Lady of Fortune (71 page)

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 pleasure 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.'

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!'

Effie affectionately pushed him away. ‘Kitty's right,' she smiled. ‘There's a time and a place for everything, and I'm not sure this is the time and the place for a passionate Latin-lover performance.'

Caldwell parted the pink velvet drapes at the window. Outside, there was nothing to be seen but themselves, hovering reflected in the darkness, and occasional crossing-lights flying past like stray planets, accompanied by the lonely clanging of bells. ‘Who knows what place it is?' he said. ‘And who knows what time it is? I haven't heard us go over the long bridge into Albany yet; so we must be somewhere between Manhattan and sheer madness.'

‘Those martinis
were
strong,' said Effie, with a mock-disapproving frown.

‘You bet they were,' said Caldwell. ‘Beckman collared me in the passageway, and said, “I know you, you're Caldwell Brooks, what the devil takes
you
to Chicago?” So I told him:
and so he dragged me along to the club-car, very excited, and bought me a drink. He said he's heard all about you, and he'd just
love
to do business with you. He's been a California farmer for most of his life; and if you want to make friends with the fruit-and-vegetable fraternity, he's your man. An excellent ally, although, from what I hear, a very unpleasant enemy if he doesn't take to you.'

‘Disregarding gold and oil, in both of which we already have unbeatable connections, what else is there in California, apart from fruit and vegetables?' asked Effie.

‘Precisely,' said Caldwell.

‘Well, let's invite Mr Beckman to dinner, shall we? asked Effie. ‘Let's see if he can't give us a little assistance.'

‘You
really
want to have him to dinner?' asked Caldwell. ‘I thought we were going to have a little celebratory diner-à-deux.'

‘Caldwell …' said Effie. ‘You know that business always has to come before pleasure.'

Caldwell sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. ‘I think I'd better order up a pot of very strong black coffee,' he said, disconsolately.

A Negro messenger returned James Beckman's acceptance of Effie's dinner invitation with a promptness that was almost laughable, as well as bringing her a spray of hothouse gardenias and a bottle of Perrier-Jouët champagne. When Beckman arrived at eight o'clock sharp at her stateroom door, he was dressed in full white-tie regalia, with a blood-red handkerchief dangling from his sleeve, and a gold-knobbed cane, which he juggled like a conjuror. He was a small, barrel chested, bushily-moustachioed man, with the congested purple face of someone who has spent 80 per cent of his waking life outdoors, and the other 20 per cent losing his temper. Dan Kress had once called him ‘The Angry Eggplant'.

‘Miss Watson,' said James Beckman, bowing his head, and kissing her white-gloved hand. ‘You don't know what an honour this is. The First Lady of American Money; rich as Cleopatra and five times as beautiful.'

‘I'm sure you didn't learn flattery like that in Morgan Hill, California,' smiled Effie.

‘W-e-e-ell,' said James Beckman, cocking his head to one side. ‘You sure do your homework, don't you?'

As a matter of fact, James Beckman had twice told Caldwell during their martini-session together in the club car that he had been ‘the most fortunate son of Morgan Hill, California,' but he had obviously forgotten. He smiled at Effie, impressed, and then took two or three steps across the carpeted floor of the stateroom. ‘I have too tell you, Miss Watson, I was real interested when I heard that you was considering a move out to the Coast. We don't have too much class out there, when it comes to banking. There's Giannini, of course; and Wells Fargo; but no
class
. Not genuine Eastern, Wall Street style.'