The Rich Are Different (104 page)

‘A Mr Keller, madam. He sounded like an American gentleman.’

My volume of Tennyson thudded to the floor as I rushed out into the hall.

By the telephone I paused until I was calmer and then said casually into the receiver: ‘Mr Keller?’

‘Yes, good evening, Mrs Sullivan – how are you?’ he said, and suddenly I was back at Milk Street five years ago in 1934 when that same voice had told Steve Cornelius had outwitted him. Yet this was not an overseas call. From the quality of the sound I knew that Sam Keller was in London. ‘Excuse me for calling when we’ve never met,’ he was saying with the leisurely charm I remembered so well, ‘but I was wondering if by any chance you’d be free to have lunch with me tomorrow. I arrived in London yesterday and I’m staying at the Savoy.’

I was terrified he had discovered what had happened.

‘How nice of you!’ I said graciously, knowing I had to find out how much he knew. ‘Thank you.’

‘Shall we say one o’clock at the Savoy? I’ll be waiting in the lobby.’

‘Lovely!’ I said with a meticulous display of warmth, and after ringing off I stared for a long time at the silent phone.

[2]

I dressed
with great care in a pale beige long-sleeved dress which looked well with my fox furs, and wore a dark brown broad-brimmed hat with matching handbag, gloves and shoes. I took a full hour over my make-up and when I looked in the glass I was satisfied. My skin, my strongest point even though I was thirty-eight, was clear and glowing; with make-up I could still hide the tiresome minor wrinkles. I had chosen a muted shade of lipstick to tone down my wide mouth, my nose was subdued by careful shadowing and my eyes looked softly knowing. Deciding I looked exactly as Sam Keller would want me to look I gave my reflection one last smile and swept outside to my chauffeur.

The pigeons in Trafalgar Square were pinched with cold, but the sun was shining on Nelson and as we passed the National Gallery I glanced down Whitehall to Big Ben shining against the pale winter sky.

I thought of Hitler gobbling up Bohemia and Moravia to complete Chamberlain’s humiliation, and was just picturing a blond handsome Sam Keller, the perfect specimen of the master-race, when the car drew up at the Savoy.

I was on time, which meant five minutes late. As the commissionaire opened the door for me I strolled into the foyer and glanced nonchalantly around for my smart, sleek, heel-clicking Nazi.

A tall dark man with a square honest face and broad workman-like shoulders whipped off his horn-rimmed spectacles and ambled towards me with a warm friendly hopeful grin.

‘Mrs Sullivan? Sam Keller – how are you?’ He offered me a large firm hand to shake while his admiring eyes made me feel as if I were the only woman in London who could possibly interest him.

‘How do you do, Mr Keller …’ Shaking hands weakly I found myself being spirited into the Savoy Grill. Naturally he had the best table booked for us and naturally the waiters fell over themselves to pay us attention.

He asked me if I wanted a cocktail before we ordered but when I merely suggested a glass of wine with the meal he held out a hand for the wine-list which immediately appeared between his fingers. Meanwhile I was scrabbling for a cigarette but he had discarded the list and struck a match even before the cigarette touched my lips. Under cover of this mundane social ritual I took a closer look at him. He had the trick of making his immaculately cut suit look as comfortable as a pair of dungarees, and so strong was his aura of casual charm that I had the absurd longing to unhook my corsets, sag in my chair and pour out to him the story of my life.

‘Is your wife here with you?’ I asked politely, finding it impossible to believe he had reached the age of thirty-one without some woman steering him to the altar.

‘Oh, I’m not married yet,’ he said, lighting his own cigarette. ‘I leave the marriages to my friend Cornelius.’ And through the smoke of our cigarettes I looked into the soft dark friendly eyes of Cornelius Van Zale’s hatchet-man.

The nervousness
sank like a dead weight to the pit of my stomach.

When our menus arrived we spent some time discussing the food and comparing the Savoy with New York’s Plaza Hotel, but eventually the food was ordered and the head waiter was hovering over the wine-list.

‘We’ll take a bottle of Piesporter Goldtröpfchen ’24,’ said Sam Keller.

He had an American accent with the usual slack consonants and an unusual way of mauling the English long A so that it was neither long nor short but a strangled mixture of the two. He also, unlike most Americans, did not roll the Rs which the English leave silent, and this made his speech seem even more casually articulated. So when he pronounced the words ‘Piesporter Goldtröpfchen’ with every consonant vibrating and every un-English vowel sound ringing faultlessly true I was so startled that I nearly knocked over my glass of water.

He looked alarmed. ‘I’m sorry – aren’t people drinking German wines any more in London? If you’d care for something else—’

‘Good heavens no! I like German wine very much.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want to give offence,’ he said, ‘and I know Americans are sometimes insensitive in Europe. Having been born on this side of the Atlantic I sometimes like to pretend I’m a European, but that’s just wishful thinking, I’m afraid, because the truth is I’m one hundred per cent American and my ties are exclusively with the United States. And talking of America …’

He was very smooth. It was impossible not to be impressed.

‘… is it really true Steve’s gone back there on a private visit? That’s the story they handed me at Milk Street but I thought I’d check it with you before I passed the word to Emily and the children to expect a visit from him.’

I referred with just the right amount of worried reticence to Steve’s brothers and hinted nebulously at some new family crisis. I had already cabled Luke and Matt to ask them to confirm this story to anyone who inquired, and I thought the lie could certainly be sustained for the length of Sam Keller’s visit to London.

‘Gee, that’s too bad,’ said my host, gazing at me with great sympathy. ‘That must be worrying for Steve.’

The waiter arrived with the wine, displayed it and uncorked the bottle while we watched. I was twisting my napkin under the table as I tried to guess how far Sam believed me.

‘What brings you to London, Mr Keller?’ I asked, changing the subject as soon as it was decently possible.

He told me to call him Sam. ‘Well, it’s real sad,’ he said with a sigh, ‘but I’ve come to wind up the Milk Street office and close our doors.’

I had heard of Americans pulling their capital out of London but I was still shocked. Biting back the obvious remark about rats and sinking ships I said dryly: ‘So Cornelius is hauling up the drawbridge over the Atlantic moat!’

‘Now don’t get us wrong!’ he said easily. ‘If America later wants to float
a war loan we’ll be at the front of the syndicate. This is purely a routine precaution to avoid any risk of capital confiscation.’

‘By a German government at Westminster!’

He laughed as if complimenting me on my sense of humour. ‘Sounds crazy, doesn’t it!’ he agreed good-humouredly. ‘But of course Neil has to think of every eventuality … Hell, we don’t want to talk about politics, do we? It’s enough to read about it in the press every darned day!’ He raised his glass with a smile. ‘To England!’ he said willingly as he drank his German wine.

‘To all those Americans,’ I said, ‘who understand that no man is an island and no moat is ever unbridgeable.’

I might not have spoken. Not a muscle of his face betrayed any emotion. Instead he said as he put down his glass: ‘You must tell me about your children – do you by any chance have a photograph of Alan? Is he like Paul?’ And later, when he had marvelled at the likeness, he said with a sincerity I could never have questioned: ‘Paul was a great man. I owe him everything. One day I’d like to meet your son to tell him what a great man his father was.’

I was touched. A second afterwards I realized that he had intended me to be. He had diagnosed my hostility and had played his trump card to neutralize it. As the fear closed in on me again I noted his skill with the detached respect of one grand master for another and tried to read the pattern his moves were forming on the complex chess-board of our lives.

‘I’m sure your friend Cornelius shares your opinion of Paul,’ I said. ‘He thinks of Paul as a father, doesn’t he?’

‘Why, no,’ said Sam, ‘I wouldn’t say that. Neil has actually become very interested in his own father in recent years – he’s just bought the Ohio farmhouse which his father used to own.’

I wondered if this surprising observation was supposed to reassure me that Cornelius had no cause to be jealous of Alan.

‘I thought Cornelius had a mystical feeling about Paul?’ I said, quoting his own phrase to him.

He failed to recognize it. ‘Well, he hero-worshipped him originally – we all did. And there was a time when he thought his life was mirroring Paul’s. But the two of them were pretty different, you know, and Neil’s mature enough now to accept the difference and welcome it.’

‘Welcome it? You mean he thinks he’s better than Paul?’

‘I didn’t say that. But Paul – great man though he was – had his weaknesses, didn’t he, and they happen to be weaknesses Neil doesn’t share. For example, he’s a devoted family man, faithful to his wife, loyal to his sister, wonderful with the children …’

A syrupy paean followed. By the time our first course was finished and the second had arrived I was so bored that I said: ‘Tell me about his halo. How big is it? And does he wash his wings every night or only on Sundays?’

Sam laughed. ‘Am I overselling him? I just wanted to give you the other side of the coin because I can well imagine the kind of opinions you’ve been getting from Steve.’

So we
had returned to Steve at last. I watched the waiter refill our glasses and wondered what was coming next. ‘Why should it matter to you what I think of Cornelius?’ I said lightly to Sam.

‘It doesn’t matter to me,’ he said, ‘but Neil is kind of anxious that you should think well of him. As a matter of fact that’s the other reason why I’m in London. I didn’t just come to close the doors at Six Milk Street. I came on Neil’s behalf to offer you the olive branch of peace.’

‘Sweet of Cornelius!’ I said. I could no longer eat but I continued to prod the grilled sole and poke the boiled potato. ‘I adore olive branches. What form does this particular olive branch take?’

‘I’m serious, Dinah,’ said Sam, looking serious. ‘Neil’s well-intentioned towards you. Of course, when he was just a kid he got all hot under the collar because you made life tricky for Sylvia, but he was too young then to understand what life was really all about. And of course he was kind of ambivalent about Alan for a while but not after Paul made him the heir. And then there was all that business about Emily, but hell! He now realizes what you and I knew from the word go – that Emily and Steve should never have married and that Emily’s happier without Steve than she ever was with him. And as for Steve using your money to set himself up to smash us in the teeth – we might as well call a spade a spade, mightn’t we! – Neil understands that you loved your husband and just wanted to do your best for him. Why, Neil even said he hoped Alicia would have done the same for him in such a situation! In fact Neil was very much impressed by that display of courage, Dinah. He said it made him realize that you were one of Paul’s people, just like us. And he couldn’t help wondering if, like all Paul’s people, you invariably knew when to cut your losses.’

He stopped. The head waiter hovered but flitted on towards the next table. ‘Gee,’ sighed Sam, regarding his plate with innocent pleasure, ‘this Dover sole’s just the greatest fish … Well, anyway, here’s the deal. If you care to bring your children to America to escape the war Neil will set you up in a new cosmetics business. I’ve got the written proposal with me – all you’d have to do is sign your name. He says he has great confidence in your business ability and the utmost faith that you and he could work successfully together.’

‘How kind. Will you think me unbearably naïve if I ask what happens to Steve?’

Sam cleared his throat. This was the difficult part requiring all his charm and skill. With appalled fascination I waited, my food abandoned and my wine untouched in my glass.

‘Listen, Dinah,’ he said, looking at me sympathetically with his honest brown eyes, ‘we don’t know each other well and your personal life is none of my business, but I can see you’re a very attractive woman who could easily win the admiration of the very best men around. Why should you settle for less than the best? Or to phrase it another way, why should you put up with all this nonsense Steve’s been handing you lately? We’re not blind and deaf at Willow and Wall, and we realize you must have had your
problems. Believe me, Neil’s been thinking a great deal about this, Dinah. He’s had your situation in mind for a long time.’

‘I bet he has,’ I said. ‘He’s been thinking of the best way to destroy Steve and he’s devised a scheme which looks as if it ought to be foolproof. But you tell your friend this: I’m going to stand by Steve. And you tell your friend this too: that even if I changed my mind the last place I’d ever run off to would be the lion’s den at Willow and Wall.’

There was a pause. A stillness smoothed Sam’s features and as his warm manner receded so did his overpowering sincerity and charm.

‘Won’t you at least think it over?’ he said at last.

‘Never. I’m sorry, Sam.’

He ate in silence, finished his wine and motioned the waiter. ‘Coffee, Dinah? Dessert?’

‘No, thank you.’

After he had signed the bill he escorted me to the foyer in silence.

‘Thank you for the lunch,’ I said to him as evenly as I could. The strain of the conversation was at last affecting me and I felt so exhausted I could hardly stand. ‘I’m sorry it had to end so abruptly.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ he said neutrally, and then suddenly he was neutral no longer. Putting a hand on my arm he said in a low urgent voice: ‘Dinah, be reasonable. Take the offer. Otherwise there’s no way you can win this hand, no way at all. It’s impossible.’