Lady of Fortune (77 page)

‘Should I give Mr Caldwell a message, if he comes back?' asked Kitty.

‘Just tell him I telephoned,' said Effie.

‘I can't hear you, Miss Effie.'

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Later, Robert called her, and welcomed her back to New York. From the background noise, it sounded as if he were in a restaurant. ‘Can I take you for dinner tomorrow?' he asked her.

‘Surely. Call for me at seven.'

‘You know that Alisdair's coming out again next month, on the Mauretania?'

‘I'll look forward to it.'

‘He's always talking about you, you know. He admires you, that boy. Well we'll all proud of you. You've done wonders with that California bank.'

‘I hear you've being doing wonders yourself.'

‘Och, not I. I'm nothing but a figurehead these days. I don't participate at all. I'm fifty-seven this year.'

‘You think that's old?'

‘It's too old to be chasing young girls around the bed.'

‘How about married women? I understand they don't run so fast.'

There was a pause. In the background, Effie heard a woman laughing, and the sound of piano music. Robert said, ‘Well, I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘Robert?' said Effie.

‘What is it?'

‘You're not offended, are you? You're not hanging up in a huff?'

‘Offended?' asked Robert, blandly. ‘Why should I be?'

‘No reason. I don't suppose I could offend you if I tried.'

After Robert had hung up, Effie called one or two of her New York friends, and arranged lunches and coffee-mornings for the remainder of the week. At eight o'clock, Charlene served Effie in the dining-room with a light supper of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, with cornbread, fresh green salad, and a half-bottle of Krug champagne. Effie went to bed at ten o'clock and read
The New Yorker
and
Time
until she felt tired. She dozed on and off for most of the night. At half past three, unaccustomed to New York's stuffiness, she took off her silk and lace nightdress, and lay naked on top of her sheets, and smoked a cigarette.

She wondered then what she was living for. Was it only for money? She knew that it wasn't. But if it wasn't only for money, what was she doing here in New York, jealously guarding her investment in Watson's bank, when she should be back home in California, jealously guarding her marriage? Perhaps the simple answer was that she was almost as relieved that Caldwell had left her as Caldwell had been to go. Perhaps their happy, prosperous, California marriage had been nothing more than a joyous pretence.

Perhaps when Karl had died, her ability to love any man passionately had died with him. Perhaps she had never loved any man passionately at all.

She felt depressed for almost an hour. Then, still naked, she went to the window and looked out over the early-morning sidewalks, at the parked cars, and the lightless mansions of the very rich. She began to feel that she was approaching a crisis in her life, that she was coming towards a moment when she would have to face up to her greatest weaknesses; and either succumb to them, or defeat them. She felt that there was a better Effie somewhere in the future, a stronger and more balanced woman who would be able to come to terms not only with her own desires but with the society which commonly treated her either with suspicion, or contempt, or as an object of prurient scandal. She had survived within herself because she had lived within herself; but her loves and her friendships had all suffered. She thought of the nickname the tabs always gave her: The
Banksterette, and she smiled to herself. Anyone less a ‘Banksterette' than this tired, pretty, 44-year-old woman would be hard to find. She was a real banker, endowed with all of the foresight and cleverness and financial sensitivities of someone who understands money
emotionally
. She was like a concert violinist, who is both master and slave to his music: he creates it, and controls it, down to the tiniest nuance of touch; and yet he cannot live without it.

She crossed her arms across her bare breasts. In the distance, from the Atlantic, the sky was beginning to lighten. She watched the definition of the Fifth Avenue houses and apartment-blocks change gradually from impenetrable shadow to grainy and photographic grey. People began to walk briskly along the sidewalks; trucks and automobiles began to move. The sun rose and glanced off the windows of the building opposite.

At six o'clock, she went back to bed and slept for an hour and a half. At eight, she called for Charlene to bring her a cup of coffee and a piece of toast.

Charlene said, ‘Somebody called for you in the night, Mrs Brooks.'

‘Called? What do you mean?'

‘Somebody called on the telephone. Long-distance, I think. He asked if Mrs Brooks was there, and when I said yes, he hung up.'

‘He didn't tell you who he was?'

‘No, ma'am. That's all he said.'

‘He didn't leave a message?'

‘No, ma'am.'

Effie sat up in bed, frowning to herself. She knew that it must have been Caldwell. She thought of calling him back; but then she decided against it. It wasn't perversity, or a lack of forgiveness. It was simply that she was frightened to put him off by appearing too eager. Caldwell, like most financiers, young or old, was impressed far more by proper ritual than by speed. There would be a far greater chance of a successful reconciliation if she gave him time to think, and didn't push him. It was her pushiness, after all, that had put him off to begin with. Like most men, Caldwell expected his wife to be demure, obedient, and pleasantly sassy. He may have been attracted to her in the first place because of her unorthodox ideas about where a woman should be, and what
a woman should do. But now they were married, did he really want her to head up a burgeoning independent bank? Did he really want her to smoke in public, drive her own automobile, and treat his business contacts as if they were equals?

She didn't allow herself to think that she might be deferring a call to Caldwell because protecting her interests in Watson's New York was, for her, a more urgent priority.

She was ten minutes late for her meeting with Dougal at The Club House, but Dougal was still there, sitting in a booth near the back, talking to a jobber named Stravinski. Stravinski stood up when Effie arrived, shook her hand, and excused himself. ‘Best of luck in California,' he called, from the doorway.

‘Would you like some coffee?' asked Dougal. He looked thinner than he was last year, less bloated, but his illness had aged him dramatically and permanently, withering his hands and his neck. He still seemed to have difficulty in using his right arm.'

‘Some tea would be nice,' said Effie. ‘How are you?'

‘I'm as well as you could hope to expect.'

‘What do your doctors say?'

‘Not much. Either they're cautiously optimistic about me, or else they're afraid to tell me the truth.'

‘You've never told me what's wrong.'

Dougal made a face. ‘I don't suppose I ever will, either.'

Effie loosened her silk neck-scarf. ‘You're as stubborn as father used to be.'

‘Father wasn't stubborn. Father was frightened. It's easy to mistake fear for pig-headedness. When you're really scared, you know, there isn't very much you can do to save your dignity except to say “no.”'

‘What do you have to be frightened about?' asked Effie. ‘You're rich, you're respectable, you're married to a pretty woman.'

‘Well …' said Dougal, ruefully. ‘All of that's true, yes. It sounds like a dream life, doesn't it, until you put it into perspective.'

Effie lifted her hand and touched Dougal, very gently, on the cheek. He tried to smile at her, but she could see how difficult it was for him to give her even an impression of amusement, even a charade of pleasure.

‘It's not just Robert, is it?' she asked him. ‘Something else is wrong.'

‘Something's been wrong for years.'

‘You mean, you and Mariella?'

Dougal nodded.

‘Dougal,' said Effie, ‘I don't understand. You seem to hate Mariella and yet you seem unable to leave her. Is it something to do with your illness, or what? Does anybody know? What about that girl you used to date? What was her name?'

‘May,' said Dougal, morosely. ‘Yes, she knew.'

‘Well, if May knew you can tell me,' said Effie, sharply. ‘Damn it, Dougal, I'm your sister. I'm here to help you and I mean to do it. I travelled three thousand miles because you asked me to. The very least you can do is let me known what the hell's going on.'

The waitress came up and said, ‘Good morning, what's it to be?'

‘A glass of water,' said Effie.

‘That's all? Nothing to eat? We have fresh English muffins.'

‘Just bring the water, will you?' asked Dougal, impatiently.

When the waitress had gone, Effie said, ‘Come on now, Dougal. You have to. You were always the most promising out of all of us. The brightest, the fittest, the best-looking. What happened to you?'

Dougal was silent for a long time, but Effie didn't interrupt his silence. The waitress brought her water, and she drank half of it before opening her pocketbook, taking out a half-bottle of McCullum's Perfection, $1.25 the quart, and topping up the glass to the brim. She stirred it with her gold propelling-pencil.

At last, Dougal said, ‘You'll have noticed we don't have children, Mariella and I'.

Effie said nothing, but waited for him to continue. He raised one hand, fingers spread, in a gesture of acceptance and regret.

‘I thought at first that it was Mariella's fault. In fact, I was convinced of it. I sent her to eight different doctors, including Dr Novotny at the Goldsmith. Every one of them said she was fine. A fecund woman, they said, ready and able to give me children.'

‘So it was you,' said Effie.

Dougal nodded. ‘It took one doctor less than an hour to tell me what was wrong. You remember when I was fifteen, I had the branks? Well, it apparently caused partial atrophy of the testicles. I wasn't completely sterile; few people ever are, after the branks, no matter what the popular tales tell you. But I was sterile enough not to be able to give Mariella any children.'

Somebody in the booth behind Effie was saying loudly, ‘Goldman, Sachs have shown
their
confidence in the present level of prices. What more proof do you need? The bull market is here to stay. You don't want Blue Ridge stock? Then don't invest in Blue Ridge stock. But don't come crying to me in a year's time when you realise what you've missed.'

Dougal said, ‘Mariella … found it very difficult to accept. You know, that we could never have children. Or probably wouldn't. You know what she's like. She needs children. But that's why I went off with May. May didn't care about children. May just wanted a good time. Well, that's what she told me. But in the end she fell in love with me just enough to expect me to leave Mariella.'

‘That's when you got ill?'

‘I –' Dougal stopped now, unable to persuade his lips to say any more. Effie said quickly, ‘Dougal, you
have
to tell me,' but for minutes on end he could do nothing but stare at her, trying to express everything he felt through his eyes. Anything, dear God, except having to admit it out loud.

Then, in a rush, he said, ‘I cut myself. After May left me. Actually, after that time I met her in Macy's. I, er, I – well, I cut myself. I woke up in the middle of the night one night, and I don't even know why. I felt so damned hopeless. I thought, what good am I, really? I'm no good to May, no good to Mariella. No damned good to anybody. And all because of this … thing … that doesn't work.'

‘You cut yourself?' Effie asked him, in growing horror. ‘What do you mean, you cut yourself?'

Dougal sat up as straight as he could. His face was like a crumpled brown-paper bag. Too much Florid sun, too much New York pain. Too much money, too much responsibility, too much agony, too much hopelessness. A man who had woken up one night in a million-dollar Long Island mansion with the realisation that he had been deceived by his destiny. A man who had been given everything – looks, and charm,
and fitness, and a great deal of money – but whose body alone had let him down. In broken sentences and fragmented words, as slushy and vicious as a bathroom basin full of broken glass, Dougal described to Effie how he had gone to his dressing-room that night, taken a straight-razor out of his top drawer, and sharpened it for almost ten minutes on a leather strap. Then, with movements that had been speedy and abrupt enough to keep up the momentum of his despair, he had opened the fly of his pyjamas, laid his penis on the blotter of his writing-pad, and sliced most of the way through the shaft of it, about halfway down. Blood had spilled like a tipped-over bottle of red accounting ink. Without realising it, he had screamed out loud (‘I never heard myself scream. To this day, I can't remember screaming. I thought I was calm.') If he hadn't screamed, though, he would probably have died. Mariella found him bleeding on the floor, and immediately called an ambulance and a doctor. While she waited for them to arrive, she tied up his mutilated penis with a tourniquet made from a silk handkerchief and a cedarwood drawing-pencil.

Effie was trembling. She said, ‘I never even knew this happened. I didn't have any idea.'

‘Nobody was told. The doctors who treated me were paid to keep quiet.'

‘But,
Dougal
–' Effie whispered.

‘I know,' said Dougal. ‘It's hard for you to understand and it's even harder for
me
to understand. I don't know why I did it and I still don't know whether I regret it or not. At least it's discharged me from the responsibility of having to try to make Mariella pregnant. I just wish there could have been an easier way. Better still, an easier life.'