Tidal Wave
Authors: Roberta Latow
Tidal Wave
Roberta Latow
Copyright © 1983 by Roberta Latow
After the spirit of place, there is the spirit of friends
.
For
Penelope Midgley,
Donald Munson,
and
Claude Ury
Have Ithaca always on your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for,
But do not in the least hurry your journey.
Better that it lasts for years,
So that when you reach the island you are old,
Rich with all you have gained on the way,
Not expecting Ithaca to give you wealth.
Ithaca gave you the splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.
— Cavafy
“Please sign here, and here, and here.”
Arabella Crawford removed the top of the red lacquered Dupont fountain pen. She stared at the shiny gold point. Her hand was steady, her emotions controlled. Her face showed nothing of her feelings to the ten men seated at the huge, round, English Regency conference table. A small voice in her head kept whispering over and over again, “History, past histories.”
The room was filled with a hushed stillness and there was a distinct tension in the air. Arabella turned to the lawyer standing next to her, holding a sheaf of papers in his hand.
She said, in her firm yet soft voice, “I think this room needs fresh air.”
Then, turning her attention back to the table, she took the time to look into the eyes of the gentlemen, one at a time.
Armand Ury returned to her side after opening the French windows that led out on to the balcony overlooking the Place Vendôme, white under the first snowfall of winter in Paris.
Arabella felt a fresh cold gust of wind wrap around her ankles. It snapped her back to the reality of the moment. With her left hand she held the documents down and quickly placed her signature where she was instructed.
Armand Ury removed the papers and passed them behind Arabella to Axel Horst, who was standing to her right. Armand immediately placed several more documents before her, indicating where she was to sign.
Her beautiful mouth broke into a sweet, mysterious smile as she looked around the table yet again. Quickly she lowered
her head and continued to sign her name on the papers before her.
Axel Horst, her Swiss lawyer, examined Arabella’s signatures, witnessing each document as authentic by adding his own signature to it. He then placed each set of papers into separate folders. The little scene was played out several more times, with Arabella never looking up again until she had signed the last paper placed before her. Then, slowly, she put the top back on her pen, raised her eyes, and looked at the men.
The expression on their faces was infinitely more relaxed. Relief and a sense of calm replaced the tension that had held them so breathlessly rigid only minutes before. Axel was placing the last of the documents in the folders when Arabella rose. The men scraped their chairs back on the white marble floor and began to rise. She held up her hand and said, “No, please, gentlemen, stay where you are.”
She closed the window and returned to her seat, relaxing into her chair. She looked serene and revealed nothing of the intense feelings she held inside.
The men at the table remained silent as Axel Horst handed the folders, one at a time, to each of them in exchange for their banker’s draft. In each case he meticulously checked the amount of the bank checks against the signed documents. He completed his circle of the table, placed the small stack in front of Arabella, and waited in silence.
She looked at the sum of each, then mentally calculated the total. The men around the table appeared mesmerized by her beautiful hands, her long, slender fingers with their red lacquered nails, as she went through the drafts, assembling them into a perfect, neat pile.
She handed them to Armand, saying “All seems in order. Please deposit them as I have instructed.” Then, turning to the men, she said, “I think we should have a last drink together.”
She pressed a button on the underside of the table and rang for the butler.
Adrian Burt-Williams was the first man to speak. “Good
heavens. Surely not a ‘last’ drink? I am certain the others here feel as I do and hope you will always have an interest in your former corporations and colleagues. Should we not stay in communication?”
“Adrian, gentlemen, this
is
our last drink. On an official basis, at least. I will never have any business communications with you again.” There was a sudden flash of shocked whispers in the room. How odd of her to say that! How strange! How rude! Finally Ito Hiro stood up and said, “Madame Crawford, after creating such successes, surely you would want to keep abreast of our progress? It has, after all, been your life’s work.”
“No, dear Ito, I will not. I have thought about this long and hard. The decision was not lightly made, but after I leave this room, I will never look back. I am leaving the business world.” She smiled warmly at them and then continued. “To put it simply, gentlemen, I am taking your money and running away. I am going out there into a new world — well, a new world for me anyway — and you will be part of my past.”
They all looked relieved that she wasn’t angry with them, and more than one man appeared sad at the prospect of seeing Arabella Crawford walk away from them forever.
Quietly the butler, Rupert, came up beside her and offered her a tall crystal, tulip-shaped glass of Dom Perignon. As she lifted it off the heavy French Baroque silver tray, she bent forward and said very softly, “After you have served the champagne, please get my coat and wait for me at the conference room door.”
She stood up, the men all following suit, raised her glass, and said, “Gentlemen, no toasts please,” and took a sip. Then she casually wandered among the men, smiling, shaking hands, and kissing the cheek of several who had just bought her out of the business world for the net sum of one hundred million dollars.
Then Arabella Crawford, one of the wealthiest and most successful businesswomen in the world, casually made her
way to where Rupert stood, slipped into her dark, full-length sable coat, and walked away without looking back.
Arabella’s riches were not inherited nor the assets of a marriage or a liaison. The enormous profits she attained on this day, in her fortieth year, reflected the culmination of her own remarkable achievements. Over a period of almost eighteen years she had managed to convert a small initial investment into an international financial empire.
From the men in her life she received wisdom, support, and encouragement, but her incredible success was truly the result of her own skill, creativity, intelligence, and determination.
Armand caught sight of her as she disappeared through the door. He followed her and stood at the top of the sweeping white marble staircase. He listened to the clicking sound of her high-heeled shoes on the marble. Her step had a bounce to it, a rhythm, more like a two-step, as if she were dancing down the stairs. He smiled, thinking that it was just like the new Arabella to dance away. He was one of the intimate few who shared those rare frivolous moments that seemed to have emerged recently in the otherwise controlled and dignified Arabella Crawford.
The night before he had asked her what she was going to do with the rest of her life. He smiled to himself now, recalling her answer. She had looked up into his eyes, broken out of his arms, and slipped out of bed. She had stood tall, naked, and voluptuous in the firelight.
Suddenly, flinging her arms out, she had said, “I’m going to trip the light fantastic all the rest of the days of my life,” and she began to dance before him.
He had never seen her like that, so open, so free, so uninhibited.
Now, the dark, handsome Frenchman leaned on the heavy sculptured balustrade of the staircase and watched the swing of Arabella’s sable coat, the quick flash of her ankles as she descended.
Arabella took a few steps toward the door. He called
down in a loud whisper, “
Chérie, mon amour
….” His whisper echoed through the vast entrance hall.
She swung around, her beautiful face radiant under the shadow of her wide-brimmed brown felt hat with its band of exquisite, sapphire-blue bird-of-paradise feathers. She smiled up at him as she pulled on her beige kid gloves, saying “
Au revoir
.”
Armand quickly reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a long, slim jeweler’s box. In a louder voice he called down, “Catch,
ma chère. Bon voyage
.”
He heard the smack of the box as it hit her leather-gloved hand.
The sound of the men talking in the conference room behind him grew louder. Not wanting them to share in this good-bye, he quickly called down, “
Merci, je t’ adore. Bon chance
.”
They turned away from each other. She said to herself, “Lovely Armand,” and remembered their time together the night before.
He had said, “Let’s take a long trip together, darling. We could spend a month in the Far East, then go on to relax on a private island a friend of mine owns in the South Pacific.”
“That would be fun, but …”
“Then perhaps we’d go on to the States so your family could be at our wedding.” He held her so they could look into each others eyes.
“I know that you love me, Arabella. I know that you want to marry. We have been so —”
She had stopped him by gently putting her hand over his lips and saying “Armand, we love each other — that will always be. Please try and understand. We’ve talked about this before. Like all women, for the first years of my love life I went out into the world looking to meet my Heathcliff. It wasn’t easy but I found him. He was mine for a little while. For the rest of my life I’ve been trying to avoid looking for another. But there are an awful lot of Heathcliffs out there and you, darling, are one of them.
“I’ve been luckier than most women who long to be loved, protected by a man. One whom they can admire and respect. There are countless women who are frustrated, left longing and looking, and never have the good fortune to find such a man.
“All the men in my life so far have been the Heathcliffs most women want, crave. I searched for them, needed them — or at least I thought I needed them. I’ve loved them as I love you, for your maturity, your success, your sense of responsibility, your mind and your sexuality. But somehow, and I know you know this too, Armand, we are not
in
love. And there is a difference.”
He nodded slowly, but again held her close to him. It was a bittersweet moment. Arabella went on, telling him how she planned to live out her fantasies.
“While I’m still young and attractive, I want to go out into the world and learn all over again, with my new eyes, what the world and people are like. My new financial security will release me. I can enjoy everyone and everything for exactly what it is or is not. I’m just going to live everything and see what happens.”
Arabella sighed, then hurried through the front door onto the snow-covered steps. She took a deep breath of the cold fresh air and, wrapping her coat tight around her, turned to her butler, saying, “Thank you for everything, Rupert. I will see you soon when you and the other staff arrive in America.”
Her driver was waiting, as arranged, and she quickly slipped into the warmth of her chocolate-colored Rolls-Royce.
The heavy snow showers that had been falling all morning, covering Paris in six inches of snow, were diminishing. The sun, a dull, blurred disc of yellow in a grayish-white sky, was suddenly shining through the clouds. Large and fluffy flakes of snow were lazily drifting down, more like bits of white candy-floss than snow.
The white blanket crunched under the weight of the Rolls
as it purred its way into the traffic toward the Place de la Concorde.
Arabella felt a smile breaking across her face. Uncontainable, it burst forth into laughter. She looked at the box in her hand and, still laughing, put it in her lap.
Full of joy, she unconsciously placed her gloved hands over her face as if to hide. It was an absurd gesture so she put them down, thinking “Why not?” threw her head back and let her laughter rip and happiness fill the car.
She said aloud, “I am rich, very rich. No matter what I do for the rest of my life, I am always going to be rich!” She clapped her hands together and applauded herself, going on, “I am free. I am rich. I am free and I never have to think about money again for the rest of my life! I will never again have to exploit my mind or my soul for security. I will never have to take another step up to the next rung in the success ladder — that dangerous ladder that promises the higher you go the greater the reward, but you never realize until you’re there how far you can fall.” Arabella recalled the times her decisions and subsequent actions were thought to be grandiose or ill-advised and she was forced to defend herself publicly, to reassure her colleagues and investors and privately pray that her intuition and judgment would not fail. She was known to take risks. She had managed to overcome fear and she had never failed … and now it was time for her to reap the rewards.
“I will never have to think about proving myself to myself, the world, or anyone ever again. What bliss!”
She put her hands in her lap and in so doing touched the jeweler’s box. She thought of Armand. It had been a lovely brief romance, and she knew she would always have a dear friend in Paris. Armand, who had always been so generous in bed, in his love for her and in his gifts, had thought to bring her yet one more present.
She pressed open the catch and gasped with pleasure at the sight of the Art Deco diamond and emerald bracelet. She held it up to the light; the diamonds shot rainbows of color around her. The setting was exquisite.
She pushed down the kid glove and clasped the bracelet on her wrist, then held up her arm to admire it. She loved it. It was a delicious gift. Arabella searched through the Van Cleef & Arpels box for a card, a word, but there was nothing. How right Armand was. He understood the end and was the generous gentleman about it.
She snapped the empty box closed and placed it on the seat next to her, bent forward, and tapped her finger on the glass that divided her from the chauffeur, Oskar.
The glass slid down silently. “Yes, Madame Crawford?”
“Is everything in order? Are we on schedule?”
“Yes and no, madame. Everything is in order but we are not on schedule. We are running late. But a message came through on the car telephone from Missy. She asked that you be told not to be concerned. The ship will wait. She and all the luggage are at customs and will meet you there. Xu, the change of clothes you asked for, and the dogs are at the heliport.”
Missy, her secretary, and Xu, her personal servant, were her constant and loyal companions and would accompany her on her journey from France.
