The Rich Are Different (26 page)

He said no more and during the weeks that followed he never spoke of Cornelius unless I myself raised the subject – which I have to confess I often
did. I felt bereft when Cornelius had gone, and with shame I realized how much I had been enjoying myself by pretending he was my son. It was only then that I wondered if in assuming Paul to have been intent on finding a substitute son that summer I had in fact only been assigning my feelings to him, and the dull nagging ache of my childlessness became a sharper, less bearable pain.

‘I’m afraid I didn’t care for him at all,’ said Elizabeth when I inevitably mentioned Cornelius to her. ‘Perhaps I was disappointed that he was so unlike Paul. I thought he was cold and withdrawn.’

‘I expect he was shy of you, Elizabeth!’ I protested. ‘You’re very imposing, you know, particularly to someone of his age.’

‘Perhaps,’ conceded Elizabeth graciously. ‘Anyway, I’m glad he won your heart even if he didn’t win mine.’

I suspected Elizabeth was too involved with her own son at that time to pay much attention to Cornelius. Bruce Clayton had just got engaged and planned to marry in the spring. At twenty-eight he was an associate professor of philosophy at Columbia University, and since his lectures brought him into contact with all manner of modern ideas Elizabeth had been terrified he would commit himself to some student ‘jazz-baby’ with Marxist leanings. When he finally announced his intention of marrying a respectable girl from a well-known family, I knew at once that no one would greet the news with more enthusiasm than his mother.

‘A Rochfort of Greenwich!’ commented Paul ironically. ‘Trust Bruce to find a blue-blooded wife – these Marxists never practise what they preach!’ But he was full of approval when we invited the couple to dinner. Grace was five years younger than Bruce and I feared Paul might not like her bobbed hair and generous use of make-up, but when she proved herself both intelligent and well-read he was impressed. She had majored in French at Vassar and had just completed a traditional grand tour of Europe, but she was by no means wedded to tradition. Indeed her main thesis, which she was only too ready to expound to us after dinner, was that women should be educated to the hilt so that they could be released from their bondage to men.

‘But all women are different, Grace,’ I said reasonably. ‘A lot of women don’t wish to be highly educated or given the chance to be self-supporting.’

‘But surely since it’s a question of freedom or slavery—’

‘Shouldn’t it always be a question of women doing what they’re best suited to do – whatever that may be? I’m not well-educated and I don’t work for a living but I certainly don’t consider myself enslaved.’

‘I should tell you, Grace,’ interposed Paul, ‘that Sylvia works harder than many women who have a salaried position. She’s no lily of the field.’

‘Of course not,’ said Grace Rochfort, trying not to look too pitying.

‘I do so resent people who insist on inflicting their opinions on everyone else!’ I exclaimed to Paul in our room after the guests had gone. ‘I’m not against emancipation – I quite understand that some women want to lead totally independent lives, but why must such women so often assume there’s only one road to heaven? Sometimes I think girls like Grace Rochfort are
just as repressive as the traditional Victorian paterfamilias who kept all his women at home under lock and key!’

Paul laughed. ‘You took Grace too seriously – wasn’t it obvious that her dedication to emancipation is only skin-deep? She’s getting married. She intends to be dependent on her husband. Probably by the time she’s forty she’ll be thoroughly conservative and opposed even to votes for women, but meanwhile she’s young enough to enjoy supporting modern social trends. What do you suppose emancipation really means to Grace Rochfort? Smoking incessantly in public, drinking appalling cocktails and pretending to be blasé about other people’s disordered private lives!’

‘Hm.’ I pondered over what he had said. Presently I put down my hairbrush, slipped out of my peignoir and moved towards the bed. ‘I guess very few women are truly emancipated,’ I said. ‘Do you know anyone who is? I don’t think I do.’

Memory flickered in his eyes. I looked away at once but when he realized I had seen his expression he said vaguely: ‘I have a client who’s launched her own cosmetics business … She’s doing quite well, I believe.’

‘Like Elizabeth Arden? How exciting! Does she have a salon?’

‘In London, not New York.’

‘But is the product available here?’ I said with genuine interest as I slipped into bed beside him. ‘What’s the name of your client’s company?’

‘It’s not available here,’ he said, reaching across me to snap off the light on my side of the bed, and the next moment his mouth closed on mine to terminate the conversation.

I thought no more about Paul’s mysterious female client. Obviously he had had a passing affair with her, and since he never discussed either his mistresses or his clients with me he had a double reason for not expounding further on the subject. But I was interested in cosmetics, particularly those which were discreet and tasteful, and when one day in the new year I met the wife of a British diplomat at a Lord and Taylor fashion show I could not help but notice that her lipstick was just the shade I wanted but had never been able to find. At the table where a group of us had coffee after the show, my interest increased when I noticed the lipstick hardly marked her cup.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, overcome with curiosity, ‘but may I be very inquisitive and ask where you bought your lipstick? It looks just the kind I want.’

‘Isn’t it nice! I’m glad you like it but I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you because I bought it in London. Do they have Diana Slade cosmetics over here?’

For a split second I was back in that lonely summer of 1922. ‘Is that D-I-N-A-H?’ I said.

‘No, D-I-A-N-A.’

I wondered if it could be a different woman but the coincidence was just too great. I began to consider Dinah Slade not merely as a discarded mistress but as a successful client. No wonder Paul had stayed with her so long! Protégée and mistress – what a stimulating combination, especially
when both roles were combined in the person of a young girl who could offer him a medieval mansion and a set of post-war morals.

By the time I arrived home I was in the most unreasonable panic, but the more I told myself I was being ridiculous the more panic-stricken I became. I thought he would have severed all his links with Miss Slade when he had left England, but now I saw that it was more than likely that the two of them were still in touch.

Eventually I pulled myself together, dressed with care for the evening and drank two glasses of sherry too fast as I waited for Paul to come home.

Of course it took him no more than five minutes to find out what was wrong.

‘I was just so startled!’ I said, trying not to talk too rapidly. ‘I think it was the idea of you having a protégée – with an extra “e” – for a change! She must be awfully clever. How exciting that she’s making a success of it!’

‘She’s been lucky,’ he said abruptly. ‘She didn’t do a single thing I told her and I hear she’s turned Hal Beecher’s hair snow-white. Still, she’s Hal’s problem, not mine.’

‘Oh, you mean you’re not in touch with her?’

‘No. Well, occasionally she writes a line to brag about her sales figures. That’s all.’ He drank some tomato juice and seemed about to change the subject, but he could not resist saying: ‘It was good lipstick, was it?’

‘Marvellous! I wish I could get hold of some!’

‘I dislike lipstick on women,’ said Paul.

I felt much better once I knew he was not in regular correspondence with Miss Slade and I did not think of her for some months after that conversation in the January of 1924. I was too busy with the migration to Florida, and at the end of February I sailed with Paul from Fort Lauderdale on a visit to South America. Paul had business in Caracas and we did not get back to New York until mid-April. As usual on my return I was engulfed in domestic problems, and I had hardly straightened out my correspondence when the bill from Tiffany’s arrived.

I had bought some additional dinner plates there before we had departed for Florida, and my first reaction when I saw the Tiffany envelope was that I was still being billed for them. I know the rich are supposed to be chronically tardy about paying bills, but I was brought up to believe this was ill-bred as well as inconsiderate behaviour, and I paid my bills promptly.

I sighed, reached for my paper-knife and slit the envelope.

At first I thought Tiffany’s had gone mad.

‘One silver christening mug,’ I read with astonishment, ‘engraved: “A.S. March 27, 1923”…’

Various thoughts flashed dizzily through my mind. A.S. Anthony Sullivan? But Steve and Caroline’s little boy had been born directly after Christmas in 1922. And anyway I had sent him a silver rattle. Which baby had been born in March just over a year ago and had recently been christened? No baby I knew, and I definitely had not bought a silver mug at Tiffany’s on … I checked the date. April the fifteenth. That was the day
after our return from South America. In bewilderment my glance swept on down the page.

‘… plus registered postage to England as per the address below …’

I reached the bottom of the bill.

‘Master Alan Slade, Mallingham Hall, Mallingham, Norfolk, England.’

After a long while I realized that my hand was shaking so I put down the bill. As I sat motionless in the still room I could hear the rain hurling itself futilely against the window-pane.

Putting the bill back in the envelope I tried to find some sticky tape to hold the slit envelope together but then realized I had no idea why I wanted to reseal the envelope. Perhaps I had thought I could avoid the implications of the bill if I pretended I had never read it. What cowardice! Reality was only dangerous when one refused to face it. Taking a deep breath I drew out the bill again and re-examined the information it contained.

‘One silver christening mug …’ Imagine Miss Slade having her illegitimate child christened! It seemed a hypocritical gesture, but the English considered christenings a social tradition which had little to do with religion.

‘Master Alan Slade …’

I liked the name Alan, but there were other names I liked better. My son would have been called Michael.

I swallowed with difficulty. Reality was proving too harsh for me after all and I told myself there had to be some explanation other than the one I could not face – obviously the baby was nothing to do with Paul, but perhaps Miss Slade had asked him to be godfather and he had felt obliged to send a handsome present …

Born at the end of March. Conceived … And again I remembered the hideous summer of 1922 when I had been alone in New York and Paul had been in England.

I groped for composure, for reassurance, for a peace of mind which I knew was already destroyed. The baby could not possibly be Paul’s because he had promised me before we were married that if he ever had any other children they would be mine as well as his. Paul never broke such a promise, never, it was unthinkable, for after all if he started breaking his word like that, who knew what other promises he might cast by the wayside?

I felt as if the foundations of my life had been uprooted by some monstrous plough and although I searched for something recognizable in that distorted new world I saw only the bill from Tiffany’s, the slit envelope and beyond them the rain hammering against the pane.

‘I don’t want a son … I’m no longer in touch with Miss Slade … It’s over …’

How he had lied! And I had believed him, every word, all of it …

My fear was gone. I was immensely angry, so angry that for some minutes I merely sat trembling in my chair, but I never cried and gradually I became more composed. I waited a full half-hour to make sure I had myself totally in control, and then I rang the bell and summoned the Cadillac to the door.

[1]

‘Willow
Street and Wall,’ I said to the junior chauffeur.

‘The bank, ma’am?’ said Abrahams incredulously.

‘The bank.’

I had been to One Willow Street to celebrate the merger of Van Zale’s with Clyde, Da Costa in 1913, but I had never been again. The bank was a world I could never enter, a masculine preserve from which women were automatically excluded, and Paul had always made it clear to me that my place was at his home on Fifth Avenue and not at his office on Willow and Wall.

When the chauffeur opened the door I climbed out awkwardly, my limbs stiff with tension, and paused in the rain while the doorman dashed out with an umbrella. He had recognized not me but Paul’s monogram painted on the side of the Cadillac.

‘This way, ma’am …’

I followed him up six marble steps to the pillared doorway. The great doors, steel-studded and silver-embossed, stood open but the inner doors beyond the vestibule were closed. Long ago before I had visited One Willow Street I had imagined ‘the bank’ to be much like an ordinary commercial bank with a host of ordinary customers who cashed cheques, made deposits and asked for loans. I had pictured a solid little building with the name over the doorway and a pleasant friendly atmosphere within. But no name marred the splendid façade of One Willow Street; if people did not know that the premises represented the great House of Da Costa, Van Zale & Company, the bank most certainly had no wish to know them. Neither did one walk in off the street and open an account. One had to be invited to be a client, and if one was granted such an honour one had to keep at least a hundred thousand dollars on deposit. The clients of Da Costa, Van Zale could only regard it as a small price to pay for the privilege of doing business at Willow and Wall.

The doorman touched a bell concealed in a pillar as he opened the inner doors for me, and I walked into the cold bleak marble lobby. I stopped. Before me were a line of columns, and beyond them I could see the hushed splendour and mesmerizing opulence of the great hall.

A clerk hurried to meet me. He was white-haired and wore a wing-collar and spoke in a voice slightly above a whisper. ‘May I help you, madam?’