‘But how can you ever accept me as I am?’ said my poor father, somehow managing to sound both pathetic and exasperating, very
old yet curiously childlike, world-weary but naïve.
‘Daddy,’ I said, ‘if you’ve got the guts to accept
me
as
I
am, why shouldn’t I have the guts to accept you as you are?’
The car plunged into the tunnel and the quality of sound in the car changed. We looked at each other warily in the dim artificial
light.
‘What do you truly feel, Vicky?’
‘I don’t know. I just hated you this morning after I discovered how damaged Scott was.’
‘Yes.’
‘But to tell the truth I feel too confused now to indulge in a simple straightforward hatred. All these honest conversations
should have helped, shouldn’t they, but I think I just feel more mixed up than ever. Where does that leave us?’
‘Well,’ said my father shyly, like some reticent student philosopher proposing a revolutionary new theory, ‘perhaps we might
manage to be friends.’
‘That ought to be impossible. Why do I have this terrible suspicion that you may be right?’
‘Because nothing’s impossible if you want it badly enough,’ said my father.
The car shot out of the tunnel into the wet shining streets of Manhattan.
‘I don’t know whether I can be friends with you,’ I said, taking his hand in mine again. ‘I don’t know whether parents and
children can ever be friends in the accepted sense of the word. There’s nearly always too much love and hate going on. But
perhaps we can make a better job of just co-existing.’
‘How magnificently pragmatic!’ said my father admiringly. ‘I think we shall have a very successful co-existence …’
[6]
He refused to go back to Wall Street.
‘I don’t want to keep you from your work,’ I said.
‘Forget the work. You come first.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘You’re not. You’re starting to cry again.’
We went up to his triplex and sat in the library, that beautiful airy room full of glass and space-age furniture which gave
it a resemblance to the set of a science-fiction movie. Central Park floated below us in a misty haze. It was still raining.
My father fixed me a martini which tasted like four parts of vermouth to one part of gin, and served it in a liqueur glass.
I was so exhausted that I didn’t even have the strength to complain. I merely accepted the glass thankfully as he sat down
beside me on the couch.
‘I’d still like to be convinced that Scott didn’t engineer this affair of yours,’ he said. ‘I know it’s none of my business.
I know I mustn’t pry. But I’m just so anxious for you to put my mind at rest. I wish I could persuade you that I’m quite unshockable.’
‘This would shock you. It even shocked me after I’d done it. That’s why I don’t want to tell you. I’m not afraid of offending
your non-existent sensibilities. I’m afraid of being ashamed all over again, except I’m not ashamed, not really, I’m glad
it all happened the way it did, I’m glad I took the initiative into my own hands.’
‘Vicky, you’re driving me crazy with all these hints and allusions! Either tell me or don’t tell me, for God’s sake!’
‘Okay, I’ll tell you. I’m too exhausted to care. I’ll tell you everything and if you don’t like it just remember that it was
you who asked for it.’
I embarked on the saga of my Caribbean cruise. Predictable exclamations such as: ‘My God! and ‘Christ!’ and ‘You didn’t!’
emanated regularly from my father.
‘Well?’ I said wearily when I faced him at last and saw his expression. ‘Are you ready to disinherit me?’
‘Was I looking horrified?’ said my father. ‘I was only thinking of all those wasted vacations on my private yacht. I could
have been on a cruise ship being seduced by pretty women!’
I laughed, then started crying, then decided to laugh again. ‘Daddy, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘There, there, sweetheart—’
‘Now don’t spoil it! God, I hated that cruise. It wasn’t funny really, Daddy. It was a disgusting atmosphere on that ship
with everyone aboard running around and copulating like animals.’
‘Disgusting,’ said my father.
I looked at him suspiciously but he was poker-faced.
‘It was!’ I said defiantly.
‘Am I arguing?’
‘Hypocrite!’
My father patted my hand soothingly. ‘Okay, you’ve convinced me that Scott didn’t initiate the affair. But how soon did he
try to take advantage of this new relationship?’
‘He didn’t. At first he thought it was a disaster. In the end it simply became an obstruction to his ambition, and I had to
be cut out of his life.’
‘If he felt that why did he persist in continuing the affair once the cruise was over?’
‘He realized I was the one woman in a million for him, just as he was the one man in a million for me.’
‘Vicky, listen to yourself! Spare me, please! That’s the kind of line Alicia lives for in her day-time serials!’
‘I can’t help that. I’m just stating the facts. You asked me a question and I gave you a truthful answer. If it’s too romantic
for you, that’s your problem, not mine.’
‘It just seems—’
‘As a matter of fact it’s got very little to do with romance and more to do with the facts of life.’
‘Sex, you mean? Are you trying to tell me Scott shot you a line about some kind of problem and then said only you could solve
it?’
‘I did solve it.’
‘Well, I’ll be … You mean he was impotent?’
‘Oh Daddy, you haven’t understood anything!’
‘Some malformation of the genitals perhaps—’
‘Of course not! He was just the same size as Sebastian, which was most extraordinary because I always thought—’
‘Wait a minute,’ said my father. ‘I don’t think fathers and daughters ought to talk about this kind of thing. Hasn’t this
conversation wandered a little far from the point?’
‘I was only trying to explain—’
‘Okay, you explained. Now tell me exactly what Scott said to you about me.’
I summarized Scott’s long confession after the clash with Kevin at the Four Seasons. ‘That’s why I know for a fact that he’s
not as hostile as you seem to think,’ I said defiantly. ‘He never said anything about erasing the name Van Zale and keeping
Eric out of the bank.’
‘Vicky, that’s a very naïve remark for a woman of your intelligence.’
‘And that’s a very cynical remark, even for a man who prides himself on his cynicism! Wake up Daddy – be rational! Come down
out of those cynical clouds! I wish I could convince you that Scott would never harm me by harming my family. If only we could
marry—’
‘
Marry!
Who said anything about marriage?’
‘I did. I want to marry him. He’s the only man in the world, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘You’re not serious,’ said my father. He had gone very white. ‘You can’t be serious. I was given to understand this was just
a casual affair.’
‘
A casual affair
? Well, I guess you were entitled to think that after listening to my account of its bizarre beginning, but Daddy, I told
you Scott was the one man in a million for me!’
‘Yes, but that was just sex. For God’s sake, Vicky, what’s come over you? I don’t believe you’re in love with him! You can’t
be!’
‘Daddy, I’m hopelessly, horribly and wholly in love with him! Do you think I’d want to marry him if I wasn’t?’
‘But …’ My father was struck dumb for a moment. Then he stammered: ‘But Scott’s not interested in marriage! You’ll never get
what you want there!’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘But didn’t you just tell me that anything’s possible if you want it badly enough?’ Tears began to stream down
my cheeks again and I gave up trying to check them. ‘Daddy, I can’t help it, I’m crazy about him, I know it should be no good
but I can’t accept that, I know how damaged he is but I think I can cure him, I think I can fix the damage somehow. God, if
I thought it would do any good I’d run after him, I’d go to London to live with him, I’d even leave the children—’
‘I’m dreaming this conversation,’ said my father. ‘It’s not happening. It’s a nightmare. I’ll wake up in a moment – or maybe
you’ll wake up and reassure me you haven’t gone clean out of your mind. Did you really say you’d even leave the children?’
‘Yes, but if Scott thinks there’s a chance I’ll live with him without the children, he’ll never marry me. That’s why I stood
firm when he tried to persuade me to go to London with him. Also I thought that if I stood firm he’d give way, but … he didn’t.
Oh Christ, he didn’t. He called my bluff and left me – I was so sure he wouldn’t – so sure that in the end he’d choose me
– but he didn’t – he
couldn’t
… crippled … couldn’t help himself … not his fault …’ I broke down altogether and could say no more.
My father gave me a handkerchief, patted me on the shoulder and sat like a statue at my side until I was more composed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered at last. ‘I must pull myself together.’
‘Right,’ said my father, and the brutal note in his voice made me jump. ‘You must. Face the facts. He’s left you. You’ve backed
a losing horse. That man’s never going to marry anyone. As far as he’s concerned you’re just a good lay.’
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘That’s not the way it is, it’s not!’
‘Yes, Vicky, that’s the way it is, although I see no way of proving it to you except to say okay, you go ahead, you go to
London and live with him and get him clean out of your system. I’ll take care of the kids. It wouldn’t be for long anyway
– the affair would be burnt out inside of six months. We could invent some story for the kids so that they’d never know, and
then you can come back easily when it’s all over and pick up the threads of your normal life again.’
There was a long silence. Then I dried my eyes, finished my martini and said: ‘No. That’s a good recipe for handling an inconvenient
love affair, but this isn’t just an inconvenient love affair. I want to marry him and I’ve got to handle this right. I’m not
going to run after him to London and I’m not going to fall swooning into his arms as soon as he comes back here on his first
business trip. He’s got to realize that he can’t just turn our relationship into an intercontinental love affair, and besides
…’ I set down my empty glass abruptly. ‘Besides, I couldn’t really leave those children. I wouldn’t be able to bear it in
the end. I’d despise myself too much.’
My father was very quiet. Some time passed.
‘I do love him, Daddy, I really do—’
‘Oh, forget him, Vicky – give him up, for Christ’s sake! My God, I’d even prefer you to remarry Sebastian! No chance of that
happening, I guess, but—’
‘None. I could never go to bed again with any man except Scott. He’s the one I want. And he’s the one I’m going to have. I’m
sorry, Daddy. That may not be the way things ought to be. But that’s the way things really are.’
[1]
‘Dear Vicky: I hope it’s okay if I write. If it’s not, say so and I won’t. How are you doing? Since you’re there and he’s
here maybe things aren’t so good for you. I shan’t say anything about him but I’m sorry if you’re not happy.
‘I’ve decided not to live in London after all as the people I know here are mostly connected with banking and I want to get
right away
from that particular scene. I’ve decided to live in Cambridge. I came here as a tourist a couple of years back and bumped
into Elfrida Sullivan in King’s College Chapel and she showed me around. She was at college in Cambridge and she knows it
well. It’s a very, very nice place. I like it. It’s a very, very long way from the plastic society. Thank God my grandfather
left me some money so I don’t have to waste my time doing something stupid, like banking, in order to earn a living.
‘I’m going to write a book. I don’t want to write a book but the research will be fun. Maybe I won’t even have to write the
book – I’ll just go on and on doing research. Elfrida Sullivan says the world is crying out for the definitive economic history
of Roman Britain and why don’t I do it. I kind of like Elfrida Sullivan. She’s very smart. But I think she’s a lesbian. Your
friend, S. FOXWORTH.’
[2]
‘Vicky darling,’ said my cousin Lori, ‘you look awful. Is anything wrong?’
I looked at her and thought of Scott. There was no marked physical resemblance between them but now I could see so clearly
that they had shared the same father. There seemed to be nothing of Aunt Emily about her. Lori was smart, sexy and tough as
nails beneath her perfect California suntan, and she had her life effortlessly well-organized. Her children were bright, attractive,
clean and courteous; her husband, now away in Vietnam, had always basked in uxorious bliss; the PTA, the essential charities
and the required women’s organizations were managed with incomparable flair and zest. Lori was a huge success in life and
knew it. Her attitude towards me ranged from the critical to the patronizing. I detested her.
‘I’m fine, Lori,’ I said. ‘Just fine.’
‘You shouldn’t drink those martinis, Vicky,’ said Lori’s sister Rose who was becoming more and more like Aunt Emily every
day. Rose was a hugely successful school-teacher at a hugely successful midwestern boarding school for girls. All her pupils
seemed to win scholarships to the best colleges. She was looking at me now as if I were an object who deserved all the Christian
charity she could lay her hands on. I wanted to slap her.
‘Shutup,’ I said. ‘I’ll drink what I like. Why don’t you drink martinis occasionally? They might improve you.’
‘Ah, come now, darling!’ said Lori, exerting her forceful Sullivan charm. ‘No quarrels at Christmas! Personally I don’t like
martinis –
they’ve got such a godawful taste. Crème de menthe is kind of nice, I’m just crazy for that mint flavour, but personally I
can’t think why people drink every day – life’s so wonderful, so glorious, why blot it into a fuzzy blur? It’s a mystery to
me, but I guess if one’s unhappy or something … Vicky, forgive me for getting personal, but don’t you think it might help
if you did something constructive, not charity work necessarily, because let’s be honest, a lot of charity is just bullshit
– whoops! sorry, Rose darling! – but there are all kinds of interesting things you can do in New York City. Maybe if you took
a course in flower-arranging—’
‘Lori, when I want your advice about how to run my life, I’ll ask for it. Meanwhile cut it out.’
‘Well, I only wanted to help!’
‘We’re just so concerned about you—’
‘SHUTUP!’ I yelled at the pair of them, and bolted headlong from the room.
[3]
‘What’s wrong with Vicky, Cornelius? She seems very depressed, much more so than usual. Don’t you think you should say something
to her? I do think it’s a pity she can’t put up more of a front when the children are around.’
‘Alicia, that’s just the kind of criticism Vicky doesn’t need right now.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but I think’s it’s disgraceful that after wrecking my son’s life she should be allowed to go on wrecking
her own and making everyone around her miserable—’
‘She hasn’t wrecked Sebastian’s life! Sebastian chose of his own free will to retire from banking, even though I offered to
reinstate him, and he chose of his own free will to go to England to live. And Vicky doesn’t make everyone around her miserable!
She doesn’t make
me
miserable! You leave her alone!’
‘Shhh, here she is … Hullo dear, how are you?’
‘Hullo, Alicia. Just fine. Hi Daddy.’
‘Hi.’
There was a pause before I said politely: ‘Thank you for having the children for me today. I hope Nurse kept them in order
and they weren’t too much trouble.’
‘No, dear, of course not.’
Another pause.
‘Vicky,’ said my father impulsively. ‘Come and see me after dinner tonight. I’ll teach you to play chess.’
‘Oh Daddy, I’m so tired, so exhausted, so … did you say chess? But you always told me chess was a man’s game!’
‘Did I ever say that?’ said my father. ‘The older I get the more amazed I am by the dumb things I used to say when I was too
young to know better. Chess is a wonderful game and takes your mind off almost everything. Everyone should play.’
‘But I’m so stupid. I’d never learn.’
‘Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re no dumb blonde! Don’t be so feeble – and don’t be so selfish! None of my present
aides can give me a decent game and I’ve no one to play with at the moment. If you had an ounce of filial feeling for your
poor old father—’
‘Daddy, you’re monstrous, worse than Benjamin. He always gets his own way too. All right, I’ll try and learn. If you say it’s
my moral duty I’m not going to argue with you, but I’m sure you’ll find teaching me a complete waste of time …’
[4]
‘Mom,’ said Eric, ‘can you get Paul to turn down that godawful phonograph? I can’t stand it any longer!’
‘But he’s playing the Beatles!’ said Samantha with shining eyes. ‘And they’re fab!’
‘I wouldn’t care if he was playing the “Hallelujah Chorus” sung by God. If he doesn’t turn that thing down I swear I’ll get
a meat-axe and—’
‘Christ, what a great day it’ll be when you go off to Choate!’ yelled Paul from the doorway. ‘I can’t wait to be rid of you!’
‘Oh, don’t fight, don’t fight!’ wept little Kristin. ‘I can’t bear it when everyone fights!’
‘Mom,’ said Benjamin. ‘My white mice have escaped.’
‘Mommy, I don’t want everyone fighting—’
‘Paul, play the one Ringo sings – the one where he says: “Give me MONEY! That’s what I want!”’
‘You play one more track from that shitty record and I’ll—’
‘That’s not Ringo! It’s John Lennon who solos on “Money”!’
‘Mrs Foxworth, Mrs Foxworth, there are white mice all over the kitchen!’
‘Mom, can I have a cookie?’
‘Mrs Foxworth—’
‘Christ, I hate living cooped up in a city apartment with a bunch of morons. Mom, why can’t we move back to Westchester like
when Dad was alive? I want a garden, I want room to breathe, I want some place where I can escape from that godawful phonograph—’
‘MOM, COOK’S KILLED MY FAVOURITE MOUSE!’
‘Mrs Foxworth, I’m quitting, I just can’t take no more, ma’am—’
‘Oh Mommy, poor mousey—’
‘Mommy—’
‘Mom, you’re not listening!’
‘Mom,
Mom
, MOM …’
[5]
‘Fundamentally the problem that Kierkegaard raised in his works was, “what is the point of man’s life?” “What sense can he
make out of human existence?” “What is the purpose of human events?” Kierkegaard attempted in his literary works to reveal
an image of human life as anguished and absurd, harrowing and meaningless …’
I closed the book. It was midnight, and I was in the small apartment which I kept for my private use, the retreat I resorted
to when I could no longer bear the sound of voices, the precious haven where I had made love to Scott.
I wanted to think about him but I knew I mustn’t. I wanted to have a drink but I knew I mustn’t do that either. I had become
disturbed about my drinking, not because I thought I was descending into alcoholism but because I was gaining weight, and
so I was rationing myself to a glass of wine a day. Surprisingly giving up the martinis had been easy. Then I had tried to
cut down on my smoking, but that had been hard. I checked the timetable I had made for myself and found, as I already knew,
that I had one last cigarette to smoke that day. I smoked it and wondered if I could cheat and have another. I decided I couldn’t.
I had to do something else very fast so that I wouldn’t have time to think of the cigarette I wasn’t smoking.
I wished I were a creative person. If I were I could immerse myself in producing something worthwhile, but instead I could
do nothing which could be described as meaningful. I could no longer even concentrate on serious reading. My lack of talent
made me feel so useless yet I felt so sure there was no need for me to lead such an inadequate existence if only I could decide
what I wanted to do with myself; I felt my intelligence was like a pair of crossed eyes which might have provided good sight
if only they could have been able to focus correctly.
But I was still trying to get my world into focus, still looking for a way of life which would enable me to wake up every
morning with pleasure instead of with dread and apathy. I was now beginning to think I would never get the world into focus.
I was no longer young and my life still seemed to resemble a sheet of water cascading down a drain.
‘I feel so guilty,’ I had said once to Sebastian. ‘Why should I feel like this when I have everything a woman could possibly
want?’
‘You mean you have everything that some women could possibly want,’ Sebastian had said. ‘But what do
you
want, Vicky?’
It seemed such an anti-climax to hang my head in shame and say I didn’t know.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ I said. ‘Even if I knew what I wanted to do I couldn’t do it. The children take all the energy
I have.’
When I did have time to myself I was usually too exhausted to do more than slump in the nearest chair and stare at the wall.
‘I’m nearly thirty,’ I said to Sebastian in 1960, ‘and I’ve done nothing and everyone thinks I’m stupid and frivolous and
shallow, and even
I
think I’m stupid and frivolous and shallow, and yet I know there’s something there if only I can track it down.’
‘Caesar did nothing till he was forty,’ said Sebastian. ‘He was rich and handsome and everyone wrote him off as an effete
society rake. Yet not long after he was forty he went off to Gaul and ten years later he had conquered the world. Not bad
for a man everyone had dismissed as stupid, frivolous and shallow!’
I thought of Sebastian saying that. I could remember the occasion as clearly as if it had been yesterday, and suddenly I cried
out loud to the silent room: ‘Oh, I do miss you, Sebastian!’ And I thought, though did not say: And I miss you especially
on days like today when everything goes wrong at home and Kierkegaard tells me life is harrowing and absurd and I can do nothing
but think what a failure I am at everything I undertake …
I stood up abruptly. Self-pity would get me nowhere. Finding pen and paper I sat down at my desk with the letter Sebastian
had sent some weeks before and began at last to attempt a reply.
[6]
‘Dear Vicky: Reading about Kierkegaard would drive anyone up the wall. Give philosophy a rest for a while. Are you really
getting anything out of it? You sound too low to concentrate properly on all those does-life-have-a-meaning-and-if-it-does-what-the-hell-is-it
kind of
questions which are about as mind-grabbing as a wet blanket when you’re in a low state.
‘Why not do some
real
reading? Read something violent and brutal like
Wuthering Heights
(how did the myth that this is a romantic novel ever get around, I wonder?) but if you feel this death-obsessed work of genius
won’t after all make you feel how wonderful it is to be alive and surviving in mid-twentieth-century America, may I recommend
instead that you try a more modern masterpiece, the
Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot. Yes, it’s poetry. No, don’t be frightened of it. It’s written in very simple clear language which a child
could understand. The catch is that Eliot’s writing of things which exist only on the periphery of human thought. Maybe it
would appeal to your philosophical curiosity. I challenge you to read it. Don’t dare tell me later that you chickened out
and chose Heathcliff.
‘You’ll find my old copy of the
Four Quartets
in the second guest room of your father’s repulsive triplex, fourth book from the right on the top shelf. Your friend and
mentor, SEBASTIAN. PS I regard Cornelius’ offer to teach you chess with grave suspicion.
Don’t let him try and take you over again
. You’re not his mirror-image in female form (thank God). You are you. Never forget that. S.’
[7]
‘He’s coming back,’ said my father, toying with an astronaut pawn. ‘Your move.’
The chessboard at once became a senseless pattern which hurt my eyes. I looked away. ‘When?’
‘In two weeks. He’ll be staying at the Carlyle. Why don’t you change your mind and see him while he’s here? I doubt if he
could make you more miserable than you’ve been since he left.’
‘Daddy, I never thought I’d see the day when you urged me to go to bed with a man who’s not my husband.’ I pushed my rook
roughly towards him.
‘Stupid move,’ said my father, capturing it with his bishop. I was always forgetting that bishops moved diagonally. ‘Well,
Vicky, you know how I feel about the situation. Morals aren’t much use here. Better to get him out of your system.’
‘Morals don’t exist merely to be useful. What are you doing?’
‘I’m giving you back your rook. You weren’t thinking when you made that last move. Try again.’