last he had the decency to say, “I’m sorry to hear that. Please give Geoffrey my sympathy. Listen, Dinah—”
“I really must go now, Steve.”
“But wait a minute!” he shouted. “How are the kids? Are they with you in town? Can I stop by later tonight to see them?”
“The twins,” I said, “are at Mallingham. ’Bye, darling.” And I slammed down the receiver.
I was shaking from head to toe. For a minute I walked up and down muttering, “Damn him! Damn him!” and then I pulled myself together, clambered into my latest silk negligee and headed downstairs for the stiffest of whisky-and-sodas.
II
I did not tell Geoffrey that Steve was back in London. I considered he had enough problems of his own, but before we had finished our dinner at Boulestin’s he twice asked me to tell him what was wrong. I declined. On our return to C
hesterfield Street I guiltily invited him in for a nightcap, but now it was his turn to decline. He was tired, he had had a long day, tomorrow promised to be unusually busy … The well-worn excuses slid courteously off his tongue, but I knew he was hurt that I had refused to confide in him.
I was just watching his Armstrong Siddeley drive away when I noticed a large black car trying to hide itself around the corner in Hay’s Mews. As I hesitated on the doorstep the car crept forward, skirted a lamppost uncertainly and trickled downhill towards me. It looked like a brand-new Bentley. It probably was. Steve could never be in a country twenty-four hours without buying the first car which caught his fancy.
I walked into the house, slammed the front door but changed my mind and opened it a crack. Plunging into the dining room, I prepared to ransack the sideboard for brandy but discovered I had lost the key. I was just peering distractedly into a vase of flowers when I heard the front door close.
I froze. Various opening remarks ranging from the enraged “You bastard, how dare you batter your way back into my life again!” to the groveling “Please come back—I’ll do anything you want!” all roared through my mind, but when his shadow fell across the doorway I was mute.
He was speechless too. He stood filling the doorway and blocking the light from the hall. I had forgotten how big he was, just as I had forgotten how striking he could look in his expensive American clothes. He was wearing a charcoal-gray suit with a pearl-gray tie, and his curly brown hair, silver now at the sides, was trying to spring up after being flattened with water. The lines were deeper in his face, but his eyes were that same hot electric blue and he still looked, to paraphrase Lady Caroline Lamb, rough, tough, and dangerous to know.
I had to sit down. I was just wondering idiotically what on earth I had done with the sideboard key when Steve groaned with typical honesty, “Jesus, Dinah, how on earth did we get into such a mess?” and sank down opposite me at the dining-room table. The chair creaked beneath his weight and the table shuddered as he leaned forward on his elbows. The mask of raw sexuality which he so often felt compelled to wear in the presence of women dissolved, and as he smiled at me with that friendly naïveté which I remembered so well one of his huge hands slid impulsively across the table and caught my wrist in a tight affectionate clasp.
“Oh, Steve!” I gasped feebly. I was on the point of making a complete fool of myself when I spotted the sideboard key lurking on the top dish of the epergne, and I grabbed it as if it were a lifeline. “Have a drink!” I said, scrambling to my feet. “What would you like?”
“Anything but tea,” he said. “I drank enough tea when I was with Emily to boost the entire economy of India. How about a quick scotch?”
Of course he had to have his wretched ice. When I gave the order to Wetherby I took the opportunity to ask why the sideboard key hadn’t been in its usual place. Wetherby told me the sideboard key shouldn’t be left lying around. “You should have one key, madam, and I should have the other.” “Wetherby, I’m not wearing that key around my neck day and night.” “As Madam wishes.” Servants were really very exhausting. Although I had abandoned my Marxist leanings I still occasionally longed for the great social leveling which Marx had promised was inevitable.
Steve and I exchanged cocktail-party questions and answers. I asked him when he had arrived, had he had a good flight, and he gave the appropriate responses. It was only after Wetherby had returned with the ice that Steve said, “I’ve got to stop drinking like this, but I’ll be all right now I’m here with you again.”
“Steve—”
“Yes, I know, don’t say it, you don’t want me back after the way I treated you, and I don’t blame you either. How can I ever apologize or explain? God, what a mess my life’s in!” he exclaimed despairingly, and having tossed back his whisky in a single gulp he poured himself another.
The nakedness of his distress made him vulnerable, and by magic I felt more composed. After drinking a little brandy I lit a cigarette with a steady hand. “You said some terrible things to me,” I said, “but I said some terrible things to you. We were both to blame, Steve.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “But what happened, Dinah?” he said, baffled. “Why did we suddenly tear into each other like that? Just what the hell was going on back there in the summer of ’29?”
“Ah, Steve!” I said with a sigh, and taking another sip of brandy I inhaled deeply from my cigarette and started to explain.
III
We had been hamstrung by our memories of my visit to New York in 1926. Having concluded he was nothing but a rake with a flair for finance, I had decided that he could be ensnared only if I acted the part of a fun-loving femme fatale. He had thought I was the hottest siren ever to emerge from England and had decided to ensnare me with a judicious mixture of copious sex and cunning British sportsmanship. Having fooled each other so successfully, we should hardly have been surprised when we found ourselves in the midst of that final violent quarrel. Our relationship, seemingly so substantial, had been a grand illusion. One can only act a part night and day for a limited time before wilting with exhaustion, and the surprise was not that our relationship had disintegrated but that it had lasted so long.
“But why did we get driven into acting these parts?” said Steve, still mystified.
“Because we wanted each other so much. I don’t think we could have twisted ourselves into such contortions otherwise. I think you were fed up with Caroline, probably more fed up than you realized, and perhaps there were other reasons too that I know nothing about. Difficulties at Van Zale’s with Cornelius perhaps? But whatever was going on, you came to England in dire need of a grand glamorous affair to cheer you up, and there was I, Paul’s mistress—”
“That goddamned best friend of mine!”
“Yes, this was his legacy to us, Steve. I told you the truth that day in the sandhills at Waxham. I was very lonely and you were very attractive, but when all was said and done I wanted you because you were Paul’s friend. I was in love not with you but with what you represented to me. I was reaching back into the past, and in order to get back into the past I had to act. I knew you’d never accept me as I really was.”
“But I did!”
“No, Steve. You backed away.”
I reminded him that he had pretended to be such a sportsman, so fond of fair play, so willing to be generous towards emancipated women.
“Yet what was the truth?” I said. “You tolerated Caroline’s emancipation because it was no threat to you; beyond all her tough talk Caroline wasn’t in the least emancipated. You tolerated my emancipation because although I was a success in the business world, my success never encroached on your territory. I was tactfully emancipated. But once I started talking to you in terms of money and power and the bank, I was suddenly right there batting on your wicket, a potential rival, and you responded just as you would have responded to a challenge by Cornelius—not sportingly, because you’re no sportsman, Steve! Sportsmen don’t survive long in the kind of world you live in. You responded by fighting back as dirtily as you knew how.”
“I must have been nuts!” he groaned.
“You were certainly flattering! Most women complain that men don’t take them seriously, but you took me too seriously! Later it occurred to me I should have accepted your horrified reaction as a compliment.”
“You mean you didn’t want the bank? But Dinah,” said Steve innocently, voicing a variation on the question which Freud—significantly—had never been able to answer, “what is it you really want?”
I sighed. “Steve, it’s no big mystery. I want what we all want. I want to love and be loved. I want to be secure and happy. I want a home and family and a job which allows me to use my own individual gifts. I thought I could make a success of banking and I still think I could, but if I never get the opportunity to enter a bank I’ve no doubt I’ll live. I’m certainly not going to go jumping off Westminister Bridge in a fit of pique. What the devil did you think I
was going to do if you gave me the chance to enter Van Zale’s? Stab all the Milk Street men—yourself included—in the back, weight your bodies with cement blocks and throw them into the Thames? Darling, I leave such behavior thankfully to you Americans!”
“You mean you didn’t sleep with me just because—”
“My dear Steve!” I couldn’t help myself. I had to reach across the table and slip my hand comfortingly into his. “I’m not Madame de Maintenon or Alice Perrers. I don’t seek power through the royal bedchamber. God knows I have enough power at the office, and when I stagger home to my lover the very last thing I want to do is prostitute myself in the name of more power!”
“I’m sorry.” He was genuinely ashamed. “It’s just that women do do that kind of thing, and—”
“So do men,” I said. “Paul slept his way into his own private banking firm when he married Marietta, but everyone thought it was a clever sensible thing to do. Aren’t double standards fascinating?” I was wondering whether we should adjourn to the drawing room, but I was afraid that once I’d got him upstairs I’d never get him down again. I poured myself another brandy instead. “Talking of the Van Zale family,” I said, “I just couldn’t believe it when I heard you married Emily.”
That casual statement hardly reflected my past rage, jealousy and searing sense of loss, but I saw no point in becoming too emotional. I told him levelly that after I had heard of his marriage I had abandoned all hope of a reconciliation, although for the twins’ sake I had felt obliged to keep in touch with him; my experience with Alan had taught me that even an absent father was better than a dead one. “And I still don’t understand why you married her,” I added to keep the conversation on an even keel.
He talked of the state he had been in when he had arrived home in 1929. “And suddenly in the midst of all these disasters there was Emily …”
The Rich Are Different Page 74
