The Rich Are Different (49 page)

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Miss Slade,’ said Elizabeth politely, ‘but then you’re very young and allowances should be made for your immaturity. The real issue doesn’t revolve around Paul’s feelings. He never could afford the luxury of high romance in his personal life, and he certainly can’t afford it now. The real issue revolves around who has the most to offer him and what can you offer him, Miss Slade? I understand you’re not interested in marriage.’

‘Well, if Paul wants to marry me to satisfy some Victorian corner of his conscience, that’s his affair but I love him too much to care whether he marries me or not. When he was at Mallingham with me in 1922 we had this totally honest, totally monogamous, wholly worthwhile relationship—’

‘Did you?’ said Elizabeth Clayton. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure!’ I said incensed, and wanting only to shock her out of her composure I added passionately: ‘And if you really want to know, I’d much rather have that than marriage!’

‘Why yes,’ said Elizabeth, quite unshocked and more composed than ever, ‘I expect you would. Marriage involves such a heavy commitment, doesn’t it, and so many promises.’

‘Hypocritical dishonest promises! How can one possibly promise to love someone for ever and ever—’

‘For richer for poorer,’ said Elizabeth, ‘in sickness and in health.’

‘Well, I mean, it’s simply not practical, is it? Everyone knows love can die! After all, if we’re to be honest—’

‘Ah yes, Miss Slade,’ said Elizabeth, ‘let’s by all means be honest. Let’s call a spade a spade. The scope of the relationship you share now with Paul falls very far short of the vows he once exchanged with Sylvia, doesn’t it?’

‘Well, I – I didn’t mean – that wasn’t what I—’

‘Be honest, Miss Slade! If Paul became so sick that he could no longer live a normal life, you wouldn’t stay with him, would you?’

‘Yes, I would! Of course I would!’

‘But I thought you just implied that love can die in those sort of circumstances?’

‘Yes, but – Mrs Clayton, don’t you think this discussion has wandered a little far from the point?’

‘In view of his illness?’ said Elizabeth surprised. ‘I should have thought that in the circumstances our conversation could hardly have been more pertinent.’

It was so peaceful in the garden. Far away Alan was chattering to Mary but I could not hear what he said. I wanted to look Elizabeth straight in the eye but it was too difficult so I looked instead at the hazy sky, the parched trees and the scorched coarse grass of the lawn.

‘Of course, since
you’re so honest with one another, he would have told you all about the illness which runs in his family.’

I could not speak.

‘The cruellest part of the whole business,’ said Elizabeth, sipping her tea, ‘is that he should have relapsed after more than thirty years of perfect health. I know he was very ill as a child but he did recover and lead a normal life. It was only after Vicky died … but of course he would have told you all about that.’

‘Of course,’ I whispered. ‘Of course.’

‘During this past year his deterioration was really most severe … Thank God you were able to help him back to health, Miss Slade! It really gave Paul a new lease of life, didn’t it, when Sylvia suggested he brought you over from England.’

At first I thought I must have misheard her. Again I was beyond speech, and as I stared at her dumbly the shadowy figure of Sylvia seemed to move forward into the light.

‘Oh, you didn’t know?’ said Elizabeth, surprised. ‘Yes, it was Sylvia who sent for you – I can’t really claim any credit because I only gave her moral support. It was, as you can imagine, a very difficult decision for her to make, but she was the only one who could make it because Paul, loving her as he does, would never have sent for you without her consent. But you see, she was desperate. Paul was so ill and nothing the doctors did seemed to work. I also got the impression – although naturally Sylvia is too well-bred to discuss private marital matters with anyone but her husband – that there were certain difficulties which Paul thought could only be resolved by someone such as yourself … What a powerful attraction you and Paul have for one another, haven’t you, Miss Slade! Sylvia’s been concerned, I know, but I’ve always told her not to worry. I know Paul. He’s no fool. He’s well aware that his illness is going to return eventually and he’s well aware that Sylvia is the one woman who’ll always stand by him. It’s so sad that the illness is incurable – in fact there’s no denying it really is the most tragic fate,’ mused Elizabeth Clayton, looking down the garden towards Alan, ‘to inherit epilepsy.’

We sat in silence for twenty seconds. Twenty seconds is a long silence when there has been a steady flow of conversation for more than an hour.

At the end of the garden Alan left the flower-bed and rushed up to me. ‘Mummy, there’s a huge great butterfly down there!’

I looked at him, my beautiful little boy with his dark eyes shining in his small bright face, and the sickness started to churn in my stomach.

Elizabeth said: ‘Is he still there, Alan? Can you show him to me?’ When she stood up, taking his hand in hers and leading him across the lawn, Alan forgot his shyness. I heard him chattering to her but I never heard her reply because by that time I was indoors. Meeting the butler I asked for the cloakroom, and two minutes later I was being violently sick in a dark little room behind the stairs.

[1]

At
first I could only remember the small incidents, Bob Peterson’s horrified expression when Paul had said: ‘I’ll drive’, Paul’s distaste for the flickering screen of the cinema which reminded him of some vague unexplained visual disturbance, Bruce Clayton’s confident assumption: ‘You know all about his illness, I guess,’ Grace’s doubtful comment: ‘Is that wise?’ when I had talked of having another child. I remembered epileptics were supposed to avoid alcohol – and I saw Paul’s countless untouched glasses of champagne. I remembered Paul saying:
‘Mens sana in corpore sano!
’ – and I saw him swinging his tennis racquet on the grass court at Mallingham.

Then the larger mysteries, all unsolved, began to billow back into my mind, Paul’s insistence that he wanted no children when it was obvious he felt the lack of children keenly, Terence O’Reilly’s determination to reassure me about Paul’s illness so that I would not ruin his plans to use me, Paul encouraging my inclinations to avoid the Sullivan set and associate with people who either did not know him or who, like Bruce, would refuse to discuss him with me.

When there were no more incidents to resurrect I could shield myself no longer. I was face to face with Sylvia at last and forced to acknowledge how profoundly I had been deceived.

I had thought I had understood their relationship but I had understood nothing. In my arrogance I had continued to think of her as a weak limited woman who had no identity beyond her married name and no existence except a life lived vicariously through her husband’s triumphs. But Sylvia had her own identity – I could see it taking shape before my eyes – and the identity had an independent will of its own. The woman who had manipulated my visit to America had been not weak but strong; I tried to imagine the inner resources needed for such a gesture but could not, for it was
I
who was limited, not she;
I
was the one trapped in Paul’s identity, abandoning my work in London to be at his beck and call in New York, imprisoned by my glib platitudes about free love and honest relationships. I had been deceived by others, but first and foremost I had deceived myself, and in turning a blind eye to Paul’s evasiveness I had indulged myself in a relationship which was as much a fraudulent sham as the institution of marriage I had long pretended to despise.

‘Take me to the Plaza,’ I said to Elizabeth’s chauffeur as we left Gramercy Park, and added to Mary: ‘I want to stay the night in town but I’ll catch the train home tomorrow morning.’

As soon as I reached Paul’s suite I raided the cache of drink but found Mayers had forgotten to replenish the supplies. After drinking half of the lone bottle of champagne I picked up the telephone with a steady hand.

‘Grace?’ I said a minute later. ‘Why did you never tell me Paul was an epileptic?’

‘My God, Dinah, didn’t
you know? I always assumed—’

‘But you never once mentioned it!’

‘Well, of course not! How could I? I mean, it’s just not the sort of thing one mentions, is it? After all, you were the one having an affair with him – I thought that if you wanted to discuss it you should be the one to bring up the subject.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course. That was the tactful thing to do. That’s all right, Grace. It doesn’t matter.’

I rang off before she could ask more questions, drank another glass of champagne as if it were lemonade and then summoning all my courage I placed a call to Paul’s house at Bar Harbor.

The butler told me Paul was playing tennis with his young protégés whom he had reunited for the summer, but as I was about to ring off he told me to wait. Paul had just walked into the hall.

‘Dinah? How are you?’

For some reason the sound of his voice made me feel faint.

‘Dinah? Hullo – are you there?’

‘Yes.’ I swallowed with difficulty. ‘Paul, first let me apologize for breaking our agreement and phoning you like this.’

‘Never mind, you picked a good time to call. Is something wrong?’

‘No, just the usual monthly bore, but I don’t think I shall feel very sexy this weekend. I was going to suggest you postponed your visit to Manhattan until next week. Is that going to create difficulties for you?’

‘Not at all. However, some cousins of Sylvia’s are arriving from San Francisco on Wednesday for a brief stay in New York before they sail to Europe so I shall have to be back in Manhattan by Tuesday at the latest. Why don’t we meet on Tuesday evening?’

‘That would be lovely. Thanks, Paul. Sorry about the weekend.’

He said he would be looking forward to Tuesday evening. Before we said goodbye he sent his love to Alan.

Finishing the bottle of champagne I paddled my way drunkenly through the telephone directory and phoned Thomas Cook, the travel agents, to inquire about a passage to England.

[2]

The next morning I went to the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street and read about epilepsy. I discovered that it was a diverse disease, that not all forms of epilepsy were hereditary, that the stigma attached to it was in most cases unjustified and arose through superstition and ignorance. I read that research was being conducted to find a drug which would eliminate seizures so that epileptics might lead normal lives; some doctors suspected that the hereditary form of the disease was caused by a recurring chemical imbalance in the brain, while others speculated that where the epilepsy seemed to be related to stress the brain might be the inherited weak point in the body through which mental stress was manifested in physical
illness. There were instances of remissions; these were being studied with interest. I read of
petit mal
and
grand mal
and auras. I read of convulsions, blackouts and hallucinations. I read that for epilepsy there was as yet no known cure.

With a shudder I caught the train to Great Neck. Four days later, on Tuesday evening, I was back at the Plaza to meet Paul.

He arrived late but brought a bouquet of carnations and a box of my favourite chocolates.

‘How are you?’ he said, kissing me.

‘I’m all right.’

He looked tanned, fit and youthful. Throughout dinner I was comparing his appearance with that of the haggard ageing man who had welcomed me to New York that April.

We dined at the Marguery on Park Avenue, just as we had dined on my first evening in New York, and we had our same private corner with the same chairs cushioned in rose and ivory brocade. We chose the sole Marguery too, and again I marvelled at those softly sparkling chains of light which reminded me of fountains frozen in some mysterious hiatus of time.

‘Why did you particularly want to dine here tonight?’ asked Paul when our fish was finished, and glancing at his glass of champagne I saw it was empty. That was when the evening took a different course from that evening in April, and I knew he had sensed my tension and was responding to it.

‘I think perhaps I wanted to go backwards in time.’

‘There’s no going back.’

‘No.’

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid there is. I’ve decided I must go back to England, Paul. I’m awfully sorry, but Harriet and Cedric seem to be fighting worse than ever, and—’

He stopped me with a gesture. ‘Let’s go back to the Plaza. We can talk better there.’

‘I’d rather talk about it here, Paul.’

He smiled at me so brilliantly that I could not quite identify the emotion at the back of his eyes.

‘So the Plaza has become as inhibiting as my forgotten penthouse with the Angelica Kauffmann ceiling! Tell me, have you set the date for your return?’

‘Yes, I have. I’m leaving tomorrow. The
Mauretania
sails at five in the afternoon.’

He was motionless for no more than three seconds before he shrugged his shoulders and gave me yet another careless brilliant smile. ‘You haven’t left me much time to talk you out of it!’

‘I know. Paul, I’m terribly sorry to leave like this, but I feel a rapid departure would really be less painful.’

‘Yes. Are you packed?’

‘I’ve been
packing since Friday and this morning I borrowed the Sullivans’ car and chauffeur to take the trunks to the pier.’

‘What happened on Thursday?’

I stared at him. Something in my expression must have betrayed me for he reached automatically for the bottle of champagne to refill his glass. But the bottle was empty, buried nose first in the bucket of ice.

With a gesture of annoyance he glanced around for the waiter but then changed his mind and put his napkin aside.

‘Well, if this evening is to be a repeat of our first,’ he remarked with all his most effortless urbanity, ‘let’s end as we began – in style at Willow and Wall!’