Dougal raised his hand to show that he acknowledged the toast. Effie said to Robert, ‘Do you have lawyers in New York?’
Robert nodded. ‘Dayton Friedman Kurst. They can get together with Dougal’s lawyers on Monday. But I hope we can say now that this arrangement is agreed.’
Dougal waved his hand again. ‘It’s agreed.’
‘Effie?’ asked Robert.
‘I don’t know,’ said Effie. ‘In principle it’s a good idea; and I accept that your bill is a watertight guarantee of payment. But I still don’t trust you, any more than I did during the war. This all seems too much like straightforward good banking for you.’
Robert laughed. ‘Did you hear that, Dougal? Young Effie still doesn’t trust me. I just hope she wins more trust from the small investors of California, for that cockeyed bank that she’s thinking of starting up! You can mark my words you’ll be ruined in less than a year, Effie, and so will all those poor misguided bumpkins who hand you their money.’
Dougal said, in a peculiarly empty way. ‘What do you think about it?’
‘What do I think about what?’ asked Robert, turning around and frowning.
Dougal smiled, and looked from Robert to Effie and back again, with an expression as blank and retarded as Stan Laurel. ‘I don’t know. Money. Banking in general.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Early in the morning, before it was light, Effie was awakened by the murmur of voices outside on the galleried landing. She lay still for two or three minutes, her eyes wide open, listening. A long way away, across the fields, a long-eared owl was whistling and calling around its nest. But then she heard the voices again, whispering and sibilant, and she got up from her bed and slipped on her silk wrap, tying it tight around her waist as she went to the door.
She didn’t usually believe in sneaking around other people’s houses; but there was something about the voices which made her open her bedroom door very quietly, and peer out into the darkness of the house with her breath held tight. There was utter silence for a very long time, almost longer than she could bear, but then she heard the creak of a floorboard, and a door opening, and a muted lamplight was suddenly switched on in one of the bedrooms.
Carefully, she crept outside on tiptoe, and made her way around the landing to the far side. Down below her, she could see the hallway, its white marble floor gleaming luminously through the shadows. To her left, three doors along, she heard voices again, and something like a moan or a sigh.
She stayed where she was. I’m a respectable, wealthy, middle-aged woman she thought. Why on earth am I creeping about like this in the middle of the night, in my brother’s own house? Yet she was provoked by a curiosity that wouldn’t allow her to go back to her bed – not without finding out who was whispering and laughing so softly in the small hours of the morning. She had a feeling that if anyone was actually enjoying themselves tonight, after all the wrangles and embarrassments and fractious arguments of the previous evening, then what they were doing must be highly significant, both romantically and financially. Enjoyment visited the Watson family only rarely, and when it did, it always brought fate on its shoulder, like Stevenson’s sea-cook with his screeching parrot.
She closed her eyes. I must make a decision. Either I’m going to go straight back to my room, and pretend that I heard nothing at all; or else I’m going to tiptoe my way along to that third bedroom and see if I can discover what’s going on.
The long-case clock in the hallway below struck two-thirty. By the time the last note had died away, Effie had made up her mind. It was knowledge that saved skins, in the banking business: early intelligence from reliable sources. That had always been Robert’s great strength; and since she had been working in American banking; it had been Effie’s great strength, too. One good fragment of gossip can save a fortune.
She lifted up the hem of the wrap, and delicately stepped along the landing until she reached the door from which the lamplight was being diffused. The door, in fact, was two or three inches ajar, and she could hear quite clearly that there was a man and a woman in there, and that they were whispering and murmuring to each other. God, she thought, I feel so guilty, spying on people like this. And yet, not guilty enough to forget all about it and go back to bed.
Holding her breath again, she danced quickly across the width of the doorway, and then tried to look through the cracks between the hinges. A little light was filtering through, but that was all. She stood quite still, uncertain about what she should do next.
The man grunted, and she was sure it was Robert. Nobody else on earth grunted in the deep, piggish way that Robert did. Then the woman’s voice said, ‘You’re teasing me. Why do you tease me so much?’
Mariella, thought Effie, at once. It’s Robert and Mariella. He’s been flirting with her and playing with her all evening; and now, in the middle of the night, he’s making love to her.
Fascinated, horrified, and tight as a clockspring with tension, she reached out her hand and gently nudged the door with her fingertips. It opened less than half an inch more, quite silently: but it was enough for Effie to be able to see through the crack. Her heart bumped. She felt hot and shaky from embarrassment and fear. But she still had to look. She still had to see for herself how Robert was betraying his own brother. She even managed to admit to herself that she might be watching because it would arouse her.
She could make out the pinkish blur of Robert’s thigh; then, giving the door another slight push, she could see almost all of him. He was lying on his back on the yellow-quilted bed, fat and naked, and startlingly smothered in thick black hair. Mariella was squatting between his parted legs, demurely dressed in a white silk nightdress – although, as Effie watched, she raised the nightdress up to her bust, and tied it in a loose knot so that she left herself naked from the waist down.
Effie couldn’t understand what they were doing at first. Robert was holding in one fist the bright crimson erection which rose from out of his bushy black pubic hair. His penis was quite small, but obviously very stiff, and there was something about it which was attracting Mariella’s intense interest.
‘If you want it, my dearie, there it is,’ smiled Robert. ‘Yours for the taking.’
Mariella raised both her hands to her face, and let out a funny little gasp. ‘You’re teasing me.’
‘A little. But you can have it if you want it.’
Effie had become slightly short-sighted over the past four years, and so she had to strain her eyes to get Robert into sharp focus. When she did so, briefly, she suddenly realised what game he was playing. Lodged in the cleft of his erection, sparkling amongst the juices of his self-stimulated lust, was a diamond of at least three carats, a diamond which was probably worth well over twenty-five thousand dollars, if it were genuine. Robert had probably brought a whole bagful over to America with him, if Effie knew him at all: diamonds bought on a depressed European gem market which could fetch two or three times as much in the United States.
The tableau of Robert and Mariella together was hideous but compelling. Effie knew that she ought to go straight back to her bedroom, now that she knew exactly what was happening; but somehow she found herself unwilling to move, unable to move, hypnotised by what she saw.
Mariella placed a hand on each of Robert’s huge hairy thighs, and bent her head forward until her face was only an inch from his diamond-studded penis. He waved it slowly from side to side in front of her, smiling like a benign emperor, and Mariella glanced up at him, and gave him a sly, seductive smile in return. Poor Mariella, thought Effie: she hasn’t had this much attention from a man for years. No wonder Robert has influenced her so quickly, and so completely.
As gradually and as gracefully as a beautiful bird descending on to a lake, Mariella parted her lips and accepted Robert’s erection into her mouth, his distended flesh pushing against the inside of her cheeks, his diamond dropping neatly on to the tip of her tongue. Robert sighed in deep satisfaction: not so much at the erotic plea
sure that Mariella was giving him, but at the deeper pleasure of having Dougal’s wife kneel in front of him on the very first night they had met; at persuading her so easily to accept his bribe, and to perform for him the kind of obeisant sexual ritual which in 1928 very few woman of any respectability had heard of, let alone attempted.
Effie balanced her why back along the landing like a tightrope-walker; and managed to get back to her bedroom without treading on any boards that creaked. She was panting and shaking when she closed the door behind her; and she had to stand in the darkness for a moment to regain her composure. She didn’t know which of the feelings that had risen within her disturbed her the most: the fright at what Robert might be doing, the disgust at seeing him degrade Mariella, or the arousal of watching two naked people engaged in such a blatant sexual game. She took off her wrap, and let it slip down on to the carpet. Then she climbed back into bed, and lay there with her hand clutching her shoulders, sleepless, alarmed, and suffering from the strangest shock she had ever experienced.
The next morning, after breakfast, she took Mariella aside and told her that all her trunks were packed, and that she was ready to leave.
Mariella frowned in disappointment. ‘So soon?’ she said, with those same lips that had encircled Robert’s erection. ‘I was hoping you could stay until this evening.’
‘I have to see some people in New York before I go. I’m sorry. But you do understand, don’t you?’
‘You have to see them on Sunday, these people?’
Effie gave her a tight smile. She knew she sounded unconvincing, but nothing would have persuaded her to stay for even another hour in the middle of this family ménage. Over towards the Peconic Bay, beyond the Sunday-morning trees, a flight of gulls rose, like newspapers tossed into the air, and then sank again.
Robert and Alisdair came out to say goodbye. Robert looked pale, but smug. Alisdair scarcely said a word.
‘Goodbye,’ said Effie, taking Alisdair’s hand, and then lifting her face to him to kiss his cheek. ‘Don’t think too badly of me.’
‘You’re not going to tell her?’ said Alisdair.
‘What do you mean?’
Alisdair glanced towards Kay, who was busy tugging up her knee-length spring socks. ‘You’re not going to tell her that I’m her father?’
‘Do you think there’s any reason why I should?’
Alisdair kept hold of her hand. ‘I love you. Isn’t that a good enough reason?’
‘You don’t love me at all. You’re just young, and lonely, with the loneliness of youth. You’ll find someone soon, and then you won’t even think about me once. Or if you do think of me, you’ll picture nothing but a bossy aunt who was rather old, and rather past her best.’
‘Never. I love you.’
Effie tried to look as if she were doing nothing more than exchanging a few moments of parting banter with him. ‘You’re a fool,’ she smiled.
‘I want you,’ he insisted. ‘I want Kay for my daughter and you for my wife.’
Effie slowly breathed in. She would have done anything to avoid this moment, but she knew it was going to have to be. She was going to have to be cruel to him: deliberately and outrageously cruel, just to make him understand that she neither wanted him nor needed him.
‘What’s seventeen years?’ Alisdair demanded. The morning breeze whipped up his curly hair; anxiety and the slight chill had reddened his cheeks and his forehead. ‘That’s all the difference there is between us: seventeen years. Plenty of people of different ages get married. It’s not unusual.’
Effie looked at him for a moment. Then she said, ‘What do I, a 44-year-old millionairess, with my own bank, and a highly sophisticated social life which includes people like George Gershwin and Henry Mencken and Dorothy Parker – what do I need with a 27-year-old Scottish boy who allows his father to treat him as if he’s a seven-year-old, and doesn’t even have the style to know that a tartan bow-tie makes him look, in America, like the dumbest of rural Rubes?’
Alisdair, regretting it the very moment he did it, clapped his hand against his necktie. Effie said caustically, ‘There! You’ve put your finger right on it,’ and turned to leave.
Alisdair roughly caught her arm. Robert looked across at them with a mixture of interest and amusement, but this time Alisdair didn’t care what his father thought. He said, quietly but intensely, ‘Don’t think that I’m going to forgive you for this.’
‘What have I done, that begs your forgiveness?’ asked Effie. ‘I neither need your forgiveness, nor want it. Now, please, You’re making a scene. If you want to talk about it later, in private, call me at the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago. I’ll pay for the call.’
Alisdair was about to spit back at her, but his youthfulness, and his tangled-up love for Effie, and his confusion – not to mention the fact that he was in a strange country now, and already a little homesick for Scotland – held him back. He said nothing, simply dropped his arms by his side and watched her walk across the gravelled forecourt to her waiting automobile, where Kay was already sitting with a rug around her knees, and a box of Stouffer’s candy which Mariella had given her to keep her mind off her car-sickness.
Effie turned around in her seat as the Pierce-Arrow rolled quietly down the driveway to the gates, and watched Robert and Dougal and Mariella and Alisdair through the brown-tinted glass of the opera window behind her. They seemed remote and disconnected: not only from her, but from each other, like strangers who had gathered on the gravel for no other purpose but to have their photograph taken. A sepia photograph of lost aspirations.
She turned back again at last, and laid her hand on Kay’s arm. For the first time in her life, she began to have an inkling not only of what strange and strangulating things her parents had done to their children – to Robert, and to Dougal, and to her – but what she had to do to redeem her parents’ failure.
Kay said, ‘I didn’t like my cousin Alisdair very much.’
Effie stared at her.
‘You don’t mind, do you, mommy? asked Kay. ‘That I didn’t like him, I mean.’
Effie, whispered, ‘No. No, darling, I don’t mind.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Late on Monday afternoon, Effie and Kitty arrived at Grand Central Station and walked quickly down the red carpet which led to The Twentieth Century Limited. The station was crowded: pierced by the hissing of huge steam locomotives, including the recently-arrived Montreal Limited, and the New York Special, about to leave; echoing with the cries of train-callers, and luggage-barrows, and that odd swimming-bath sound of hundreds of people talking and laughing and hurrying around in a large vaulted hall.
The red carpet led straight to the glistening green and gold train; and the conductor, in his stylish green uniform, with a fresh pink in his buttonhole, was waiting to greet her. Effie hadn’t travelled on The Twentieth Century Limited before, but the New York Central railroad had a legendary reputation to keep up: they had once welcomed Dame Nellie Melba and the violinist Fritz Kreisler on board the train by serving them with a special dinner, consisting of crayfish soup, Dover sole, and chateaubriand – after which, the bill had been nothing more than a note which read ‘Compliments of The Twentieth Century Limited.’
‘Miss Watson, honoured to have you aboard,’ said the conductor. ‘Your stateroom’s this way. My assistant here will take care of your maid. Mr Brooks is on board already, and presents his compliments.’
The conductor led Effie through the train to a small discreetly-lit drawing-room, furnished in pink and cream, with art-deco armchairs and a matching art-deco sofa. On the table was a huge array of pink and white carnations, and a handwritten card which said, ‘The directors of the New York Central welcome Miss Effie Watson aboard The Twentieth Century Limited.’ There was also a basket of complimentary fruit, a magnum of champagne in a silver cooler, and a leather-covered folder of notepaper.
After Kitty had unpacked her trunks and put out her clothes, Effie changed into a mid-blue
cocktail gown, with a sprinkling of pearls and tiny diamonds over one shoulder. A steward came in to open her champagne for her, and to inform her that dinner for herself and Mr Brooks would be brought to her drawing-room at eight o’clock. While she was sitting with her feet up on her sofa, sipping champagne, Train No. 25, The Twentieth Century Limited, all-Pullman, extra-fare, with valets, maids, barbers, and every luxury that could be crowded aboard her, drew out of Grand Central station under her own illuminated clock of coal-smoke, right on time, to the split-second, to begin her flying run to Chicago on the tightest rail schedule ever known.
At six, there was a knock at her door. Kitty answered it, and turned around to Effie with a smile to say, ‘It’s Mr Brooks, Miss Effie.’
‘Caldwell!’ said Effie. ‘Please do come in. What took you so long?’
Caldwell, dressed in an informal black tuxedo, with a neatly pleated white shirt, came into the drawing-room with a shy grin. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d like a little while to settle down.’
‘If the conductor hadn’t told me you were on the train, I would never have guessed,’ said Effie. ‘Have some champagne.’
‘I just had a couple of rather strong martinis, thanks. Do you know who else is on the train? James Beckman, of the United Finance Trust of California. Well – it was James Beckman who bought me the rather strong martinis. Or rather, the glasses to put them in, and two olives.’
‘Sit down,’ said Effie, laughing. ‘You look as if somebody hit you over the head with a hammer.’
Caldwell dropped heavily on to the sofa beside her, puffed out his cheeks in pretended exhaustion then leaned over and kissed Effie on the lips, quickly at first, followed by a lingering nuzzle at her mouth and her neck and her shoulders. Kitty, over on the other side of the drawing-room, where she was putting away Effie’s business-papers, said, ‘Why, Mr Brooks! That John Gilbert isn’t nothing on you!’
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