The Rich Are Different (2 page)

At half past ten, just after I had sampled some undrinkable coffee and embarked on my correspondence, Dinah Slade’s letters arrived. I was roaming around the room as I dictated to my secretaries; I usually dictate to more than one secretary at a time for the simple reason that I have never found a secretary who can keep pace with my dictation.

It was at this point that O’Reilly interrupted me. ‘Miss Slade’s letters, Mr Van Zale.’

‘Dear Mr Van Zale,’ Dinah Slade had written in a firm spare hand, ‘I am in a highly unusual situation and consider it absolutely imperative that I obtain the advice of a discriminating and sophisticated man such as yourself … so please could you help me by sparing me a few minutes of your time?’ she concluded. Turning to her second letter, I found the mystery was unveiled further. ‘Dear Mr Van Zale, I am writing to you as I know you appreciate the past and have a connoisseur’s eye for medieval beauty. I have the most beautiful house in England, small but exquisite, like a miniature by Fouquet, and I would like you to see it. You owe it to yourself not to miss such an important aesthetic experience.’

I looked up. Both secretaries were motionless, pencils poised over their notebooks, a dazed expression in their eyes. It was seldom they had such a respite. Ignoring them I sat down at my desk and read the third letter. ‘Dear Mr Van Zale, Because of an English law which discriminates against females, I am about to lose my home. You should see it before it’s lost. If you can’t come to Norfolk at least let me see you for a minute in London so that I can paint the house for you in words.’

To me the most interesting aspect of this correspondence was not that Miss Slade never asked for money – though this was noteworthy enough in any appeal to me for help. I was intrigued because the letters were obviously part of a carefully planned campaign. Even though they had been mailed on different dates, I suspected all the letters had been written on the same day
and constructed, like a detective story, to leak information at a calculated pace. Acknowledging my curiosity with reluctance, I embarked on the final letter.

‘Dear Mr Van Zale, What a pity you’re so zealously protected from the world! But I don’t think your secretaries would dare throw away the Mallingham Hours, a book which has been in the hands of my family for over four hundred years. After reading in
The Times
that you recently acquired a medieval manuscript at Christie’s I thought you might enjoy the opportunity to examine this perfect example of fifteenth-century art. I must make it clear that it is not for sale, but you may keep it for one week, at the end of which I should be delighted to collect the manuscript in person. Yours sincerely …’

The address prefacing all four letters was Mallingham Hall, Mallingham, Norfolk.

I smiled, and when my letters to Steven Sullivan, my young partner in New York, and Carter Glass were finished I sent for O’Reilly.

‘I want to see Miss Slade’s file when I return to Curzon Street,’ I said. ‘And O’Reilly—’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Find out if she’s a virgin, would you? I know we’re supposed to be seeing the dawn of a new morality, but frankly I’m beginning to doubt if anyone knows that beyond the limits of the West End of London.’

‘Yes, sir.’ No man could have sounded more neutral. We looked at one another. I did not quite believe he led the celibate life for which his experience in the seminary had prepared him, but I knew he wanted me to think he did. Towards sexual matters he cultivated an air of supreme indifference which I liked because it meant my private life could never embarrass him, but which also annoyed me because I felt such a pose was priggish. Until O’Reilly had risen to prominence in my household I had never realized how extraordinarily irritating Sir Galahad must have been to the other knights of the Round Table.

‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ said this tiresome paragon, and I had to repress the urge to dispatch him in search of the Holy Grail.

It was a long day but eventually I returned to Curzon Street, glanced at Miss Slade’s file which told me no more than I already knew, dictated a few social notes to Miss Phelps, skimmed the evening papers, bathed, shaved, changed and arrived at the theatre just as the curtain was rising. The play was execrable but the leading lady fulfilled all the promise she had shown me at our previous meeting, and after a late supper we retired to her apartment.

I was annoyed when my mind kept straying towards the Mallingham Hours, but not surprised. I had become bored with my leading lady’s theatrical gossip, disappointed by her lack of originality, and although I delayed my departure in order to be polite it was a relief to retreat home with Peterson faithfully at my heels. When Peterson was on duty as my bodyguard I seldom spoke to him; the best way to tolerate a surrender of privacy
is to ignore the offending presence, but that night as I stepped into the evening air I felt the sinister pressure building behind my eyes and I said quickly: ‘You can sit in the back with me, Peterson,’ as my hand groped in my pocket for my medication. As soon as I had taken a pill I felt better and knew the symptom had been imaginary, a product of my fear of illness and not of the illness itself. Meanwhile the car was drawing away from the kerb, and to distract myself I said rapidly to Peterson’s solid comforting bulk beside me: ‘What do you think that girl Dinah Slade wants?’

‘Money and the usual, sir,’ said Peterson placidly. ‘Same as all the other broads.’

‘But no broad’s ever sent me a book of hours before … My God, listen to me! Peterson, why is it that when I’m with you I always pick up your detestable slang?’

We laughed. I was relaxing, the pressure behind my eyes fading fast and my fear temporarily conquered. ‘We’ll play tennis tomorrow,’ I said. ‘We’ll leave the house at seven, motor to Queen’s Club and play for an hour or so before I go to the City …’ And as I spoke I remembered those far-off days of my secluded childhood when my parents had taken me from doctor to doctor until finally my father had cried out in an agony of guilt: ‘There’s nothing wrong with that boy that a game of tennis can’t cure!’ Lawn tennis had been a new game in those days, but it had quickly become popular at Newport. I could remember playing with my father as clearly as if it were yesterday, my father and Jason Da Costa—

A curtain came down over my memory. Turning to Peterson I talked to him about tennis and I talked until we arrived home five minutes later.

It was one o’clock. After dismissing my valet I was alone at last with the Mallingham Hours, and I retired to bed without a thought of the inevitable insomnia in the hours before dawn.

Time passed tranquilly. I was examining the pictures, imagining myself a craftsman working for three days to illuminate one letter. What could it be like to labour day after day to produce an object of great beauty, a legacy of spirituality as well as aesthetic triumph? My romantic imagination, always at odds with my quest for classicism, overcame me at this point and I visualized myself as a humble monastic scribe, living in creative peace in some remote corner of Europe where money was virtually unknown. Fortunately my common sense reasserted itself before I could continue in this sentimental vein, and I remembered that medieval artists were always anxious to get paid before either they or their patrons were eliminated by a new war, famine or pestilence … The fascination of Europe enveloped me again; I heard its mysterious call, felt it once more stake a claim upon my soul, knew myself hypnotized by that old familiar glamour, and as I fingered my way through the Mallingham Hours from Matins to Lauds and from Lauds to Vespers I felt as if I had been given a key to a world which I had always longed to enter but which had remained tantalizingly just beyond my reach.

At two o’clock I put the manuscript aside, and postponing once more
the dreaded moment when I would have to try to sleep, I began to write to Elizabeth, the woman I had loved for thirty years but had somehow never succeeded in marrying. I felt Elizabeth would understand how the seductive mirror of Europe had once more caught the sun to blind me with its brilliance, yet when I wrote the words ‘My dearest Elizabeth’ I saw not Europe but her house on Gramercy Park, and then I was back in New York again, back in my own culture among my own people in a world which I had so painfully constructed with my own soiled and bloodied hands.

I got up and began to pace around the room. It was three o’clock before I could bring myself to return to bed and four before I drifted into sleep, but my dreams were so appalling that it was a relief to rise at six to play tennis. By nine o’clock I was already at Milk Street to submerge myself in my work.

Three days passed. O’Reilly submitted a disappointing addendum to his file on Miss Slade and suggested she was merely an ordinary girl from a country backwater who despite her superior education had seen little and done less. Since her father had died the previous autumn she had lived alone at Mallingham Hall and there were no reports of any attentive friends of the opposite sex. At Cheltenham Ladies’ College there had been no opportunities for escapades and at Cambridge she had acquired the reputation for being a blue-stocking. Apparently her virtue was not only unquestioned but unassailed, a sad fate for a young lady already twenty-one.

I sighed. I really could not, at my time of life, start toying with virgins. Such a step would involve me in endless complications and was altogether too time-consuming and troublesome. Other middle-aged men might choose to indulge themselves in such senilities, but I was still young enough to find inexperience boring and still sane enough to avoid any risk of trouble in my well-ordered private life.

‘Return the Mallingham Hours to Miss Slade, please,’ I said to Miss Phelps. I had already decided reluctantly not to make Miss Slade an offer for the manuscript for fear she would interpret my gesture as a sign of interest in her. ‘The covering letter should read: “Dear Miss Slade, Thank you for the opportunity you have given me to see this exceptionally fine manuscript, but I would not dream of asking you to come up from Norfolk to collect it. Accordingly I am returning the manuscript to you by special messenger. Wishing you all the best in your endeavours I remain … etcetera, etcetera.”’

Miss Phelps’ small mouth pursed in approval. I felt depressed and wondered glumly how I had managed to surround myself with prudes. During the next few days I devoted myself conscientiously to hedonism but emerged yawning with a distaste for Epicurean philosophy. I wanted to go home yet perversely did not want to leave Europe. It rained. I felt fractious. Peterson started to beat me at tennis. I had an overwhelming longing to be entertained yet seemed to have exhausted every conceivable source of entertainment. I wanted something to happen, I wanted to be diverted and most of all I wanted to cut myself loose from my worst memories of the past.

On the
morning of the fifteenth of May at eleven o’clock Peterson entered my room at the office and waited silently for me to conclude a telephone conversation. It was so unusual for him to seek an audience with me at Milk Street that I ceased jotting down sterling figures in dollars and stared at him. ‘Yes, Peterson?’

‘Excuse me, sir, but there’s a young guy outside who says he comes from an outfit called Fortnum and Mason. It seems they’re some kind of food joint—’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ I was getting my decimal points wrong. ‘One moment, please,’ I said into the telephone, and added curtly to Peterson: ‘I’ve ordered nothing from Fortnum’s. Send the man away.’

Peterson turned obediently to find O’Reilly blocking the doorway.

‘It’s Miss Slade again, sir,’ he said with his most insufferable neutral expression. ‘She’s sent you a hamper and the delivery boy flatly refuses to go until he’s delivered the hamper to you personally. I would have sent for the police to remove him but thought I should seek your permission before taking any step which might result in adverse publicity for the firm.’

‘For God’s sake!’ It had been a trying morning, Peterson had beaten me again at tennis and I was being interrupted in the middle of an important conversation. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said in my most charming voice to the telephone, ‘but may I call you back in five minutes? A matter of vital urgency … cable from New York … thank you so much.’ I hung up with a crash and prepared to make mincemeat of my aides. ‘What the devil do you two mean by taking up my time with trivialities?’ I blazed. ‘Your job’s to save my time, O’Reilly, not to waste it! And I employ you to make decisions about my safety, Peterson, not to come shilly-shallying in here because you can’t make up your mind about some goddamned gift from Fortnum and Mason! Have the boy bring the hamper in! We all know Miss Slade’s not an assassin! I only hope she’s had the good sense to order me a decent bottle of brandy, although God knows only your asinine behaviour could drive me to drink hard liquor at eleven o’clock in the morning!’

They slunk away. I scribbled crossly on my notepad and rearranged some decimal points. Finally Peterson returned with a young man who was pushing a large wicker hamper on a porter’s handcart.

‘Mr Van Zale?’ he said nervously in an upper-class English accent. I raised my eyebrows. Despite his overalls this was no ordinary delivery boy. Had unemployment really reached such a pitch that boys fresh from public school were obliged to seek employment as delivery boys? I thought not.

‘Bring it in,’ I said, watching him, ‘and leave it by the fireplace.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The hamper was pulled carefully into position and eased from the handcart.

O’Reilly produced a tip.

‘Gosh, thanks a lot!’ said the boy, disconcerted, and hung around as if he were unsure what to do next.

A spark of amusement flared within me. ‘Is there something else you have to do?’ I inquired, strolling casually towards him.

‘No, sir. At least
… would you like me to open the hamper for you?’

‘Why not? Let’s see what Miss Slade’s sent me!’

‘Sir—’ O’Reilly and Peterson were equally horrified but I silenced them with a wave of my hand. ‘If there’s a bomb in that hamper,’ I said pleasantly, ‘our young friend here will be blown to pieces with us. How long have you known Miss Slade?’ I added to the boy.