There was a long silence.
‘Well, shit,’ said Donald Shine at last, ‘Well,
shit
.’ He pulled open the door but then, overcome with the desire to express his rage, he shoved it shut again and spun to face
me. ‘If that story’s true,’ he said violently, ‘that lover of yours is in big trouble. Jake knew everything. He knew Scott
suggested to me last May that my next target should be the Trust, and he knew Scott gave me all the information I needed.
There was nothing I didn’t tell Jake about the whole deal.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m sure that was exactly what Scott wanted to find out when he called you just now. Goodbye, Mr Shine.’
‘And you can tell that father of yours—’
‘The door’s right behind you. Please go.’
‘The hell with you – the hell with the whole goddamned lot of you, you fucking snobs!’ yelled Donald Shine as he walked out
of my life, and then as the door slammed I found myself alone at last with all the terrible wreckage he had left behind.
[3]
Blundering downstairs I grabbed a cab and told the driver to take me to Willow and Wall. My moment of calm had passed and
now the fear was smothering me again, pushing me to the brink of panic. I knew nothing except that I had to get to Scott as
soon as possible.
‘Yes, ma’am?’ said the new young security guard at the bank’s entrance. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I want to see Mr Sullivan – one of the partners – a tall dark man in his forties – he would have arrived here about half
an hour ago.’
‘Oh, he left, ma’am. He didn’t stay long.’
‘Left? Left, did you say? Are you sure? All right, I’ll see my father – Mr Van Zale.’
‘Mr Van Zale’s left too, ma’am. He left in his car shortly after Mr Sullivan.’
‘I see. I’m sorry but I’ve got to sit down. I’m not feeling well. Is there a chair?’
He hastily showed me into the inner lobby where I sank down on a chair facing the pillars which framed the great hall, but
before I had time to fight my nausea one of the partners rose from his desk in the distance and hurried over to me.
‘Vicky! Are you okay?’
‘Peter … No, I’m feeling awful. Is there any brandy somewhere? Perhaps my father’s office … I know he’s left for the day but
perhaps if I could just sit in his room quietly for a while—’
‘Sure. I’ll take you there myself. Should I call a doctor?’
I somehow found the words to tell him this was unnecessary.
We were walking through the great hall and I was staring at the floor so that I didn’t have to acknowledge the other partners
whose desks I passed. My father’s office lay off the back lobby, and once I was there I got rid of my escort, drank the brandy
he had poured me and slumped into the chair behind my father’s desk. There were several phones on the desk. I tried the black
one first and after some delay obtained an outside line.
The receptionist at the Carlyle said Scott had not yet returned, and although I dialled the hotel a second time five minutes
later there was still no answer from the suite. Then I dialled the number of my father’s apartment.
He had just stepped into the hall.
‘Vicky?’ he said as the butler passed him the receiver.
‘Yes.’ I couldn’t go on.
‘Where are you?’
‘Willow and Wall.’
‘Have you talked to Scott?’
‘No. To Donald Shine.’
My father said curtly: ‘I’ll come at once. Stay where you are, please. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Daddy—’
‘How much do you know?’
‘Everything. Oh God, everything—’
‘Then you’ll understand that I had no other choice but to—’
‘No – no, you didn’t fire him – please, please say you didn’t—’
‘It wasn’t just my decision, Vicky. I don’t have the power on my own to fire Scott before the new year, but of course once
all the partners knew just how grossly he’d misconducted himself, jeopardizing not only the Trust but the entire firm at Willow
and Wall—’
‘Daddy, you can’t do this. You mustn’t. You must reinstate him. It’s all been the most terrible mistake – he would never have
messed around with Shine if he hadn’t been under this delusion that you intended to cut him out altogether—’
‘Now hold it, Vicky! Take it easy! The situation’s not as bad as you think. Of course Scott realized I had no choice but to
fire him – he came to me fully prepared for the worst, even resigned to it. There was no big melodramatic scene – quite the
contrary! We had a calm reasonable discussion and I offered to do everything in my power to see he was offered an equivalent
partnership elsewhere. I also made it clear that although it was impossible for me to retain him as a partner I was anxious
for your sake that we should remain on friendly terms. Things’ll work out, Vicky. This has been a catastrophe, I won’t deny
that, but we’re all going to get over it. Do you hear me? Are you listening? We’re all going to get over this, Vicky. It’s
all going to—’
I hung up on him and dialled the Carlyle but still no one picked up the phone in Scott’s suite. I knew I should rush there
immediately but when I stood up black spots danced before my eyes and I had to sit down again. I poured myself some more brandy,
and as I continued to sit numbly in my father’s chair one thought detached itself from the jumble of impressions tormenting
me and revolved round and round in my mind. I thought: I don’t believe my father. I don’t believe one single word he says.
I stared at the top of the desk. Presently I realized I was looking for something, although what that something was I didn’t
know. There were some letters under a glass paperweight, a photograph of Alicia, a photograph of me, a leather desk-set, two
slim files and an unexpectedly large silver cigarette box. My father never kept cigarettes for guests, never encouraged smoking
in his presence.
Reaching forward I raised the lid.
‘Oh God,’ I said, and in the box the spools of the exquisite little tape-recorder revolved automatically at the sound of my
voice.
I had found my father’s latest toy.
I fidgeted with it clumsily for a time but at last the tape was rewound and I had discovered how to play it back. I pushed
the button. The performance began.
For two minutes I listened to a one-sided phone conversation between my father and Harry Morton, but seconds after this ended
a
woman’s voice said over the intercom: ‘Mr Sullivan’s here to see you, Mr Van Zale.’
‘Show him in.’
Another pause. The door opened. Scott’s voice said pleasantly: ‘Cornelius! Good to see you again!’
I waited, holding my breath, but all I heard was a silence broken only by Scott saying abruptly: ‘Well, if you won’t talk
and won’t shake hands, perhaps I should ask for an explanation.’
My father did speak then. He said as dispassionately as a chess-player winding up a difficult game with all his most consummate
skill: ‘Let me first fix you a drink …’
[4]
I listened, a blind witness to carnage, while the little spools turned around and around in the shining box. The world was
reduced to a desk-top and the voices which after a while I failed to recognize because it seemed they could have no connection
with the two people I loved. I told myself I was listening to a conversation between strangers; I told myself I was hallucinating,
acting out the nightmares which had seized control of my subconscious mind, I told myself I was someone else in some other
place and that eventually I would emerge from the world of illusion and be reclaimed once more by the world of reality.
But all the while I told myself these frantic lies I knew that the revolving spools
were
reality and that I was right there watching them as they spun all my dreams far out of sight into oblivion.
‘You’ve just wasted your entire life, Scott. You’ve ended up as big a failure as your father. And the greatest irony of all
is that for years and years I wanted you to have the bank. In fact although you didn’t know it you’d dedicated yourself to
giving me what I wanted most.’
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t tell him that! Never, never tell him!’
But the spools never stopped for one instant, and my father’s voice went on.
‘But it wasn’t enough for you to get the bank, was it? You’re so mentally sick that nothing less than the destruction of everything
I cared about would satisfy you, so you started messing around with my daughter and dividing me from the people I loved.’
‘No!’ I sobbed. ‘No, no, no!’
‘No!’ shouted Scott. ‘It wasn’t like that! You’re the one who’s sick, twisting everything around like this and making out
I don’t love Vicky—’
‘Well, you can forget about Vicky now! She’s through with you. She told me so herself. As soon as she heard the truth from
Jake back in September she saw at once how you were using her to guarantee your future!’
‘That’s a lie!’
‘Is it? I tell you, she wanted to break off with you right then and there, but I persuaded her to hold on until I’d taken
care of Shine. She didn’t want to do it – she’s scared of you. She’s been scared of you for some time – haven’t you noticed
how tense and nervous she’s become? She didn’t even want to see you today but I gave her my word I’d send for you as soon
as you arrived at the hotel. I didn’t want to run the risk of you harming her.’
‘But I’d never harm Vicky – never—’
‘My God, you’ve got a hell of a nerve to say that – and to think you accuse
me
of lying! You must be even sicker than I thought!’
‘I swear to you I’D NEVER HURT VICKY!’
‘Don’t give me that crap. You wanted to kill her back in August.’
I thought dimly: Kevin betrayed me. In the end, like Jake, he found his first loyalty was to that alliance formed years before
I was born.
‘She told me all about it. You tried to beat her up. You threatened to kill her. She never got over that, never, and she never
will, but she was too frightened of you to break the engagement off right away. It was only when she got back to New York
and learnt the whole truth about your activities with Shine that she realized just how far she’d been used and abused!’
‘You’re lying to me, you’re lying to me just as you once lied to me about my father—’
‘You know I’m not. You know it’s the truth. You just can’t face up to it, that’s all. You’re too sick. You ought to be locked
up. The very least I can do is make sure you never get another job in banking – and the very least I can do is stop you from
terrorizing my daughter. I’m going to see all Wall Street knows about the way you double-crossed me with Donald Shine, and
I’ve already got security guards keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on my family. You make one move – just one – to see Vicky
again and I’ll see you nailed on an assault rap, and don’t tell me I can’t do it because we both know damned well I can. You’re
finished. Got it? I don’t want to know you, Vicky doesn’t want to know you, nobody wants to know you any more. You’ve failed.
You’re through. Now get out of here and go somewhere a long way away and live with those truths – if you can. From now on
I don’t care what happens to you because I never want to see you again. It’s over. It’s finished. I have nothing else to say.’
I switched off the tape-recorder. I said aloud: ‘I can’t listen to such wickedness,’ but I was still speaking when I turned
the recorder back on again. ‘I can’t listen,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’ But there was my father, talking with such poisonous credibility
as he laid waste the life that was so precious to me, and there was Scott, shouting abuse until the room echoed with his disjointed
sentences, and then my father’s bodyguards entered the room and there was a scuffle and someone, surely not Scott but someone
very ill, was threatening violence, and my father said: ‘Make one more threat like that in front of witnesses and you’ll be
in the psychiatric block of the nearest jail before sunset tonight,’ and then as Scott began to shout obscenities again I
switched off the recorder. But this time I didn’t switch it back on. I looked at the little spools dumbly for a long time.
Then I rewound the tape, removed it from the recorder and slipped it into my purse. I was dry-eyed by that time and my hands
were steady.
I left the room. I walked the whole length of the great hall without looking either to right or to left, and when the doorman
in the front lobby offered to find me a cab I said: ‘Yes. Thank you, that would be nice,’ as if I were on my way to some social
engagement.
Halfway uptown I almost asked the driver to stop at a pay-phone but I knew there was no point in calling the Carlyle again.
Scott obviously wasn’t answering the phone.
At the hotel I paid the driver and crossed the lobby to the elevators. I began to feel as if I were moving in a dream; the
world looked bright but far away, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope, and I could no longer hear what people
were saying.
With my hand still steady I used my key to unlock the door of the suite, and walked in. There was, of course, a note. I believe
there always is in such cases. The note said: ‘My darling Vicky: Believe nothing your father tells you. I shouldn’t have involved
myself with Shine but I knew your father had become determined to cheat me out of what was justly mine, and Shine was my last
chance to achieve that peace of mind which I’ve wanted so much for so long.
‘However I know now that there’s no justice and no peace. I shall never make amends to my father for what I did to him, just
as I shall never make amends to you for leading you to believe I could ever bring you the happiness you deserve. I realize
now we were deceiving ourselves when we thought we could have a successful marriage. I’m unworthy of you, not fit to live.
The violence just won’t let me be.
‘I’ve managed to go on all these years because I’ve turned the violence outward. By channelling it into my ambition I was
able to live with myself, but since my ambitions have been annihilated I no longer
have an outlet for the violence so the violence has nowhere else to turn except inward upon myself. But perhaps after all
this is what I’ve always wanted. Sometimes the worst that can happen to a man isn’t to die. It’s to live with the consequences
of what he’s done – or what he’s failed to do.