The Rich Are Different (32 page)

He started kissing me again. Hardly knowing what I was doing I touched his dark hair. My fingers were shaking. I closed my eyes as if to blot out the sight of a world turned upside down but all I heard was him begging me in his tense urgent voice: ‘Let her have him. They’re two of a kind, and one day he’s going to leave you flat to go off with her for good. But you don’t have to wait for that to happen, Sylvia. Let me take you away from here as soon as possible, and you’ll never regret it, I swear it.’

‘I—’

‘Shhh.’ He was caressing my hair again and the thick uncoiling strands were sliding
through his fingers. I was immensely aware of his physical excitement and immensely shocked to find that it was contagious.

I groped to reassemble the fragments of my defences. ‘Paul would never leave me. He’s always promised—’

‘There’s no promise he wouldn’t break if it suits him.’

I thought of Alan Slade.

‘He’d never bring her here – with the child—’

‘There’s nothing he wouldn’t do.’

I thought of him brutally disillusioning Bruce.

‘You don’t know Paul as I do—’

‘And you don’t know him as I do,’ he said. ‘Which of us knows him best?’

‘If you hate him so much, how can you bear to—’

‘—remain in his service? Because there’s a lot of money in it for me and I wanted to save up enough to afford to take you away.’

I immediately thought of blackmail. Appalling thoughts about the Salzedo affair flashed into my mind but I could not face them. My courage failed me. I could not cope. ‘But to work with him every day,’ I stammered, ‘to live beneath his roof—’

‘Your roof. That’s all I cared about.’

‘How could Paul never have guessed?’ There was something sinister about the fact that Paul, who was so astute, had been deceived for so long.

‘He thinks I’m only interested in celibacy.’

‘But if he should find out—’

He laughed unexpectedly, and this eased the tension between us. He had been holding me tightly but now he released me, stepped back a pace and fumbled for a cigarette. ‘If he finds out,’ he said amused, ‘he’d have a fit. Literally, maybe.’ He paused, the cigarette case still unopened in his hands. Then he added softly: ‘He’s an epileptic, isn’t he?’

‘What! An
epileptic
?’ The suggestion was so ridiculous that even I finally had to laugh. ‘Of course he’s not! Whoever told you that?’

‘The Da Costa brothers.’

‘Oh my God, is there nothing they won’t say about Paul? How despicable they are!’ I cried, and the next moment all my emotions of the past five minutes clashed together.

I burst into tears.

Abandoning his cigarette case he at once took me in his arms again and began to stroke my hair. When he had finished apologizing he said curiously: ‘You know nothing about it?’

‘I know it’s not true!’ I dashed away my tears. ‘Lately I’ve been wondering about the Da Costa brothers’ slanders, but that statement at least is an outright lie! Why, you must know that perfectly well yourself – you see almost more of Paul than I do! Have you ever known him have an epileptic seizure?’

‘No, I never have.’

I felt quite illogically relieved. ‘Well, then—’

‘He behaves
pretty oddly sometimes, doesn’t he? Those times when he won’t go out … That drug phenobarbital …’

‘That’s all a legacy from his childhood asthma. It runs in the family – why, Cornelius suffers from it! Do the Da Costa brothers say Cornelius is an epileptic too?’ I broke away from him, too angry to be still any longer, and the abrupt movement loosened my hair completely so that it cascaded down my back. Raising my hands I groped helplessly for the pins.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, following me to the mirror where I was attempting to recoil my hair. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ve always known that where your husband’s concerned I must concentrate on hard facts if I’m ever to get anywhere with you, so it was stupid of me to raise the issue of his health. Let me stick to his correspondence with Dinah Slade. The letters show beyond any doubt that—’

‘I don’t want to see them. I’ve always accepted his infidelities, and because I’ve accepted them they can never humiliate me. But if I now start behaving like the traditional jealous wife I’m quite sure I shall be traditionally humiliated, and that’s why I absolutely refuse to read or discuss his correspondence with another woman.’

He was silent. I saw his eyes watching me in the mirror, and my hair felt so heavy that I could no longer hold it up. As it slipped through my hands he bent his head to kiss me on the neck.

‘You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen.’

I tried to push him away but he only drew me closer to him. Again I was fearfully aware of the disastrous physical excitement generated by his fanaticism.

‘Be with me now. Please.’

‘No, I—’

‘We could go to my room.’

‘—absolutely impossible—’

‘All I’m trying to prove is that I won’t disappoint you.’

That was just it. I was terrified of giving in to him. It had never even occurred to me before that any man but Paul could arouse such a response in me.

‘I have to think,’ I said unsteadily. ‘I must have time. Please, Terence. Let me go now.’

‘You can’t go like this,’ he said, kissing my loose hair, but he stepped back and made no further effort to touch me while I put my hair up. When I had finished he said: ‘I shall be out of town with him on business next week until the end of the month. Perhaps in June we can discuss all this again.’

‘July,’ I said. ‘Bar Harbor.’ I would be safe in Maine because Paul and I were so close there.

‘That doesn’t offer me much opportunity,’ he said, guessing my thoughts.

‘I’m sure you’ll make the best of what opportunity you can find.’

‘Sylvia—’

‘I can’t
talk any more, Terence, I just can’t,’ I blurted out, my tongue tripping awkwardly over the simple words, and before he could destroy my remaining defences I rushed upstairs to my room.

[2]

My mind was in such turmoil that it was at least an hour before I grasped the fact that I was on the brink of an infatuation which threatened to distort, perhaps destroy my grip on reality. I did not love Terence. That was impossible since I still knew next to nothing about him, and to tell myself that I could easily fall in love with him when I knew him better was to traffick in dangerous illusions. The truth was that Terence was no different from all the other men who had in the past tried to persuade me that infidelity could be amusing. The only reason why I had become so confused was that I happened by chance to find him physically attractive. In my labours to recapture my sanity I paused to marvel that I should now find Terence O’Reilly attractive. Then remembering that fanaticism I shivered, though whether because I thought such single-mindedness sinister or erotic I hardly knew.

I struggled on. Naturally there was no question of my giving in to him. I did have sympathy for wives who, unsatisfied by their husbands, sought passion elsewhere, but I could hardly put myself in that category. Paul satisfied me. I loved him. We had, as he himself had said not so long ago, a successful marriage and if I were to risk ruining it by a pointless lapse with another man I could rightly tell myself I was insane.

All the same … Just what
was
Paul doing with Dinah Slade?

My calm rational common sense lurched and broke down. I thought of loving someone who never looked at another woman, someone who could say ‘I love you’ without difficulty, someone who was strong and sympathetic without being remote and detached.

Eventually, noticing the time, I changed for dinner and by taking that trivial action I was able to regain my grasp on reality and think practically again. It was no good moaning about Paul’s infidelity. I had made up my mind long ago to accept him as he was, and although the Dinah Slade affair was thoroughly distasteful to me it would be stupid to lose my nerve over it and go to pieces. Obviously I had to find out what was going on, and since it was in Terence’s best interests to lie it would be a mistake to accept his information about the Dinah Slade correspondence as gospel truth. In fact the more I thought about it the more unlikely it seemed that Paul would break yet another important promise by reviving if only by letter his moribund affair with Miss Slade.

‘You look tired,’ said Paul when he came home that evening. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Oh Paul!’ As soon as I saw him Terence became insignificant and I could dismiss all thought of Dinah Slade. He kissed me, held me close and sat down with me on the couch as Mason brought in our drinks. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve just felt blue all day. I don’t know why.’

‘Well, there must
be some reason!’

‘Perhaps it was because I saw Caroline Sullivan today at one of my committee meetings and she showed me some new photographs of Tony – he’s such a cute little boy now, and suddenly I remembered that he’d been born just before Dinah Slade’s child—’ I saw him look away and knew he was angry for this was a subject we had both studiously avoided since the incident of the Tiffany bill. I had to summon all my courage to go on. ‘—and I wondered if you ever heard from Miss Slade nowadays. Doesn’t she ever send you any photographs of her little boy? I would if I were her.’

‘You’re not her.’ He drank half his tomato juice and picked up a magazine which lay on the table.

‘You mean she never writes?’

He tossed aside the magazine, yawned and fidgeted impatiently with his glass. ‘We exchange classical quizzes occasionally. It’s an amusing pastime, quite harmless. She started it by sending some photographs with no covering letter, just a few lines of Latin … Catullus’ description of a baby … quite clever. I capped the quote and sent her another one to identify and soon the game developed into a regular quiz. As a matter of fact I received a letter today which I want to show to Elizabeth – there’s a question I can’t answer, and I think Elizabeth might have some ideas. You can read the letter if you like,’ he added as if the conversation were of no importance to him, and pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket.

I looked at the folded notepaper but did not take it. ‘I see,’ I said, thinking I spoke neutrally, but some element in my voice must have upset him for he exclaimed irritably: ‘Why are we discussing this anyway? Do you object to this completely trivial correspondence? If you do I’ll stop writing, but I really can’t see why—’

‘It’s all right. But are you sure you should seek help from Elizabeth? That sounds like cheating to me!’ I said lightly, and as I spoke I was thinking of Dinah Slade, smart, determined,
ambitious
Miss Slade far away in England, and I knew she wanted him back.

I also knew that Terence, gambling on the fact that I would refuse to read the letters, had exaggerated their importance in order to turn me against Paul. So much for Terence O’Reilly.

I was very angry but at least I knew where I stood. Paul was mine and he was going to stay mine, and not even the most unscrupulous young woman on earth was going to take him away from me.

Anger made me passionate. Sensing that I was angry about the correspondence but not realizing my anger was directed only at Miss Slade, he stayed in his room when we went to bed that night, but I went to him and slid naked between the sheets and presently we began to make love. Usually I preferred to be in darkness or twilight but I told him to turn on the lamp and later we left the bed and went to the long mirror. By that time I was too intent on seeking an emotional release to be plagued by reserve. The smallest details seemed extraordinarily exciting, the sweat on Paul’s back, the reflection of the light on his muscles, his hot steamy breath on my body,
and most exciting of all was to see his suave mannered detachment dissolve beneath the barbarism of physical intimacy.

He kept saying how beautiful I was, as if he could not quite believe it, and when we went back to the bed he kissed every part of my body until I wanted him so much that I drew him back into me. He rolled over, pulling me with him, and I felt the excitement rush forward beyond my control. I cried out but he did not let me go, only held me closer until we were still. When he moved at last I saw his body glisten in the light again. My thighs were wet.

Later he said with a laugh. ‘After thirteen years you’re still capable of surprising me!’

‘And shocking you?’

‘Yes, it was delicious,’ he said still smiling, and although he started to stroke my breasts I decided that this time it was my turn to initiate the kisses. I was surprised by the speed of his response. I had hardly expected him to make love to me a second time directly after such an exhausting experience but evidently he was in one of his dazzling moods when all exhaustion was a mere irritation to be swept aside and his energy blazed from him with an electrical intensity. I have no idea what time it was when we finally fell asleep. Paul’s valet tried to wake him at six-thirty but abandoned the attempt. As he left the room I was aware of him turning off the lights we had left on.

At eight Paul reached for my hand. ‘I shall be thinking erotic thoughts about you all day at the office!’ he murmured. ‘Lewis, Charley and Steve will be discussing business and I shall say “breasts” when I mean debentures and “thighs” when I mean common stock.’ He kissed me. I felt his body move under my hand. ‘My God, if I don’t leave this bed I’ll never get to the office!’

When he tried to sit up I pulled him back beside me and we kissed again.

‘I love you, Paul.’

‘My darling, how extraordinarily seductive you are! Have you been paying secret visits to the picture-theatre to study the notorious lady – whose name I forget – who purports to be something called a vamp?’

‘It’s you who must have been paying secret visits if you know about Theda Bara!’

‘Is there anyone alive today who doesn’t gloat over such actresses? Really, one of the most irritating aspects of the nineteen-twenties is that everyone behaves as if sex has only just been discovered!’ He got out of bed and as he looked around for his robe his naked body twisted and turned gracefully in the shafts of sunlight. He looked much younger than his years.