I remain with respect and sincerity, your partner,
CORNELIUS
“Jesus Christ!” yelled Steve, and rushed headlong from the breakfast table.
Alan was away at Winchester by that time, but I hastily told the astonished twins to finish their breakfast while I went to inquire what was wrong. In the library I found Steve already in the middle of an incensed reply, and when I asked if I could read the letter he merely grunted his assent.
Seconds later I burst out laughing. “Honestly!” I exclaimed in delight. “I haven’t read anything so entertaining since Lady Bracknell’s dialogue in The Importance of Being Earnest! You’re not taking it seriously, I hope?”
He looked at me with suspicion, his pen motionless.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” I said carelessly. “He wants to quarrel with you so that you resign immediately. Then once you’re no longer a Van Zale partner he’ll be free to launch all kinds of nasty rumors about you before you launch our new house. It’s clear he’s found out exactly what’s going on.”
There was a silence. When he did not look at me I realized he was not only angry that he had failed to see the trap but mortified that I had recognized it on sight.
“Steve …” I was deeply embarrassed, wishing I had had the sense to point out the truth in such a way that he could have pretended he had discovered it himself, but before I could say anything else he had cut off my apologies with an impatient movement of his hand.
“Hell,” he said, “you’re right. Damn the little bastard. I won’t reply at all.” And he tore up his unfinished letter.
“Steve,” I said with tact, “wouldn’t it be better if—” I ran out of tact and stopped awkwardly.
“Go on,” he said dryly. “I’ll listen. God knows, where Cornelius is concerned I need all the help I can get.”
It was an admission a lesser man could never have made. Kissing the top of his head, I smiled at him in admiration and said squarely, “Act as though you’re much too good-natured to quarrel seriously with him. Sound annoyed but above all tolerant and even vaguely amused.”
There was another pause. “Sure,” he said. He took a fresh sheet of paper and sat looking at it.
“I’ll do a draft if you like,” I said, “and then you can alter it as much as you like, just as you would alter a letter submitted by your secretary.”
He offered me his chair and pen without a word and watched over my shoulder as I wrote with gusto:
MY DEAR CORNELIUS,
Why all the fuss? My “triumphant progress through Germany,” as you so kindly phrased it, resulted in excellent publicity for Van Zale’s, and if I have my doubts about doing business with the Nazis it’s only because I hate to think of people like our friends the Reischmans treated as if they were cattle—or worse. In short I’d recommend you to concentrate a little less on my caution in Germany and a little more on my English successes. Why you should complain about my taking an old friend like Bill Le Clair out to dinner I have no idea, but may I inform you that we expatriate Americans like to see someone from home occasionally. If you’d ever been out of the States you’d know that!
And what’s all this prune-mouthed description of Dinah as my “sexual partner”? She’s my wife! How would you like it if I said “How’s your sexual partner?” when I inquired after Alicia’s health? And what’s all this earnest condemnation of promiscuity? I agree I’ve been no saint in the past, but neither have you! In fact since you wrote me this extraordinary letter you’ve probably been to bed with at least six other women besides Alicia—and don’t tell me that you, with your obsession for aping Paul, practice the marital fidelity you preach! Anyway as far as cold-blooded sexual exercise is concerned, what does it matter where and with whom you perform the sexual act? I’ll bet it matters precious little to you, despite the amusingly pious tone of your letter, I’m sorry about your sister, who’s a good woman, but at least I’m not hypocritical enough to pretend that such a dead relationship is still alive. I’ll leave that final hypocrisy to you, Cornelius.
Regards,
STEVE
“He’ll never believe I wrote that,” said Steve. ‘It’s much too cool and British and debonair, and he knows I’d just wade in waving a meat ax.”
“You can make it more obscene!” I suggested, making him laugh, but he refused.
“It’s the right reply to the little bastard,” he said. “I’ll have my secretary transcribe it just the way it is.” It was only after he had reread the draft that he asked curiously, “How did you know Cornelius is obsessed with Paul?”
“Everything points to it. The way he took Paul’s full name after Paul’s death. The way he went to live at Paul’s house and work at Paul’s bank. The way he called his daughter Vicky. The way Sam Keller talked about a ‘mystical’ feeling Cornelius had towards Paul.”
“I think he’s a lot more faithful to his wife than Paul ever was.” He folded the draft carefully and tucked it away in his pocket. “He’s just crazy about that funny little fish-eyed girl.”
“She obviously represents the Eastern-Seaboard aristocracy to him. He probably feels inadequate because his father was merely an Ohio farmer.” I was still holding his pen. Idly I drew a picture of a mermaid on the note pad as I considered the unknown Alicia with her piscine eyes. “What I can’t understand,” I remarked as an afterthought, “is why they’re not hard at work reproducing themselves. Why is there no little Cornelius sitting beside them on the love seat? Cornelius is just the sort of power-hungry despot who would equate a horde of sons with virility and virility with power.”
Steve laughed. “Well, the happy couple on the love seat aren’t talking, but my own theory is that he came out of an attack of mumps the worse for wear. Do you know what can happen to an adult male who gets mumps?”
I shuddered. “I detest medical horror stories!” Curiosity overcame me. “Good God, do you mean he’s impotent?”
“Apparently it needn’t affect performance. But you can forget the hordes of sons.” He shrugged, glanced at his watch and turned to the door. “But so what? They have children from their previous marriages—there are plenty of other couples in the world who are worse off than they are.”
“But not many frustrated fathers like Cornelius. That’s just the sort of disaster which could have a very unstabilizing effect on him, Steve. A whole avenue of power would be closed to him, and all his aggression would have to be channeled elsewhere. My God, look what Henry the Eighth did when he started crashing around trying to reproduce himself!”
“Was that the guy with six wives? I always kind of liked him. Honey, I’ve got to get going now or I’ll be late for my first appointment.”
We kissed and parted, but for a long while I remained thinking about Cornelius, rearranging the puzzle of his personality and studying each shadowy feature as carefully as I would have studied an opponent’s pieces on a chessboard.
Cornelius never replied to Steve’s letter, but gradually the telephone calls between Steve and Sam ceased and Steve bent all his energy towards establishing our new issuing house. It was an anxious time for us both, but at last the house was ready to be launched and on the twelfth of February, 1936, Steve cabled his resignation to his partners in New York and later announced that the new London issuing house of S. & D. Sullivan and Company had opened its doors at Number Twelve and a Half, Milk Street.
II
Having made our historic coup, we held our breath, pricked up our ears and surveyed the landscape.
In America at One Willow Street an icy silence greeted our announcement.
In England the National Government had been reelected to power and Baldwin was busy puffing his pipe. The government dithered vaguely over foreign policy, one moment supporting the League but the next moment giving way to Italian aggression, and the Peace Ballot revealed massive support among the people for the League of Nations, for disarmament, for the belief that the fascist dictators would submit to nonmilitary coer
cion.
But in Germany that March Hitler reoccupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland and no one tried to stop him.
“Well, we won’t think of Hitler,” I said brightly to Steve. “Boring little man!” And in fact I was so busy helping to arrange our huge celebration party to promote our new house that I didn’t have the time to pay attention to international affairs. In May we gave our famous masquerade ball at the Savoy, and five hundred guests came to celebrate with us.
“It’ll cost the earth!” I said when Steve first suggested the idea, but he simply laughed and told me we could well afford to pay. This was true, but I remembered my penniless days too clearly to embrace extravagance with ease, and also my riches were still mostly on paper. After the taxes had been paid and our new house established we were hardly the richest couple in England, and as a precaution I set up a trust for the children and established a fund for my old age. I did not tell Steve. I was afraid he might interpret my insecurity as a lack of confidence in him, although in fact he would most probably have approved of my foresight; he was ho fool. However, his attitude to his money was very different from my attitude to mine, and I thought it was extraordinary as well as ironic that he seemed to have little interest in his income after it was earned. Making money was the game which enthralled him, and once the commission had been safely salted away he forgot about it and plunged back into the chase. He had only the sketchiest notion what his brokers were doing, and the idea that he could make himself immensely rich by imaginative management of the money he already had bored him. So long as he had enough money to live exactly as he pleased he was satisfied, and fortunately for him he always did have the money he needed; but he was haphazard about his private financial affairs, and I often thought how odd it was that although he usually had no idea of the balance in his checkbook he could and did calculate his clients’ affairs down to the last farthing. He reminded me of a doctor who tirelessly saved people’s lives while his own family staggered unnoticed beneath the burden of a dozen minor ailments.
Another anomaly of his position was that although he had made fabulous amounts during his years at Van Zale’s he had surprisingly little to show for it. He had lost money in the Crash, he was now paying generous alimony not only to Emily but to his first wife in California, he was overwhelmingly generous to me and all seven of his children, and he liked to live well. In his eyes a ball at the Savoy was not an extravagance but a necessary business expense, and when I pointed out that we could promote our new house successfully on a less lavish scale he was incapable of seeing my point of view.
“If we’re going to make a splash let’s whip up a tidal wave!” he exclaimed exuberantly, and there was no doubt later that the ball’s huge success more than vindicated his policy of extravagance. The event was reported in all the international magazines and described with breathless detail in the popular press. However, England is not America, where size and spectacle are all-important, and I knew that a certain segment of society considered our celebrations vulgar.
My friends, who were pleased by the degree of autonomy I had won for them from Lord Malchin, wished me well with good grace. Harriet came dressed as Lady Macbeth, Cedric masqueraded as a Tottenham Hotspur football player and both did their best to pretend that my decision to sell had not upset them.
My own feelings were ambivalent. I regretted the sale yet embraced it. It was indeed the end of an era, but it was also the beginning of another. I had had thirteen extraordinary, exciting, arduous years of Diana Slade Cosmetics, but it was time to move on, and on the horizon was the new issuing house, intricate and mysterious, its doors leading into a mouth-watering new world of challenge and adventure. I went to the ball to celebrate the future, and although I was nostalgic about the past I had no regrets.
It took me a long time to decide what I should wear, but after fobbing off the double-edged suggestions that I should dress as the Virgin Queen or Catherine the Great, I decided to go as Cinderella. I went to Norman Hartnell, who dressed Gertrude Lawrence and Evelyn Laye, and he designed a gorgeous creamy-yellow gown in the style of the late eighteenth century and shoes encrusted with metallic discs to give the illusion of glass slippers. Steve’s costume was originally intended to recall the eighteenth century too, but he soon decided that the necessary wig would be tiresome and that George Washington’s identity wasn’t the most tactful to assume in the circumstances. It was I who suggested he masquerade as the Duke of Wellington, and he eventually made a dazzling entrance in skin-tight white trousers and a cutaway coat which made me realize how sexy men’s fashions were in 1815. He complained he couldn’t sit down, but I told him that everyone occasionally had to make sacrifices in order to be beautiful.
All the children came to the ball, even Alan who had obtained a special exeat from Winchester. He was dressed as a turbaned Indian page, and the twins came as a Dresden shepherd and shepherdess. They were an absolute menace with their crooks, but Nanny somehow managed to prevent them from doing too much damage.
Nanny was dressed inevitably as Nanny and looked as Queen Victoria might have looked if she had been taken by magic carpet to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Since she had her hands full watching the twins, the latest nursemaid was in charge of George, who was now fourteen months old and could stagger along in drunken fashion on his fat little legs. George came as a cherub. We popped him into a little white tunic and attached a pair of silver wings to his back, but fancy dress bored him and after pulling off the wings he fell asleep beside a tray of petits fours.
We hired the best band in London, ordered eight hundred bottles of 1928 champagne at twelve pounds a case and flung open the ballroom doors.
“Some party!” gasped Steve as we snatched a dance with each other sometime after two.
I thought of his party ten years before on Long Island when I had listened to the band blaze into the Charleston. The twenties seemed far away now, almost as far away as that remote epoch before 1914. I looked around at the luxury from which all brashness had been ruthlessly excluded. The band was playing an old-fashioned waltz.
The dancing lasted till dawn, when a party of us drove to Mallingham for breakfast. It must have been a long night for the chauffeurs, but we slept on the journey and awoke ready to begin the party all over again. At noon I was suddenly smitten not only by exhaustion but by a desperate desire to be alone, and abandoning my guests, I rowed out over the Broad and found a quiet spot, in the reeds. Steve arrived an hour later. He rowed the dinghy around the Broad until he found my hiding place, and after climbing into the rowing-boat so clumsily that he nearly capsized it he fell asleep with his head on my breast. It was a quiet ending to such a flamboyant occasion, and kissing him with relief I lay back to watch the clouds floating over the wide Norfolk sky.
All but the oldest and most conservative of his clients followed Steve up the road to the new house, and across the Atlantic a new man was dispatched without comment to pick up the pieces at Six Milk Street.
A month later I read that Mrs. Cornelius Van Zale had held a dazzling fashion show in her beautiful Fifth Avenue home and that all the proceeds of this charitable gathering had been donated to medical research. For the benefit of European readers the article noted that Mrs. Van Zale was the wife of the well-known philanthropist who had just launched a new foundation to assist struggling writers and artists, and there was also a picture of Alicia looking devastating in a little black dress which had probably cost at least fifty guineas. I thought Steve had been unkind to her in his descriptions. Mrs. Van Zale said when interviewed that she and her husband had simple tastes and liked nothing better than a quiet evening alone together while they listened to their favorite radio shows; they were looking forward to their usual quiet summer holiday at Bar Harbor with their three children; they did not care to travel abroad. Mrs. Van Zale was a regular client at Miss Elizabeth Arden’s salon and was dressed by Chanel, whose designs she liked because they were “simple” and “quiet.” She had no views on
politics but understood that her husband was in favor of international peace.
In Europe the British and French governments, also much in favor of international peace, rushed to arrange for nonintervention in the Spanish Civil War, and all the major European powers, including Germany and Italy, signed this agreement at the end of August. But in the autumn Germany and Italy swung into the Rome-Berlin Axis and agreed in future to hunt as a pair.
It was such a relief when the papers purged themselves of all foreign news to concentrate on the Abdication.
“This shows the British at their worst,” said Steve, who was having to tolerate a large amount of anti-American sentiment “All this talk about divorce and the Church is just an excuse. They don’t want Mrs. Simpson to get the King because she’s a foreigner.”
“Darling, it’s much more complicated than that!” I protested, but I did not argue long with him, because I had spent many years admiring the King when he was Prince of Wales, and although I did not care for Mrs. Simpson I thought some sort of compromise should be found to accommodate them.
I was very much immersed in current events at that time because I had so little to do. Steve was totally absorbed by his work, which he would willingly discuss with me whenever he had a spare moment, but I was becoming more and more uncomfortably unemployed. At first I had enjoyed my leisure. I had met all my friends for lunch, gone to matinees, tried—unsuccessfully—to understand modern art, and joined the Left Book Club. But after a while these occupations had palled. I missed the cut-and-thrust of the business world, and the round of trivial social activity seemed shallow. I loved seeing more of George, but one cannot and should not expect intellectual stimulation from a child less than two years old no matter how adorable, entrancing and unique that child may be. The twins were at school all day. Alan was away. My servants ran the house with splendid efficiency.
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