Circles of Time (37 page)

“VLK,” he whispered. “A job well done.” He tried to give some thought to his own future, but the engines droned and the clear Mediterranean sun streamed through the round windows and he fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

P
AUL
R
ILKE STOOD
on the promenade deck of the Cunard liner, one pudgy hand resting on the top of his homburg to keep it from blowing away in the wind. It was a brilliant May morning, the Hampshire hills and New Forest bathed in sun, the waters of the Solent a deep, almost painful blue. He breathed deeply a few times, expanding his broad chest, then walked briskly around the deck before going into the saloon lounge for a morning bracer of Cognac and seltzer water.

He was a man that people noticed. Not so much for his looks—a fat, bald man of average height—but for the air of success and self-confidence that flowed from him like an electric charge. He was sixty years of age and looked exactly like a man who was worth fifty million dollars and who had every intention of making fifty million more. As he sipped his drink in the lounge he felt a fleeting regret that the voyage was nearly over. But there was always the return trip to look forward to. He loved ocean travel—the freedom and the fun of it, the abundance of good food and liquor, the long, pleasant nights of poker, and the inevitable—and sought-after—adventure. His wife of thirty-three years never accompanied him on his twice-yearly trips to Europe. She suffered from totally incapacitating seasickness, an affliction for which he thanked the Almighty.

When he entered his stateroom the woman was still there. She was only partially dressed, in a provocative black lace garter belt and a short, flimsy chemise, over the top of which peeked one large, firm, mauve-tipped breast. She was no more than twenty-five and claimed to be the wife of a Portuguese diplomat, but she had all the sexual refinements of a professional adventuress plying her first-class trade on the transatlantic run. He had an eye for the type and had never slept one night of an ocean crossing alone.

“I am so sorry to see land,” the woman said, pouting. “So sorry it is over.”

“So am I, honeybunch.” He sat on the edge of the bed and motioned to her. She came with the eagerness of a spaniel and sat on his lap. He stroked her naked breast and tweaked the nipple.

“There's a little something in my coat pocket, honeybunch. Call it a gift.”

After the woman had gone, he went into the bathroom, washed lip rouge from his face, and straightened his clothing. It had been a fine trip and he felt a wondrous sense of contentment. He was by nature a faithful husband; unlike many men he knew at the Union Club in Chicago, he had no sugar baby stuck away in an apartment. But he excluded the high seas from his moral conscience.

He spotted Martin in the crowd as he came down the gangway.

“It was damn good of you to meet me.”

“No trouble, Uncle Paul.”

Paul traveled light—a steamer trunk and a suitcase. Banes, with the aid of a Cunard porter, secured the luggage to the rack at the rear of the car.

“I saw Hanna and Tony in Chicago,” Paul said as he squeezed his bulk into the back of the Rolls. “California-bound. I understand Alexandra's in the family way.”

“That's right,” Martin said as he got in beside him. “Six months along.”

“Are you caretaking at the Pryory?”

“Houseguesting. I'm writing another book, and it's more peaceful here than in London. And I enjoy Charles's company.”

Paul bit the tip off a cigar and spat it out the window. “I saw your ex-boss in New York. I'm a heavy investor in his Consolidated Broadcasters setup. He still can't figure out why you quit. Why did you?”

“I'm not sure. Just got tired of it, I guess.”

“What do you do for money?”

“I had enough saved—and I sell a few articles.”

“Why don't you work for me? I need an agent in Germany I can trust.”

“Thanks, but no. Sounds like a good job for Karl.”

Paul snorted and lit his cigar. “I wouldn't trust that son of mine to go out and buy me a newspaper. A Yale man! Jesus Christ. I stuck him in the advertising department of Rilke Metals—kitchen stove division.” He puffed on the cigar and squinted at Martin. “You don't give a damn about money, do you?”

“No.”

“Like father, like son. Willie was the same. When we were kids, Papa gave us fifty cents a week. I'd put aside a quarter and when I had five dollars I'd buy a share on margin from Papa's broker. Willie'd blow his half-buck in a day.”

“Well,” Martin said lamely, “that's how it goes.”

The problem with being around Uncle Paul was that he was always dredging up the past. A reminder here, a remembrance there. Martin gazed out of the window as the car rolled out of Southampton. Happy-go-lucky William Frederick Rilke—a myth shared by both Paul and Hanna. The bohemian brother who had tossed away his inheritance to run off to Paris and become a painter. Martin's only memories of his father were of a morose, yellow-bearded man who had slipped in and out of their apartment in the rue Lepic like shadow and smoke. He was buried in the
cimetière
de Montmartre in a walled-off section reserved for suicides.

It was difficult to equate Uncle Paul now with the slender man who had come to Paris in the winter of that year of death, the winter of 1898, and had offered to take his brother's wife and son back to Chicago with him. His mother, speaking painful English, had agreed, and back they had gone. Paul had been kind and generous, buying a little house for them and paying a monthly allowance even after his mother had built up a modest business as Madame René, Modiste. It had been Paul's money that had sent him through the University of Chicago, and he had lived in his uncle's North Side mansion after his mother's death. He had many reasons to be grateful and he genuinely liked the man even though they disagreed on practically everything.

Banes turned off the highway at Godalming and down a narrow twisting road toward Abingdon.

“Abingdon Pryory,” Paul said. “I remember the first time I ever saw the place. Came over with the old man for Hanna's wedding. Jessie and I had only been married a year. That was Jessie's first and last sea voyage. She was sicker than a hound.

“Well, let me tell you, Martin, there was no man on God's sweet earth tighter with a penny than your grandfather. I worked for him, of course—managed two of the breweries—and all he paid me was fifty dollars a week. Jessie and I lived with him, in the big old house on Prairie Avenue that was torn down before you were born. He deducted twenty-five dollars from my pay for room and board. Oh, he was something, the old man. They broke the mold after he came into the world. The only person he was ever generous with was Hanna. She just had to hold out her hand and he'd plunk a ten-dollar gold piece into it. That sure burned your Aunt Jessie, I can tell you.

“So, anyway, here we were in England, coming down this very road in a coach and pair—a victoria, I guess it was—the grooms in the Greville livery and Jessie just fuming inside. I mean, here she was, married to a man bringing in fifty dollars a week—and handing half of that back—and here was her sister-in-law, who she had never liked anyway, about to be married to a bona-fide English lord who had grooms in livery and matched grays. She burned even more when she caught sight of the house. Back home we lived in three rooms. Three
small
rooms in that ramshackle barn of a house—and here was Hanna about to be the mistress of a goddamn castle!

“Anyway … the old man pointed to the house and said in his crazy katzenjammer English how happy he was that his Hanna was marrying a nobleman, but that it was a pity the old earl had squandered so much of the estate before he died. ‘You mean he's
broke?
' Jessie asked—sounding a bit pleased. ‘Oh, ja, ja,' the old man said, then shouted proudly: ‘But vun million dollars cash I haf for der dowry given!'

“Martin, I swear to God, I thought Jessie was about to drop dead right there on the seat. And let me tell you, a million dollars was a million
dollars
in those days. Poor Jessie. She never got over the shock. I think that's why she has fourteen fur coats and seven cars and solid gold plumbing in every bathroom in the house. It just unhinged her mind.”

C
HARLES MADE A
spectacular carom shot and then leaned on his cue as though oblivious to what he had done.

“You know, Martin, I like Uncle Paul. He has such a zest for life—and is absolutely unabashed about his love of money. I find that refreshing. So many of the men who make fortunes these days try to atone for it in good deeds. Homes for impregnated mill girls or something. I can't imagine Paul
giving
anything away.”

Martin studied the table and tried to work out a shot. “Well, he's owned the losingest team in the American League for the past twenty years. I suppose that's a form of charity—at least to the players. That's baseball, by the way—an American game.”

“I have heard of it,” Charles said laconically, watching Martin miss his shot by a wide margin. “Obviously billiards is not.”

“I used to be damned good. The eye has lost … whatever an eye loses.”

Charles chalked his cue. “He wants you to work for him.”

“I know. What did he say to you?”

“He offered a five-thousand-dollar donation to the school—if I could convince you that joining the old family firm was in your best interest. I rather like the proposition. Not a whiff of charity. Something for something.”

“I suppose the school could use the money.”

“Oh, yes, but we can survive very well without it. Why does he want you?”

Martin racked his stick and ambled over to the sideboard to pour a whiskey.

“Paul's thinking is about as devious as a straight ruler. He's always had a twinge of conscience about me. It's the inheritance. I was—oh, I don't know, five or six, when Grandfather Rilke died. I never knew I had an American grandfather. My father never spoke of his family. Anyway, according to what my mother told me later, the reality of being disowned came to my father when he received a check from a Chicago law firm in the amount of one dollar. He cashed it and got drunk. I imagine one could get very drunk in Paris on one dollar in those days.

“Paul gained a good deal by my father's disownment. When old Rilke died, he got what would have been his brother's share. It gave him two-thirds of the Rilke estate and Hanna one-third. That was fair enough, I suppose, because Paul had been running the business for several years. He could have ignored my mother and me—except for token money orders—but he came to France and brought us back. Looked after us very well and gave me everything but a share of the profits.”

“And now he wants you to sign on. Potential heir apparent, do you think?”

“I don't know. Something on that order perhaps. Karl's a washout. A pompous prig with a brain like a vacuum tube.”

“I remember him vaguely. Dropped in on us one summer before the war on his way to Germany. Smoked a pipe and wore a Yale sweater. That's all I can recall of him.”

Martin splashed some soda in his drink and leaned against the sideboard. “I'm not a businessman and Paul knows it.”

“You may not be a businessman, old boy, but you're a first-rate organizer and an intelligent man. A Pulitzer Prize winner, a top executive in the second-largest news agency in the world.”

“
Ex
–top executive.”

“Your choice, though, Martin. You weren't sacked for juggling the old books or pinching secretaries' bottoms. Any corporation with interests on the Continent would hire you like a shot. One of your problems, if you don't mind my saying so, is that you tend to hide your light under a basket.”

Martin drank reflectively and looked at Charles over the rim of the glass. He then finished the drink in a swallow and set the glass on the table.

“Speak for yourself, John—as the saying goes. I watch you riding off to Burgate every morning on your knobby-kneed horse. A canvas sack of books over your shoulder. Dressed in scruffy corduroys and an old sweater.
You
—a viscount, scholar, and gentleman, not off to great fame in Whitehall but on your way to teach a bunch of kids. And you know what you look like when you ride off? You look contented. And I'm contented. I have no burning ambition to make money or to be head of the Rilke empire after Uncle Paul kicks the bucket.”

“Then I would make that very plain to him, Martin. I don't think he quite believes there are people in this world who don't hunger for money and power.”

“I have told him, but he only stares into space and says, ‘Like father, like son.' It's a nagging conscience, if you ask me. The ghost of Willie Rilke grinning at him.”

P
AUL LOOKED FAR
from ghost-ridden as he sat in bed, cigars and a brandy decanter handy. A bed tray spanning his short legs overflowed with papers. He peered at Martin over his eyeglasses as he came into the room.

“Saw the light under your door,” Martin said. “Thought I'd wish you a good night.”

“You already did. But come and sit down. Have a cigar and a glass of Cognac. I'll say one thing for Tony, he has the best damned wine cellar of anyone I know.”