‘Why, sure!’ said Sam, wanting nothing of the kind.
‘I think it would be a mistake to feel sentimental about Paul who always despised sentimentality, and as far as I’m concerned
I’m all for something original – I’m not interested in echoes from the past. No, you stick with Erich Dieter. I admit I was
surprised at the hospital but I was under the mistaken impression Vicky wanted to call him Sam after you.’
That was a bad error. I had made a statement which was obviously untrue. In the pause which followed I watched Alicia gazing
in embarrassment at the unlit logs in the fireplace, and my fingers bit into the palms of my hands as I clenched my fists
behind my back.
‘Well,’ said Sam thinking: got to defuse this somehow, Christ, how awkward. ‘If you’re sure—’
‘Hell, Sam, it’s nothing to do with me! I’m just the grandfather, as Alicia never ceases to remind me!’ Another bad error.
I sounded both angry and jealous beneath my light-hearted manner. The sweat of humiliation trickled down my back. I had to
get out. ‘I feel about seventy and ageing fast!’ I said, trying to make a joke of it and only succeeding in making us all
feel more embarrassed than ever. ‘I think I’ll go to bed and rejuvenate myself. Don’t rush off, Sam. Alicia, have Carraway
bring Sam another drink.’
I left the room, closed the door firmly, took six paces down the corridor and then padded back to listen. On the other side
of the panels Sam was saying: ‘Damn! He was upset, wasn’t he? And I thought I was handling it well.’
‘Well, don’t persist now with Paul Cornelius or you’ll make everything worse …’
I crept away.
Retreating upstairs I dismissed my valet, sat down on my bed and interlocked my fingers tightly as I reviewed the situation.
I did not understand how I could have mishandled the scene so badly. Perhaps I was emotionally upset. But no, how could I
be? I had sorted myself out long ago. The trouble had arisen because
they thought
I was emotionally upset, and it was their suspicions, not the facts themselves, which I found upsetting. I hated them thinking
I was neurotic, someone to be handled with kid gloves, when I knew without doubt how well-adjusted I was. I had known for
sixteen years now that I would have no son – sixteen years seven months and five days, to be accurate – and if one can’t come
to terms with un unfortunate fact of life after sixteen years – sixteen years seven months and five days – just what the hell
can one come to terms with, for Christ’s sake. Of course I would have liked a son but one can’t have everything in this life,
as my mother used to say back in Velletria, and since I had damned near everything else, how could I complain? I didn’t complain,
that was the answer, but Alicia kept trying to stuff her own soap-opera emotions into my head and make out I was suffering
from some sort of deprivation. Of course I felt sorry for Alicia because it was obvious she would have liked more children,
but she had her two boys and I’d given her a stepdaughter so why should she complain either? I refused to feel guilty when
we were all one big happy family with so much going for us. Why should I? I didn’t believe in guilt anyway. Guilt was for
maladjusted neurotics who could not cope with life. God dealt out the cards and one played the hand as best one could and
that was that.
Sixteen years seven months and five days. It sounded like a jail sentence. September the seventh, 1933, and the sky was a
steaming hazy blue … That was when everything had come to an end, my dreams of a large family, my perfect physical relationship
with my wife, my hero-worship of Paul who had filled the void left by a father I could hardly remember – and even my sister’s
marriage had come to an end, leading me into an open breach with my brother-in-law, that sonofabitch Steve Sullivan—
I was taking another shower before I remembered I had had a shower only a short time earlier. I must be going out of my mind.
I tried to figure out what the new shower meant. Another act of lustration? Perhaps I was trying to wash away the memory of
the humiliating scene in the Gold Room. I always had good clean cheerful thoughts under the shower.
Putting on my pyjamas I got into bed and was just opening a book
when I heard the door of Alicia’s room open. I switched off my light immediately and lay motionless in the dark.
Perhaps if she thought I was asleep she would slip into bed with me and put my hand between her thighs. She had done that
once out of pity for me, and later when I had been impotent she had pitied me enough to refuse my offer to make love to her
in a less conventional way. She knew I disliked such practices, and no doubt she thought it was pathetic that I should offer
to do something I disliked in order to please her. I sweated at the memory but then reminded myself that I was indulging in
unnecessary torment. Our sexual relationship was dead. It had taken me a long time to realize how great a hell I was putting
her through by persisting in my selfish efforts to recapture our past happiness, but once I had understood how much she was
suffering I had ended the relationship at once.
I would have done anything for Alicia, anything at all. When I had first discovered we would have no children I had offered
her a divorce so that she could have children by someone else, but she had chosen to stay with me – and not just because I
was rich; Alicia had her own fortune and her own inherited place in New York society. No, this unique, beautiful woman had
chosen to stay with me in adverse circumstances because she had thought I was the one man who could make her happy. It was
small wonder that since then I had done everything in my power to ensure her happiness. She had wanted me to love her sons;
I had bent over backwards to treat them as my own. She disliked charity work; I had taken great care that she should never
be bothered by any of my charitable interests. She needed, naturally, the very best home I could provide for her; I maintained
Paul’s Fifth Avenue home, which I loathed, specially for her benefit. She had wanted to end our sexual relationship; I had
ended it. If she had wanted a divorce I would somehow have found the strength to give her that too though I didn’t see how
I could have survived without her. I had even told her to take a lover because I had realized it was better to be a complaisant
husband than a deserted one. I loved her. I wanted her more than any other woman in the world, and often when I was making
love so effortlessly and emptily with Teresa my impotence with my wife did indeed seem like a jail sentence – sixteen years
seven months and five days of imprisonment in some police state where torture was rife and justice nonexistent. Every day
I woke shouting inside my head: ‘I’ve suffered enough! Let me go!’ and every day my faceless jailor would remind me that he
had thrown away the key of my cell. Whoever was
dealing the cards of life had tossed me an ace of spades to ruin my royal flush in diamonds, and sometimes I thought that
single black spade was digging my grave.
The glow of light beneath the door which linked our bedrooms was extinguished, but nothing happened. I waited alone in the
dark.
I was on the crosstown bus again, but it was an empty bus without a driver and the loneliness was more than I could bear.
Slipping out of bed I padded to the door and listened. Nothing. In an agony of indecision I moved away again and tried to
think logically. Could I make some excuse to knock on the door? No, I couldn’t think of one. Could I be honest and just ask
her directly if she would object if I lay down beside her for a while and held her hand? No, I couldn’t. Her immediate reaction
would be: poor Cornelius, impotent as ever, I’d better humour him but how pathetic. Yet the hideous irony of it all was that
I wasn’t poor Cornelius, not by a long chalk. I was rich, successful, powerful Cornelius with a mistress who had told him
that very evening how great he was in bed. So if I was a failure I was a failure in one place only and that place was the
mind – Alicia’s mind, of course, not mine. There was nothing wrong with my mind. But Alicia thought I was a failure so I was.
I’d worked that one out long ago. All these stupid people who waste fortunes on psychiatrists should try a little clear-eyed
self-analysis occasionally. They might save themselves some money. Anyway I don’t believe in psychiatrists. They’re for women
and queers.
I got back into bed.
Thinking of queers reminded me of Kevin and thinking of Kevin reminded me how few people I could talk to any more. I would
never have dreamt of revealing any of my most private troubles to anyone I had met since I had inherited Paul’s money, for
the whole point about power is that people must think you’re impregnable or else they lose the respect which your power extracts
from them. I was hardly about to reveal my problems to anyone I didn’t trust, but I trusted very, very few people.
I trusted my sister but we had drifted apart over the years, particularly when she had returned to live in that dump Velletria
after the war. I trusted Paul’s Sylvia whom I had always greatly admired but she lived three thousand miles away. My mother
had died in 1929. My stepfather, whom I had never liked, was dead. My own father, an Ohio farmer whom I was supposed to resemble,
had died when I was four. Even Paul himself, the great-uncle who had adopted me in his will, had been dead for twenty-four
years – and had never cared much for me during his life-time. The knowledge of his indifference
still hurt, although since I was the only person who knew the indifference had existed it was easy for me to bury the knowledge
along with all my other past memories which I was determined never to resurrect. In fact I made a cult of respecting Paul’s
memory so that no one would ever guess how much I resented him for that casual indifference which might, if he had lived,
have been translated into active dislike.
However there was no doubt that despite Paul’s antipathy he had given me everything I wanted, and so I supposed it was right
that I should respect his memory. Certainly I was glad I had been a Van Zale protégé. Would I have made it to the top without
Paul’s help? Almost certainly yes, but it would have taken me longer. Paul’s backing had provided an invaluable short cut
to me as I set out along the road to power, although that hardly mattered now because it was all so long ago. All that mattered
at the moment was that Paul was dead and couldn’t help me with my problems.
Apart from my family there remained only the three friends who had known me when I was nobody, just undersized, underestimated
Cornelius Blackett from Velletria, Ohio. Sam I was no longer one hundred per cent sure I trusted. Kevin amused me but it would
never have occurred to me to have a serious conversation with a homosexual, while Jake … But yes, I trusted Jake. He lived
my kind of life and had my kind of business problems. Jake was probably the one true friend I had left, but the fact remained
that we had no communication on a personal level. We talked about finance, politics and art but never about our families,
and I knew why. A man who loves his wife and believes strongly in marital fidelity can have little to say to a man who hasn’t
slept with his wife in years and lays as many women as possible in his spare time. I would never have criticized Jake; I was
hardly in a position to criticize him after I began my affair with Teresa, but the difference in our private lives continued
to present a barely perceptible but ever-present barrier between us.
I turned on the light again to let Alicia know I was awake. Then I turned it off and waited. Still nothing. Obviously she
was asleep. Lucky Alicia. I wondered if she had ever followed my advice and taken a lover, but it seemed unlikely. Alicia
was not promiscuous and as everyone knows, only promiscuous women enjoy extra-marital sex. Women don’t have erotic thoughts
the way men do anyway. When they see a man they don’t picture him naked and calculate the size of his erection. They imagine
him wearing a tuxedo and giving them two dozen red roses while the violins in the background play
‘The Blue Danube’. Women are romantic. They dream about love, not sex, and Alicia wasn’t in love with anyone else. If she
was, I would have known.
Anyway she was sick of sex, that was obvious. I didn’t blame her either after all I’d put her through.
I got up again, went to the bathroom, used the toilet, flushed it and wandered aimlessly back to the bedroom. At the window
I looked out over Central Park and thought of all the hundreds of people I knew in the city, the acquaintances attached to
my business and social life. Surely there must be someone I could talk to! It didn’t have to be a deep meaningful conversation.
Just an informal chat would take the edge from the discomfort of insomnia.
I went downstairs to the library.
I had five address books. Number one contained the names of people I liked enough to invite to small dinner-parties, number
two covered larger dinner-parties, number three cocktail parties, number four dances, and number five exhibitions. My personal
secretary had cross-indexed them in a card file which was kept meticulously up to date, and every six months Alicia herself
revised the books, shuffling people into different categories, bringing new people in and dropping old people out. Alicia
always knew whom I wanted to see and how often I wanted to see them.
I was halfway through address book number one when I realized it was much too late to call anyone in New York. I went on flipping
over the pages while I debated whether to call Sylvia in San Francisco, but I knew Sylvia would want to talk about the baby
and I felt I had had more than enough of little Eric Keller for that day.
The ‘S’ page fell open beneath my fingers and I saw the entry
Sullivan
.
For one split second I was back, back in the past, back with Steve, back knowing he’d wipe me out if he could, back with blood,
murder and mayhem, back at Emily’s frightful wedding, back, back, back into the appalling past, back to Steve quitting Van
Zale’s but still trying to smash me in the teeth, back to the schemes and the machinations, back to his death on that English
country road, back to the woman who’d backed Steve to the hilt, broken up Emily’s marriage and turned Paul against me, back
to
Dinah Slade
outwitting me with the grand suicidal gesture which had destroyed her, back to all those deaths, all that blood, all that
guilt, but no, my hands were clean, I’d washed them and washed them and now I knew there was no guilt, I knew I’d been driven
to do what I did, I knew the past was dead and there’d be no resurrection, never, never, NEVER.