The Rich Are Different (16 page)

Vicky was twenty-one, and since her debut three years before her life had been conducted in the tradition of the most breathless romantic novel. She had fallen in and out of love at least a dozen times and had been pursued by a host of ardent admirers ranging from fortune-hunters to rich rakes, from self-important idlers to humble clergymen and from sighing grandfathers to besotted youths. During these trying times I had almost expired with the torments of fatherhood, but eventually Vicky had become engaged to an admirable young man who had just graduated from Harvard Law School and was anxious to begin a career on Wall Street. However, no sooner had I heaved a sigh of relief than disaster had struck; the young man had become deranged over a forty-year-old actress and the engagement had
collapsed. As Vicky sank into a decline and I returned to the torments of fatherhood, my mother had exercised her practical streak with commendable speed and borne Vicky off to Europe immediately after my marriage to Sylvia.

Fortunately the young are very resilient. It took me much longer than Vicky to recover from her broken engagement, and presently my daughter was writing me ecstatic letters about the glories of the Italian lakes. If she had not spoilt her letter by saying she was seriously thinking of entering a convent I might have stopped worrying about her long before she returned, radiant as ever, to New York.

Within two weeks she had fallen in love with Jay and Jay was mooning around Wall Street in a manner recalling the unknown narrator of Tennyson’s poem who had loitered yearningly around Locksley Hall.

My first instinct was to ship Vicky back to Europe. I was actually sitting down with my mother to plot the details of the conspiracy when my mother succumbed to snobbery and aroused all my most contrary instincts.

‘For after all,’ she said, ‘who are the Da Costas? Everyone knows the first Da Costa was a Portuguese Jew.’

It was a fatal error. If she had simply said ‘a Portuguese merchant’ I would have taken no notice for the first Da Costa had indeed fitted this description. He had reached America soon after the War of Independence, established a small trading post in Boston and prospered in the best American tradition. His descendants had been marrying tirelessly into the best Anglo-Saxon stock ever since and had been practising episcopalians for at least one hundred years.

‘Jason Da Costa,’ I said to my mother, ‘is no more a Portuguese Jew than I’m a Dutch patroon. And even if he worshipped in a synagogue I would consider it a mark in his favour.’

‘Well, of course, I know you chose to work in a Jewish profession, but—’

‘Mama,’ I said, very angry by this time, ‘the vast majority of bankers in this country are not Jewish. They’re of British stock, Yankees just like you and I, and anyway it was a privilege, not a disgrace, to work in one of the finest investment banking houses in New York …’ And so the well-worn argument continued, my mother insisting that she wished health, wealth and happiness to every Jew in the land – so long as they neither married her granddaughter nor crossed her threshold – and I retorting heatedly that the German Jewish aristocracy of New York did not care about her petty threshold, and would have considered a marriage with a gentile to be a mésalliance. My mother and I both knew that the one subject we had to avoid was my loyalty to the Jews, and so when we made the mistake of dragging the subject up we were even more angry with ourselves than with each other.

Finally we both apologized, but the damage was done and I no longer wanted to engage my mother’s help in saving Vicky from Jay.

Although my mother had picked a ridiculous objection to the match, there were several good reasons why I did not want Jay and Vicky to marry. The
first was that Jay’s reputation with women was second only to mine and I was sure his infatuation with her would never last. The second was that Vicky appeared to have fallen in love on the rebound, never a stable state of affairs. And the third was that my desire to have my revenge on Jay for past humiliations remained undiminished.

If he married my daughter I would have to forget, for Vicky’s sake, the dreams of revenge which had sustained me when I had been working as an office boy for five dollars a week. On the other hand … I considered the other hand. I thought of that great palace at Willow and Wall, I dreamed of a mighty front-rank house called Van Zale’s, I pictured myself sitting at last in Lucius Clyde’s chair. Even if I had to forgo my revenge I could still satisfy my ambition.

I thought again of Vicky and Jay, and now as I thought of them my first feelings of revulsion towards the match faded away. I told myself sternly that I must be realistic and not indulge in some over-emotional Victorian response. I had to draw a line between exercising reasonable care as a father and acting as if I were incapable of letting my daughter go, and to draw the line I had to face the facts. Vicky was obviously going to marry someone, and since she was past twenty it was equally obvious that she was going to marry soon. Since this was so, wouldn’t it be better if she married a man of experience instead of some callow youth who hardly knew what he was doing? If she married Jay, she would be marrying an eminent man, rich, handsome and brilliant in his field, who would look after her devotedly for two years and possibly three. It would be a good experience for Vicky, and when she emerged from the inevitable divorce she would have sufficient maturity to cope with the fortune-hunters and find at last a man who was truly suited to her.

I began to look with increasing favour on the marriage, and although I could still have sent Vicky to Europe I did nothing. I stood by and watched as they became hopelessly entangled with one another, and when Jay approached me at last to seek permission to propose, I gave him my blessing without hesitation and even offered him my hand to seal the deal.

[5]

They were very happy. Vicky seemed to dance through married life with such joy that her feet barely touched the ground and Jay underwent one of those curious changes of personality which occasionally overtake middle-aged men who fall in love with youthful fervour. The shark had been transformed into a dolphin who did nothing but smile and frolic in the sunniest of waters. I got the merger on the exact terms I wanted, and in the October of 1913 I was sitting at last in my uncle’s chair. He died shortly afterwards. One of the last things he did was to warn Jay against me and tell him he had made a terrible mistake in consenting to the merger.

‘Funny old guy!’ said Jay affectionately as he showed me the letter.

Frankly Jay
was of little use at the bank at that time since his honeymoon mentality made it difficult for him to concentrate on such delights as the financing of a new stretch of tunnel for New York City’s subway system, and it was a relief to me when eighteen months after the wedding he took Vicky for a protracted ramble through America. He was supposed to be doing business in a number of major cities, but I knew perfectly well this was just an excuse for a second honeymoon.

What I did not know was that Vicky was upset that she had been married eighteen months without conceiving a child and that the doctor had advised a change of scenery to solve the problem.

As soon as they returned from California Vicky called on me with her good news.

‘You’ve told her the risk, of course,’ said my mother to me in private, and when she saw my expression she exclaimed: ‘Merciful heaven, doesn’t she know?’

‘I couldn’t speak of it.’

‘Charlotte told Mildred!’

‘And Mildred took no notice.’

‘It’s just Mildred’s good fortune that Emily and Cornelius are both healthy, although I do declare that when I heard Cornelius suffered from asthma … but Mildred assures me that that’s not a euphemism for something worse.’

‘Vicky’s always been healthy – it never seems to pass through the female—’

‘Sheer coincidence. The truth is the Van Zales born over the past three generations have been predominantly males and so naturally males have been predominantly affected. I’ve never been able to believe this dreadful affliction discriminates between the sexes.’

‘Mama, I’m sorry, but I can’t tell Vicky. I can’t talk about it. It’s beyond me.’

‘Well, naturally you mustn’t tell her now – you’d destroy her peace of mind for the next few months. But she should be told afterwards and if you can’t tell her I shall. I’m surprised Jay hasn’t said anything. He knows your circumstances, and – dear God, Paul, what is it now?’

‘I told Jay it wasn’t hereditary.’

‘Oh Paul – my dear …’ She was incapable of reproaching me. She was the one person who knew exactly how much I had suffered in the past, and I knew in turn about that unique and underrated suffering visited on the parents of a chronically sick child.

‘It’s all over now,’ I said. ‘It’s exorcized. It’s finished. Charlotte’s descendants are all healthy and mine will be healthy too. I’ve been well without a single relapse for over thirty years.’

‘I know, dearest … a miracle … if you only knew how often I’d gone down on my knees and thanked God – but there! I can see I’d better start getting down on my knees again and praying for Vicky. You’d better start too. How long is it since you were in church, Paul?’

Drawing a
temporary veil over my agnosticism I accompanied my mother to church the following Sunday, but in the end our prayers came to nothing. Vicky lost the baby, and the miscarriage was so severe that the doctor recommended a year’s delay before she began a second pregnancy.

It seemed hardly the moment to inform Vicky about the family weakness, and my mother herself said she would wait before embarking on such a conversation.

‘The whole episode of the miscarriage is Jay’s fault from start to finish!’ I exploded to Elizabeth. ‘He should have wiped the blood from his face after he was hit by that scrap of tile which fell from the roof. No wonder Vicky fainted with shock when he walked through the door! It would make any pregnant woman miscarry to see her husband walking around as if he were fresh from some French battlefield …’

Elizabeth told me I should calm down before my anger upset Vicky, but Vicky was so upset already that she was barely aware how distraught I was. Jay was distraught too, and when I thought he was being ineffectual and he thought I was being interfering we exchanged sharp words. Finally he took more leave from the office and sailed away with Vicky on his yacht for a two-month winter cruise in the Caribbean.

When they returned and I saw Vicky was radiant again I felt so enormously relieved that I decided to forgive Jay for every ounce of his stupidity.

My forgiveness lasted less than five seconds.

‘Wonderful news, Papa – a miracle! I’m going to have another baby right away …’

As soon as Jay and I were alone I said: ‘I thought the doctor advised—’

‘Oh, we saw another doctor in Palm Beach,’ he said glibly, turning away from me a split second after I had seen the guilt in his eyes. ‘Vicky’s fine.’

I was so outraged that it took me several seconds before I could say: ‘She should have the pregnancy terminated.’

‘Nonsense. She’s doing well and anyway she would never consent to it.’

‘But—’

‘Paul,’ he said with the brutality I could remember from those faraway summers at Newport, ‘this is none of your goddamned business. You’re not Vicky’s husband.’

‘If I were,’ I said, ‘she wouldn’t be pregnant now, I can assure you.’ Then I turned on my heel and left him.

It was the only honest conversation we ever had on the subject and during the remainder of Vicky’s pregnancy we never referred to it again.

She became unwell, always tired, always pale, always struggling with discomfort. I saw the gradual fading of her radiant vitality, and long afterwards I remembered that spring and summer of 1916 when I had called daily at Jason Da Costa’s house and watched my daughter die.

The baby was born soon after noon in mid-September. Jay had not come to the office but had called to tell me the baby was on its way.

‘You’ll let me know as soon as—’

‘Sure.’

I heard
nothing. Naturally I could not work so telling my staff I was not to be disturbed I sat alone in the office to wait for the telephone call which never came.

At three o’clock my secretary announced that Elizabeth had come to see me. I remember thinking without emotion how extraordinarily understanding it was of Sylvia to send Elizabeth to break the news. I said politely that I would see her and she was ushered into my office.

She told me. My rage was so violent that I never noticed the sinister pain building behind my eyes, and I was still spewing out abuse when suddenly I looked past Elizabeth and saw the terrifying distortion at the far end of my vision. Comprehension burst upon me but it was too late and there was nothing I could do. Thirty years of perfect health dissolved in far less than thirty seconds, and in those last few moments I was back once more among all the horrifying memories of my childhood and the roof of hell was grinding shut above my head.

Later I found Elizabeth was holding me in her arms, and when I saw the pity in her eyes I knew I could never sleep with her again.

She took me home. I felt deaf, dumb and blind with pain, unable to perform even the simplest tasks.

At the funeral four days later I saw Jay for the first time since Vicky’s death. The baby, who was later to die in infancy, was still alive so there was no double funeral. No doubt that was just as well. I had not expected to be shocked by Jay’s appearance, but when I saw his eyes, bloodshot with drinking, and his hands, trembling whenever he unclenched his fists, even I was appalled. He cried throughout the service. He kept rubbing his knuckles against his eyes like a little boy and his sons had to pass him a succession of handkerchiefs.

My eyes were dry. I had obtained some medication for my illness – there was a new drug called phenobarbital which had been produced in 1912 – and I had drugged myself into a stupor. All I wanted to do was sleep.

After the funeral I shut myself in my house and refused to see anyone. No one thought this odd, since Vicky’s death was certainly enough to send me into seclusion, and it was only my mother who guessed I was suffering from more than my bereavement. After a week she insisted on seeing me. She was an old woman by that time and had not long to live but as usual her mind was sharp and clear.