‘The subject is closed,’ said Emily, terminating the conversation with a ruthlessness which shattered me. ‘Apologize if you
wish, of course, but I myself have nothing else to say.’
I saw the wintry look in her grey eyes and knew I’d lost her. But perhaps in fact I’d lost her long ago when I had encouraged
her to marry Steve Sullivan so that I could gain some temporary security for myself at the bank.
‘Emily—’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘Nothing – it doesn’t matter,’ I said sick at heart, and abruptly turned away.
[2]
Ten months after Andrew and Lori’s wedding Vicky gave birth to a daughter but this time not even my desire to see my family
could coax me aboard the ship to Europe. The baby was named Samantha. I made no comment on this execrable name but merely
sent the required christening present from Tiffany’s. However the thought of a small granddaughter just like Vicky attracted
me and I had just written to suggest that the Kellers should visit us at Bar Harbor in August
when my attention was diverted by a crisis which blew up over Sebastian.
I did not dislike Sebastian but he was very, very difficult. My task as a stepfather would have been easier if he had resembled
Alicia, but I always found it hard to believe she could have produced such a son. However since he
was
her son I had been determined to establish a good relationship with him, and logically this should have been easy to achieve;
Sebastian had an excellent academic record, he had never wavered from his early decision to be a banker, and he had been working
hard at Van Zale’s since he had finished his army service under the draft (I had secretly used my influence to keep him out
of Korea).
During his childhood he had required little paternal discipline. Andrew had always been bouncing in and out of scrapes but
Sebastian, prowling around by himself, had needed only an occasional reprimand to keep him on the rails. It was true I often
wanted to hit him but that was because he exasperated me and not because I found his behaviour insulting.
The trouble with Sebastian, on paper the ideal stepson, was that he was totally charmless. Reserved and morose he sat like
a great hulk at the dining-table and exuded a miasma worthy of any fabled death’s head at a feast. I wanted to like him but
my efforts never seemed to get us anywhere. His desperately unattractive personality also made me worry about his future at
the bank. There’s more to being a banker than working out an issue with financial flair and parcelling it out to the public.
A banker must take his clients to lunch and inquire tenderly after their families as well as their credit, and I had begun
to doubt that Sebastian would ever be capable of more than a formal greeting, a few apelike grunts and endless awkward silences.
He was a continuous source of anxiety to me. The situation was complicated by the fact that Alicia idolized her son, and I
lived in dread that if I somehow alienated him irrevocably I would also alienate her. The rockiest days of our marriage had
not been when I had begun my affair with Teresa; the nearest we had ever come to divorce was that time in 1945 when we had
quarrelled over Sebastian.
To put the whole sordid matter in the smallest possible nutshell I can only say that he had indecently exposed himself to
Vicky during one of our family summers at Bar Harbor. By a superhuman effort I had sufficiently controlled my rage and revulsion
to send him to his Foxworth relations without laying a finger on him, but Alicia and I had quarrelled almost fatally and for
months afterwards I had been afraid of coming home from work in case she’d walked out on me. But she had stayed, and gradually
by another superhuman effort I had
taught myself to look back at the incident with detachment. Many adolescent boys find their new sexuality hard to handle,
and Vicky was an exceptionally attractive young girl. The two of them were unrelated by blood. They had never even lived beneath
the same roof until both were approaching puberty, and adolescence must have added to the awkwardness of a situation already
rendered tense by adult squabbles over custody. In the circumstances I had decided I should feel sorry for Sebastian. I had
to feel sorry for him anyway because it was in my best interests to be sympathetic and I was, as I reminded myself over and
over again, always mindful of my best interests in adverse circumstances; I was essentially a pragmatic man.
After Sebastian had been discharged from the army he lived at home for a time but shortly after the wedding in Velletria he
moved into a gloomy apartment in Murray Hill. When we were grudgingly invited to visit him we found black carpet on the floor,
black fabric on the chairs and a black coffee table in front of a black leather couch. Two prints by Hieronymus Bosch adorned
the walls and some horror by Dali (painted before he turned soft and started painting Madonnas) defaced a corner of the hall.
God knows what was kept in the bedroom.
I spent some anxious moments wondering if these tastes indicated some form of sexual perversion, but although I checked Freud’s
entry in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, Freud’s views seemed such garbage that I didn’t bother to read to the end of the summary. No wonder Kevin had felt that
Freud had never reached Staten Island, Brooklyn or Queens in his journey through the psychological equivalent of the street
directories of the five boroughs! Personally I thought Kevin was being generous in suggesting Freud had even made it through
Manhattan and the Bronx. My knowledge of Freud’s theories had previously been confined to the intriguing hearsay guaranteed
to stimulate a flagging cocktail party, but I saw now how wise I had been to keep my knowledge limited. All that talk about
the id, the libido and phallic symbols was enough to make any sane man look askance at himself.
‘Why do you like black so much?’ I asked Sebastian in curiosity after Freud had failed to provide me with an answer, but Sebastian
just said poker-faced: ‘Because it’s dark.’
I gave up, telling myself I had done all a father could to raise a normal well-adjusted son, and if Sebastian was odd it could
hardly be my fault. Having myself lacked even the most basic paternal advice from my own stepfather I had made very sure my
stepsons had gone out into the world knowing one end of a condom from the other and
aware that VD wasn’t a reference to some allied victory in the Second World War.
When the crisis blew up over Sebastian it was the spring of 1955. The weather was beautiful, the stock market was booming
and I had just bought a new milk-white Cadillac with pale blue upholstery. In fact I was in such good spirits that I even
stopped after work to buy a bottle of champagne for Teresa, but when I arrived at the Dakota I found her in a sour mood. Her
painting was going through a bad patch. I had successfully steered her away from post-impressionism but now she had been seduced
by the current craze for the American abstract, and the malign influence of Jackson Pollock was leering at me from every canvas.
I had told her politely that I thought she should return to her earlier pristine style. She had told me she wanted more from
life than the reputation of being a second Grandma Moses, and why the hell couldn’t I mind my own business. Our sexual relationship
had become unpleasantly mechanical. Once I had even asked her if she wanted to end the affair but she had said ‘No thank you’
very politely and on my next visit had cooked me a magnificent steak with Bearnaise sauce. Later she had asked me if I myself
wanted to end the affair and I had said ‘No thank you’ equally politely and had given her a gold bracelet from Cartier’s.
I had hoped that this would mean we could be more relaxed with each other, but when I arrived at the Dakota that evening I
was told that menstruation was on, sex was off and the new picture was a disaster. She was right. It was, and declining her
half-hearted offer of a hamburger I left the champagne in the refrigerator and set off home in my Cadillac.
As I entered the hall the first person I saw was Jake Reischman.
‘Neil!’ he exclaimed at once. ‘Thank God you’re here! I was on my way over to the Dakota to get you. Does Teresa usually leave
the phone off the hook at this hour?’
I was unsurprised by these references to Teresa; he met her every time I exhibited her work and had known for years that I
kept her at the Dakota. But I was confused by his presence.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said stupidly.
‘Alicia called me in a panic. She tried to call you but you’d left the office and when you didn’t come home she turned to
me as one of the old Bar Harbor brotherhood, someone she could rely on in a crisis – ah, here she is! Yes, it’s all right,
Alicia, he’s here.’ He took me by the arm and propelled me into the library. ‘Sit down and I’ll fix you a drink. Alicia, would
you like me to tell Neil what the police said? You should go and lie down.’
Alicia looked like death. ‘I couldn’t, Jake,’ she said, ‘but do please
stay and explain to Cornelius.’ She sat down stiffly on a hard chair near the door.
Jake had already moved to the liquor cabinet. ‘Scotch, Neil?’
‘Okay. But what the hell—’
‘Let me just get the drinks. I can promise you we all need them.’
‘Okay, but … wait, Jake, Alicia doesn’t drink scotch.’
‘Oh, I do drink it nowadays, Cornelius,’ said Alicia mechanically.
Jake said at once: ‘You were drinking scotch when I arrived. I assumed—’
‘Oh yes of course. Yes, I’d like another scotch. Thank you, Jake.’
‘For Christ’s sake, why the hell are we all wasting time discussing Alicia’s drinking habits!’ I was almost tearing my hair
with exasperation. ‘Jake, what’s going on? Why were the police here? Has there been a robbery?’
‘No, Neil, it’s Sebastian. He’s in trouble. The police allege he beat up some woman on the Upper West Side.’
I knocked back my scotch, grabbed the phone and streamed into action. ‘Middleton, get the police commissioner.’ I depressed
the phone and dialled another digit. ‘Schuyler, get my lawyers over here right away.’ I hung up the house-phone, got an outside
line and dialled the number of Sebastian’s apartment.
‘Hullo?’ said Sebastian laconically.
‘Sebastian, what the hell’s going on? Are the cops there?’
‘Yeah. They’ve made some crazy mistake. I’ve called my lawyer.’
‘Don’t say one syllable without him. I’m coming right over.’
I hung up. The phone rang beneath my fingertips. ‘Yes?’
‘I have the police commissioner for you, sir.’
‘Put him through. Hullo? Yes, this is Cornelius Van Zale. What the hell are you doing persecuting my stepson? … What? You
know nothing about it? Then may I suggest you find out right away? My stepson’s name is Sebastian Foxworth and some of your
men are harassing him right now at one-one-four East Thirty-Sixth Street, I repeat, one-one-four East Thirty-Sixth Street.
You get hold of your precinct captain and tell him I sue automatically in all cases of wrongful arrest.’ I hung up. The phone
immediately rang again. My personal lawyer was on the line.
‘What’s going on Cornelius?’
‘How much does it cost to beat an assault rap?’
Alicia bent over as if she were about to faint. Jake moved across to her automatically but then stood around like a tailor’s
dummy as if he couldn’t decide what to do.
‘For Christ’s sake, Jake!’ I snapped, interrupting my lawyer who was
giving me some unspeakable drivel about bribery. ‘Get Alicia on to the couch and ring for her maid, can’t you?’
Jake obediently tried to make himself useful. I hung up on my lawyer and ordered a car to the door.
‘I’ll go over right away,’ I said to Alicia, giving her a kiss. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix this, no problem. Jake, I’ll call you.
Thanks for your help.’
And I rushed over to Sebastian’s apartment to make good my promise.
It was extremely awkward since the injured woman, a West Side prostitute, had in her possession Sebastian’s wallet which contained
his driving licence with the address still made out to his old Fifth Avenue home, but the woman turned out to be most reasonable
when she saw the colour of my money, and the police needed little encouragement to be persuaded that she had been hit by her
common-law husband after he had discovered her with Sebastian. No one wants to waste time prosecuting a petty assault case
when there are cases of murder, rape and arson on the books waiting to be solved.
When I was finally alone with Sebastian I said to him: ‘We may as well get what sleep we can now, but I want you in my office
at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and if you’re one second late you’re fired.’
‘Okay,’ said Sebastian.
I looked at him. I never spoke but after five seconds he stopped slouching against the wall, and after ten seconds he reddened
and muttered: ‘Yes, sir.’
I turned on my heel and left him.
[3]
He knocked on the door at nine o’clock and rising from my desk I took him into the other half of the double room where I worked.
In Paul’s day the room which opened on to the back patio had been furnished as a library while beyond the archway the far
room had been used as an elegant sitting-room where a few select people had gathered every afternoon to drink tea. I had dispensed
with nineteenth-century tradition. The main room was now designed as an austere study while the far room, as I had once heard
a junior partner whisper, had become the chamber of horrors. This was the place where I fired people, clubbed them into line
or conducted interviews with clients who thought their long-suffering investment banker was in business solely to hold their
hands while their paths automatically paved themselves with gold.
‘Sit down, Sebastian,’ I said to my stepson who was already unhealthily pale.
He sat down awkwardly on the couch while I remained standing before the fireplace, one hand resting on the bleak marble mantel.
‘Well?’ I said abruptly.
He cleared his throat. The sound reverberated on the ash-white ceiling and unadorned walls. The carpet in the room was steel-grey.
Behind my shoulder the digital clock flickered scarlet, time’s life-blood oozing away into infinity.