Sins of the Fathers (49 page)

I’m tempted to kiss her, just to scare Cornelius, but I don’t. I touch her left hand which is lying on top of the sheet and
say: ‘So long.’

I don’t bother to ask her what she’s going to do when she leaves the hospital. I know what’s going to happen. Cornelius is
going to sell the Kellers’ home in Westchester, ship all four kids and the nurses downtown to Fifth Avenue and rake Vicky
back into the family compound. Cornelius is going to take over as usual and go right on making a mess of his daughter’s life.

But I love Vicky and I’m going to save her. Cornelius thinks he has the whole problem sewn up because I’m safely married off,
but he’s wrong. Cornelius is a smart guy but where Vicky’s concerned his head’s so buzzing with Greek drama that he can’t
think straight.

But I think straight. You’re living in a fool’s paradise, Cornelius. Your problem’s only just beginning.

6 March. Cornelius says: ‘Scott’s lunching with Jake today to straighten out that muddle over Pan-Pacific Harvester.’

Something’s happened between Jake and Cornelius but no one knows what it is. For various pragmatic financial reasons Reischman’s
and Van Zale’s still do business together but anyone can see the old informal partnership is dying on its feet for lack of
sentimental affection. Jake and Cornelius will no longer deal with each other in person, and whenever they meet by some unfortunate
accident at a social occasion they’re exquisitely quiet and polite, like two old Chinese mandarins. Rumour’s rife about the
cause of the rift, but so far no one’s improved on my theory that the trouble began with my engagement to Elsa. The anti-Semitic
talk that got flung around then had to be heard to be believed, and knowing the Reischmans I’ll bet there was
plenty of unforgiveable anti-gentile talk being flung around at the same time.

‘Jake himself is having lunch with Scott?’ I say to Cornelius. Jake, whose reputation as a difficult man increases daily on
Wall Street, can be guaranteed to find fault with any of Cornelius’ deputies, and after a couple of meetings he always appoints
deputies of his own to deal with them. The last I heard he had refused to deal with Scott (appointed after Sam’s death to
be the liaison man with Reischman’s) on the grounds that Scott was too young. Anyone would think Scott was a vacuous teenager,
but Scott is almost thirty-nine and very, very experienced. ‘I thought Jake had appointed Phil to deal with Scott,’ I say
surprised.

‘Jake fired Phil.’

‘Tough on Phil,’ I say laconically, picturing the head rolling into the basket. ‘What did he do?’

Cornelius shrugs. Purges are of no interest to him unless he’s signing the death warrant.

But he and Jake are a dying breed. Major private investment banking houses are becoming an institution of the past because
nowadays it pays to incorporate the firm for tax purposes, and although the new corporation president will try to be just
as dictatorial as he was when he was senior partner he’s held in better check by the board. People’s attitudes have changed
too: the war and a changing employment picture have encouraged a man to think twice before he places his career in the hands
of an autocrat, and the board of a corporation offers not only a greater degree of security to the post-war banker, but a
bigger slice of the pie.

‘The point is,’ Cornelius is saying, ‘that Jake’s obviously decided to give Scott a second chance. And not only that – he’s
taking Scott to lunch and he’s suggested that you come along as well. He knows you’ve been helping Scott over this PPH mess.’

‘Okay,’ I say, still laconic, but I’m excited because Jake normally never lunches with anyone who’s not a full partner. This
invitation is a big step up for me, and Cornelius knows it – he knows Jake would never have bothered with me, even though
I’m his son-in-law, unless he believed I was worth bothering about.

I decide it’s time to soft-pedal a few facts that Cornelius may have overlooked.

‘Jake knows I’ll be thirty next year,’ I said. ‘He knows I’m not just a kid any more.’

‘Uhhuh.’

‘Jake told me he was made a partner in Reischman’s on his thirtieth birthday.’

‘I remember it well!’ Cornelius pretends to be nostalgic but underneath he’s thinking hard. ‘And that reminds me, Sebastian
I was planning on discussing this with you later, but since the subject’s come up …’

I’m offered a partnership. I accept.

‘Well done!’ says Scott, who’s ten years my senior and has been a partner for some time.

He seems genuinely pleased, but what are you after, Scott? You’re just about the smartest guy in the bank aside from me and
Cornelius, and Cornelius likes you very much, far more than he likes me. I like you too, but there’s something strange about
you, Scott Sullivan. It’s not just that you don’t drink, don’t smoke and live alone in some hermit’s cell which no one is
ever invited to see, and it’s not just that you’re so obsessed with medieval literature that you turn up your nose when I
try to introduce you to a twentieth-century masterpiece like the
Four Quartets
. I’m not disturbed by your asceticism because you’re never priggish enough to flaunt your questionable virtues, and I’m certainly
not disturbed by your intellectual tastes, eccentric though they may be, because they make it possible for me to communicate
with you. In fact it’s a treat for me to talk to someone who’s not excruciatingly dumb, but much as I like you I’m becoming
increasingly aware that there’s something about you which doesn’t add up. For instance, you sit around talking garbage about
chastity giving a man superhuman strength, but you never explain the root of this unhealthy fascination with abstinence, never
explain why you feel this superhuman strength is so necessary to you. Anyway, I don’t believe you’re chaste. I think that
when you go on your vacations to Mexico, California or Alaska you let off steam in the biggest possible way. Do I believe
this just because I myself find celibacy inconceivable? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I notice the spark in you when you return
from your vacations and I doubt if that’s solely generated by lying in the sun.

But what does all this mean?

I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve begun to watch you, Scott Sullivan. I’m watching you, and I’m going to find out.

Easter 1958. Something’s going on between Mother and Cornelius. They keep touching each other and exchanging little smiles.
If the woman was anyone else but Mother I’d say Cornelius was getting a piece of some very exciting action. Can two people
pushing fifty who have been married for nearly thirty years possibly have anything approaching an exciting sex-life – or indeed
any sex-life at all? It seems
incredible, but what am I to think? There he goes, smiling at her again as if she’s the sexiest woman since Mae West batted
her eyelashes at Cary Grant, although God knows my mother is the last person to remind me of Mae West. Mother looks as if
men’s genitals might possibly be a good invention after all. How inconceivable it is to think of one’s parents having sex.
Surely Mother must be frigid, but now I’m probably the one who’s being Freudian, playing Oedipus to Mother’s Jocasta – or
should it be Orestes to Mother’s Clytemnestra? At least when Oedipus got so screwed up he didn’t know Jocasta was his mother.
I must get hold of a translation of Aeschylus and reread the
Oresteia
along with the Theban plays of Sophocles. I might learn something.

Vicky’s a bit out in the cold because of this raging love affair which is going on between our parents. She’s quiet, probably
appreciating the chance to relax. I take a look at her kids as the Easter celebrations roar on around us. There’s a very cute
little girl called Samantha whom everyone spoils shamelessly. The other girl, Kristin, is plain like Sam but cheerful. The
two boys, who arrived back in the States too shy to say a word, are now noisy and ill-behaved but Cornelius seems to think
they should be allowed to scuffle in corners, break precious porcelain and eat with their fingers at the table. ‘Boys will
be boys!’ says Cornelius cheerfully. He never said that when Andrew and I knocked one of his Kandinskys off a wall during
a fight. I wonder if he’s going to be silly about these grandsons, so silly that he’ll act out of his shrewd tough character.
No, I’ll pay Cornelius the compliment of saying that it would be impossible for him to be really stupid where the bank’s concerned.
If the boys are a dead loss he’ll write them off.

What are the boys like? Impossible to tell. They ought to be bright if heredity means anything. Eric might make the grade;
the blond curls give him a vague resemblance to Vicky. But Paul might be smarter. Have to wait and see.

Vicky’s having another baby, Mother says. Damn. That means Vicky will be wrapped up in reproduction till the end of summer.
But maybe that’s okay; it means it’ll be considered harmless for me to take her out. Nobody goes around seducing pregnant
women – except Cornelius, of course, when he took Mother away from Dad, but then we all know Cornelius is capable of anything.

Easter isn’t usually such a big family scene as Thanksgiving, but this year Andrew’s got extra leave for some reason so he
and Lori have brought the kids east again for a vacation. The kids are all happy and normal, just like Andrew, and Lori’s
normal too, discussing fashion
with Mother and telling her about the course she’s taking in French cookery. Can people conceivably be that normal? Apparently.

‘How are you doing?’ I say sceptically to Andrew after everyone’s stuffed themselves with roast turkey at lunch on Easter
Sunday and heaved themselves out of the dining-room.

‘Swell. There’s this fantastic new plan …’

God, Andrew’s boring. He probably thinks I’m boring too.

‘And how are you doing, old buddy?’ he says cheerily, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘Still bumming around counting nickels
and dimes?’

Andrew’s grown up in this celebrated banking family and yet I do believe he still thinks Van Zale’s is a commercial bank.
There
is
a commercial Van Zale’s, the Van Zale Manhattan Trust, and the two banks work hand in glove, but I’m an investment banker
channelling the public’s capital into long-term investment for the benefit of the great corporations, not a teller cashing
checks for some two-bit client on a weekly wage.

‘I’m okay,’ I say to Andrew. What else can one say to someone so dumb? How does one communicate with such mindlessness?

He starts talking about some Foxworth cousins of ours. All the Foxworths love Andrew. I guess Andrew takes after Dad and that’s
why he fits in so well with Dad’s family. Dad must have been a fool too, giving up banking for politics, exchanging the fascinating
world of economics for the plastic world of vote-catching in pursuit of a power which is largely illusory. Power attracts
me, I have to admit it, but not a politician’s power. That kind of power is puny when compared with the power wielded by the
top members of the financial community who run this country’s economy.

However I’m not in banking just for the power, like Cornelius, and I’m certainly not in it just for the money and social status,
like Sam Keller. My maternal grandfather left me a pile of money and I was born into what used to be described as the Yankee
aristocracy. I’m in banking because I like it. I like figures. I like the challenge of working out a complicated deal. And
I’m good at it. I may not have Sam Keller’s synthetic charm or Cornelius’ brutal streak but I have something which I suspect
neither of them ever had, a true financial brain.

If I say I like money, that conveys the wrong impression: one thinks of a miser hoarding coins under the bed or some materialistic
hero of our modern culture chasing the godalmighty dollar, but I like the abstract nature of money and its mathematical properties,
I like the absorbing variations of economic theory, and last but not least I like the challenges which few people in our rich
plastic society care to
confront: the endless confrontations between money and morality, battles which can only increase one’s philosophical speculations
on the ultimate value, purpose and even reality of immense wealth as it exists today in the black chaotic doomsday world of
our appalling twentieth century.

I’m not a philosopher. But philosophy interests me. (Only people like Cornelius call it a parlour-game for egg-heads.) And
I’m no dehumanized ape. I’m tired of watching billions of dollars being spent on ways to make people die. I’m tired of watching
the privileged citizens of the richest country in the world wallowing in mindless luxury while millions live in a poverty-stricken
hell. I wouldn’t say so out loud, of course; people would call me an ‘idealist’, class me as ‘irresponsible’ and ensure my
career ended ‘tragically’ (generous severance pay after inevitable nervous breakdown), but sometimes I dream of being president
of a bank which tries to channel wealth not only into the poor countries but to the people below the poverty-line right here
in America, my America, the America I love all the time I’m hating it, the America I care for enough to criticize, the America
not of the A-Bomb and
I Love Lucy
but the America of the Marshall Plan.

‘My, you’re quiet today!’ says my noisy brother, clapping me on the back jovially again as if he were a candidate in an upcoming
election and I were a recalcitrant voter. Again I’m reminded of my father. I guess my father was fond of me but primarily
he only made such a fuss about getting custody because he wanted to pay Mother back for running off with Cornelius, and he
used to get irritated when I missed her so much. Mother loved me when no one else did, I’ll say that for her. I love Mother
too deep down, but she drives me crazy. Mothers should guard against becoming obsessed with their children, but poor Mother,
I can’t get angry with her just because she uses me to fill some emotional lack in her life. Marriage with Cornelius can’t
always be a bed of roses. Mother thinks she understands me but she doesn’t and I don’t truly understand her either although
I sense she’s often unhappy and that makes me automatically mad at Cornelius. Mother and I aren’t alike although once she
said I did take after her side of the family. She said I reminded her of her father Dean Blaise who was once head of the investment
banking firm of Blaise, Bailey, Ludlow and Adams. He died when I was six but I remember him clearly. He used to sit glowering
at his dinner-guests and if anyone was reckless enough to make some dumb remark he would growl: ‘Damn stupid hogwash!’ He
was a big man on Wall Street. They say he was one of the few men who could give Paul Van Zale as good as he got. A tough guy.
Smart. Hope I’m like him.