Sins of the Fathers (15 page)

‘But she wouldn’t be isolated! I’d marry her – of course I’d marry her! We’d have a nice new home with one of those modern
kitchens where she can practise all those Creole recipes, and we’d have three or four kids, and … why are you looking at me
like that?’

The bell rang, and turning abruptly away from Kevin I unlatched the door.

Cornelius, looking chilled and delicate, walked past me without a word and halted beneath the centre light in the hall. His
fists were shoved deep into the pockets of his pants. He was huddled in his corduroy jacket as if the temperature outside
was below zero.

‘Sam, can I see you alone, please?’ He did not look at Kevin.

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘
No
, God damn it! Stop arguing and get into the den!’

We went into the den.

‘Have some brandy, Neil,’ said Kevin.

‘No thanks. Kevin, how the hell did you get in on this act?’

‘I might ask you the same question! Sam and I have just agreed it’s inexplicable that you and Teresa should have ended up
in bed together. How did it happen?’

Cornelius swung to face me. ‘Sam, do we really have to air our most private troubles in front of someone who isn’t interested
in women and therefore can’t understand a single word we say?’

‘I’m very interested in women,’ said Kevin, getting up to leave. ‘Probably more interested than you are. But I agree I’m not
interested in seducing my best friend’s girl. I leave that kind of pastime entirely to men like you.’

‘Stay where you are, Kevin,’ I said abruptly. ‘He’s only trying to get rid of you because he’s planned the entire conversation
on the basis that there would be no third party present.’

Cornelius sat down very suddenly on the edge of the couch, and without a word Kevin brought a third glass from the living-room
and poured out the brandy. We all drank in silence, and when I saw Cornelius was drinking fastest of all I felt better. As
soon as my nerves were steady I said: ‘Okay, I’m listening. Talk. But tell me the truth because if you start lying to me I’ll—’

‘Okay,’ said Cornelius rapidly. ‘Okay, okay.’

I waited. Kevin waited. Cornelius looked increasingly miserable but finally said: ‘It was all kind of an accident. I was feeling
upset. Personal problems. But I’d like to make it clear that I love my wife and if you think I’m on the verge of divorce you
couldn’t be further from the truth.’

No one argued with him. We went on drinking and waiting.

‘I had to talk to someone,’ said Cornelius, ‘but I didn’t know anyone suitable. Maybe I should have gone to a call-girl, but
I didn’t think I wanted sex and anyway I don’t approve of that kind of thing. Finally I decided to go to see you, Kevin, because
you always seem to cheer me up if I feel depressed—’

‘Make up your mind,’ said Kevin. ‘One moment you’re behaving as if my sexual preferences make me some kind of moron and the
next moment you’re saying you were craving my company.’

‘Oh, hell! Listen, I’m sorry—’

‘Okay, forget that. Go on. You wanted to talk to me – so you arrived at my house and asked for Teresa. Let’s hear you talk
your way out of that one.’

‘I only asked where she was because I wanted to talk to you on your own! But you were in such a filthy mood that you gave
me no chance to explain anything!’

‘This is all so unlikely,’ said Kevin, ‘that I suppose it just has to be true. But can you please explain why, if your visit
was so spontaneous, Teresa had spent at least two hours cooking dinner for you?’

‘I don’t think she was cooking specifically for anyone. She said cooking was therapy – she liked to cook when her work wasn’t
going well. She said she was depressed about everything, so depressed that she’d cancelled a big date with you, Sam—’

‘—so the two of you sat down in the kitchen,’ I said, painfully remembering the abandoned
filé gumbo
and the bottle of California red, ‘and had dinner.’

‘That still leaves you a long way from the attic,’ said Kevin cynically to Cornelius. ‘What happened next?’

‘Well, I didn’t feel like talking but I was grateful to her for being hospitable so I felt I ought to make an effort at conversation.
I asked her if she’d seen the Braque Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and we talked about modern art for a time and
I told her about the Kandinsky which I’ve just bought for my office—’

‘All right, we get it. You gossiped about art. And then I guess she invited you upstairs to see her pictures.’

‘Wrong,’ said Cornelius. ‘She didn’t. She tried to hand me some garbage about how her paintings weren’t good enough for anyone
to see. Of course I was fascinated. Jesus, when I think of all the artists in New York who try to ram their stuff down my
throat … and here was this girl behaving as if she’d rather die than let me look at her work. “It’s just junk!” she kept saying.
“Only junk!” “So what?” I said. “I see a lot of junk in the art world. Junk holds no terrors for me, none at all.” And I set
off up the stairs to the attic. She ran after me and all the way upstairs she kept saying she was no good, useless, a fifth-rate
Norman Rockwell. I thought it was cute she should be so shy … Anyway I got up to the attic and took a look at the pictures
and they weren’t bad at all, in fact some of them I liked very much. The style is American primitive, of course, but she’s
got strong classical overtones in her draftsmanship. I said: “Your work reminds me of Breughel,” and she said: “That’s the
most wonderful thing anyone’s ever said to me,” and suddenly … well, I don’t know … she looked so sweet and earnest, and …
the bed was right there and … it happened.’

He stopped. When nobody said anything he drained his glass of brandy. ‘Of course it was unforgivable,’ he said at last. ‘I
won’t make excuses for myself except to say that I was very upset – emotionally unbalanced by my private problems—’

I lost my temper and sprang to my feet. ‘Are you trying to tell me that’s the whole story?’ I said, my voice shaking with
rage. ‘Do you really think I’m going to believe this fairytale?’

Kevin’s eyes widened. Cornelius looked sick.

‘I told you not to lie to me!’ I shouted. ‘I warned you—’

Kevin stepped between us. ‘Take it easy, Sam. What makes you so sure he’s lying?’

‘He’s telescoped two separate occasions into one!’ I elbowed him aside. ‘You first slept with her the very night you both
met, didn’t you?’ I shouted at Cornelius. ‘You slept with her last Wednesday! That was the night you had your big row with
Alicia as the result of my revealing to her that you wanted me to marry Vicky. And it was the next morning – Thursday – that
you nearly passed out with asthma in your office when I told you I planned to marry Teresa. She’d given you the impression
that her affair with me was over and you’d assumed it was as much my decision as hers – you were horrified when you discovered
my feelings for her were far stronger than you’d been led to believe! In fact you were so bursting with remorse that ever
since you’ve been bending over backwards to be nice to me, telling me to forget about marrying Vicky, telling me not to worry
about the Hammaco disaster, offering me your private plane for a weekend in Bermuda—’

‘Right,’ said Cornelius. ‘Right. Absolutely right. Yes, that was the way it was. It was all her fault for giving me a false
impression of the way things really were. I’d never have deliberately taken Teresa away from you, Sam, I swear it.’

‘Then if that’s the way it was, you sonofabitch, why
did you go back to her tonight
when you knew beyond any shadow of doubt how I felt about her?’

‘She invited me,’ said Cornelius.

Kevin had to restrain me from hitting him. Words streamed from my mouth but I was speaking German and no one could understand.
I groped for the right words but my vocabularies were inextricably mixed and at last I gave up, slumped down on the couch
and put my head in my hands.

‘I didn’t want to tell you that,’ said Cornelius, ‘because I knew you’d be hurt. That’s why I tried to make out that last
Wednesday’s scene happened tonight. Last Wednesday happened just as I’ve
described except that you’d gone to bed, Kevin, by the time I got back to your house, and Teresa, who was clearing up the
jambalaya in the kitchen, invited me to have some coffee instead of some
filé gumbo
. As I said, it was all a sort of casual accident which I’d made up my mind was never going to be repeated. And then late
last night at the office – after you’d gone home, Sam—’ He stopped.

‘Go on,’ said Kevin when I still could not speak.

‘Teresa called me and invited me to dinner tonight. I said: “You’ve got one hell of a nerve,” but she couldn’t see it. “No
man owns me,” she said. “I’ll do what I like. I’m sorry for Sam,” she said. “He’s a nice guy. But he’s not for me and never
will be.” “Okay,” I said, “if that’s the way you feel so be it, but you’d better damn well straighten things out with Sam
so that he knows where he stands.” “Oh sure,” she said, “but I’m fond of Sam and I don’t want to hurt him more than I have
to – I’ve got to find the right moment to tell him.” “Find it real soon,” I said, and hung up. Then I sat around and thought
about the situation. I knew I was being stupid. I knew it would be much better to leave her alone. But you see, I had these
problems—’ He stopped again. ‘I can’t explain any further.’

There was a silence. I suddenly felt very, very tired, so tired that even my rage towards him was impossible to sustain. I
myself might have made his mistakes if I had been labouring under similar misapprehensions, and I believed him when he said
he had only lied to save me from further unhappiness. It would have been so much easier for me to have thought of him as the
aggressor with Teresa the reluctant victim. The thought that their roles had been reversed was intolerable to me.

‘I won’t go back to her,’ said Cornelius at last. ‘I couldn’t. Not after this.’

I repeated the words I had spoken in the attic. ‘Take her. She’s yours.’

Kevin said strongly: ‘I think you should talk to Teresa before you make any final judgement on the situation.’

‘Kevin, can’t you see that I’ve been given the gate in the biggest possible way? If it hadn’t been Neil it would have been
someone else. Teresa was evidently ready to move on. Perhaps I’ve subconsciously known that ever since she started inventing
excuses not to see me.’

‘Yes, but …’ Kevin pushed back his hair in a distracted gesture. ‘There’s a lot I still don’t understand about this,’ he said
finally. ‘We now know Neil had certain unspecified personal problems which made him act out of character, but what we still
don’t know is why Teresa acted out of character – why she ditched you in the
worst possible way by two-timing you with your best friend. I just don’t understand that at all.’

I was so exhausted I could barely shrug my shoulders. ‘Neil can talk art to her. He’s better-looking than I am. Isn’t it just
a question of trading in last year’s automobile for a newer more exciting model?’

There was a slight pause before Kevin said gently: ‘Sam, are you sure you’ve ever really known Teresa? She’s not just a facile
girl who’d carelessly trade you in for a better-looking partner who can talk art with her! She’s a complicated woman who’s
apparently decided – for reasons I can’t begin to fathom – that Neil can help her sort out her problems better than you can.’
He set down his glass and moved towards the door. ‘You go to Germany, Sam,’ he said, still speaking gently but no longer looking
at me, ‘and you find one of those famous women who think of nothing but
Kinder
,
Küche
and
Kirche
. Believe me, you’d never be happy with someone like Teresa. You can’t recognize the conflicts arising out of her work and
even if you could I doubt if you could cope with them … Come on, Neil, let’s go. I think it’s time we gave Sam a chance to
recover.’

Cornelius lingered in the hall. ‘Sam, we’ll get over this, won’t we? I know it’s a terrible thing to have happened, but—’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake get the hell out and leave me alone!’

Cornelius trailed away, a small forlorn figure with a pinched expression.

When they had gone I remained in the hall until I heard the whine of the elevator descending to the lobby, but at last when
the ensuing silence became too great to endure I headed blindly back to the brandy bottle to put myself beyond the reach of
my pain.

[5]

She came to see me the next day. She wore a neat black coat and skirt, a frilly white blouse and a little black hat with a
feather in it. I hardly recognized her.

I was hung over and not thinking clearly. When I heard her voice on the intercom my first thought was that she wanted me back.
It was only when I saw the formality of her clothes that I realized the affair was not to be resurrected from the grave.

‘Hi,’ she said awkwardly, her hands twisting the strap of her purse. ‘It was nice of you to let me come up. I promise this
won’t take long.’

Unable to speak I opened the door wider, and as she passed me I
had a strong urge to take her in my arms. But before I could move she said in a low voice: ‘I came because I owed you two
things: an apology and an explanation.’

I pulled down the shades of my personality so that my pain would remain private, and suddenly I saw my so-called ‘professional
charm’ for the defence that it was, a suit of armour protecting me from the rigours of the life I had chosen for myself. I
tried to discard the armour but no discarding was possible. It was as much a part of me as a skin-graft and if I tore it away
I knew I would bleed to death.

‘Well, I guess I could use an apology!’ I said, smiling at Teresa good-humouredly. ‘Thanks!’

Teresa said in a polite voice: ‘I wasn’t going to apologize for sleeping with Cornelius.’

No suit of armour is impregnable. I turned away in retreat. ‘Come into the living-room and have a seat,’ I said, somehow keeping
my voice calm and courteous. ‘Excuse me looking like a hobo – I’ll have to start getting up earlier on Sunday mornings! Can
I fix you some coffee?’