‘Hullo?’ I said anxiously into the phone. ‘Sebastian? What a nice surprise! Is everything all right?’
There was a silence broken only by the hum of the transatlantic wire.
‘Hullo?’ I said. ‘Hullo, can you hear me?’ I suddenly felt faint. My heart had begun to beat much too fast.
‘Go ahead, London,’ said the operator.
‘Hullo?’ I said. ‘Hullo—’
‘Hullo, Vicky,’ said Scott. ‘Don’t hang up. I’ve got to talk to you.’
[1]
I had forgotten the exact timbre of his voice but immediately he spoke I felt as if I had remembered it daily since our last
meeting. His flat neutral Eastern Seaboard accent was neither attractive nor remarkable, but he had the trick of speaking
without hesitating and this gave him an air of authority which made it easy to believe in his determination to get what he
wanted at all times.
‘Vicky?’ He sounded crisp, confident and cold.
‘Yes, I’m here.’ My skin was crawling with heat. I rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them again the room seemed no longer
blurred with shock but blindingly clear, the bright colours glowing and the softer shades heightened to a brilliant gleam.
‘Listen, I’m calling about your mother.’
I tried to focus on what he was saying but this was hard because I never liked thinking about my mother. My mother was seventy-four
years old and lived in London. I did not write to her, but every Christmas I sent her the year’s photographs of the children
and every January she wrote back to say how pleased she was to be able to keep her album up to date.
‘Vicky? This is a terrible line! Did you hear what I said?’
‘About my mother, yes. What’s happened? Is she dead?’
‘She’s had an accident. She’s been hospitalized with a broken hip.’
‘Oh.’ In my mind I was back in bed with him. I could feel the tensed muscles of his chest and hear the rasp of his breath
as wave after wave of pent-up emotion exploded between us. I began to feel dizzy again.
‘I’ve got her out of a Dickensian ward in some National Health nightmare of a hospital, and put her in the London Clinic.
The authorities called me, you understand, after she’d had the accident because in her purse she had one of those cards giving
a number to call in case of an emergency, and for some reason she’d put down the number of the bank in the City. She appears
to have no friends and of course there are no relatives here. She’s also short of money. Apparently rising prices have taken
a toll on her fixed income, and she’s been living in some dump south of the river.’
I was jolted abruptly out of the past. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but could you please repeat that last sentence?’
He repeated it and added: ‘Let me get the operator – this line’s impossible.’
‘No, I can hear you. But I don’t understand. Why didn’t she ask me for money?’
‘She said she didn’t want to be a burden to you any more.’
‘Oh, but I would have considered it my moral duty—’
‘Yes, she said she knew just how you felt about her. Look, you’d better come over and sort this out. How soon can you get
a plane?’
‘Oh, but … I don’t think I could possibly … I’ll wire money, of course, but—’
‘Vicky, I have this pathetic old senior citizen here who’s asking for you. Like it or not, she’s your mother. She looked after
you for the first ten years of your life so presumably you must owe her something, no matter what unforgivable mistakes she
made later. And are you sure those mistakes were really so unforgivable? And just out of interest, can I ask you if you turned
around and began to hate your mother all by yourself? Or were you aided and abetted by someone else, someone I don’t need
to name?’
I couldn’t speak but a voice inside me was screaming: no, it couldn’t be, it wasn’t, he didn’t, he
couldn’t have
.
I felt as if I were on the rack. Again I tried to speak but again no words came.
‘Cable me your arrival time,’ said Scott, ‘and I’ll send a car to meet you at Heathrow and make a reservation for you at the
Savoy. There’s no need for us to meet if you’d find that distasteful.’
‘Distasteful?’
There was a pause. Then: ‘I’m not entirely unaware of what’s going on in New York,’ said Scott, ‘and I hear from more than
one source that you have a new romantic interest in your life. In those circumstances I fully understand that you’ve no wish
to be reminded of a past you’d prefer to forget.’
‘Are you referring to Jordan Salomon? But—’
‘It’s not important. All that’s important at the moment is that you should cable me at your convenience so that I can make
the appropriate arrangements. I’ll hope to hear from you as soon as possible. Goodbye.’
‘Scott—’ I gasped, but he had hung up. I sat there, trembling from head to toe, the receiver still in my hand, and whispered:
‘Scott … Scott … Scott’ until the operator came back on to the line and asked if the call had been cut off.
I replaced the receiver but went on sitting on the edge of the bed. I decided not to think about my mother. There was some
sort of apocalyptic truth hidden in that situation, but that was all right, I had learnt long ago to shove that to the back
of my mind so that I wouldn’t have
to think about it. Eliminating her effortlessly from my thoughts as usual I found myself free to think entirely of Scott.
Suddenly I noticed that light was streaming into the room, and when I went to the window I found I was taut with excitement.
Beyond the window the world basked in brilliant sunshine, and suddenly I no longer felt as if I were on the verge of middle
age. My despair was gone. So was my sense of futility and waste. For I was thirty-six years old in the very prime of life
and the one man I wanted had obviously made up his mind that we should soon be face to face again.
[2]
I decided to say nothing to my father. Since he thought I had fully recovered from my affair with Scott I had no intention
of disappointing him, and although he had urged me to continue the affair in 1963 when it must have seemed I was in the grip
of a temporary infatuation, I suspected he would take a very different view of the situation now in 1967 if the affair were
to revive long after it should have died a natural death.
It was also only a matter of months until Scott was to be recalled permanently to New York. I could well imagine my father
growing nervous, tying himself in knots over his Machiavellian power games and attributing all kinds of sinister motives to
Scott if the affair were revived, but I saw now so clearly that I could not expect rational behaviour from either my father
or Scott where the bank was concerned. Obviously I was going to have to mediate between them. They would never trust one another
sufficiently to reach a satisfactory truce unless I imposed a solution which would end their ridiculous power-games once and
for all.
It occurred to me, not for the first time, how very childish and stupid men could be. It was small wonder that the world,
run by men, was in such a shambles when they persisted in locking themselves into tight corners from which they could only
escape by making some violent demonstration. It seemed extraordinary that they never fully comprehended the futility of aggression.
If it weren’t for women men would have been extinct long ago, demolished by their own stupidity, but of course women were
stupid too, letting men get away with their nihilistic behaviour and accepting their violent behaviour as inevitable.
I had no intention of accepting this particular violent conflict as inevitable. During the past three years I had tried not
to think too
much about Scott’s future, but as time passed and I realized he was giving a typically impeccable performance as a banker
in London, I had thought it probable that he would eventually reach some new understanding with my father which would enable
them to maintain their close business relationship even though they might remain privately estranged. I didn’t seriously believe
that my father, loving Scott as he did, would take any blatantly destructive step against him, and I didn’t seriously believe
that Scott would ever be a threat to my father so long as he was treated fairly. If I could somehow end their private estrangement
I thought that their business relationship, no longer fuelled by bitterness and suspicion, would eventually take care of itself.
All they needed was the chance to return to a normal rational coexistence without either side believing he was being conned,
and I was going to provide that chance. Those two men were going to be reconciled. A reconcilation was what I wanted and a
reconciliation was what I was going to get because this was a situation where for once in my life
I
was in control.
Power blazed through me like an aphrodisiac. At last I felt strong enough to conquer the world, and smiling at Sebastian’s
description of the effete Julius Caesar who had become the toughest man in town, I dialled Pan American Airways and booked
my flight to London.
[3]
I announced to my family that I had received an unexpected invitation to spend a few days with an old schoolfriend in Virginia,
and the only person I took into my confidence was Nurse. It was essential that she should know where I was in case an emergency
arose, but I told her I was keeping the visit to England secret because I didn’t want the children to worry about their grandmother.
I packed carefully, remembering that English springs could be cold. I also remembered that Scott liked women to be chastely
dressed, like Aunt Emily, so in addition to the skirts and sweaters I took one dress with a high neckline. Then I consulted
the calendar, realized I had no time to waste and hurried to the nearest clinic for a new supply of the pill. I had abandoned
the pill when Scott had abandoned me, but I had once resumed taking it for a short while when it seemed I might have an affair
with Jordan.
I went to the airport. I boarded the plane. I set off on that long journey east into another world. We seemed to fly endlessly
above the hazy sea far below, but after the long twilight darkness fell, the plane
began its measured descent and finally the neon glow of London stretched ahead of us as far as the eye could see.
[4]
I knew he was somewhere near by as soon as I walked out of the customs hall. I stared feverishly at the crowds hanging over
the barriers but beyond the blur of unknown faces there was no sign that he had come to meet me.
Then I saw him. I had moved around the edge of the crowd and was just looking back across the hall when he walked through
the doors from the sidewalk. He was thirty yards away.
He gave his smallest, politest smile and raised his hand in greeting.
I tried to move forward to meet him but nothing happened. I just stood there, my suitcase in my hand, and was at once immensely
aware not of time standing still but of time moving on at last after some intolerable hiatus.
I forgot my clear-eyed analysis of the future in which I solved everyone’s problems with such matchless efficiency. I forgot
the frustration of the present in which I felt shackled by my past mistakes. And I certainly forgot the pain of the past when
I had daily wondered how I was going to survive on my own. In that second when I saw him again my mind focused itself on his
presence with such intensity that every move he made seemed like a revelation of some spell-binding truth and every detail
of his appearance assumed a blinding significance.
His hair was greyer at the sides and also longer, to conform with current masculine fashion. I had never realized until I
saw him then how short he had kept his hair before. At first glance I thought he was still cleanshaven but a second later
I saw he now had a pair of slim trim sideburns. He had put on some weight too but that suited him for he had always been too
thin. His eyes were a bright black, like polished volcanic rock. His walk was rapid but very smooth, very confident. He wore
an immaculately tailored dark suit with a discreetly striped blue and white shirt. His tie was navy blue silk. His shoes gleamed.
His cuff-links were silver. I wanted him so much I could barely stand.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How are you? Good trip? Okay, let me take your case. The car’s outside.’ And he began to walk away from me
with my case in his hand.
I just managed to stumble along in his wake. My breath was
coming unevenly and I felt unbearably hot. All rational thought was impossible.
Outside a policeman, an English policeman with a helmet and no gun, was chatting sociably with the chauffeur of a milk-white
Rolls-Royce, but when we left the building he turned to face us and the chauffeur sprang forward to open the passenger door.
Scott set the suitcase down on the pavement. ‘Sorry, officer, we’re just going.’
‘Very good, sir, but perhaps you’d be so kind as to ask your chauffeur to use the car park next time, if you please.’
I remembered that I was now a foreigner in a land where even threats were wrapped up in inscrutable politeness, and looking
around dazed I saw the malformed little cars with their displaced steering wheels, the shabby people in raincoats, the soft
drizzle falling steadily from the alien neon sky.
I suddenly realized they were all waiting for me so I crawled into the Rolls and collapsed on the upholstery. Scott sat on
the back seat beside me. We didn’t speak, just waited while the chauffeur placed the suitcase in the trunk and returned to
his position behind the wheel.
The car drew away from the kerb.
‘I spoke to your mother on the phone today,’ said Scott effortlessly while I was still racking my brains for the appropriate
small-talk. ‘She’s much better. I don’t think she’ll have to stay in the Clinic long. I’m having my secretary find out about
convalescent homes on the south coast.’
‘Oh. Yes. What a good idea. Thank you so much.’ The car was heading for the tunnel which led out of the airport.
‘She’s looking forward to seeing you, of course.’
‘Yes. Oh yes. Good.’ I didn’t dare look at him in case I lost control of myself and did something stupid which would upset
him. His lack of emotion made it obvious that the last thing he wanted from me was an embarrassing display of passion.
We travelled on in silence but at last, feeling that even the most mundane question would be preferable to this appalling
lack of conversation, I said: ‘Do you like living in London?’
‘Not much.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘You’re three thousand miles away.’