Sins of the Fathers (41 page)

‘Well, Sebastian?’ I said again as he struggled to compose himself.

‘Thanks for clearing up the mess, sir. I’m sorry you were involved. I apologize for all the trouble.’

That was a long speech for Sebastian but I made no acknowledgement. The silence lengthened. I never moved a muscle but he
began to shift on the couch.

‘I’m still waiting, Sebastian.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand—’

‘I’m waiting for your explanation.’

‘Oh.’ He shifted again, trying to find a comfortable position but as I well knew the modern couch, backed only by a single
teak rail, precluded all hope of comfort.

‘I want to know,’ I said without expression, ‘why an intelligent young man, well brought up in a happy home with every conceivable
advantage which wealth can provide, has to behave in this sordid and incomprehensible manner.’

He said nothing. I felt my temper begin to rise. Moving so suddenly that he jumped I abandoned the fireplace to position myself
in front of the window. ‘Has it never occurred to you,’ I said, ‘to date a nice girl, buy her dinner, take her to a movie?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’d rather have dinner and go to the movies by myself.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like talking to stupid people.’

‘Then why don’t you date someone intelligent?’

‘Intelligent girls aren’t interested in me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m fundamentally uninterested in their brains and they’re intelligent enough to find this insulting.’

Conversation ceased. Sebastian, sitting on the edge of the couch, was glowering at the carpet. I was aware with exasperation
that instead of crumbling into abject loquacity he was hardening into rebellious silence.

Moving back to the fireplace I prodded the screen gently with my toe.

‘Sebastian,’ I said, showing him my back but watching him in the mirror, ‘you must, please, cooperate with me in getting to
the bottom of this. Can’t you see that if we don’t solve this problem it’s going to happen all over again? Now just give me
the facts. There’s no need to be afraid of shocking me because I assure you I’m quite unshockable. Let’s start with the obvious
question: why did you hit this woman?’

Sebastian looked up. His dark eyes were hard with hostility. ‘Why don’t you try reading the Marquis de Sade?’ he said.

He had shocked me. Gripping the edge of the mantel I told myself that this was Alicia’s son, that I had brought him up from
the age of nine and that he was – had to be – at heart a good decent boy.

‘You mean,’ I said slowly, ‘it gave you a sexual thrill to beat up this woman.’

‘That’s right.’

My mind, fine-tuned to lies after twenty-five years of survival under trying circumstances, at once sensed a false note in
his voice.

‘This is a pose, Sebastian,’ I said coldly. ‘Please don’t waste my time like this. It can only deepen the contempt I already
feel for your behaviour.’

He reddened and refused to look at me.

Since severity was apparently leading me nowhere I switched my mood, sat down beside him on the couch and put an arm around
his shoulder.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘tell me the truth. I’m your father and I want to help you.’

‘You’re not my father.’ He got up and walked away.

My fists clenched. I sprang to my feet but before I could speak he mumbled: ‘She said something stupid and I lost my temper.
I hate stupid people.’ He began to roam around the room, sometimes pausing to scuff up the carpet by shoving his heel into
it. ‘She said I hurt her,’ he muttered. ‘She said it as though I meant to hurt her. What annoyed me was that it was such a
dumb thing to say. What was I supposed to do – shrink? And she said it at such a stupid time, just when I … And then she tried
to pull out and I got mad and goddamned well shoved her away from me and she fell backwards out of bed and slammed her head
against the nightstand and her nose started to bleed and she started to scream and it was all so
stupid
, I wished I were a million miles away. I got away as quickly as I could but in the fuss I left my wallet behind and as soon
as she saw my Fifth Avenue address of course she couldn’t resist trying to make something of it … I’m sorry,
Cornelius, but you can see how it was, it was all just a stupid accident and won’t happen again. You don’t need to worry about
me, you truly don’t.’

‘But I worry about you very much, Sebastian,’ I said before I could stop myself. I forgot my exasperation, forgot the chill
of the interrogation room and the clinical choreography of power. I was with an unhappy young man who was my responsibility
and for his mother’s sake I had to give him all the help I could. Knowing he would shy away again from any display of affection
I said carefully in my most reasonable voice: ‘I think you should try and form some sort of … socially acceptable relationship
with a member of the opposite sex. I can’t believe you derive any …’ I paused again for the right words ‘… sustained benefit
from these very transitory episodes. I think you should look for an intelligent girl who attracts you physically and then
– after a trial period – propose marriage. You’re twenty-six years old and I think you should consider containing your very
natural physical requirements in a structure which is regarded, both by convention and by modern sociology, as a suitable
sexual framework.’

‘It doesn’t contain your physical requirements very well, does it?’ burst out Sebastian. ‘And who are you to criticize me
for going to whores?’

I walked right up to him and struck him across the face.

We were both trembling. I hated him for making me lose my temper when I had wanted only to be kind. He hated me for reasons
which I preferred not to analyse but which probably sprang from the fact that I had deprived him of his mother when he was
young. Now my apparent rejection of her gave him another cause for grievance.

‘Sorry, Cornelius, but—’

‘Be quiet!’ I blazed. ‘Now get this straight: I don’t go to whores. For the past six years I’ve had one mistress and one mistress
only in order to spare your mother from an aspect of our marriage which she now finds distasteful. Now you listen to me, and
you listen real well. If you want to get on in this bank you’ll make some changes in your private life. I don’t pick my partners
from maladjusted neurotics who are incapable of leading normal lives. If you’re set against marriage at present you can certainly
leave it till later – I’m not strong-arming you into proposing to the next girl you meet. But you damn well find a steady
girl by the end of the year or you’ll be out on your ass looking for a job. Okay? Got that? Am I making myself quite clear?’

He looked frightened. Of course he had no idea I was bluffing him. I could never have faced Alicia with the news that I had
fired her
son, but Sebastian did not understand my relationship with his mother and he had grown up in a house where my word was law.

‘Yes sir,’ he whispered.

‘Right. Now get the hell out back to your work.’

He stumbled away and I sank down exhausted in the nearest chair.

It took me some time to recover from that scene with Sebastian but when I reviewed it afterwards I thought I had given him
good advice. It would certainly do him no harm to go steady with a girl, and although I assumed he would always retain his
preference for whores I was practical enough to realize this was a trait I was unlikely to change. Some men preferred such
women for some mysterious reason which was perhaps part of the New York street directory which Freud had never reached – Queens,
perhaps, or maybe Staten Island. I had never been to Staten Island and often thought vaguely that anything was capable of
happening there.

However my most significant achievement was that I had clearly spelt out to Sebastian how important it was to present a normal
domestic front to the world, and I presumed that eventually, perhaps when he was around forty, he would for the sake of his
career pick a suitable woman to be his wife. Meanwhile he remained a constant worry to me but that was nothing new; I was
used to that particular burden and had long since learnt to live with it.

With a sigh of resignation I heaved my anxiety aside, called Jake and thanked him for looking after Alicia so well during
the trauma of the previous evening.

[4]

Sebastian dropped the bombshell on me two months later in June. He arrived on a Sunday at noon when he knew Alicia and I would
be having lunch together, and informed us casually, without any warning or even a tactful preamble, that he was getting married.

‘Married!’ Alicia and I were both transfixed. We were eating outdoors on the terrace, a large flowered umbrella shading our
white wrought-iron table from the sun. Before us the garden stretched tranquilly to the distant tennis court. A sprinkler
was watering the lawn, the birds were singing on the balustrade and only the drone of traffic beyond the high brick wall reminded
us that we were in the heart of a city.

‘Yes. Married.’ Sebastian looked in the pitcher on the serving-cart. ‘What’s this? Tom Collins?’

‘But Sebastian—’ Alicia rose to her feet only to sink down again into her chair.

‘Is this a pitcher of Tom Collins?’ said Sebastian again.

‘No, lemonade.’ I tried to make a speedy recovery. ‘Are we by any chance allowed to know the name of your fiancée?’

‘Elsa.’ He turned to the nearest enthralled footman. ‘Bring me a Tom Collins, would you?’

‘
Elsa
?’ Alicia and I repeated in voices loud enough to be heard in the Reischman mansion three blocks away.

‘Yes. Jake’s daughter. The fat one.’ He found a spare plate and helped himself to eggs benedict.

I flicked my wrist at the servants who reluctantly retreated indoors. Alicia looked wildly at me for help. Her eyes were a
dull shocked green.

I was so angry I could hardly speak. To calm myself I poured fresh coffee into my cup and picked up a soft roll. ‘I didn’t
know you’d been dating Jake’s daughter,’ I said in the friendliest voice I could muster. ‘How long’s this been going on?’

‘A couple of months. I’ve been taking her out every Friday night to a drive-in movie in New Jersey.’

If he had told us he had taken her to the far side of the moon we couldn’t have been more amazed. We stared at him in stupefied
silence.

‘I like New Jersey,’ said Sebastian, drawing up a chair and dumping himself in it. ‘I like all the hamburger joints and the
billboards and the plastic-looking shops on Route 22, and I like that bit of the Turnpike when you go by all the oil refineries.
It’s surreal. So are the road-stops,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘I like the way you drive and drive and the restaurants
always produce identical food. It’s like a science fiction movie.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So you’ve only been seeing Elsa once a week.’

‘Hell, no, I’ve seen a lot more of her than that! She used to come downtown and meet me in my lunch hour and we’d ride the
Staten Island ferry together.’

‘Staten Island?’ I shouted.

Sebastian looked up from his eggs benedict. ‘What’s wrong with Staten Island?’ he said astonished. ‘I like the way the ferry
pulls out and you see the whole weird Manhattan skyline drawn up like a row of dinosaur’s teeth. It’s a great way to spend
a nickel.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said. I suddenly realized I was speechless. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Darling,’ said Alicia, very white but regaining her immaculate self-control, ‘do the Reischmans know you’ve been seeing Elsa?’

‘Of course not! Why go looking for trouble? Elsa told them she was staying Friday nights with Ruth in Englewood.’

Ruth was the Reischmans’ newly-married elder daughter.

‘Staying … Friday nights—’

‘Sebastian, are you trying to tell us—’

‘It’s okay,’ said Sebastian comfortably. ‘Ruth swore she’d give Elsa an alibi – in fact she said she only wished someone had
been around to give
her
an alibi when she was looking for ways to bust out of her chastity belt … Say, I wish to hell Carraway would bring my Tom
Collins.’ He looked crossly over his shoulder before attacking the eggs benedict again.

‘Cornelius—’ said Alicia faintly.

I took charge of the situation. ‘You’re telling us,’ I said, enunciating every word clearly to make sure there was no mistake
in communication, ‘that every Friday night for the past two months—’

‘One,’ said Sebastian. ‘The first month we were just friends but after that, yes, we checked into a motel near the Turnpike.’
Abandoning his eggs benedict he laid down his fork and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘I did just as you told me,’ he said.
‘I took your advice down to the last letter. I found an intelligent girl who attracted me physically, I took her out a number
of times and then – after a suitable trial – I proposed marriage. Wasn’t that just what you advised?’

Carraway emerged from the house, his silver salver glittering in the sunlight. ‘Your Tom Collins, Mr Foxworth.’

‘Great. And bring us a bottle of champagne too, would you? I just got engaged.’

‘Congratulations, Mr Foxworth!’

‘Thanks.’ He drank half his Tom Collins and resumed munching his eggs benedict. ‘Say, isn’t it about time you two followed
Carraway’s lead instead of cross-questioning me about my dating habits?’

‘Cornelius,’ whispered Alicia, ‘did you truly tell him—’

‘I never, never told him to—’

‘Oh yes you did!’ said Sebastian fiercely.

I shot to my feet but Alicia grabbed my arm and said rapidly before I could speak: ‘That’s enough, Sebastian. Don’t talk to
your stepfather like that – and
stop eating, sit up straight and look at me when I talk to you
!’

Sebastian clenched his fork, straightened his back and stared at some point past her left shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Mother, but—’

‘And don’t interrupt!’ I had never before seen Alicia so angry with him. ‘How dare you behave like this – as if we hadn’t
already had enough of your sordid escapades! I’ve never been so ashamed of you in all my life! You’ve taken the daughter of
one of Cornelius’ oldest
friends and treated her exactly as if she were no better than some cheap prostitute!’