The Rich Are Different (21 page)

He had a high forehead, deep humorous lines about his straight mouth, and brilliant dark eyes.

‘Sylvia! You look wonderful!’ I had expected him to speak with the English accent he sometimes affected but he did not. His voice wrapped itself effortlessly around the conventional words and infused them with immense warmth and sincerity. ‘How are you?’

I had carefully prepared a series of non-committal opening responses but now found myself speechless. I was so ashamed. As his hands clasped mine my face turned upwards automatically and in a flash he had kissed me on the lips. At once the press swarmed forward in delight and somehow I produced a smile for the cameras, but although I leant on Paul’s arm for support he had already glanced away from me to acknowledge the presence of his favourite partner.

‘Steve!’

‘Welcome back, Paul!’

They shook hands. I stood alone, hoping he would not linger to talk to the press, but when the reporters showered him with questions he naturally stopped to answer them. Paul was a master of creating a smooth public personality for the newspapers.

‘Mr Van
Zale, is it true you plan to retire permanently to Europe?’

‘At my age? Why, I’ve barely embarked on my career!’

‘Can you tell us what’s going to happen to the market?’

‘It will fluctuate.’

Everyone laughed. A dozen plebeian faces gazed at him with affectionate admiration, spellbound by his patrician elegance.

‘And Mr Van Zale, how does it feel to be—’

‘—to be back? Gentlemen, you know what a New Yorker I am! What could be better than being back in the greatest city on earth—’ His arm slid smoothly around my waist again ‘—with the most beautiful woman in the world? And now if you’ll excuse me – I haven’t seen my wife in months and I’m naturally anxious to make up for lost time …’

The reporters tittered sycophantically and cast admiring glances in my direction while the photographers indulged in a final orgy of picture-taking.

‘This way, my dear,’ said Paul.

As soon as we reached the car he said to Steve Sullivan: ‘Pretend you’re going to the office. You don’t want to look as if you’re intruding on my reunion with my wife.’

‘Sure.’ Steve disappeared just as Wilson, our senior chauffeur, stepped forward beaming from ear to ear.

‘Good-day, sir – welcome back to New York!’

‘Thank you, Wilson! It’s wonderful to be back!’ He really did sound as if he meant it.

I felt confused, not knowing any longer what to believe. I still had not said a word but now I had to find something to say for we were alone in the back of the automobile and Paul’s bodyguard Bob Peterson had closed the glass partition to give us privacy.

‘You look awfully well, Paul.’

‘I feel marvellous!’

I could not quite look at his face, and I was aware that he was looking out of the window as if he could not quite look at mine. Suddenly I had a moment of complete despair. I had spent hours during the past months trying to decide how I could cope with this revival of his old love affair with Europe, but now I was face to face with the problem I felt as helpless as I had felt in 1917 when we had started our two-year stay in London. The girl, Dinah Slade, did not concern me; he would have had no trouble discarding her as he discarded all the other women who attracted him, but Europe … One can fight another woman, but how can one fight an entire civilization? In theory I admired Europe, but in practice I had found it unbearable. I shuddered as I remembered that oppressive grandeur, the crushing sense of times past, the strangeness, the sense of being cut off from all familiar customs, standards and ideas. I had hated being a foreigner and I had longed for my home. But Paul had felt just as much at ease in Europe as in New York, and possessed an astonishing gift for achieving a dual nationality. His secret, as I had discovered so painfully when I had been with him in England, was that he had a dual personality. The American Paul, who had
resurfaced on our return to New York in 1919, was the Paul I had married while the English Paul was the foreigner who would always remain a stranger to me.

I wondered if he had ever given me more than a passing thought during those lost months near the Norfolk coast that summer, but I doubted it. When Paul was mesmerized by Europe all memory of his American life faded into the distant background, and his waking hours became dominated by medieval art and architecture, classical ruins and museums, historic libraries and monuments. No mistress could have been more demanding than the all-embracing silken net of Europe’s interminable past.

He had decided what to say to break the silence. I felt his hand slip winningly into mine. ‘Well,’ he said in a cheerful voice, ‘I lost my head and my heart but thank God not my homing instinct! I can’t tell you how good it feels to be home … Ah, I see the Fifth Avenue traffic is as appalling as ever! Is it true they’re going to bring in those traffic towers by Christmas? That should make a difference if anyone takes any notice of them … Now how many stores have crept further uptown in my absence, and which restaurants have disappeared? Tiffany’s is still there – and Lord and Taylor …’ We moved uptown through the Thirties into the Forties. ‘Delmonico’s still on its last legs, I see! And Sherry’s … De Pinna … St Patrick’s – Gothic as ever! … The Plaza … The Park …’ He sighed over the landmarks as if they were long-lost friends, and summoning the courage to look at him directly I saw his eyes were sparkling and his smile was radiant. ‘I love it all!’ he exclaimed laughing as he turned to me, and I thought: yes, you love places, cultures, civilizations, but not people. I had never once heard him say ‘I love you’ either to me or to anyone else.

Our glances met at last, and suddenly I saw beyond his exuberance to his concern and anxiety. The English Paul with his crushing indifference had vanished and I was once more in the presence of the American Paul who was so proud of his marriage and who so intensely wanted all to be well between us.

‘Paul …’ Tears sprang to my eyes.

‘Ah Sylvia, don’t be sad!’ he exclaimed impulsively, and when he tilted my face to his I was a slave to his quicksilver moods again, overpowered by his vitality and his charm. ‘If you knew how glad I am that I decided to come home …’

He never finished his sentence and I never gave him the chance to do so. He drew me to him, I slipped my arms around his neck, and as he began to shower me with kisses the tears streamed down my face to wash away the last traces of my pride.

[2]

We lived in a fifty-room house which faced the Park on Fifth Avenue. It was built in the classical style with pillars, porticos and long symmetrical windows, and certainly looked stylish although, as my housekeeper was always
telling me, it was not an easy house to run. Paul had had it built after we were married, and when I had remarked vaguely that it was a pity townhouse gardens always had to be so small, he bought the house next door, demolished it and had the ground suitably landscaped for me. He even had a tennis court made as well as an indoor swimming-pool. I did enjoy the garden but when we first moved into the house I was more absorbed in choosing which rooms would be set aside for the nursery.

Those days seemed long ago now.

My responsibility as Paul’s wife was to supervise his domestic affairs, organize his social calendar, represent him on various charitable committees and see that he was never troubled by details which would unnecessarily consume his time. It was a demanding position but I enjoyed it, and if I had merely been Paul’s employee I could have handled my duties tranquilly. The trouble was that being Paul’s wife was far more difficult than being Paul’s employee.

Paul’s shining virtue was his honesty. He did not live as other people lived and his standards were hardly those of the conventional world, but he had his own code of honour and he stuck to it through thick and thin. Before he embarked on either marriage or an affair he always told the woman exactly what he expected of her and what she could expect of him, and if he ever made a promise to her he kept it. He never promised anyone fidelity, a calm life or peace of mind, and yet in his own way he could be both loyal and trustworthy. I knew that so long as I did my job well he would never discard me to run off with someone else; I knew he was genuinely proud of me and always praised me to his friends, and I knew I occupied a special place in his life. Knowing these things did not make my difficulties disappear but it did make them easier to endure. I accepted the fact that his work came first and that the bank consumed enormous amounts of his time. I accepted the fact that for a man who rarely drank or smoked women were an inevitable vice, and I accepted too that for Paul a casual liaison was of no more importance than a hard set of tennis or a fast swim in the pool. He lived with tremendous pressures and it was vital that he could relax whenever he wanted in whatever way he pleased. Yet acceptance was hard. There were so many evenings I spent alone, but I loved Paul and I knew it was futile to try to change him. I had to accept him as he was.

Once long ago when we were first married I had thought I could change him. I was only twenty-five then, and although I had been married before I was still naïve. I had thought that if I loved him enough he would never look at anyone else, and even later when I was disillusioned I still thought I could put matters right in the simplest of ways.

I can still remember the appalled expression in his eyes when I had told him I was pregnant.

‘But you told me you couldn’t carry a child!’ he said accusingly as if I had been guilty of some gross deception, and when one look at my expression told him how insensitive his response had been, he began to talk rapidly about his horror of childbirth. His first wife had died from some postpartum complication
and he had blamed himself terribly; for months after her death he had been plagued with guilt and when he eventually recovered from the tragedy he had decided he wanted no part in any future pregnancy.

It was not until I miscarried again that he tried to tell me he did not like children. It was quite impossible to believe him. He idolized his daughter Vicky, and it took no modern psychiatrist to interpret the role Paul’s ambitious young protégés played in his life. However I did believe that for some reason he was afraid of fathering another child and I became determined to find out what that reason was.

Summoning all my courage I called on my mother-in-law, an aristocratic, erudite and forceful old lady who by some miracle had always approved of me, and asked her outright if she knew of a reason for Paul’s fear.

‘I can tell you nothing,’ she said, neither hostile nor sympathetic but merely neutral. ‘You must ask Paul.’

Paul’s sister Charlotte was dead by then, but the next time I saw her daughter Mildred I made further inquiries.

‘My dear, I’m just Paul’s niece!’ said Mildred. ‘What would I know about anything like that?’

I had an absurd impulse to discuss the problem with Elizabeth Clayton, the woman who had been Paul’s mistress on and off for more than twenty years, but of course that was impossible. It was not until Paul’s daughter Vicky died that Elizabeth and I became close friends.

I was very fond of Vicky. She did not resemble Paul greatly in looks but whenever I was with her I was reminded of him constantly. She had that same zest, that same quick mind, that same source of ready humour, but where Paul was hard, she was sensitive, generous and sweet-natured; she had all Paul’s warmth without the layer of steel underneath. Paul spoiled her abominably but somehow it never mattered. She had the humour to see the absurdity of the pedestal on which he wanted to place her, and the innate good sense not to think of herself as a fairy-tale princess who could have everything she wished. Paul’s mother had brought her up and this stroke of fortune undoubtedly saved her from becoming unbearable. Old Mrs Van Zale was the sort of woman who stood no nonsense from anyone, and Vicky was a glowing example of a sensible balanced upbringing.

I can vividly recall the panic which swept over me when I realized someone would have to break the news of her death to Paul.

It was not Vicky’s husband who telephoned me with the news but Stewart, Jay’s elder son by his first marriage, and as soon as the call had finished I rushed to Paul’s mother. But shock and grief made her cold. When I cried in despair that I did not know how to tell Paul she merely said: ‘It’s your duty,’ and after that there was nothing I could do but leave her to grieve alone. I was crying when I left her house. The tragedy of Vicky’s death seemed far more than I could cope with, and finally I became so desperate that I turned to the only other person in New York who could help me, Elizabeth Clayton at her house on Gramercy Park.

‘I know
it’s shameful, Elizabeth, I know I’m being weak, but—’

‘I’ll tell him,’ said Elizabeth.

I never found out what happened between them because neither of them ever spoke of the meeting, but I always remembered how Elizabeth had come to my rescue and Elizabeth always remembered how I had paid her the ultimate compliment of asking her to take my place at Paul’s side. The incident created a strange bond between us, and not long afterwards when Paul himself promised me the affair was finished my natural awkwardness with Elizabeth dissolved and we began to meet occasionally for lunch. I was worried about Paul’s health at the time, and it was a relief to have someone to confide in.

‘He has this awful fear of fainting,’ I said. ‘I think it must be some legacy from his childhood asthma, although I don’t like to ask him about it.’

‘No, never discuss his delicate childhood with him, Sylvia. He hates to be reminded of it. As for his present health I shouldn’t worry too much about it – he’ll recover soon enough once he gets to Europe.’

How right she was! But then Elizabeth always did seem to understand Paul much better than I did, and I could not help but think it strange that he had never married her. She was only a year younger than he was, and very grand in a quiet dignified intellectual way which had deeply intimidated me when we had first met. I was not her social inferior for both my parents had come from families well known along the Eastern Seaboard and our wealth had sprung from land, not from a vulgar enterprise such as mining or railroad expansion, yet Elizabeth always made me feel as gauche as a girl whose father had made a fortune out of hatpins. Nor was I uninterested in culture. I had always enjoyed my novels and my evenings at the theatre, but whenever Paul and Elizabeth drifted into a discussion of some fine point in French literature I would feel as idiotic as any retarded servant-girl fresh from some charitable institution.