Sins of the Fathers (71 page)

‘Then in that case you’re probably too drunk to listen to my side of the story!’

‘I’m never too drunk to listen, but I suspect you’ll always be too buttoned up to talk. A pity. I feel sorry for you in a
way. Vicky darling, do you fully realize what kind of problems you’ve taken on along with this guy?’

‘Why, you goddamned bastard—’

‘Scott, please! Kevin—’

‘This guy’s trouble, darling. He’s too mixed up to relate properly to anyone – all he can relate to is his ambition. If he
weren’t so dangerous he’d be pathetic.’

‘You bastard, you sonofabitch, you miserable
fucking
queer—’

‘Let’s skip the sex angle, shall we? It’s so boringly irrelevant—’

‘—what gives you the right to sit in judgement on me? What makes you think you’ve got some God-given gift for analysing people
and making an unqualified, pseudo-psychological diagnosis when you’re not even in possession of all the facts? You know nothing
about me, and nothing, nothing, NOTHING about my situation! Now get the hell out of my way and leave us alone or I swear I’ll
knock your teeth down your throat and smash your face to pulp!’

I had been speaking in a low voice but gradually it sounded louder and louder and when I stopped talking at last I realized
why. Our quarrel had called attention to our corner and everyone had turned to stare at us. The
maître d
’, fearing trouble, was watching us with dread.

There was a silence. I had a fleeting impression of Vicky’s grey eyes dark in her white tense face, but I was only wholly
aware of Kevin. I could see now what a long way he was from being sober, but he held his liquor so well that there were no
obvious signs of drunkenness. He was motionless; there was no swaying on his feet. His speech was clear and incisive; there
were no slurred consonants. Only his manner betrayed him; his characteristic debonair spontaneity had fallen apart to reveal
the tough-as-nails bitchy bedrock of his personality, and for a moment this bizarre unveiling was revealed in his face. The
dimple in his chin seemed very deep, his long-lashed, liquid-brown eyes very bright, his square jaw very hard. He looked ready
to take a swing at me but I knew he never would. That kind of guy never does.

‘But how violent!’ said Kevin at last in a pleasant voice, retreating behind the veil again. ‘I detest violence. But perhaps
violent behaviour makes you feel more masculine. Good night, Vicky. I’ll withdraw
before Scott can turn the scene into a bar-room brawl. I’m sorry if we’ve upset you.’

He walked away. I sat down abruptly.

‘Some dessert, sir?’ murmured the
maître d
’, anxious that the scene should immediately return to normal. ‘Coffee? Brandy?’

Brandy. Courvoisier, Rémy Martin, Hennessy. Dark brown brandy, warm brown brandy, rich bitter brandy, I could smell it, taste
it on my tongue, and suddenly I was back in that Mediterranean port again and the grey warship was waiting in the bay for
me to return from shore-leave. I saw the smashed bottles and the smashed furniture; I heard the ship’s captain saying: ‘Guys
like you are always trouble’; I felt the pain as the ship’s doctor dressed the cut on my head and worst of all I remembered
the shame of waking next morning and telling myself I was unfit to live.

‘No brandy,’ I said aloud in that smart New York restaurant twenty years later. ‘Nothing.’

‘No beer,’ I had said to the landlord of the pub at Mallingham after I had visited my father’s grave in 1946. ‘Just ginger
ale.’

Vicky was standing up. ‘I want to go now, please,’ she said in the Four Seasons in 1963.

‘Take all the time you want,’ said Death to Bergman’s knight in the world of my fantasies, ‘but if you take one false step
I’ll be waiting for you.’

So vivid was that image of Death that I found myself looking around for him, but all I saw was the blazing hulk of the Pan
Am Building as we stepped out into Park Avenue, and the next moment I was flagging down a cab, opening the door, hesitating
over the address.

‘Will you come to my place?’ I heard myself say to Vicky.

‘
Your
place!’ she said in a hard off-hand voice. ‘God, I thought no one ever got invited there!’

‘I want you to see it.’

Her eyes filled with tears, but all she said was: ‘Thank you. I’d like that,’ and when I reached for her hand again she didn’t
draw it away.

The cab set off uptown. For some time we were silent, but at last I said: ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I don’t know what happened.
It’s been such a terrible day.’

‘Is that all you’re going to say?’

‘I—’

‘Was Kevin right? Are you always going to be too buttoned-up to talk?’

‘Well, I … Vicky, you mustn’t listen to him—’

‘No, you’re the one I want to listen to. I’m listening right now. But I can’t hear anything.’

‘I … Look …’

‘Yes?’

‘I want to talk,’ I said. ‘I do want to. That’s why I invited you to my place. I … didn’t want to be alone there any more
… cut off—’

‘Yes, I understood that. It’s all right. I do understand. Let’s wait till we get there.’

I kissed her, and then in a moment of panic, which was all the more terrifying because it was so unexpected, I wondered if
I’d be crippled again once we got to bed. Kevin seemed to have severed Vicky from me with the result that she was now drifting
steadily beyond my reach. I felt desperate. I knew I would do anything to get her back. The thought of being forced back into
my former isolated half-life was now far more than I could endure.

The quality of the silence in the cab changed abruptly and I realized with a shock that the driver had switched off his engine.
His next words confirmed that we had been stationary for some time outside my apartment building.

‘Do you folks want to get out?’ he inquired. ‘Or should I get some blankets and pillows to make you comfortable?’

I paid him and without a word took Vicky up to my apartment.

[2]

Yet in the end it was Vicky, not I, who halted the drift and brought us back together again. I couldn’t have done it. For
a while I thought she couldn’t do it either, but when I saw how determined she was I became determined too and my determination
gave me the strength to help her.

She began to talk as soon as we entered the apartment.

‘Kevin was wrong, wasn’t he,’ she said. ‘He was wrong to imply the driving force in your life was your ambition – as if you
only cared about money and power and success. You don’t really care about all that, do you?’

‘No.’

‘And Sebastian was wrong too, wasn’t he, when he decided the driving force in your life was the desire for revenge. You’re
not a hero in a play by Middleton or Tourneur.’

‘Right.’

We were standing by the window of the living-room and before us stretched the lights of Queens. I was holding her hand very
tightly and wishing I could talk more but my throat hurt too much and my head was throbbing with pain.

‘Nobody’s ever understood, have they?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s guilt, isn’t it?’

The lights of Queens began to blur.

‘You’re like me,’ said Vicky. ‘I recognized the likeness in the end. The driving force in your life is guilt. You feel horribly,
overpoweringly guilty. But why? What did you do? Can you tell me about it?’

I nodded. She waited. But I was dumb.

‘Something happened back in the thirties?’

I nodded again.

‘Between you and my father?’

I shook my head. Then I said: ‘My father.’ A second later I wasn’t sure whether I had spoken the words aloud so I said them
again. ‘My father,’ I said. ‘Mine.’

‘Something happened between you and your father? I see. What was it?’

‘I—’

‘Yes?’

‘I was an accessory—’

‘An
accessory
?’

‘—before the fact—’

‘
Before the fact
? What fact?’

‘—of his murder,’ I said. ‘Of course. What else?’ And slumping down on the ottoman I buried my face in my hands.

[3]

‘But your father wasn’t murdered,’ said Vicky.

‘Yes, he was. He was driven into alcoholism and harassed to his death. And I stood by and let it happen. I turned away from
my father. I was loyal only to the man who killed him.’

‘But your father walked out on you!’

‘No, he always wanted me and Tony to live with him. He walked out on Emily but not on us.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I was upset because I loved Emily so much. I was only fourteen and I didn’t understand anything. Then Cornelius stepped in
and took me over. I shouldn’t have let him but I did. It was a terrible thing to do. I turned my back on my father and made
up my mind to have nothing more to do with him.’

She was appalled. ‘Are you trying to tell me that my father—’

‘Your father’s not really an issue here. Don’t get side-tracked. The main issue’s between me and my father. Your father’s
just a figure on a chessboard whom I have to manipulate in order to reach my father and make amends to him. I have to make
amends, you see. It’s my one justification for being alive. I wouldn’t be fit to live otherwise. I did such a terrible thing,
siding with his murderer, conniving at his guilt … How can people do such terrible things and survive? My father died, my
brother died, my mother died – and yet I
lived
. It seems so wrong, and that’s why I’ve got to justify myself, I can’t die now till I’ve justified my survival. If I can
bend my undeserved life to rewriting an undeserved past … You understand, don’t you? You do understand?’

‘You couldn’t have treated your father that badly! You were so young, you were mixed up, this has all got exaggerated in your
mind—’

‘My father loved me. I hated him and hoped he would die. When he did die I was glad. I actually said to Cornelius: “Thank
God he won’t be around to bother us any more.” Can you imagine that? I actually said—’

‘This is all Daddy’s fault, I know it is. It’s utterly wrong that you should blame yourself like this—’

‘I shouldn’t have let myself be influenced by Cornelius. Tony wasn’t influenced. He always saw straight through him.’

‘Tony’s position was probably different from yours. He was younger, at a less vulnerable age. And Daddy never liked Tony,
did he? Tony was probably not subjected to the same influence. You shouldn’t compare your behaviour with Tony’s.’

‘I even turned my back on Tony, and later I never had the chance to make it up with him. I never had the chance to make it
up with my father either. They died and I was left with no way of unloading my guilt – no way except one way, and that was
the way I had to take. … God, can’t you see the kind of past I had to live with as soon as I read Tony’s last letter to me
and realized exactly what I’d done? Well, of course, the truth was I couldn’t live with it. I saw at once I had to rewrite
it through Cornelius and the bank. There was no choice. There was nothing else for me to do. I did think of killing myself,
but—’

‘Scott!’

‘Well, of course I did! Of course! And if I fail to rewrite the past I’ll think of it again because then I wouldn’t want to
live any more.’

‘You mustn’t talk like this! It’s wicked! It’s wrong!’

‘Why? Death and I are old acquaintances – I think about him often, I live with him all the time. Sometimes I see him watching
me
when I look in the mirror, and then I go to the bathroom and get the razor and sometimes I even run the water in the bath
… The Romans committed suicide that way – a hot bath, the severed veins, and then death comes without pain, very peacefully,
you just drift into unconsciousness, but always I’ve thought no, I can’t die yet, I can’t die until I’ve completed my quest
and succeeded where my father failed—’

‘Scott – Scott, listen – Scott, please—’

‘Ah Vicky, Vicky, you never knew my father, but he was such a wonderful guy, so full of life – yes, that’s what I remember
best, I remember how full of life he was, and that’s why I’ve got to go on, Vicky, that’s why I live the way I do, that’s
why nothing matters to me but to rewrite the past, to bring him back from the dead, and to
make him live again
…’

[4]

I was in the kitchen in the dark. My body was racked with silent sobs and my eyes were burning with pain. I was so unused
to crying that I couldn’t begin to handle such humiliation. I could only give way and wait for it to pass.

‘Scott.’ She was in the lighted living-room beyond the doorway. Her voice was gentle.

I tried to say: ‘I’m okay,’ but I couldn’t.

‘Do you want to be alone?’ she said. ‘Shall I go?’

I was so sure I could say ‘no’. It was such a simple word, one of the first words a child learns. But I couldn’t say it.

‘Don’t hurry to answer,’ she said. ‘Take your time.’

She moved further back into the living-room and I was left to battle with my humiliation in private. I tried to remember when
I had last cried. I thought it must have been after my mother’s death when I was ten, but then Emily had been there and Emily
had expected children deprived of their mother to cry so I had cried. In fact I had seen little of my mother. Tony and I had
been brought up by a succession of nurses, and the one permanent feature of my childhood had been not my mother, who was always
so busy with her social activities, but my father. My father had worked hard all week in the city but every weekend he had
come home to Long Island to play with us and take us on expeditions.

I opened the door of the refrigerator and looked at all the bottles inside.

‘God, I could use a drink,’ I said, and astonished myself by sounding normal. Perhaps the road to recovery lay in making trivial
observations.

‘Then why don’t you have one?’ called Vicky casually. ‘You’re not an alcoholic, are you?’

‘No, I was never an alcoholic. But drink didn’t suit me,’ I said, uncapping a bottle of Coke with clumsy fingers. ‘I felt
better when I’d given it up.’

‘I envy your strength of mind. I know I drink too much at the moment.’