Lady of Fortune (81 page)

All over the United States, ordinary people were making small but spectacular fortunes. A nurse made $30,000 from stock-market tips given to her by grateful patients; an exactress gave up the stage to deal entirely in stocks; a young banker sold everything he had to buy stock in Niles-Bemend-Pond and was now set up for the rest of his life. But the soaring balloon of American business, inflated by very little more than public confidence and commercial credit, was already beginning to leak. At the absolute height of the market, over $750 million of its value came not from cash investment but from bootleg loans, and countless millions more were simply hot, Hoover-inflated air. The boom was kept aloft by nothing more than a national act of will, and by the concerted interests of a very small group of powerful speculators – men like John J. Raskob, W. C. Durant, the Fisher brothers, and Arthur Cutten, men who had bought into the market in 1928 in the certain knowledge that if
they
bought, prices would rise, and that if prices rose, the American public would be unable to resist the appeal of a surging market.

John J. Raskob, a close buddy of Al Smith, the ‘Happy Warrior' whom Herbert Hoover had decisively defeated in the 1928 elections, made so much profit out of the bull market that he decided to erect himself a monument in New York city, and call it the Empire State Building.

September 1929, was a month which Effie would remember
for the rest of her life. It was the month in which her childhood dreams finally spent themselves; the month in which she came to terms, after forty-four years, with her own character and her own life.

Many other dreams died that month. Jack Dempsey had lost his title to Gene Tunney, and Gene Tunney retired so that he could mingle with the literary set. Babe Ruth had put in a season as good as any, but his baseball career was drawing to a close. Erich Mari Remarque had published
All Quiet On The Western Front
, and killed at last the nation's romantic illusions about the war. Tilden had won his seventh and last American amateur tennis championship.

On the morning of Friday 19 October Jimmy Byrd called Effie on the telephone, and said, ‘I don't have any confirmation of this yet, but I hear that about $95 million of German war profits have found their way into Unidexter, for distribution among all the other holding companies in the Poind Corporation.'

‘You mean those German bills have been honoured?' asked Effie.

‘Sure looks like it. And that means that Robert could be getting himself ready to pull the plug on you.'

‘Thank you, Jimmy. Let me know if you hear any further news, won't you?'

‘Naturally. Oh – and thanks for the cheque.'

‘You've earned it, believe me.'

Effie called Dougal at Long Island and told him the news. Dougal said hardly anything, except, ‘Maybe it's time we asked Robert out here for another meeting. Do you think that's a good idea?'

‘Anything's better than sitting here waiting to be ruined,' said Effie.

‘All right. Drive out here this evening, and have dinner with us. I'll call Robert and ask him if he wants to spend the weekend, and talk things over.'

Effie put down the phone. She felt worried and tense, and she lit a cigarette and walked up and down the room for a while, thinking of Robert and Dougal and the implications of what Robert was doing to them. She paused by a tiny painting of bathers, which had been given to her by Henri Matisse, and smoked, and looked at it, and felt a sense of loss and frustration which was partly financial and partly sentimental.
I have to
face it
, she thought,
I'm on my own again. Have all these years really been for this, and for nothing else?

Charlene came into the room, in a candy-striped smock. She said, ‘Miss Effie, there's a gentleman.'

Effie turned, her cigarette cocked in her right hand, her right elbow cupped in her left hand. ‘Who is it? I'm out.'

‘He says his name's Watson, ma'am.'

Effie couldn't understand who it could be at first, Watson? Which Watson? But then she realized it must be Alisdair; and she hurried straight into the hallway, where Alisdair was standing waiting for her in a smart grey suit, tall and collected and smiling as if he had brought her news of the greatest financial coup the world had ever known. He looked years older, but he smelled of expensive cologne, and cigars, and money.

‘
Alisdair
,' she said, warmly.

‘Hello, Aunt Effie.'

She took his arm, and led him affectionately through to the living-room. ‘You don't have to call me “Aunt Effie” any more. You can call me “Effie”, if you care to.'

He sat down, and smiled at her. ‘I
would
care to, very much.'

‘You've been here in New York almost three weeks, almost a month, and you haven't called me,' Effie chided him.

‘Well … I've been very tied up. Father's been keeping me working until two or three in the morning.'

‘You've been
afraid
, too, in case I'm still angry with you.'

Alisdair ran his hand through his curls, and then nodded. ‘Yes. You're quite right. I've been afraid.'

‘It's so wonderful to hear a Scots accent.'

‘You still sound Scottish to me.'

‘Oh, don't you believe it. Ever since I've been out in California I've been saying “corner” instead of “coroner” and “sidewuk” instead of “pavement”. The trouble is, if you don't speak the way they do, Americans never understand you.'

Alisdair said, ‘I wanted to come in person, you know, to tell you how sorry I am.'

‘Sorry? What for?'

‘You know what for. For everything that happened last year. For the way I spoke to you. I was infatuated with the idea of being Kay's father, and I thought that just because I'd
created a child with you, we ought to love each other. I still love you, and I think I always will, but I've come to understand that we can never actually … well, you know marry or anything.'

Effie said gently, ‘Would you pour us a whisky? The decanter's on the sideboard behind you.'

Alisdair poured them each a stiff drink from a Baccarat decanter of Black & White. Effie said, ‘You've made me very happy by saying that.'

Alisdair sat down again. ‘I have to admit that what helped me most was falling in love with a very pretty young lady in London. Her name's Sara, and she's an actress.'

‘I'm glad,' said Effie. ‘Not just for you, but for Kay, too. I don't ever want her to know who her real father is. Especially since she might soon be getting a little brother or sister.'

Alisdair's eyes widened. ‘You're going to have another baby?'

‘My husband's, this time. Caldwell's.'

‘I thought you and he were –'

‘Well,' said Effie, brushing her skirt straight, ‘we are. But I shall be going back to California in a week or two, just as soon as I've managed to straighten everything out in New York, and then I don't really think that either of us will let a couple of months of separation stand in our way. If anything, we'll probably find that it's improved our marriage no end.'

Alisdair was quiet for a moment, watching her. Then he said, ‘How's my father?'

‘Dougal?' asked Effie, and Alisdair nodded.

‘He's much better than he was,' Effie said. He was suffering badly from hepatitis last year; but I think he's mostly gotten over it now.'

Alisdair sipped his whisky. Effie said, ‘I've told him that you're his son.'

‘You've
told
him?' asked Alisdair, shocked.

‘I thought it was time he knew. I didn't want a repeat performance of last year's charade.'

‘What did he say?'

‘He didn't believe me at first. But I think he does now. He doesn't quite know what to do, or say. But I know that he'll be glad to see you again.'

‘Does
father
know that he knows? I mean, Robert?'

‘I don't think so. I certainly haven't told him. In any case, I haven't spoken to Robert in weeks. The last time we met our discussion was what you might describe as heated.'

‘Oh,' nodded Alisdair, with a knowing smile. ‘The time you dropped the fish down his neck. He told me about that. He wasn't at all amused, as you can imagine.'

‘I didn't do it to amuse him.'

They talked a little about the bank, and about Edinburgh, and the stock market; but then Effie said, ‘You've been working on these German funds for your father, I suppose.'

‘You know about that?'

Effie said, ‘Robert ha sn't made any secret of it. He doesn't have to. Provided he goes through all the legal rigmarole, nobody in the government or on Wall Street is particularly worried. They're more interested in seeing the money invested in American business than they are in ethics. The only people who are going to be really furious are the French and the British.'

‘I don't think that what we're doing is unethical. I wouldn't have anything to do with it if it were.'

‘Well, no, I suppose you're right,' said Effie. ‘It was foolish of the Allies to insist on such heavy reparations from Germany in the first place. But laundering this German money is only part of the story.'

‘What do you mean?'

Effie took another cigarette from the box inside the sofa, and lit it. Then in careful detail, she explained to Alisdair how Robert had arranged the £24 million loan to tie up Watson's New York; and how he was using Effie's and Dougal's credentials to bring millions of dollars' worth of Reichsmarks into the United States.

When she had finished, she crushed out her cigarette and said, ‘There you have it. Your adoptive father has a stranglehold on your real father; and on me, too. We daren't do anything for fear of starting a run on the bank; and ruining not just our investors but ourselves, too.'

Alisdair said, ‘Isn't there any way out of it?'

‘Oh, yes, there are plenty of ways out of it,' said Effie. ‘But all of them are far too costly in terms of lost cash and lost reputation for us to contemplate. We're on the brink of a very slippery and very long slope, and all we can do is pray that Robert doesn't decide to push us down it.'

Alisdair finished his drink and set it down on the table. ‘Perhaps I should talk to him, persuade him to arrange it some other way.'

‘Do you really think he would?' asked Effie, sceptically.

Alisdair shook his head. ‘No, I don't think so. I've never been able to change his mind about anything before.'

‘In that case, I think you'd be better off keeping quiet,' said Effie. ‘But let me ask you one favour: if you do hear the slightest hint that your father is thinking of selling his own companies short, let me know at once. Can you do that?'

Alisdair said, ‘Yes, I can do that. I just wish there was more I could do.'

Effie held out her hand to him. ‘There is. I'm driving out to Long Island this evening, to see Dougal. I'd like it very much if you came with me.'

Dougal was waiting for them at the top of the steps when they arrived, leaning on a cane. As Kosczinski climbed out of the car, and walked around to open Effie's door, he took one or two steps nearer, but there he paused, waiting for Alisdair to emerge.

There was no reason for their nervousness, any more than there was any reason for their love. But when Alisdair stepped out on to the drive, and stood staring at his father in the windy, grey, October afternoon, they both faced each other with a mixture of compelling affection and undisguised trepidation. Effie, standing a little way away in her dark mink coat, watched them both and said nothing, although inside her head she was paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, over and over again. ‘
Yet each man fears the thing he loves
…'

Dougal came down the steps jerkily, unsteadily, and confronted his son with an expression on his face of wonder and pride and sudden, unexpected confidence. He understood now that nothing he had done had been wasted, because he had fulfilled the destiny for which he had been born: to establish a banking dynasty. He had succeeded where Robert had
failed, after everything. All of his struggle and all of his pain had suddenly proved worthwhile.

They shook hands, father and son. Then, with tears in his eyes, Dougal held Alisdair close to him, and hugged him tight. Neither of them spoke: Dougal because he was unable to, Alisdair because he was afraid to. But both of them knew that at last they had found the answer to their constant discontent; and what had appeared to be the confusing purpose-lessness of their lives.

Mariella appeared from the house, and stood on the top step watching them. Dougal said to Effie, ‘I've told Mariella, too.'

Effie looked up to Mariella questioningly, but Mariella smiled. ‘I am happy it has happened this way. We have a son now, even if he isn't mine. Dougal is as pleased as a child at Christmas.'

They went inside, where Rousseau the butler had already opened a bottle of Dom Perignon. Alisdair was shy, and said very little, but Dougal was so excited that he talked incessantly, and kept clapping his hands, and pacing from one side of the room to the other.

‘Of course, it's going to take both of us
years
to get used to the idea. I don't want to force myself into your life, Alisdair … I couldn't. But after Effie told me, I realised how much I'd sensed it already … that first time you came out here …'

They had dinner together and talked of Scotland, and Watson's in London, and Dougal described the old days at Baeklander Trust, and how many times he had nearly embarked on a ship back to Scotland, just to see Auld Reekie again. ‘I'll probably die now without visiting Edinburgh again,' he said, wiping champagne from his lips. ‘But now you're here, Alisdair, I don't think I need to.'

After dinner, by the fire, Alisdair said, ‘You have something of a problem with my father. I mean, with Robert.'