Inheritance (49 page)

But it wasn't just the Chicago Beacon Hill that filled her thoughts; already she had begun to go beyond it. She hadn't told Currier, or anyone, and of course there wasn't much she could do for at least a year, until she'd proven herself here, but her imagination was already soaring past Chicago, to Owen's other three hotels, and his plans, and her own, for transforming them. She didn't know exactly how she'd do it: where the money would come from, how long it would take to buy all three of them—even if she could get them, the most troubling thought of all, since Felix might sell them before she could get the money, or she might not be able to find the money at all—but she had to believe she could make it h^ pen. Somehow, whatever it took, she intended to do it all, as fast as she could, and she wasn't going to let anything stop her.

The New York Salinger, she said silentiy, then swifdy changed it. The New York Beacon Hill. The Philadelphia Beacon Hill. The Washington Beacon Hill.

Felix, I've got my start now. And one of these days you and your family are going to know I'm here. I'll own the hotels you stole from me and swore I'd never have; I'll fill them with the kind of famous, wealthy, powerful people you admire most; and I'll make them pay.

She turned and left the lounge to join Currier and dress for dinner. She was smiling to herself. And then, Felix, you'll know that Owen and I beat you after all.

Chapter 19

/ / TTE can be vice president for security," Felix I—I snapped to his daughter, who was calling from J^ JL Amsterdam, and his wife, who was on an extension telephone in another room of the house. **l told you that a month ago, and I haven't changed my mind. I also told you it's tentative. We don't know anything about him except the reports I've gotten from the hotel's management— '*

"I've told you all about him," Allison said. "I've been telling you about him for over a year."

"You've been giving us romantic twaddle for over a year. And you refused to let us meet him; when you came home to visit, you came alone, and you told us you didn't want us there. And your cousin Patricia thinks he's a fortune hunter. I shouldn't be promising him a job at all; we're cutting back, not expanding, and I can't think of one good reason why he should get an executive's desk without working his way up from the bottom."

"He did that in Amsterdam. And he's going to be your son-in-law."

**That's no reason. Thomas Janssen is my brother-in-law, but he doesn't work for the company anymore."

"He left on his own," Leni put in quietly. "As soon as Owen died. And he's still a shareholder and member of the boani."

"I'm asking you to do it," Allison said. "Is that a good reason?"

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There was a pause. Like mother, like daughter, Felix thought: cold and independent. They don't ask for love. No wonder I don't love them.

But he still felt the same pride in them he had felt for twenty-four years; it had never waned, and by now he thought I of it as a kind of love. When he saw them together, their I striking angular elegance causing passers-by to turn as they ! walked down the street, he had the same sense of achievement and possession he had when he walked through one of his i hotels. He became larger, more visible, more envied: Felix I Salinger, who had outstripped his father in vastly expanding his hotel empire, who was changing the kind of empire it was I by getting rid of its small properties and concentrating on [ mammoth ones, who had even outdone his father in his family j Ufe—his father's wife had died after ten years of marriage, I but Felix still had his wife.

! And now, listening to his wife and daughter talk over the 1 telephone, their clear Boston accents filling his head, he was ) swept again by a sense of accomplishment, because it was ) through his largess that they were what they were: wealthy, t world-traveled, sophisticated—and Salingers. They weren't f soft and pliable, but they were part of his empire; they were I essential to his whole being. And since, in the past year, the Salinger hotel chain had begun to show certain signs of trouble, Felix needed his wife and daughter more than ever, as

I proof that he always triumphed in the end.

He gazed at the December blizzard that swirled beyond the

window, obscuring the homes across the road. A white

Christmas, he reflected. A white Christmas wedding. Pity my

,) daughter isn't a virgin; it would be so appropriate. But not

II only isn't she a virgin, she isn't even maldng a pretense at respectabihty: openly living with a man nobody knows, announcing their engagement in a telephone call at Thanksgiving, planning their arrival in Boston one week before the wedding. What does she have to hide? "What are you hiding?" he asked abruptly.

"You keep asking me that. Nothing. Ben is wonderful;

everything is wonderful. I just wanted to have lots of time for

I us to be alone, to get started by ourselves, without anyone

I around. There were so many awful things that had happened

Judith Michael

at home—^Thad was a hideous mistake, and then Grandpa died and then that mess with—with his will ... I couldn't stand the thought of something else going wrong: I wanted everything with Ben to go right." There was a silence. "Can't you understand that?"

"Yes," Leni said. "But it would have been kinder if you'd said that months ago. You've been secretive for such a long time, keeping everyone away: I would have liked you to share it with me—with us."

"I know." There was another silence. Felix listened to the faint hiss of the thousands of miles between them. "Well, but that's past," Allison said tranquilly. 'There aren't any more secrets. We're coming home, and we'll live in Boston and see you all the time. I just wanted to make sure Ben had a job. He said he'd look for one when we got there, but why should he? We have a company and he belongs in it. And he's satisfied with being vice president for security; you mustn't think he's complaining about it. I'm the one who diought he should be in charge of something bigger. Finance, or something like that. More important. And paying a lot more."

Felix stirred in his chair. 'There's been no talk of salary. And I will not be forced into discussing it now."

"I wasn't forcing. I just thought I'd mention it because Ben won't. He'd never say anything, but I know it bothers him that I have so much more than he does."

*Then he'll learn to accept it or find a way to make more money on his own. He'U get no special treatment from me. Is that clearT'

"Yes, indeed," Allison said crisply. "It's all business in our family. No sentiment allowed. Actually, Ben will like that: he's not a very sentimental person. The two of you will probably get along fine."

"I'd like to talk about the wedding," Leni said before Felix could respond. "We'll have dinner here the night before, and lunch after the ceremony. Of course, it's only the family, but it's not often we're all together anymore . . . unless you'd like me to call some of your friends?"

"No, just the family," Allison said. "Ben really is adamant about keeping it small and absolutely no publicity; he's the most private person I've ever known. Did Rosa call you? I

Inheritance

I wrote and asked her if she*d come out of letiieinent long enough to make our wedding dinner."

"Yes, she called, so pleased that you wanted her.*'

Felix listened to the talk about menus and the small ceremony in their living room and the shopping Allison wanted to do as soon as they arrived. Ordinarily he would have hung up at this point but today he listened, confused and a little disturbed at the new confidence and composure in Allison's voice. She had been unsure of herself for such a long time, drifting from one man to another, one hobby to another, even one country to another, that now she sounded almost like a stranger. This business of gaining a son was sentimental horseshit, he thought: he wasn't gaining anything; he was losing the daughter he thought he knew. A wave of anger at Ben Gardner swept through him; she'll even change her name to his, he thought.

"Good-bye, Daddy," Allison said. "I'll see you next week. And Daddy"—her voice changed, becoming younger and more tentative—^'*please be nice to Ben. To botii of us. I'm sorry I didn't want you to meet him, but it was all so special and I wanted it to stay that way, and Patricia was such a bitch—"

"Allison, she's your cousin," Leni said.

"Sony. But she was snide and kept hinting at awful things just when I felt happiest, and I didn't see why I should have to go around defending the man I love to people who don't know a damn thing about him, so I just kept everybody away. It seemed a lot simpler at the time. I know I hurt your feelings and I'm sorry, but it's over now and we're all starting again, and I hope you'll be . . . nice."

"I am always civil, Allison," Felix said evenly. He knew she had started to ask him to be loving, but had evidendy thought better of it. "We'll all be glad to see you next week."

"Next week," Allison echoed, her voice subdued, and Fielix hung up, satisfied that his daughter had come begging to him and he had cowed her by being in better control of his emotions than she was of hers. He was always in control, he thought, turning to the paperwork on his desk. He assimilated information and then acted on it without second thoughts or puerile shilly-shallying. The ability to make swift decisions

Judith Michael

was his strength, and he relied on it even when he felt beset, as he did occasionally with the troubles at the company and this damned business with Allison.

Her new marriage would do nothing for him. It would not bring prestige or an infusion of wealth into the family; it would not even make him father-in-law to a pedigree likej Thad Wolcott's, who, even though he turned out to be in debt, could trace his descendants to the Mayflower. His daughter was marrying a nobody, a nonentity they'd have to stumble over in the executive offices until she shed him the way she'd done with Wolcott, and then he could fire him. And if he could speed up that day, he'd damn well do it. In the meantime, to keep her and her mother happy, he'd go along with them as sociably as he did everything, even playing the proud father at the wedding. None of it would take much of his time. And none of it would last long.

I knew a Gardner once before, Felix thought. He was a nothing, too.

Paul flew to Boston a week before the wedding, scheduling his flight to arrive close to the time Ben and Allison were to arrive from Europe. It was the first time he had been back since his own wedding, eight months earlier, and as his plane flew out over the ocean and turned to come in low over the islands and bays and curving necks of land crowded with houses that formed the Massachusetts coast, he reflected that almost nothing in his life was the same as it had been when he last flew over that landscape. Then, he and Emily were poised at the edge of the extravagant success they would soon achieve. Emily had appeared twice in Eye magazine, in small spreads, and had just heard from Barry Marken that the fashion editor of Elle wanted her in Paris for a feature on new young designers; and Paul's portraits of three of Manhattan's | most prominent hostesses had brought him calls from their friends and from two of their publicity agents: the swiftest road to fame. And in those early months after they had setded into Paul's Sutton Place apartment, they had been "discovered" and had soon become one of the hottest couples on the city's social scene, invited to diimer parties, charity balls, and discos, and sought after for all the fund-raising boards in town.

Inheritance

It was a whirlwind of black-tie affairs by night and work by day that stopped only briefly when they went to Boston in May for their wedding, then picked up as soon as they ie> turned, because their marriage made them even more enchanting in a time when every social event became an occasion to learn who had divorced whom, or moved out or in with whom, or was sleeping with whom, or had wed whom.

Paul became one of the chroniclers of this scene, photographing its wealthy, powerful leaders with an eye for angle, lighting and pose that made every woman look as stunning as a dream and every man as sleekly powerful as he imagined himself to be. And Emily was a symbol they all wanted to claim as one of them, because she was the woman who had everything: wealth, background, youth, beauty and fame, and her presence was like a promise of hope to those who had not yet achieved so much.

But her fame really rested on Paul's photographs of her; they gave Jason d'Or and photographers at other magazines ideas on catching her beauty at its most tantalizing. In modeling, as in any field, tiiere are fads that are seized by the quick and promoted by the clever, and Emily's ingenuous sophistication became the rage of the year on both sides of the Atian-tic, her looks imparting a tantalizing blend of innocence and knowledge to whatever she modeled so that it looked as if it could be worn by everyone from hesitant virgins to jaded women of the world. By the time the Manhattan social season revived in October after its summer lull, Paul and Emily Jans-sen were the center of its spinning days and nights—the perfect couple: talented, beautiful, ideally matched. And if they quarreled, they never did it in public.

It was not until Thanksgiving that Paul took a night off to be alone and think. Emily was in London on an assignment for a consortium of British designers, and he hadn't felt like going to Boston for the holiday. Allison had called the day before, from Amsterdam, to tell him she and Ben would be married at Christmas, in Boston, and he had felt a sharp surge of longing, the same kind he had felt a year earlier, when he had seen Leni and her young man outside the Mayfair Regent. And he remembered what Emily had said: She should have what she wants, not what she can get. Nobody should have to settle for that,

Judith Michael

What have I settled for? he wondered. He sat in his library, where he had watched Emily's face by firelight, and thought back over the past frantic months of work and social life. His portraits of social leaders hung in Park Avenue apartments and homes throughout the world, and they illuminated conmiercial and charitable advertisements in magazines of a dozen countries. But no art or photography gallery carried them, and Paul knew why: they all looked the same and, though they were excellent, they were not art.

For months he had been telling himself that soon he would move beyond the obvious: change the lighting to heighten shadows, not disguise them; refuse to brush out the lines, creases, and pouches that made faces distinctive; and try to recapture his earlier vision and brief moments of passion. But the months had gone by, and he had done more of what people wanted, avoiding controversy, as he always did, accepting their praise in an increasingly moody silence that was hailed as re^shing modesty.

It doesn't make much sense, he brooded, sitting in his library and thinking about what he had settled for: fawning adulation, a wild social scene, and more commissions than a serious artist could accept. Owen wouldn't be impressed, he thought. In his memory he saw Owen, tall and a little stooped, his long mustache curling at the ends, his eyes dark as he scolded Paul for his restless wanderings. ""I'm finding myself," Paul had always declared, young and sure of himsetf, and Owen had shaken his head. "It'll take you a hell of a long time if you keep cluttering up your life so you never have time to do anything but make more clutter."