Sins of the Fathers (65 page)

[4]

Vicky tapped timidly on the panel. ‘Scott?’

I did not answer. I was trying to turn on the cold tap but my fingers had no strength in them. I tried again, using both hands,
and the next moment the cold water was burning my hands like dry ice. After dowsing my face I nerved myself to look in the
mirror, but the reflection there was the one I wanted to see and I knew I was safe. I’d been afraid I would see Scott. That
would have been very serious, but Scott was evidently still back in New York along with the New York Vicky and I was still
myself, emerging from yet another one-night stand with just another chance acquaintance. That was a manageable situation.
That was something I could handle with one hand tied behind my back. That was something I could control.

I grabbed a towel, tucked it around my waist and unlocked the door.

She was there. She had pulled on one of my shirts to hide her nakedness and was hugging it tightly to her body. Her bright
hair was dishevelled. She looked sick with fright.

‘Oh Scott—’

‘You want to use the bathroom? Go ahead. Sorry I was so long.’ I stepped past her and as the door closed quietly I began to
make the bed as if I could somehow unmake what had happened there. Halfway through straightening the blankets I had to sit
down. I felt exhausted, and suddenly I was aware of the soiled sheets, the smell of sex, the satiation in the groin, the danger,
the horror, the fear …
The shock reached me at last and I was stupefied. I felt no joy, no triumph, no excitement. Now that I knew who she was the
success would never be repeated. And now that I knew who she was the success was no longer a success but an unbelievable lapse
in self-discipline.

The shock deepened. I abandoned the idea of making the bed and began to grope around for my clothes. I could no longer think
clearly. I hardly knew what I was doing.

The bathroom door opened.

‘Scott – no, please! Let me speak! I must tell you how very sorry I am – I must at least ask you to forgive me! It was a cheap
sick decadent trick, and oh God, I’ll never go on another cruise again, never, never, never—’

She stopped. I knew instinctively, like some masterly actor faced with a world-famous speech by Shakespeare, that this was
where I showed my years of training, experience and class. I groped for my identity – but which identity? Not Scott. He would
never have got himself into such a mess. That left myself, the cripple who conned his partners he was uncrippled, and I saw
at once with the most violent self-loathing that even though I had just proved I need not be crippled I would still have to
go right on living my crippled life. The only way to extricate myself from danger was to continue to play the con-man. I had
to go right on being a liar, a loser and a cheat.

‘Relax, Vicky!’ my voice said laughing. ‘Spare me the great soul-searching agony! What’s the big deal? It was fun! Sure it
was a trick you’d never dream of pulling on shore, but so what? Half the fun of a cruise is that you do all the things you’d
never dare do anywhere else! Now let’s be honest – it was a brilliant manoeuvre superbly executed and we both had a great
time. So why don’t we celebrate? Let me take you to the aft bar for a drink so that we can toast each other’s health before
we go our separate ways!’

After a pause she said levelly: ‘Sure. Okay. Why not?’ and gave me a passable smile.

So far so good, but I was sweating with tension. It had never seemed more difficult to assume the role of playboy; and it
had never seemed more unpleasant. The effort of continuing to speak in character was so great that I could hardly get the
words out but I managed to say smoothly enough at last: ‘You want to shower with me before we get dressed?’

‘You bet!’ she said, and the slang sounded odd, making a mockery of her attempt to sound spontaneous and sophisticated.

We stood looking at each other. She was still wearing my shirt.

I had at some stage scrambled into my shorts but now, groping again for the playboy image, I shed them carelessly and strolled
towards the bathroom.

She never moved. I walked right up to her but she still blocked my path, and it was then that I realized she was as disorientated
as I was – and just as trapped in a role she had no wish to play.

I put aside all pretence. It was no conscious decision but merely the overwhelming urge to be myself, and as I looked at her
I knew I couldn’t just tear up my pass to a world which had been transformed.

We never did get as far as the shower. Nor did we get as far as the aft bar for our phony celebration drink. We couldn’t even
get as far as the bed. I stepped forward at the exact moment that she held out her arms, and as the light glowed softly behind
us I slammed her hard against me and took her against the wall.

[5]

In the dawn light we began to talk.

‘Do you have a mistress in New York?’

‘No, I’m different there.’

‘So am I. I can’t live the way I really want to live.’

‘Who can? Freedom’s a grand illusion. We do what we have to do and there’s no escape.’

‘And what is it you have to do, Scott?’

‘I’d have thought that was obvious. I’m under a compulsion to make amends for my father’s failure and get to the top of my
profession. No doubt any analyst would see my behaviour as only too predictable.’

There was a pause. Then she said: ‘Is it really that simple?’

‘Why should you say that?’

‘Because life so seldom is. What do you truly think of my father?’

‘Vicky, there’s no need for you to feel, as I’m sure Sebastian often felt, that I’m privately wrapped up in some titanic drama
of revenge. The truth’s a lot more complicated than that.’

‘But what
is
the truth?’

I was silent. But then I said: ‘I wish I could tell you. I think I would tell you if I thought you would ever understand.
Maybe one day …’

[6]

Later when the sun was streaming through the porthole and the sea was a pure translucent blue she said: ‘And do you really
have no time or energy for a personal life in New York?’

‘Is that so hard to understand?’

‘No, only too easy. I’m in much the same boat. The family life I’m obliged to lead leaves me no time or energy for a real
life of my own. But I’m not fuelled by ambition, as you are. I’m fuelled by guilt.’

I got up and went over to the porthole. It was suddenly impossible to speak.

‘I don’t think we do what we have to do,’ she said. ‘I think we do what guilt makes us do.’

I still couldn’t speak.

‘Sometimes you can’t just put your guilt aside,’ she said, conscientiously explaining herself. ‘You want to but you can’t.
It’s nailed to you and if you try and tear it out you bleed to death and innocent people suffer. So you go on doing what your
guilt dictates you should do, and the only escape is to construct a sort of double life – to divide your personality in two.
That’s a terrible burden too, of course, but it’s less of a burden than living daily with a guilt you can’t endure.’

Speech was still beyond me. There was a hotness behind my eyes, a blurring of the vision.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You must think I’m talking garbage. Forget it.’

‘Vicky—’

‘It doesn’t matter. Come back to bed.’

[7]

Later still she was the one standing by the porthole and I saw that the skin below the line of her delicate tan was as pale
as ivory.

‘We’re approaching Curaçao,’ she said. ‘I guess now’s the time I have to face slipping back to my cabin in broad daylight
in full evening dress … What are you thinking about?’

‘I’m thinking you look as Maeve and Grainne ought to have looked but probably never did.’

‘Who the hell are they? No, don’t answer that, I’m not in the mood to be educated. Look, why don’t we go ashore together once
the ship docks? I’m supposed to be lunching with the captain, but I’ll get out of that.’

‘No, I … shan’t be going ashore.’

Her eyes widened in disappointment. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m tired. I’m not Superman. I’ve got to have some rest. And Curaçao’s nothing special, just an island left behind by the
Dutch on one of their off-days.’

‘Oh, but … well, okay, if that’s the way you feel. Maybe I’ll rest too, and then this evening—’ She paused.

‘This evening,’ I said. ‘Yes. I’ll call you.’

She smiled. I watched her dress. When she was ready she didn’t touch me but merely blew me a kiss from the doorway.

‘Till later!’ Her eyes glowed. She was radiant. I wanted to push past her, lock the door and toss the key out of the porthole,
but I didn’t. I was paralysed by the conflict in my mind, torn between the dream of living a normal life and the reality of
the compulsion to complete my quest, but as soon as I was alone, I realized I had no choice except to pull myself together
and face reality. The dream was over; I was a survivor and I had to protect myself; I had to escape home to Scott without
delay.

By the time we docked at Curaçao I had already made my arrangements with the purser, and soon after the gangway had been lowered
I left the ship and set off on my return journey to New York.

[8]

In the first letter which I intended to leave for her I wrote: ‘My dearest Vicky: First I want to thank you for seducing me
with such remarkable originality – how you would have delighted Chaucer! I can imagine him writing
The Wyf of New York’s Tale
and greatly improving on
The Miller’s Tale
where all kinds of couplings took place under cover of darkness. If you can imagine Chaucer writing
The Investment Banker’s Tale
– or perhaps he would have called me The Rich Lombard – I hope you believe he would have described me as generously as he
would undoubtedly have described you.

‘So much for the Middle Ages.

‘Unfortunately since we have to live in the present I see no way we can continue to act out our latter-day version of
The Canterbury Tales
. Having taken many cruises I know very well that the reality which exists on board ship never survives the reality of the
return to shore, so since our new relationship, enjoyable though it is, has no future I see no point in extending it to the
end of the cruise. Better to have a single memory of one perfect night than a painful recollection of the kind of emotional
mess which I’m sure both of us want to avoid.

‘I wish you a safe trip home and the best of luck in the future, SCOTT.’

It was only when I wrote his name that I realized I had been trying to write in his voice. I reread the letter and was struck
at once not by the coldness, the priggishness and the stylized intellectual detachment, though they were all present, but
by the falseness which permeated the letter from beginning to end. What I had written had nothing to do with what was really
going on in my mind.

I folded the letter but realized I couldn’t send it. I tore it up. By this time the ship was within minutes of docking and
my time was running out, but I knew I could not leave the ship without also leaving some word for her. Finally, since an explanation
was impossible and an apology would have made me seem not only a coward but a heel, I wrote: ‘Vicky: I just have to cut this
encounter short. I don’t want to but I must. If we go on I see nothing ahead of us but insoluble problems so the only sane
course has to be to stay uninvolved. But believe me when I say I’ll remember you always as you were last night when you made
the myth of romance live, no matter how briefly, in reality.’

I did not want to sign Scott’s name so I wrote no more. Sealing the envelope I left it at the purser’s office for delivery,
and tried not to imagine how she would feel when she opened the letter and found I had kicked shut the door she had so magically
opened between us.

[9]

I had a four-hour wait at the airport for the one direct flight to New York. As soon as my bags were checked I bought some
magazines but when I tried to read them I found it hard to concentrate. Eventually I set them aside and just sat thinking
about her. I told myself the incident had been no more than a chemical reaction between two people who under bizarre circumstances
had seen each other in an irresistibly attractive light, but I remained unconvinced that our meeting could be summed up so
easily. I couldn’t understand why my discovery of her identity hadn’t destroyed the chemistry. How could I have continued
to make love to her successfully once I knew who she was? In panic I tried to find a rational explanation of my behaviour.
I was beginning to feel as if my entire sanity was on the line.

Her words echoed in my mind.

‘Do you have a mistress in New York?’

‘No, I’m different there.’

She hadn’t even asked me what I meant. She had known I wasn’t
Scott. She had recognized me as myself and, more important still, she had accepted me as I was. And I knew and accepted who
she was too. Not Cornelius Van Zale’s daughter or Sebastian’s ex-wife or the harassed mother of all those noisy ill-behaved
kids. This was a fellow-survivor juggling with the double-life. This was a fellow-traveller tormented by the demands of self-discipline
and driven by motives no one understood. This was the companion I’d always wanted to put an end to my isolation. This was
the woman I’d long since decided I’d never be able to find.

I couldn’t even regret that she was someone who knew Scott’s world so well. That only added to the understanding between us
because there was no need to explain Scott to her. She knew exactly who Scott was so we were immediately beyond all the boring
questions other women found they had to ask: where do you live, what do you do, have you ever been married … I thought of
all those dreary questions and revelled in their absence. Then I remembered saying to her at some time during the night: ‘But
Tony was the good-looking one – how could you possibly think I was more attractive than he was?’ and she had said idly: ‘Yes,
he was nice, but he was kind of boring, I always thought, like Andrew.’ And amidst all my gratification I had suddenly thought
how wonderful it was that she
knew
Andrew and Tony and that there was no need for me to embark on turgid explanations.