The Rich Are Different (11 page)

During our
previous quarrel over the packaging designs I had felt more entertained than angered by her refusal to acknowledge her ignorance of the world of commerce, but on this occasion I found I was no longer amused. I suspect this was because I was now taking her schemes much more seriously, but I was also annoyed because her arrogance led me to suppose she thought our intimacy permitted her all manner of infantile behaviour in our business relationship. Regretfully I realized I had no choice but to put her very firmly in her place.

‘That may not be what you want,’ I said so sharply that she jumped, ‘but that’s all that I, as the senior partner of Da Costa, Van Zale and Company of New York and London, am prepared to offer you. If you don’t like it, take a walk down Lombard Street and see if any other firm of merchant bankers – or indeed any commercial bankers – are prepared to assist a young girl with no money, no experience and no apparent awareness of how exceedingly fortunate she’s been so far!’

‘Well, I think a banker should at least listen to the wishes of his clients!’ she retorted, still defiant, but I heard the uncertainty in her voice and I knew I had shaken her.

I pressed on inexorably, determined to ensure there should be no future misunderstanding of our business relationship.

‘Dinah,’ I said, ‘my business as a banker is not in listening with paternal charity to little orphaned girls in distress. My business lies in raising and channelling capital, not in dabbling in the kind of petty financial aid you require. Have you any idea what I do at Milk Street? No? I thought not. Perhaps I should explain to you so that you can see your affairs in perspective instead of assuming you’re my most important client.’

‘Well, naturally, I don’t think—’

I held up my hand and when she was silent I said rapidly: ‘I’m a middleman in the financial structure and in London they refer to my bank as an issuing house. My job is to provide facilities through which savings are directed into long-term investment – a job which serves both the users and suppliers of capital. Let me give you an example. If I hadn’t met you, my interest in the potential of the cosmetics industry would only have been aroused if one of the country’s leading industrialists – perhaps Sir Walter Malchin – had come to me and said he was expanding into the cosmetics field and needed extra capital to finance his expansion. I would have examined his industrial structure, investigated the market potential of his proposed products, calculated the risk and evolved the best way of getting him his money –
if
I decided to help him. To raise the capital I would then have to work out the number of securities to issue, when and how to market them, and what kind of securities they ought to be. After that, being in England, I would have insured the issue and distributed it to the brokers for sale to the public. The procedure is different in America where syndicates are prevalent and the wholesale and retail distribution of securities takes place on a much vaster scale … Now let’s go back to you. You’re no Sir Walter Malchin. I couldn’t possibly issue securities for a
paltry little company of no standing. Such money as I provide will in effect be money out of my own pocket, and the only reason I’m involving the bank at all is because you’ll have additional status in the commercial world if you can call yourself a client at Six Milk Street. Am I making myself clear? Good. Now perhaps you can understand why I feel not only that your criticism is impertinent but that I’m entitled to call the tune.’

‘And I feel that your attitude is unspeakably arrogant!’ bawled Dinah, almost in tears at being put in her place so brutally, ‘and your patronizing contempt not only shortsighted but self-defeating! How dare you talk to me like that! You’d never dare if I were a man!’

It was no use. I could sustain my stern expression no longer. ‘Is this a prelude to some delightful suffragette panegyric?’ I inquired with a smile, but if I thought I was pouring oil on troubled waters I was gravely mistaken.

‘And how dare you call me a suffragette!’ blazed Dinah, tears forgotten as she gave vent to a rage that seemed entirely out of proportion to my mild remark. ‘I’m no certifiable political fanatic! I’m a woman who has to work for a living and I think I should be treated with respect and not regarded patronizingly as a second-rate citizen of the world!’

‘I’m perfectly willing to give you my total respect,’ I said equably, ‘but you must earn it. It’s no good throwing scenes just because I threaten you with an American business manager. While you behave like a child I shall treat you as a child, and I would do so whatever sex you happened to be, male, female or hermaphrodite. Now grow up, wise up and shut up. Shall we go to bed?’

There was a hideous silence. I was just thinking in despair that she would burst into tears and keep us both up all night, when she delighted me as usual by doing the unexpected. She giggled. ‘I do so love American slang!’ she said. ‘Perhaps an American business manager could teach me something after all.’

‘Allow me to continue your education until he arrives …’

We went to bed. It was the best night we had ever had together. I fell asleep toying with the idea of taking the rest of the week off and motoring to Mallingham directly after our visit to Lincoln’s Inn.

The next morning I had to admit that this idea was impossible, but I thought that after Hal Beecher arrived I might be able to escape more frequently from London. I could have a month of long weekends at Mallingham and still be back in New York by the end of July – or perhaps early August. The thought of New York in August made me shudder. August was one of the months we always spent at Bar Harbor, but how much pleasanter it would be to stay at Mallingham! Perhaps if I wrote to Sylvia and said I had decided to take my summer vacation in Europe … But then I would really have to ask her to join me. No, there was no alternative. I had to be home by the last week in July, review matters at Willow and Wall and retire as usual to Maine with my wife.

That weekend I returned to Mallingham.

I had
to work all day on Saturday, but at seven o’clock I set off north along the Newmarket road and by midnight I was back in North Norfolk. I found the candles lit in the dining-room, cold roast fowl and home-baked bread on the table and Dinah, looking vaguely Dickensian in a long black gown, waiting to receive me.

‘The champagne is chilling in Mallingham Broad,’ she said after we had kissed, and we went down to the boathouse to pull up the bottle. On an impulse I suggested a moonlight sail, but since the dinghy threatened to capsize when we made love we returned to the house to complete our reunion.

Later I brought her back to London with me and we went to the theatre. We saw the outstanding event of the summer season, a revival of Pinero’s
The Second Mrs Tanqueray
, and discussed Gladys Cooper’s performance
ad nauseam
; we saw a new Edna Best comedy which I disliked; and we spent many happy hours wrangling over the significance of the works of George Bernard Shaw. Tiring at last of such lightweight intellectual activity, we turned to the season’s sporting events. I took a thirty-guinea box at Royal Ascot and we saw the fabled horse Gold Myth win both the Gold Vase and the Gold Cup.

However it was not until the end of June that Dinah’s name appeared in the press, for the English gossip columns, few in number, purveyed only innocent items heavily swathed in discretion. We had motored down to Wimbledon where the Lawn Tennis Championships were due to begin on the New Ground, and although rain fell almost continuously the Ground was opened at half past three when the King himself graciously struck a gong three times in the Royal Box. Because of the presence of royalty I hardly expected anyone to notice us, but some enterprising journalist recognized me and asked O’Reilly for the name of the lady at my side. Knowing I was never averse to a quick mention in the press, O’Reilly disclosed Dinah’s identity.

The next morning he presented me with the
Daily Graphic
’s report of the events at Wimbledon. Under the sub-heading ‘Famous People among spectators’, it was stated that Mr Paul C. Van Zale, the well-known American millionaire, was present at the New Ground with Miss Dinah Slade.

I thought such a discreet little mention could have hardly given offence to anyone, but I had reckoned without the English horror of publicity.

‘How vulgar!’ exclaimed Dinah, dropping the paper with a shudder. ‘And dangerous too. Supposing our affair turns into a huge scandal and rebounds against us?’

‘I can’t think why it should. We conduct ourselves decently in public and behave before the servants. What more do the British expect of their aristocracy?’

The very next day young Geoffrey Hurst travelled from Norwich to London to answer my question.

[4]

I was
still more occupied at the office than I had anticipated. Hal Beecher had arrived from New York and although I had at first regarded his arrival as my passport to greater leisure, I soon discovered I was more thoroughly chained to the office than ever. Hal was a good fellow and more than willing to become a merchant banker in London, instead of an investment banker in New York, but the terminology was not the only difference between the two jobs and, to put it kindly, it is not always easy to teach an old dog new tricks. I was in the middle of putting him through his paces on the morning after Dinah’s debut in the
Daily Graphic
, when Geoffrey Hurst arrived without an appointment and demanded an audience.

‘I’m sure you won’t want to see him, sir,’ said O’Reilly, ‘but since he’s a friend of Miss Slade’s I thought I should tell you he’s here before I sent him away.’

‘As usual, O’Reilly, you did the right thing. Tell him to wait.’ By that time I was almost gasping to have a break from Hal. We had spent over an hour discussing the English laws on disclosure as outlined in the Companies (Consolidation) Act of 1908, and Hal was still marvelling at the English taste for regulation. In America we can peddle securities more or less as we like so long as we maintain a vague respect for the loose ‘Blue-sky’ laws operating in certain states, but then in America the concept of the freedom of the individual is so inflated that even laws protecting its citizens from investing in fraudulent securities are regarded as infringements on the right of men to throw away their money as they choose.

‘I’ll see the boy now,’ I told O’Reilly five minutes later, after Hal had been dispatched with a cup of coffee to browse among the complex clauses of the Act.

Geoffrey Hurst swept into the room with the air of a crusader blazing into battle against the Saracen.

‘Sit down, Mr Hurst,’ I said, seeing at once how the land lay and not making the mistake of offering him a hand to shake. ‘I’m delighted to see you again – how kind of you to call! How is your father?’

‘Very well, thank you, sir, but I didn’t come here to discuss him. I came here to tell you—’

‘May I offer you coffee? Or tea?’

‘No, thank you, sir. I came here to tell you that your beastly rotten behaviour has gone too far and that you have absolutely no right to drag Dinah with you into the columns of the gutter press!’

‘I didn’t know you read the gutter press, Mr Hurst, and besides I suspect the
Daily Graphic
might well find such a description slanderous. However, I’ve no wish to quarrel with you.’

‘Well, I’ve every intention of quarrelling with you!’

‘Oh dear.’ I regarded him sympathetically. He was such a nice-looking boy and so well brought up. I wondered if he had known he was in love with Dinah before I had arrived on the scene, but thought not. He had the
anguished air of a man who has discovered a fundamental truth in life too late to do anything about it.

‘You’ve taken advantage of Dinah, you’ve corrupted her—’ The predictable tirade continued for some minutes while I listened patiently and allowed my glance to wander over the objects on my desk. I suddenly noticed my calendar was set at the twenty-eighth, and with a jolt remembered that the twenty-ninth was my wedding anniversary. Seizing a pencil I hastily scribbled: ‘Cable Sylvia’ on my memo pad.

‘—and how dare you attend to business matters while I’m talking to you!’ yelled the boy in a towering rage, and jumping to his feet he tried to sweep the pad off the desk.

I shot out a hand, grabbed his wrist so tightly that he squealed, and shoved him back in his chair.

‘Behave yourself, Mr Hurst,’ I said shortly. ‘Your conduct is unbecoming in a gentleman.’

Evidently I had selected the appropriate English phrase for he lapsed at once into a stunned silence. As his shattered expression continued I said without any special emphasis: ‘Your quarrel is not with me but with Dinah. In my own way I’m trying to look after her. It may not be your way, but that doesn’t mean I’m not well-intentioned. I wish to correct you on one detail; I did not seduce Dinah. She seduced me, very deliberately and with her eyes wide open, and if you look back at your personal memories of the incident with the hamper I think your natural honesty will force you to acknowledge I’m speaking the truth. Whether her private conduct is any of your business is not for me to say, although I strongly suspect it is not. You’re not her brother or even her cousin, although perhaps you once had some private understanding with her that I know nothing about. If this is true I can only apologize, plead my ignorance and repeat that your quarrel is with her and not with me. If it’s not true, then I believe I’m perfectly entitled to Dinah’s affections if she chooses to bestow them on me.’

‘But Dinah doesn’t know what she’s doing! After all, she’s only a girl—’

‘Mr Hurst, you may regard women as mental defectives. I don’t. Dinah is twenty-one years old and she knows exactly what she’s doing. If she were a man her decision to seek capital to start a business and save her home would be entirely commendable. If she were a man her decision to lose her virginity and embark on a love affair would also be regarded as natural – even healthy. Just because she’s a woman should she be expected to give up her home, her potential career and her private life in order to fulfil some illogical masculine concept of how a woman should behave?’