The Rich Are Different

by Susan Howatch

  “I’m sure your friend Cornelius shares your opinion of Paul,” I said. “He thinks of Paul as a father, doesn’t he?”

  “Why, no,” said Sam, “I wouldn’t say that. Neil has actually become very interested in his own father in recent years. He’s just bought the Ohio farmhouse which his father used to own.”

  I wondered if this surprising observation was supposed to reassure me that Cornelius had no cause to be jealous of Alan.

  “I thought Cornelius had a mystical feeling about Paul?” I said, quoting his own phrase to him.

  He failed to recognize it. “Well, he hero-worshipped him originally—we all did. And there was a time when he thought his life was mirroring Paul’s. But the two of them were pretty different, you know, and Neil’s mature enough now to accept the difference and welcome it.”

  “Welcome it? You mean he thinks he’s better than Paul?”

  “I didn’t say that. But Paul, great man though he was, had his weaknesses, didn’t he, and they happen to be weaknesses Neil doesn’t share. For example, he’s a devoted family man, faithful to his wife, loyal to his sister, wonderful with the children …”

  A syrupy paean followed. By the time our first course was finished and the second had arrived I was so bored that I said, “Tell me about his halo. How big is it? And does he wash his wings every night or only on Sundays?”

  Sam laughed. “Am I overselling him? I just wanted to give you the other side of the coin because I can well imagine the kind of opinions you’ve been getting from Steve.”

  So we had returned to Steve at last. I watched the waiter refill our glasses and wondered what was coming next. “Why should it matter to you what I think of Cornelius?” I said lightly to Sam.

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” he said, “but Neil is kind of anxious that you should think well of him. As a matter of fact, that’s the other reason why I’m in London. I didn’t just come to close the doors at Six Milk Street. I came on Neil’s behalf to offer you the olive branch of peace.”

  “Sweet of Cornelius!” I said. I could no longer eat, but I continued to prod the grilled sole and poke the boiled potato. “I adore olive branches. What form does this particular olive branch take?”

  “I’m serious, Dinah,” said Sam, looking serious. “Neil’s well-intentioned towards you. Of course, when he was just a kid he got all hot under the collar because you made life tricky for Sylvia, but he was too young then to understand what life was really all about. And of course he was kind of ambivalent about Alan for a while, but not after Paul made him the heir. And then there was all that business about Emily, but hell, he now realizes what you and I knew from the word ‘go’—that Emily and Steve should never have married and that Emily’s happier without Steve than she ever was with him. And as for Steve using your money to set himself up to smash us in the teeth—we might as well call a spade a spade, mightn’t we!—Neil understands that you loved your husband and just wanted to do your best for him. Why, Neil even said he hoped Alicia would have done the same for him in such a situation! In fact, Neil was very much impressed by that display of courage, Dinah. He said it made him realize that you were one of Paul’s people, just like us. And he couldn’t help wondering if, like all Paul’s people, you invariably knew when to cut your losses.”

  He stopped. The headwaiter hovered but flitted on towards the next table. “Gee,” sighed Sam, regarding his plate with innocent pleasure, “this Dover sole’s just the greatest fish. … Well, anyway, here’s the deal. If you care to bring your children to America to escape the war Neil will set you up in a new cosmetics business. I’ve got the written proposal with me—all you’d have to do is sign your name. He says he has great confidence in your business ability and the utmost faith that you and he could work successfully together.”

  “How kind. Will you think me unbearably naive if I ask what happens to Steve?”

  Sam cleared his throat. This was the difficult part requiring all his charm and skill. With appalled fascination I waited, my food abandoned and my wine untouched in my glass.

  “Listen, Dinah,” he said, looking at me sympathetically with his honest brown eyes, “we don’t know each other well and your personal life is none of my business, but I can see you’re a very attractive woman who could easily win the admiration of the very best men around. Why should you settle for less than the best? Or, to phrase it another way, why should you put up with all this nonsense Steve’s been handing you lately? We’re not blind and deaf at Willow and Wall, and we realize you must have had your problems. Believe me, Neil’s been thinking a great deal about this, Dinah. He’s had your situation in mind for a long time.”

  “I bet he has,” I said. “He’s been thinking of the best way to destroy Steve and he’s devised a scheme which looks as if it ought to be foolproof. But you tell your friend this: I’m going to stand by Steve. And you tell your friend this too: that even if I changed my mind the last place I’d ever run off to would be the lion’s den at Willow and Wall.”

  There was a pause. A stillness smoothed Sam’s features, and as his warm manner receded so did his overpowering sincerity and charm.

  “Won’t you at least think it over?” he said at last.

  “Never. I’m sorry, Sam.”

  He ate in silence, finished his wine and motioned the waiter. “Coffee, Dinah? Dessert?”

  “No, thank you.”

  After he had signed the bill he escorted me to the foyer in silence.

  “Thank you for the lunch,” I said to him as evenly as I could. The strain of the conversation was at last affecting me and I felt so exhausted I could hardly stand. “I’m sorry it had to end so abruptly.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said neutrally, and then suddenly he was neutral no longer. Putting a hand on my arm, he said in a low urgent voice, “Dinah, be reasonable. Take the offer. Otherwise there’s no way you can win this hand, no way at all. It’s impossible.”

  “Never tell me,” I said, “that something’s impossible! Run back and tell your boss that I refuse to play Chamberlain to his Hitler and if he offers me a bit of paper to sign I shall tear it up and scatter it to the winds!”

  “That’s not a very reassuring analogy, is it?” he said casually. “After all, no well-informed person seriously believes England can hold out for long against Hitler once war starts.”

  I stepped back from him, my exhaustion forgotten and the rage streaming through me in a dark dizzy tide.

  “You bloody Nazi!” I cried. “You just watch me beat Cornelius! And you tell him he’ll go to his grave knowing he never got the better of me!”

  And leaving him stunned and speechless in the middle of the foyer, I walked out of the Savoy with my head held high and the rage still roaring through my veins.

  III

  By the time I arrived home I felt I had been patriotic but unintelligent. I should have lingered with Sam to discover what Cornelius planned to do if I refused his proposal, although instinct told me that Sam would have given nothing away even if I had ultimately invited him to bed. He had given his loyalty to his own particular Führer long ago at Bar Harbor, and I knew that his loyalty would be both unswerving and incorruptible.

  I studied my imaginary chessboard. Cornelius’ plans for Steve were easy to read: he wanted revenge not only for Emily’s humiliation but for the destruction Steve had wrought in Milk Street when he left Van Zale’s. Cornelius’ plans for me were less easy to decipher, but I was sure that despite all Sam Keller’s protestations those plans were hostile. As Sam himself had admitted, it had been my money which had backed Steve, and I doubted that Cornelius would find that fact easy to forgive. Yet I could not imagine what he had in mind for me. His offer to set me up in business was obviously part of his revenge on Steve, but once he had had his revenge it was hard to predict his next move.

  I studied Cornelius’ character again, but when I began to feel as if I were alone and blindfolded in a dark house with an armed robber bent on rape, I mixed mys
elf a stiff gin-and-French and phoned the nursing home to find out if Steve was capable of receiving visitors.

  The doctor was sympathetic, and after telling me Steve was making good progress he said I could call at the nursing home the next morning for half an hour.

  I had another drink, looked at my dinner, tried listening to the wireless and ended up reading Tennyson again. It was the anthology Paul had given me long ago. Usually I kept the book at Mallingham, but since I had rediscovered Tennyson’s poetry I had brought the book to London. For a long time I looked at Paul’s inscription on the flyleaf, and then I thumbed through the pages until I came to the poem he had quoted.

  “I detest poems glorifying war!”

  “Ah, but The Revenge isn’t really about war at all. …”

  I could hear our voices as if it were yesterday.

  At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay …

  How comforting it must have been to live in Victorian times when all wars were little wars and England was impregnable! I had already heaved a sigh of nostalgia before I remembered that The Revenge had recalled a time when one small English ship had faced a fleet of the huge galleons of Spain.

  For some were sunk and many were scattered and some could fight no more,

  Oh God of battles, was there ever a battle like this in the world before?

  I fumbled for a cigarette and lit it. It was quiet in the house. Presently I began to read again.

  And he said “Fight on!” though his ship was all but a wreck …

  I stopped. I could no longer see. Closing the book, I moved restlessly through the house, but when I went to bed I slept badly, and I was already drinking coffee when the dawn broke over London.

  At nine o’clock I telephoned Geoffrey in Norwich and asked if he could recommend a private-detective agency, and by ten I was drawing out a cash advance. After I had instructed the detective to keep a twenty-four-hour watch on Sam Keller I stopped at Fortnum’s to buy Steve a tin of his favorite biscuits and then set off for Hampstead.

  Halfway up the Edgeware Road my chauffeur said to me, “Madam, I have no wish to alarm you, but we’re being followed.”

  I somehow managed to stop myself pressing my nose to the back window. “What kind of a car is it?”

  “One of those little Fords, madam. A 1935 model, I think.”

  I wondered which detective agency Sam Keller was using. “Has he been following us for long?”

  “He was there when I was waiting for you in the City, madam.”

  My own private detectives were in Fetter Lane. “All right,” I said. “Lose him, would you, Johnson? I detest invasions of privacy.”

  Johnson lovingly caressed the Daimler’s wheel, and we swept into the side streets south of Maida Vale.

  The Ford was lost in three minutes but I was shaken by how little I had fooled Sam Keller, and when we reached Hampstead I made Johnson leave me some way from the nursing home.

  A nurse showed me to the doctor’s consulting room. Again I was assured that Steve was making excellent progress, but although the worst physical distress was over he was still heavily sedated.

  “When can he leave?” I said.

  “I would recommend he stay at least another two weeks, Mrs. Sullivan, and preferably longer. It’s a great mistake in these cases to leave too early.”

  “Yes, I do understand that. Doctor, have you by any chance received inquiries from people who wanted to know if my husband was here?”

  “Not to my knowledge, and you can rest assured that if we did we would divulge no information of any kind. A large part of our success can be attributed to the fact that our patients have total privacy.”

  I felt reassured and he took me upstairs himself to Steve’s room.

  “Half an hour, Mrs. Sullivan,” he said as he opened the door. “But no longer, please.”

  “Dinah!” shouted Steve exuberantly. He threw his magazine at the ceiling, bounced out of bed, swept me off my feet and kicked the door shut.

  “Darling, I thought you were supposed to be heavily sedated!”

  “I’ve just had the most almighty stimulant!”

  I laughed, clutched him greedily and forgot my fears about Sam Keller. I even forgot Cornelius.

  “Heavens, Steve, are we supposed to do this?”

  “Well, if I die trying,” said Steve, “what a wonderful way to go.”

  We laughed and kissed again. Later after he had survived with flying colors I told him how much better he looked, but when I saw the lines of strain in his face I knew he had suffered greatly. I sat down on the edge of the bed. At once he grabbed my hand as if it were a lifeline, and his hot tight trusting clasp was unbearably poignant. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them away and lit a cigarette.

  “Darling, we’ve only got a few minutes and there’s so much to tell you.” My voice became crisp and businesslike. I gave him the latest news of Elfrida and George and showed him Alan’s and Edred’s latest letters from school. I told him I had telephoned the office in Milk Street and had been assured that no disaster had happened in his absence. “Now tell me everything,” I invited, still keeping a sharp eye on the time. “Has it been hell?”

  “Well, I’ve had better vacations. Oh Christ, Dinah, I don’t want to conduct a self-pitying monologue on how goddamned awful it is not to have a drink! Why do you keep looking at your watch? Who’s the lucky lover and when’s the assignation?”

  “The assignation’s come and gone, darling. I lunched at the Savoy yesterday with Sam Keller.”

  I told him every detail of Cornelius’ offer. I thought it would be good for his self-confidence to hear my response, but his fighting spirit was so roused by the story that it was all I could do to stop him rushing headlong to the Savoy.

  “I’ll crucify that kid Sam Keller!” he yelled.

  I opened the tin of Fortnum’s best Scottish shortbread and offered it to him. “Have some of this, darling, and calm down. Sam Keller’s not a kid anymore and neither’s Cornelius. They’re two dangerous and determined men who would be only too delighted if you made a very public appearance in London after we had told everyone you had gone to America. Don’t give them the satisfaction of watching you play straight into their hands.”

  He took a stick of shortbread and rammed it into his mouth. I mixed us each a glass of barley water.

  “Cornelius obviously has a list of old scores to settle,” I said. “It’s all frightfully Old Testament and tiresome of him, but the fact remains that if we stay together, and we shall, and if you get well, which you will, all his plans are going to misfire. He’s pulling out of London. We’ll be in different continents. If we sit tight and leave him well alone there’s not one thing he can do to touch us. Or is there? I keep wondering if there’s something I’ve missed.”

  Steve drank his barley water in one gulp, grabbed the box of shortbread and launched into a long muddled tirade about what he would like to do to Cornelius. I listened absentmindedly.

  “Yes, darling,” I said when he paused for breath. “But what would Cornelius like to do to me?”

  Steve gave a short cynical laugh. “What most men would like to do, I guess. Then he could pat himself on the back and tell himself he’d followed in Paul’s footsteps all the way down the line.”

  “According to Sam, Cornelius isn’t much interested in Paul anymore.”

  Steve gave another short cynical laugh and an even shorter more cynical expletive.

  “Steve,” I said. “Do humor me for a moment, because this could be very important. We’ve underestimated Cornelius before and it’s absolutely essential, especially now we’re vulnerable, that we don’t underestimate him again. Now think. You know this man well and in fact you probably know him even better than you realize. Put yourself in his shoes. There I am in New York, prospering in a cosmetics business which you yourself have so kindly sponsored. You have a list of old scores to settle with me. What would you do next? Are you really so sure you’d just jump straig
ht into bed with me in order to follow in Paul’s footsteps?”

  “Dinah, I don’t care what Sam said to you yesterday. Cornelius worships Paul like a savage worships a totem pole.”

  “Then why should Sam give this impression of indifference—almost of a turning away from Paul? It made me wonder if Cornelius had been disillusioned in some way. You see, Steve, the interesting part is that Cornelius could hardly have known Paul. If he did hero-worship him I suspect he worshiped not Paul himself but the power Paul represented to him.”

  “Paul was certainly powerful,” agreed Steve, “and he certainly liked to make everyone think he was tough as steel, but Jesus, he was soft as butter underneath, wasn’t he? Of course, he kept it well hidden, but if Cornelius could have seen him on the morning of the assassination—”

  A nurse looked into the room. “It’s time, Mrs. Sullivan,” she said pleasantly.

  “Five more minutes!” wheedled Steve, and she smiled at him as she left the room.

  “Steve—”

  “Yes, that morning when he was weak as water, talking about giving everything up and running after you to England, a middle-aged man chasing a girl half his age—sorry, honey, but that was the way it seemed to me at the time! And when I think of the struggle I had to persuade him to file that last letter he wrote you—”

  As the jigsaw of Cornelius’ personality revolved before my eyes, the missing pieces came sailing softly towards me out of obscurity.

  “That letter was never found, was it,” I said.

  “Well, we worked that out years ago. We know Paul must have filed it before he died and Mayers burned the file.”

  “Steve, that’s just what we don’t know. Supposing Cornelius read that letter and found out his totem pole was a fraud.”

  “It would certainly explain the inconsistency between my memory of him and the picture Sam gave you, but Dinah, there’s no way Cornelius could ever have seen that letter. He didn’t even start to work at Van Zale’s until after Bart Mayers was killed, so he would never have had access to your file.”