Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  Effie personally won several million-dollar accounts outside of the fruit and vegetable industry. Three oil companies from Seal Beach transferred their working funds to Commerce; as did the Jenners Seaplane Corporation, in order to finance a new US Coastguard contract for fifty-five Seaspray observation aircraft. She really knew that the Commerce Bank was a genuine success, however, when she was telephoned one morning by Douglas Bean Wallis, the owner of the Wallis Newspaper Corporation. Wallis asked her to lunch at his fabulous hilltop mansion Santa Ysabel, at Woodland Hills, and in between the shrimp and the bombe surprise, in an echoing banqueting-hall that smelled sharply of California cedar, he had wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, ‘I’m giving you the Los Angeles Post account.’

  ‘Oh,’ Effie had said.

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’ Wallis had asked her. He was swarthy, and gross, and bearded, like one of the Borgias. He had been holding up a gold-plated goblet, about to take a mouthful of wine.

  ‘Do I need to say anything else?’

  Wallis had thought about that, and then chuckled. ‘I don’t think so. You might have said, “Be gentle with me.”’

  Effie had looked down at her plate, looked up again, and smiled. ‘I think if anyone ought to be appealing for gentleness, it’s you.’

  By the summer of 1929, the Commerce Bank was rivalling every other bank in California, and was unofficially rated as the fifteenth largest bank in the United States. In June, after a year of living at the Bel-Air Hotel, Effie and Caldwell bought a large white stucco mansion on Benedict Canyon Drive – eleven bedrooms, a pillared ballroom, a billiards room, and a sloping garden that was crowded with orange and lemon trees, bougainvillaea, jasmine, and heliotrope. The house had been built in 1921 by the silent picture star Owen Stark, a rumoured lover of Ethel Jackson. Stark had retired from motion pictures in 1924 when talkies came in, mainly because of his high-pitched Italian accent. He had called his house ‘Case Superba’, but Effie renamed it ‘Caledonia’.

  In September, Caldwell met Kerry T. Scryman of the Renown Picture Corporation at a noisy champagne reception in Culver City, and within a week the Commerce Bank had lent Renown more than $2 million for a two-hour motion-picture version of The Life of Christ, starring Gloria Pesca and Nolan Twilley. The Reverend Charles E. Coughlin, the popular rabble-rousing radio priest of the early 1930s, was to remark later that ‘The Life of Christ is doing more to preserve the hope and courage of the American people through these days of Depression than any other inspirational message, in any medium.’ Coughlin’s endorsement wasn’t strengthened by the later discovery that he owned $15,000 worth of shares in the picture; but nonetheless The Life of Christ earned $71 million in three years.

  It was on the last day of August, when Effie and Caldwell were both sitting on the balcony of Caledonia, overlooking the garden, that Effie received, unexpectedly, a crucial letter from Dougal. Their Spanish butler Primo had been serving them breakfast, grapefruit juice and fresh coffee and Danish pastries, when he came out on to the balcony with the letter on a silver tray. ‘It come by messenger,’ said Primo. ‘He is panting down the stairs.’

  Effie said, ‘Give him a dollar, would you, Primo?’ and tore the letter open.

  ‘Who’s that from?’ asked Caldwell. He was sitting with his feet up, sipping coffee and reading the Saturday-morning paper. They had both been to late business meetings last night, and then to a dinner and dance at the Lost Angeles Bar Association Country Club.

  ‘Dougal, I think,’ Effie told him. It wasn’t unusual for Dougal to write to her. Since they had been in California, he had kept in regular touch on matters of major business, particularly the £24 million investment plan which Robert had been arranging for him. Up until now, though, the scheme had all seemed quite routine; and Effie’s suspicions about it had almost completely evaporated. The stock market still appeared to be holding up strongly. Robert had kept his word and assisted with all Dougal’s arrangements. Watson’s in London and New York had both begun to do brisk business in overseas investment – including the construction of a high dam on the River Kabala in East Africa, which Watson’s New York customers were financing through Watson’s in London. Despite the dangerous instability of most of the European banks, and the depression which had already brought down hundreds of German and Austrian businesses and factories and finance houses; despite the skyscraping inflation of the New York stock market, the Watson brothers were growing wealthier by the week, and their combined future as heirs to the world of international banking seemed secure.

  But Dougal had written, in his own handwriting, ‘Dear Effie, For reasons I cannot easily explain I am growing suspicious of Robert’s investment arrangement. Is there any possibility of your returning to New York within the next few days?’

  That was all. The letter wasn’t even signed. Effie turned it over, then read it again, and finaly folded it up. Caldwell glanced up a her, and said, ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think I’m going to have to go back to New York.’

  ‘New York? When?’

  ‘As soon as possible. Today.’

  ‘Today? You’re joking.’

  Effie handed Caldwell the letter. ‘Something’s wrong here, Caldwell. I mean it. You don’t know Robert the way I do. He takes a peculiar kind of pleasure out of banking swindles – or near-swindles, at least. Remember I have twenty million dollars of my own money tied up in Watson’s New York.’

  ‘Can’t you telephone him? For goodness’ sake. Do you really have to go in person?’

  Effie leaned over and kissed Caldwell on the forehead. She loved the smell of him when he had just showered and washed his hair. She said, ‘I can take the Pennsylvania Railroad’s new air-rail service. Did you read about it? You leave the Grand Central Air Terminal at Glendale at about nine in the morning, fly to New Mexico until nine in the evening; then you transfer to a sleeping car on the railroad until you get to Oklahoma in the morning; then you fly to Indiana until the following evening, and finally take a night train into New York. I could be there by Tuesday morning.’

  Caldwell looked extremely unhappy. He folded up the letter, and tossed it on to the breakfast table. ‘Your family,’ he said sourly. They only have to whimper and you come running. They’re men. At least they’re supposed to be. Why can’t they look after themselves?’

  ‘Can you look after yourself?’ Effie asked him, kindly. ‘Do you think I can? We’re all in this business together. Dougal needs me, and I have to go. You can come if you want to. James can easily keep an eye on things for a week.’

  Caldwell shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I’d really rather not.’

  Effie stood beside him for a moment, one hand resting very lightly on his shoulder. Then she said, ‘All right. But you do understand that this could be serious, and I really have to go.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said Caldwell, and noisily turned over the page of his newspaper. ‘So serious you won’t be here for my birthday.’

  Effie kissed the top of his head, then his ears, then his cheeks. ‘I can’t give you your present on your birthday anyway.’

  ‘I don’t want any present. Just forget it.’

  ‘Oh, stop being so sulky! I went away for a week to San Francisco and you didn’t make a fuss about that. Besides – you’ve got to have my present, whether you want it or not.’

  Caldwell tossed his paper aside and glared up at her angrily. He couldn’t sustain his anger for very long, though; especially since Effie was smiling at him with such exaggerated cuteness. He pursed his lips tightly, and tried to stay grim, but after a moment or two he let out a blurt of laughter.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess it’s my hangover. So what’s this present you’re going to give me?’

  ‘It’s nothing fancy.’

  ‘I don’t want anything fancy. All I really want is to have you around.’

  ‘Well … I’m not 100 per cent sure … I haven’t had it confirmed yet … but I believe
d it’s possible that you’re going to be a daddy.’

  Caldwell stared at her. ‘You’re pregnant?’

  Effie nodded.

  ‘But you’re –’ his mouth opened and closed but nothing came out.

  Effie waited, but Caldwell didn’t seem to be able to speak at all. ‘But I’m what?’ Effie asked him, at last. ‘Forty-four years old? Too ancient to have a baby? Caldy, I’m pregnant, and that’s all there is to it, so I can’t be all that decrepit! You sound as if you don’t even want your own child!’

  ‘I –’ he let hands drop with a slap on to the arms of his chair. ‘I don’t know, he said. ‘I never even considered that it could happen. A baby? I mean, it never even entered my mind.’

  ‘You’re disappointed?’ asked Effie. With sudden frustration and annoyance, she found that her eyes were already filling with tears.

  ‘Disappointed? Of course not. I’m just surprised. What did you expect me to say? I mean, we’re way past the age when people normally have children.’

  ‘Did I ever make any claims to you that I was normal?’

  ‘But there’s the risk, too,’ Caldwell protested. ‘Have you thought of the risk? It’s all right when a woman’s twenty … even thirty. But the incidence of malformed babies born to woman over forty … well, I was reading the Pacific Mutual’s insurance statistics the other week, and –’

  ‘This isn’t a statistic!’ Effie burst out at him. ‘It’s your baby! How can you talk about it like that?’

  Caldwell pressed his knuckles against his jaw, his expression unexpectedly bitter and rigid. He let out tightly controlled breath; then he turned his face away from her. The tension of his anger gradually left him, but he still wouldn’t look at her, and still wouldn’t speak.

  ‘Caldy,’ said Effie, as gently as she could. ‘It’s your baby. I want to have it.’

  He didn’t answer. She walked around his sunlounger chair, but he kept turning his face away from her.

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re so angry,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I am,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘Believe me, I am.’

  ‘Then what’s wrong?’

  ‘You might have told me,’ he said.

  ‘Told you what? Told you that little girls sometimes have babies if little boys play doctors and nurses with them? Is that what I should have told you?’

  ‘Don’t be so foul.’

  ‘Foul?’ Effie demanded. ‘How can you call me foul? You’re behaving like a fifteen-year-old brat.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Effie reached out and grasped both of his hands. His fingers remained inert, like the fingers of a man who has just died. ‘Caldy,’ she said, seriously, ‘you have to tell me what’s wrong.’

  Caldwell said, with an abrupt and shocking outburst of tears, ‘I’m thinking of leaving you.’

  Effie stared at him, frozen cold, cold in August in California. ‘What?’ she heard herself saying.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a month or two now,’ said Caldwell, wiping his eyes. I’m sorry. This is a bad moment to tell you.’

  ‘As if there could ever be a good moment.’ She was so devastated that she could only answer with a wisecrack.

  He gave her a brief, unhappy smile. ‘I’m sorry. It was just that when Dougal’s letter arrived…’

  ‘And then I told you that I’m having your baby …’ Effie put in.

  Caldwell said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Effie. ‘Aren’t you happy with me? Whatever’s wrong?’

  Caldwell was silent for a long time. A small bird perched on the rail of the balcony, and chittered at him, and then flew away. Effie said, ‘Is there someone else?’

  ‘No.’ he said, emphatically. ‘It isn’t that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  He looked up at her. His eyes were dull and unfocused. ‘I think you explained it all yourself, on the day we were married. You remember when we walked along the beach? You said you were free, and independent; and that no matter how much you upset people, you were determined to live a free and independent life’

  ‘But I’m dependent on you. You know that.’

  ‘Sure you’re dependent on me. You’re dependent on me whenever you need someone to discuss one of your financial projects with; or whenever you haven’t managed to reach your investment target at the end of the month. You’re dependent on me for sex, I suppose, but anybody could provide you with that. You need me as a business partner, and as a social asset. I think there are quite a few times when I actually provide you with comfort. But, Effie, it isn’t enough. You could easily make it without me and you never let me forget that you could. Until I married you, I was smart and successful and full of self-confidence. I was a man. But the drive and independence you have inside of you – no matter how carefully you conceal it – no matter how meek you seem to be – no matter how much you compromise and act like a modest little girl – that drive and independence is too much for me. I can’t take it.’

  He swung his legs off the sunlounger, and stood up. ‘A year ago, everybody talked about Effie Watson as Caldwell Brooks’s “little woman”. These days, people are talking about Caldwell Brooks as Effie Watson’s “little man”. I love you, Effie. I know that I do. But I can’t happily live my life in your shadow. I’ve got my own independence to think of. My own freedom.’

  Effie lowered her gaze, little by little, until she could see nothing but the Mexican clay tiles of the balcony floor. A blurred pattern of terracotta squares. She knew that Caldwell was right: that she had been building the Commerce Bank hard and quickly, according to a scheme that she kept nowhere else but inside of her own head. She knew that she had used him as a sounding-board for some of her most outrageous financial ideas, like her recent scheme for ‘zero bonds’ – bonds which would technically pay no interest, but which would be discounted by as much as two-thirds on the day of sale, and would pay out a guaranteed full price on the day of maturity, ten years later. She knew that she had been taking advantage of Caldwell’s professional wits, as much as his love; sometimes more of one than the other.

  But his dearness to her had not diminished. And when she had missed her period last month, and realised that he might have made her pregnant, she had felt nothing but confidence and joy.

  She said, shakily, ‘Caldy … you can’t leave.’

  ‘I can’t stay, either,’ he told her. ‘You’re not going to change, and I can’t ask you to.’

  ‘Can you stay her at least until I come back from New York? We have go talk it over.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess so. If you’re not here, I suppose it doesn’t make any particular difference.’

  ‘You don’t care about the baby?’ she asked him.

  He was trying to be far more objectionable than he actually was. He was trying to make her angry with him, so that it would be easier for him to storm out. But she wouldn’t be angry with him. He may not have been the greatest and fieriest love of her life, but she loved him, with great care and with great depth. She had decided to spend her old age with him; and for their marriage to collapse after only a year was unthinkable. She wouldn’t consider it. She wouldn’t let it happen.

  Caldwell said, ‘Don’t you think it would be better if you didn’t go to New York at all? If you really are pregnant, all that flying and railroad travelling …’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Well, sure, you have to. It’s your family. And dealing with your family is one son-of-a-bitch that you can’t delegate to anybody else; not even to me.’

  Effie said, ‘I’m trying to be reasonable but you won’t help me.’

  ‘Why should I help you? You’re the boss. You’re the one who knows all the answers.’

  ‘Do you really feel that bitter about me? What have I done to you?’

  Caldwell came over and stared her straight in the face. ‘You’ve done nothing. Nothing that matters. I’m just the good-old ob
liging president of Commerce Bank when I’m at work; and just the good old obliging husband when I’m at home. I’m like a tatty old lion in the circus, Effie, a lion who used to be sleek and fast and good, and who now has to sit up and beg when the lady lion-tamer snaps her whip. Oh, she’s kind, all right, this lady lion-tamer. She feeds me and waters me and tosses me sugar-knobs. She keeps a roof over my head, and has my claws manicured by the best veterinarian in town. I’m a happy creature, Effie, but I’m not a lion any more, and that’s why I have to go.’

  Effie sat down, tired and bewilderd. She took a cigarette out of her bathrobe pocket, and Caldwell lit it for her with a match.

  ‘I really treat you like that?’ she asked him.

  ‘That’s what it feels like, Effie. You’ve buried my independence under yours.’

  She said, ‘I have to think.’

  ‘Sure,’ nodded Caldwell. Think all you want. I’ve been thinking about it day and night for months.’

  Primo, the butler, came in, and began to clear away the dishes Caldwell said, ‘Primo – is my car out of the garage?’

  ‘I ask for you, sir.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll get it out myself.’

  ‘You want Carl to drive you, sir?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll drive myself.’

  Effie said, without looking at him, ‘Are you going to tell me where you’re going?’

  ‘If I knew, I’d tell you,’ said Caldwell. ‘Maybe I’ll drive to San Luis Obispo, and see if I can have any money revelations down at the beach.

  There were six hundred things more that Effie wanted to say; but this wasn’t the moment. Caldwell stalked back to his room, and left her sitting on the balcony smoking her cigarette, while Primo quietly stacked the breakfast plates on to his tray.