The Rich Are Different (45 page)

He smiled at her. I had never thought I would see him give that special smile to any woman but me. When he reached her he slid his arm around her waist and said something which made her lean against him fractionally as she looked up into his eyes.

She was radiant.

Tears spilled down my cheeks. Unable to watch any longer I turned away and ran as fast as I could across the lawns to the distant waters of the Sound.

[2]

The beach was narrow and the Sound, reflecting the afterglow of the sky, glistened with copper lights. Halting at last I leant against one of the trees which fringed the sandy shore, but when I was unable to stop my tears I stumbled down to the beach, sank on to the sand and wept without restraint. I was just wondering dimly if I would ever be able to stop crying when a voice said, shocked: ‘Dinah!’ and a man’s hand, firm and gentle, restrained me as I tried to struggle to my feet.

Bruce Clayton squatted beside me. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Take me home!’ I sobbed, my pride in ruins, and clung beseechingly to his sleeve.

‘Certainly. I’d be glad of the excuse to leave.’ We were silent while he
passed me a handkerchief and I tried to mop myself up. At last he said: ‘You didn’t know Paul and Sylvia would be here?’

‘Did anyone? They were supposed to be in Connecticut!’

‘Paul cancelled that this morning apparently. I was talking to Sylvia just now.’

‘But they were going last night!’

‘No, he took Sylvia out last night. We were dining at Voisin’s with friends of my mother’s and later the Van Zales came in … I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear this, do you?’

‘Oh, yes, I do!’ I said fiercely, dashing away the last of my tears. ‘Go on. Why was the Connecticut visit cancelled?’

‘Sylvia said Paul felt too exuberant for a quiet weekend in the country. He thought it would be more fun to turn up at the Sullivan party and take everyone by surprise. Didn’t you tell him you were coming here? No, don’t bother to answer that. Have another handkerchief.’

‘It’s silly but I can’t stop crying …’

It was another five minutes before I was dry-eyed again.

‘I’m so terribly sorry, Bruce.’

‘So am I! What’s a nice girl like you doing mixed up with a bastard like Paul Van Zale?’

‘Don’t you like him? But he’s so fond of you! He often talked about you when he was in England.’

Bruce took off his glasses and stared at them. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

Halfway back to the house I remembered Terence and Grace. ‘How will they get back?’

‘There are plenty of people who can give them a ride. Terence won’t mind, and Grace and I agreed long ago that I could feel free to walk out of a party like this any time I liked. She won’t be surprised.’

He led me to the green Studebaker parked among the crowd of other cars in the drive, and then leaving me in the front seat he returned to the house to find his wife. Ten minutes later we were on our way to Manhattan.

After several miles of silence he said: ‘I’m going to stop for gas,’ and we swung off the road into the forecourt of a petrol station. As we waited he remarked to me neutrally: ‘I guess you hope to marry Paul.’

‘I don’t really care about that so long as he comes back to Mallingham with me and doesn’t belong to anyone else.’

‘Dinah, Paul doesn’t practise monogamy. He’s incapable of it.’

‘That’s not true! He was faithful to me in England. Of course I know he found someone else as soon as he got back to America, but …’ The shock of discovery overwhelmed me again, and I squeezed my eyes shut to ward off the pain. ‘I never imagined – never dreamed … oh God, his
wife!
To think he really loved her all the time and I never knew! But why, why, why did he send for me? I don’t understand, nothing makes sense, what the hell’s he doing sleeping with both of us—’

‘My God,’ said Bruce, ‘you’re very young.’

‘You don’t
understand!’

‘I’m afraid I do. My mother was Paul’s mistress on and off for over twenty years.’

‘But I’m different! I’m special!’

‘So was my mother! She was beautiful, intelligent, well-educated, steeped in a knowledge of the classics—’

‘Stop it!’ I screamed at him.

‘Pardon me, sir,’ said the freckle-faced petrol-pump attendant, ‘but that’ll be a dollar twenty-five.’

Bruce gave him a couple of bills. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to me. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sure Paul does think you’re special if he invited you to come all the way from Europe to share his convalescence. You know about his illness, I guess?’

‘Of course.’ I gathered together the shreds of my dignity. ‘If Paul thinks I’m going to share him with someone else he’s made a very big mistake,’ I said. ‘I have my pride and I have my self-respect, and I’m not sacrificing it for anyone, not even him.’

‘Then you will be different,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘Then you will be special.’

I did not answer. I was staring towards the distant lights of Manhattan while I planned exactly what I was going to say to Paul.

[3]

I lay awake half the night planning brilliant dialogue and finally fell into an exhausted sleep some time after four. At seven o’clock precisely the telephone rang at my bedside.

I was deep in unconsciousness and could hardly open my eyes. ‘Yes?’ I whispered into the mouthpiece.

‘Dinah, it’s Paul. I’m downstairs in the lobby. I’m coming up,’ he said, and hung up before I could gasp.

I felt as if someone had walloped me over the head with a sledgehammer. I got up, blundered against a chair, caught sight of my face in the mirror and began to scrabble frantically for my make-up. My hair had a stringy uncombed appearance and my nightdress, torn at the shoulder, looked as if it had been rescued from a jumble sale. My mind felt blank, bleak and beaten.

The doorbell rang.

‘Oh God,’ I said. I grabbed my best negligée and reached for my powder-puff. There was barely time to take the shine off my nose before the doorbell rang again.

‘The bell’s ringing, Mummy!’ called Alan.

‘Yes, darling.’ I could not cope at all. Flaying my hair with the brush I tried to remember the brilliant dialogue I had invented the night before. Naturally I could not remember a word.

‘Can I open the door?’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘It’s Papa, Mummy!’

I
dropped the hairbrush, glanced in the glass and saw Paul in the doorway.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’

‘Yes,’ I said, knees shaking.

He smiled gently at Alan. ‘Can you help Mary get breakfast or are you too little?’

‘No, I’m big! I often help get breakfast!’ boasted Alan, and pattered away proudly to the kitchen.

Paul locked the bedroom door. ‘Steve told me you were at the party,’ he said. ‘Caroline told me Bruce had taken you home. Mayers found a young bond salesman called Craig Harper who recalled pointing out my wife to you while she was waiting for me by the fountain.’

I was pulverized. I opened my mouth to stammer: ‘Paul, I’m really not capable of scenes like this at seven o’clock in the morning’ – and then I realized that this was exactly why he had chosen to call at such an appalling hour.

I stared at him. He was immaculate, his black suit perfectly tailored, his shirt snow-white, his tie dark and discreet, and as I saw him watching me with expert intentness I felt the first flicker of a slow scorching rage.

I found my voice. ‘Your wife’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘I was delighted to have the opportunity to see her. Is that what you wanted me to say?’

‘I suspected you might have been upset, and I thought perhaps I should explain—’

‘—why you lied when you said you were going to Connecticut on Friday night when in fact you’d planned a dinner
à deux
at Voisin’s with your wife? Oh come, Paul! Let’s be sophisticated about this! You wanted to take your wife out to dinner – well why not? After all, she
is
your wife! And since you awoke the next morning feeling too “exuberant” to bury yourself in Connecticut – goodness me,
what
a night that must have been – why shouldn’t you have decided to take Sylvia to your best friend’s party? After all, she
is
your wife! I don’t deny I was a little surprised to discover she’s twenty years younger than you and no doubt the belle of every ball she attends, but then life’s full of little surprises, isn’t it, and I really couldn’t have expected you to give me a detailed description of her. Of course it would have been interesting to know you still slept with her and that she obviously adores you, but I can’t complain, can I, Paul? That wouldn’t be playing the game at all!’

He said nothing. His dark eyes were expressionless.

‘You and your games?’ I said with a laugh. ‘What fun we have with them, don’t we? Oh yes, I adore your games, Paul, but there’s just one snag you may have overlooked:
I don’t like your bloody rules!
’

There was another silence. At last he said in a low voice: ‘The situation isn’t as you think it is.’

‘Don’t try and tell me you’re not sleeping with her, Paul, because I simply shan’t believe you.’

His face
hardened. ‘I never promised you fidelity.’

‘Oh yes, you damned well did!’ I shouted at him. ‘You implied it when you asked me to come here! You knew me – you knew I wouldn’t come to New York just to be your tart who could amuse you whenever you became bored with your perfect wife! You know I’m not that kind of woman, Paul, so how dare you now treat me as if I had no pride, no self-respect and no damned shred of common sense!’

‘I’d better come back later,’ he said shortly, turning to unlock the door. ‘It’s obvious that you’re now incapable of listening to explanations.’

I was at once terrified of him leaving. ‘Paul—’ I gasped before I could stop myself, and as if on cue he spun to face me.

‘Listen, Dinah,’ he said in a quick urgent voice, ‘you must – please – make some effort to understand. When I was ill Sylvia stood by me, and I just
cannot
ignore her or abandon her now as you might wish – it’s impossible. Try and be patient. You know how important you are to me—’

‘As important as a bottle of medicine which gets thrown away as soon as the patient recovers!’

He went sheet-white.

I was too angry to care. ‘My dear Paul,’ I said acidly, ‘you may think I’m hopelessly naïve but before we met I spent some time living with a man your age and I’m not so ignorant about the problems of middle-aged men as you might think. My father was always recalling his favourite girl-friend whenever he ran into temporary difficulties with his wife.’

I had partially redeemed my mistake by not mentioning the disastrous word ‘impotence’ but I fully expected some explosion of wrath. It never came. In fact when I nerved myself to look at him again I saw to my astonishment that he was neither furious nor humiliated but curiously relieved. Finally he even laughed. ‘My dear,’ he said, amused, with all his old urbanity, ‘I think you’re on dangerous ground if you start to compare me with your father! Take it as a compliment that when I really needed a woman the first person I turned to was you.’

‘But—’

‘I’m glad you realize how important you are to me. Now I know this is a difficult situation but I know too that you’re intelligent enough to see beyond the present awkwardness to the long-term pattern of the future …’ He had moved slowly towards me until we were only inches apart, and as he started speaking again he took me in his arms. ‘I’m extremely sorry you were upset last night. As you know, I wouldn’t have upset you for the world …’ He paused to kiss me. His hands slipped between the facings of my negligée. ‘All I ask is for you to be patient.’

I found my tongue. ‘You’re asking me to share you with Sylvia,’ I said, ‘but I can’t do that. I’m sorry but I can’t.’

‘If you care for me—’

‘I love you more than anyone else in the world but there’s no future in a three-sided love affair.’

He could have had an easy victory then. All he had to do was say ‘I love
you’ and my resolve would have been crumbled like rotten wood, but instead he said abruptly as he turned away from me: ‘Your trouble is that you really love no one but yourself.’

‘That makes two of us!’ I shouted in rage and terror as he strode to the door.

As the door was wrenched open Alan, who had been pressing against the panels, fell headlong into the room and began to cry.

‘Alan, I’m sorry!’

‘Poor darling!’

We helped him to his feet, kissed him better and made an unnecessary fuss of him. Alan loved it. He clung to Paul’s hand and sobbed emotionally against my bosom until finally, wrinkling his nose at the smell of bacon, he ran off to see if breakfast was ready.

‘You’ll forgive me if I leave you now,’ said Paul politely, ‘but I see no point in continuing our discussion.’

I stared at the ground. My whole will was bent on the task of remaining silent and I hardly knew how to stop myself begging him to stay.

He left. The door closed. His footsteps receded into the distance and I heard the whine of the lift as it responded to his summons.

I dashed out into the hall.

‘Paul!’

But the doors of the lift had already closed and he was gone without a backward glance.

[4]

At eleven o’clock, unable to endure my misery a moment longer, I telephoned Terence O’Reilly. Alan and Mary had gone out for their Sunday morning walk so I was alone in the apartment. I was still in my negligée. After the iciness of Paul’s withdrawal I had been too numb with shock either to eat, dress or cry.

‘Something wrong?’ said Terence sharply when he heard my voice.

‘Everything. You were mistaken. He’s sleeping with her again.’

There was a silence. Finally he said: ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘He admitted it to me. He won’t leave her.’

‘He actually said that?’

‘Well—’

‘Wait a moment. We can’t talk about this over the phone. Let me come over.’

‘Oh Terence, I’m not even dressed!’

‘All right. You come down to me whenever you’re ready. You’ve got my address, haven’t you? I’ll have a drink waiting for you and we can talk this over.’