Sins of the Fathers (39 page)

I noticed at once how fit and relaxed he looked. He was wearing a light-weight pale suit to combat the September heat, and
the colour emphasized his suntan. His black eyes sparkled.

‘I’m just fine,’ I said. ‘How was your vacation?’

‘Wonderful!’ Scott was always secretive about his vacations which I had begun to suspect were spent sampling the delights
of the flesh as extensively as possible. ‘I took a boat to Alaska. My, you should see that Inside Passage!’

‘Hm.’

‘And how was your own vacation, Cornelius? I hear you had to cut it short.’

‘The English air didn’t suit my asthma.’

‘That’s too bad! I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, it was a pity … By the way, I saw your half-sister when I was in London. Have you heard from her recently?’

‘No, we’re only in touch at Christmas. How is she? You’re looking very sober! I hope there’s nothing wrong.’

‘On the contrary Elfrida and I are launching a project together. She wants to found a school at Mallingham in memory of her
mother. I’m donating the land and backing her through the Van Zale Educational Trust.’

‘What a great idea! And how nice that the two of you could get together like that!’

‘Yes … But Elfrida seemed under the impression she was extracting some kind of revenge.’

‘She did?’ Scott seemed to find this genuinely amusing. He even laughed. ‘How naïve!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it won’t cost you a cent, will it? It’ll all be deductible.’

I got up without a word and walked away into the other half of the room. I was at my office. Outside the sun was beating down
upon the patio but indoors the air conditioning was keeping the room as cool as an ice-box. I walked to the fireplace to examine
the digital clock before pacing back to the fireplace by my desk to stare at the Kandinsky above the mantel. Scott seemed
unfazed, although by this time it must have been obvious that something was seriously wrong. The interview, littered with
my tense silences and expressionless comments, was far removed from our usual relaxed conversations.

I turned to look at him. He raised his eyebrows quizzically and smiled at me. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he said in the most natural
voice imaginable. He must have had nerves of iron.

I said abruptly: ‘Elfrida showed me Tony’s letter.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Scott sociably. ‘I always wondered when that old skeleton was going to crawl out of the closet. I suggested
to Emily at the time that we should show the letter to you, but she wouldn’t hear of it and out of respect for her I didn’t
argue. She seemed to think it might upset you. I can’t think why. You must have been well aware that Tony hated your guts,
and it’s always seemed clear to me that his version of the past was unlikely to either surprise or disturb you. I hope I wasn’t
wrong.’

I did not answer directly. I was too overcome with admiration for the way he was handling the conversation. But perhaps he
had had his responses prepared for years. The chance had always existed that I would see the letter eventually.

I decided I didn’t quite dare to feel relieved. Not yet. Not until I was one hundred per cent sure that relief was justified.

There was a pause. Then I said: ‘What did you make of the letter?’

‘Not much,’ said Scott, as if we were discussing a somewhat substandard article in the
New York Times
. ‘Like Elfrida’s bid to extract revenge, it struck me as being naïve.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, sure! Come, Cornelius, I’m not a baby and I know how the world’s arranged. You and my father had a power-struggle.
Such things are very common in big business. They happen all the time. You won. Almost certainly my father made the mistake
so many people have made in the past and underestimated you. That’s tough. Bad luck, Dad, but you really should have been
a little smarter. So what does my father do next to restore his fortunes? He goes to England. He then has a wonderful opportunity
to make a big comeback, but does he make the best of it? No, he doesn’t. He throws all his chances away because
he can’t leave the bottle alone. He dies. Again that’s tough but alcoholics always die, usually sooner rather than later.
That leaves you alive and well and in full command at One Willow Street. Do I expect you to be a saint? No, I do not. Saints
don’t occupy the senior partner’s chair at One Willow Street. You’re a powerful, dangerous and unscrupulous despot and anyone
who works here and doesn’t know that has to be some kind of mental defective. I’m not a mental defective. I – shall I go on?
I don’t want to bore you by spelling all this out unnecessarily, but perhaps in the circumstances—’

‘Go on.’ I couldn’t stand any longer. I was too weak with relief. I sat down rather suddenly in the senior partner’s chair.
‘You were saying you weren’t a mental defective—’

‘I’m not a mental defective. I’m ambitious, as you well know, and I want to get to the top in banking, as you also well know,
and I’ll take every opportunity I can get, as must be abundantly clear to you by this time. Why should I bother to deny it?
And why should you bother to get flustered when you’ve always had and always will have total control over my career at Van
Zale’s?’

‘Why indeed?’ I hardly knew what I said. The relief was so enormous by this time that I even wondered in alarm if I were on
the verge of tears.

‘So I ask you,’ said Scott, ‘what’s the big deal about this goddamned letter? Tony may have enjoyed presenting you as some
kind of Count Dracula in modern dress, but to be honest I don’t give a shit. I’m no more interested in the way you might be
– a latter-day Dracula – than the way you ought to be – a golden-haired angel with a halo and wings. I’m interested in the
way you really are. And you know why I’m only interested in the way you really are, Cornelius?’

‘Tell me.’ I was getting stronger with every passing second. I even managed to smile at him.

‘I’m interested in the way you really are because you’re my boss and you hold the key to my future – and believe me, Cornelius,
I’m only interested in the future. Why should I crucify myself over what might or what might not have happened in the past?
What good could that possibly do me? You’ve taught me to be a pragmatic survivor, Cornelius! Look at me and congratulate yourself
on the way I’ve turned out!’

I burst out laughing. He laughed too, and suddenly I felt so happy again, as if I had lost a pot of gold but had finally located
it after a long agonizing search. My loneliness and misery vanished abruptly. I wished only that we were at home so that we
could have a game of chess and chat about eternity as usual.

‘So I’ve made you in my own image, have I, Scott?’ I said humorously.
‘Powerful, dangerous and unscrupulous – weren’t those the words you used?’

‘Right!’

‘That scares me! I’m not sure I like it!’

‘Oh yes, you do! You wouldn’t have me any other way!’

We laughed again, and all my fears seemed so irrational, so irrelevant to the affection which existed between us. It occurred
to me that I had been more severely disoriented in England than I had realized at the time. I must have been out of my mind.
This was
my boy
still, nothing to do with Steve, and the past was all sealed off, just as it should be.

‘Of course I ought to get rid of you!’ I said, thinking how ridiculous the idea sounded as soon as it was voiced aloud.

‘Well, that would be very aggravating,’ said Scott frankly, ‘and I don’t mind admitting I’d be very hurt, but as I’ve already
said I’m a survivor and I don’t think I’d have much trouble walking into a top job somewhere else.’

‘Hell, I’m not letting my best man go!’

‘Thank God. You had me worried for a moment. I thought you were just about to cut me up and feed me to the pigeons in the
patio.’

‘I wouldn’t do that! I’m too fond of those birds! Say Scott, talking of birds … what was the name of that guy who wrote about
the sparrow in the lighted hall?’

‘Bede.’

‘Come round to Fifth Avenue tonight and tell me more about him. I’ll get in some Coke and dust off your favourite chess-set.’

Scott said he’d be looking forward to it.

Later when I was alone I sat at my desk for some time while I doodled on my blotter and summed up the situation with a cool
practised rational eye. My last thought before I pushed the buzzer to summon my secretary was: yes, I do trust him. But I
shouldn’t.

[1]

I did not see Emily again until the following spring. Usually she joined us for Thanksgiving but that year some minor ailment
kept her in Velletria, and although I reissued the invitation for Christmas she said
she was committed to running a big holiday party at the local orphanage. Her elder daughter Rose had graduated from Wellesley
that summer and was helping Emily with the local good works while she decided what to do with herself. Meanwhile Lori, who
admitted frankly that good works ‘bored the pants off her’, had bucketed around from Foxcroft to a Swiss finishing school
and was now idling away some time by completing an advanced cookery course in nearby Cincinnati. She wanted to live away from
home but Emily, rightly in my opinion, refused to agree to this while Lori was under twenty-one. Young girls need looking
after, particularly young girls like Lori who wore tight sweaters and had a pin-up of Marlon Brando tacked to her bedroom
wall.

‘I think Lori’s just great!’ said Andrew to us presently. ‘Boy, did they finish her off at that Swiss finishing school! When
I first visited Velletria after her return from Switzerland I could hardly believe she was the same person as the little pest
who broke the strings of my tennis racket at Bar Harbor. She was sitting on the couch with her legs crossed – like Rita Hayworth
– and she had her hair flopping over one eye – like Lauren Bacall – and she was smoking a cigarette with her eyes half closed
– like Marilyn Monroe – and when I gaped at her like some hillbilly from hicksville she said: “Hi gorgeous! Love your uniform.”
I just reeled! It was wonderful! Somehow Aunt Emily’s living-room is the last place you’d expect to find a torrid sex-symbol!’

‘Emily’s going to have trouble with that girl,’ I forecast to Alicia, but I was wrong. In the end Emily had no trouble at
all because Lori not only decided to get married but decided to marry someone of whom we couldn’t possibly disapprove. She
picked Andrew. I doubt if Andrew himself had much to say in the matter. In the summer of 1953 when I was in Europe he was
transferred to an air force base near Cincinnati and would often spend his leave with Emily and the girls. By Christmas he
and Lori were engaged and announcing their plans to marry in the spring.

‘And just think, Cornelius!’ said Alicia, her eyes shining although she had never much cared for Lori ‘My son will be marrying
your niece!’

‘Hm,’ I said, but I felt no kinship with Lori whose noisy vitality all too often reminded me of her father Steve Sullivan.
‘I hope she’ll behave herself when Andrew’s up in the clouds flying the planes. They say life on those air force bases can
be pretty wild.’

Alicia said nothing more on the subject but I sensed she was disappointed, and I realized she had been hoping this marriage
might prove
to be a viable substitute for her old soap-opera dream that Vicky should marry Sebastian.

I liked Andrew much better than I liked Sebastian although we had no interest in common beyond a fondness for watching baseball.
He was straightforward and good-natured, a clean-cut all-American boy. His slight physical resemblance to his mother made
it easy for me to feel affectionate towards him, and although his extrovert’s nature was entirely different from hers I had
no trouble remembering that this was the son of the most important woman in my life, a boy who deserved the best paternal
care I could offer. He was no match for Sebastian intellectually but he was intelligent and, better still, articulate. I foresaw
success for him in his chosen career and although I had no interest in planes I backed him up to the hilt when he decided
to enter the air force. Since I knew he would never make a banker it had been a relief to me when he had selected such a respectable,
patriotic way of earning his living, and having survived the Korean war with honours he was now angling for a transfer to
Germany since Lori thought a spell in Europe would be ‘so glamorous’.

‘That girl’s going to boss Andrew around until he won’t know whether he’s coming or going,’ I said to Alicia shortly before
the wedding.

‘Andrew says he loves to be organized.’

I said nothing but I believed whole-heartedly that a man should be the boss in his own home. I strongly disapproved of pushy,
domineering women with minds of their own and wills to match. If God had wanted women to be that way he would have made just
one sex, men, and arranged for reproduction by some kind of scientific splitting in two, like amoebas.

However I forgot my disapproval of Lori as soon as Vicky arrived home for a visit in order to attend the wedding. Sam came
later, spending only a few days in America before flying back to London to attend to his business commitments, but Vicky and
the boys spent the whole month of May with us.

To my despair I found she was still enamoured of Europe. To my horror I found she was now studying German in earnest. And
to my rage I found Sam was starting to push me to open a German office.

‘Two years in London,’ I said to him. ‘That was the agreement.’

‘Yes, and next year is 1955 and the London office will be two years old. If we don’t start planning for the German office
now it’ll be 1956 before I get to Germany.’

That would give Vicky another year to return to her senses and become prostrated by homesickness for America.

‘You’ve waited so long to get to Germany,’ I said to Sam. ‘What’s one more year?’

‘Look, Neil—’

‘I refuse to be rushed on this. I sanction the German office in principle, but I don’t want to tackle the expansion into Europe
before we’re ready for it. Aren’t I allowed to be prudent and sensible when your beloved Germany’s at stake?’

He just looked at me. If looks could kill I would have suffered an immediate cardiac arrest, but I went right on smiling sympathetically
and even offered him my hand to shake. I saw he was tempted to quit there and then, but of course he didn’t. It was worth
waiting out the extra year and remaining under the lucrative Van Zale umbrella with a happy untroubled Vicky at his side.
Sam was playing for high stakes and he wasn’t about to abandon them unless I flatly refused to send him to Germany.

He somehow managed to shake hands with me and we parted friends in an atmosphere thick with hostility.

After such an exhausting interview it was almost a relief to leave New York for the wedding in Velletria, the Cincinnati suburb
where I had eked out my life amidst stupefying boredom from the age of five till the age of eighteen. I am by nature unfitted
for life in a prosperous midwestern suburb which numerous decent commendable citizens find delightful. Not even God had performed
a greater service when he had rescued the children of Israel from Egypt than Paul Van Zale had performed when he had rescued
me from Velletria, Ohio, and drawn me east to New York.

The wedding took place at the Episcopalian church where I had endured countless dreary sermons throughout my childhood, and
Emily held the reception at the Country Club. It was a successful wedding even though Lori wore a skin-tight dress which reminded
me of a mermaid. I wondered if she could possibly be a virgin but thought it most unlikely. Emily cried throughout the service,
probably with relief. After I had given the bride away I gazed vaguely at the stained glass windows and wondered what my mother
would have thought of it all. My mother had been a forceful woman who had ruled her second husband, if not her first, with
formidable domestic efficiency. I had had repeated struggles to prevent her from smothering me and since my will had been
stronger than hers I had won, but nevertheless I had been fond of my mother and had felt genuinely bereaved by her death.
Bossy and opinionated though she was she had loved me and done her best for me and one can’t expect more of a mother than
that. In fact so sentimental did I feel that day
about my mother that I jumped at the opportunity to sit up late with Emily that night and reminisce nostalgically about our
shared past.

As I reminded myself later, there’s no bigger mistake one can make than to give way rashly to sentimental impulses.

‘Oh, it was such a lovely wedding!’ said Emily, dabbing away with her handkerchief again.

‘Lori looked very pretty,’ I said generously, putting my arm around her and giving her a squeeze. I really was in a dangerously
sentimental mood.

‘Dear Steve would have been so proud!’ whispered Emily.

‘He’d probably have been in a wheelchair. How old would he have been by this time? Seventy?’

‘Sixty-seven,’ said Emily coldly. ‘How small-minded you are sometimes, Cornelius, how utterly lacking in generosity of spirit.
I’d have thought that tonight of all nights – just for once – you could have found it in your heart to be charitable towards
Steve.’

‘But I didn’t say anything against him! I just made a comment about his age!’

‘You implied a debilitated senility. Cornelius, for years and years I’ve put up with your snide remarks, your acid comments,
your—’

‘Now wait a minute! You can hardly expect me to follow your example and canonize Steve’s memory.’

‘I haven’t canonized Steve’s memory. I should never have married him and he made me very unhappy, but at least I have my two
wonderful girls – and at least I have the Christian decency to remember his good points as well as his bad points, and to
forgive him for all the wrong he did! However I’ve long ago given up expecting you to show any Christian spirit. Paul wiped
all that out when he ruined you with his wealth. Sometimes I feel glad poor Mama died when she did. I consider it a mercy
that, unlike me, she was spared all knowledge of your later activities.’

‘Oh Christ, Emily, what garbage you talk! Just because Tony Sullivan writes one melodramatic letter—’

‘Who told you about Tony’s letter?’

‘Elfrida showed it to me when I was in London last August. I was horrified and appalled. Why have you never confronted me
with it? Why have you brooded over it in secret all these years? Don’t you think you had a moral duty to hear my side of the
story before you silently sat in judgement on me and decided I was every bit as bad as Tony said I was? You knew Tony hated
me. Why you should automatically accept the word of a biased hot-headed young man without even
deigning to hear the word of your own brother I have no idea, but all I can say is I feel very hurt. I wasn’t going to mention
the subject, but since you’ve brought it up—’

‘It was you who mentioned Tony’s name – no doubt out of guilt. I always thought it was a disgrace the way you treated that
boy. You hardly ever spoke to him – it was always Scott this, Scott that, Scott, Scott, Scott! I guess it was because Tony
looked like Steve while Scott had inherited Caroline’s looks – Scott was the only one you could look at without feeling overcome
with remorse!’

‘That’s not true. Listen—’

‘No, you listen to me! It’s true I’ve held my tongue for years and years, and yes, maybe that
was
the wrong thing to do – maybe I should have spoken up long ago to save you from yourself!’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘Give up that bank, Cornelius. It’s the root of all your present problems and past disasters. Give it up and devote yourself
to your Fine Arts Foundation and your Educational Trust. That would be worthwhile and meaningful.’

‘Banking’s worthwhile and meaningful! And why in God’s name should you think the Foundation and the Trust offer the equivalent
of a religious order to which I can retreat in order to lead a pure unsullied business life? Jesus, you should come to some
of the board meetings and see all those millionaires jockeying for position – that would disillusion you pretty damned quickly!’

‘I see that you’re deliberately choosing to misunderstand me. Let me try again. Cornelius, now that you’re middle-aged—’

‘Thanks, but I consider I’m still very much in my prime!’

‘—you should reassess your life and question your values. Do you ever pause to question your values, Cornelius? Or has your
wealth put you so out of touch with reality that you’re no longer capable of getting your priorities right?’

‘You’re the one who seems to be out of touch with reality here! The trouble with you, Emily, is that you live such a cloistered
life here in this godforsaken dump that you’ve no idea what goes on in the world. Why don’t you remarry or take a lover or
lose twenty pounds or dye the grey out of your hair or go on a cruise or do something interesting for a change? All these
endless good works and a single bed at night are enough to drive any sane woman off the rails!’

‘Well, of course,’ said Emily, rising to her feet to terminate the interview, ‘I always knew you were obsessed with sex.’

‘And I always knew,’ I shouted, rising to face her, ‘that you’re sublimating your sex drive by acting like a religious crank!’

Like so many violent quarrels, the element of the absurd mingling with the shafts of rage gave an additional savage twist
to the explosion. I think Emily and I both realized this, and for one long moment we stood stock still as if we were trying
to make up our minds whether to embrace with laughter or part estranged. But there was no reconciliation. Emily just said
coldly: ‘Poor Mama must be turning in her grave to hear us quarrel so disgracefully. I apologize for attempting to speak to
you so frankly and I hope you’ll forgive me when I explain that I acted only out of love and concern. Whatever you do you’re
still my brother and I’ll never speak one word against you to anyone, but don’t think my loyalty represents a condonation
either of your opinions or your way of life. Now we’ll set this scene behind us, if you please, and never refer to it again.’

She swept out of the room. I laughed to try to convince myself I hadn’t been outfaced, but I knew that I had. Later I went
to bed and lay awake for a long time in the dark, but before I slept I had made up my mind what to do and the next morning
I said humbly to Emily: ‘Say, I’m real sorry about last night. You know how fond of you I am and how much you mean to me.
I’d like to take back all those stupid things I said.’