Sins of the Fathers (72 page)

‘I doubt very much if you know what those words can mean.’

‘Well, naturally I don’t go on binges! But I always have two martinis a day, and in my opinion that’s at least one too many
… Would you mind if I had some coffee? I’ll make it myself if you like.’

‘No. I’ll make it.’ I switched on the light and filled the kettle. The gas flared on the stove. I put the kettle down and
stood watching the steady flame.

‘I meant to go on the wagon years ago,’ said Vicky, watching the flame with me. ‘But somehow I never seemed to be able to
get through the day without a martini to help me along.’

‘Plus the occasional playboy?’

‘Oh, them! They never mattered. I was just trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t frigid.’

‘Frigid?’ For the first time I was able to look at her directly. I prayed my eyes weren’t bloodshot after the tears. ‘You?
I don’t believe it!’

She laughed. ‘If I told you the real truth about my supposedly glamorous private life, your head would be so swollen you wouldn’t
be able to walk through that doorway!’

I tried to figure this out. I was feeling better but still confused. I had to make a great effort to concentrate. ‘And If
I told you the real truth about
my
supposedly glamorous private life,’ I said, ‘your head would immediately be as swollen as mine.’ That seemed like a neat
thing to say. I had a sudden picture of us effortlessly swapping bright brittle remarks as we stood kettle-watching in the
kitchen.

‘You make it sound as if we both suffered from the same problem,’ said Vicky surprised. ‘But men don’t have that kind of problem
… or do they?’

‘Men have all kinds of problems, believe me.’

‘You mean you couldn’t get it up?’

‘No, that was easy.’

‘I see. So in that case you must mean you couldn’t—’

‘Yes. Of course it was all very trivial.’

‘Of course. But don’t you think it’s so often the trivialities of life which cause the most misery once their cumulative effect
becomes a back-breaking burden?’

‘Christ, you can say that again.’ The kettle was starting to boil. I groped for her hand and found it.

‘I often think sex is like money,’ said Vicky. ‘When you’ve got it you never think about it, and when you haven’t got it you
think of nothing else.’

I squeezed her hand tightly and kept my eyes on the kettle. ‘What would someone like you know about having no money!’

‘What an insulting remark! Do you think I’m totally devoid of intelligence and imagination? Do you think I’ve never wondered
what it’s like to live in poverty on a diet of rice with ten children under ten and no birth control?’

‘Incidentally—’

‘Yes, I was wondering when you were going to ask. I take a little pink pill. No fuss, no mess, no mistakes. Sebastian would
no doubt call it the ultimate product of our plastic society.’

‘And what do you call it?’

‘Liberation.’

We had our coffee in the living-room. By her own choice she sat on the ottoman and I sat opposite her on the recliner, but
after a while that didn’t feel right so we sat side by side on the floor with our backs to the wall and held hands again.

‘What did I do in bed that everyone else didn’t?’ I said curiously at last.

‘I don’t think you did anything in particular. Oh God – sorry! That’s not very complimentary, is it! Of course you were great.
That goes without saying, but what I really meant was—’

‘It was the anonymity, wasn’t it? The secret was that I thought you were someone else. It set you free to be yourself.’

‘Yes. That’s it exactly. And later—’

‘You’d established a new identity and didn’t feel a prisoner any more.’

‘—later,’ corrected Vicky firmly, ‘I realized you were the sexiest man I’d ever met.’

‘I’m flattered! But please don’t feel you have to anaesthetize me with compliments.’

‘I don’t. But since we’re being so frank with each other—’

‘God, yes. It’s more of a relief than you could ever imagine.’

‘You’d be surprised what I can imagine. I know all about being buttoned up in a straitjacket with my mouth gagged and my hands
tied behind my back.’

I kissed her.

‘Do you want to go to bed now?’ said Vicky later.

‘Yes, very much. But I’m still so shook-up I’ll probably be no good.’

‘Well, we don’t have to do anything, do we? We’re not circus performers. No one’s watching so who do we have to impress?’

‘My God, what a marvellous woman you are!’ I said and took her to the bedroom.

‘I can’t think what you were worried about,’ she said later as I lit her cigarette.

‘Neither can I.’ I went to the kitchen and brought back two more bottles of Coke.

‘Scott.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘If this question upsets you don’t answer it, but did my father make a real effort to turn you against your father? I mean,
it wasn’t a few careless remarks here and there, was it? It was an all-out deliberate brainwashing?’

‘Yes.’

‘How horrible. And how
wicked
. Are you speaking the truth when you say he’s so unimportant to you nowadays? Surely you must loathe and detest him!’

‘You can’t live daily with violent emotion, Vicky. To survive you have to distance yourself from it. Besides, it’s unlikely
Cornelius deliberately set out to be wicked. Knowing him, I’d say it was more likely that he’d conned himself into believing
he was acting with the purest possible motives.’

‘But that makes him all the more repulsive! How could you ever have worked at his bank day after day and allowed him to treat
you as a substitute son?’

‘But I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I just stayed home. It was Scott who went to the bank and dealt with Cornelius.’

She switched on the light. We were very close on my narrow single bed and I had felt the
frisson
which had made her whole body rigid in my arms.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Big mistake. Now you think I’m crazy.’

‘No. I just feel frightened to think of the kind of strain you must have been living under.’

‘But don’t you see? Scott was my solution to all the strain – Scott was my way of distancing myself from all those violent
emotions which I couldn’t live with on a daily basis!’

‘But didn’t you tell me yesterday,’ she said, ‘that Scott had died?’

‘Yes, he had to die. There would have been no room for you in
Scott’s life. I had to choose between the two of you and I chose you.’

‘I see. Yes. And may I ask how you’re now going to manage without him?’

‘I’ll get along. At least I have you. I’ll be all right.’

‘Great. And what happens about my father? Has he received news of Scott’s death yet?’

‘You’re laughing at me!’

‘I assure you I’m not. It’s no laughing matter, is it?’

I was reassured. ‘Yes, your father knows.’

‘An unpleasant shock for him?’

‘Yes. He’d just got rid of Sebastian and he suddenly found himself locked up with a tiger in a rapidly shrinking cage.’

‘Tell me what happened. Everything. I’ve got to know.’

I talked for some time while Vicky smoked her way through another cigarette. In the end all she said was: ‘Poor Sebastian.’

‘He’ll be okay. He’ll easily walk into another top job somewhere else.’

‘He only cared about Van Zale’s.’

‘I appreciate that. I’m sorry for him too, but he was asking for trouble. He behaved very foolishly.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘We recuperate from the explosion and get back to normal. I think if I’m very careful now I’ll still be able to weather this
storm.’

‘Good. I want you to get the bank. I’m sure it’s the only just solution after the way Daddy’s behaved in the past, and I’m
all for justice … What will you do when you finally get control? Put the name Sullivan in the title alongside Van Zale? That
would be justice too, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well …’

‘I can’t see why Daddy wouldn’t agree to that. The bank will go back into the Van Zale family eventually, as you’ve no sons
of your own, so why shouldn’t he be generous to you?’

‘Hm.’

‘Funnily enough Eric’s anxious to be a banker. I can’t imagine why, but I’m glad for Daddy’s sake. Poor Daddy. I can’t help
feeling sorry for him in spite of everything. Is that guilt too, I wonder? Maybe it is. I always feel his life would have
been quite different if he’d had a son instead of a daughter.’

‘I doubt that very much. Cornelius has glamorized the idea of having a son. We always glamorize what we don’t have. A real
son would almost certainly have been a disappointment to him.’

‘Perhaps … I wish I could convince you not to think of yourself as a disappointment to Steve. Surely, Scott, if he was the
wonderful father you say he was, he would have forgiven you for all those mistakes you made?’

‘That only makes the burden of my guilt more intolerable. If he would have forgiven me in spite of everything – can’t you
see how that would make me feel all the more ashamed of myself?’

‘But you must try and see this from a different point of view. You’ll never have any peace otherwise. You’ll just stay trapped
in this terrible cycle—’

‘Once I get the bank I’ll be at peace.’

‘I wonder about that. I wonder very much.’

I sat up in bed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I have this unpleasant suspicion that no matter what you do to make amends to your father you’ll find it’s never enough.
I suspect this quest, as you call it, has no real end.’

‘No, no, you’re wrong! Once I’ve rewritten the past—’

‘Oh, Scott, those are such empty words – the phrase has no real meaning! You can’t rewrite the past. The past is over, the
past is done, and to talk of a past recaptured is, if I may so, just classic
fin-de-siècle
romanticism with no valid root in reality!’

‘You don’t see time as I see it,’ I said. ‘My time is different from yours.’

‘But that’s absolute—’ She checked herself. Then she exclaimed passionately: ‘Scott, can’t you see your situation as it really
is? You’re wasting your whole life doing something you don’t really want to do in pursuit of a release from a pain which is
largely a self-inflicted illusion! You’ve bound yourself to some kind of nightmarish wheel but you don’t have to stay there
– you don’t have to go round and round – that’s all an illusion too! If you could only forgive yourself, you could step off
the wheel, you could free yourself of all these illusions, you could start at last to live the kind of life you really want
to live—’

‘I wouldn’t want to live. I’m sorry you see the situation that way. I’m sorry you don’t understand.’ I started to get out
of bed, but she grabbed me and pulled me back.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said rapidly. ‘Don’t be angry. I love you. Don’t cut yourself off from me. I’m trying so hard to understand,
I want so much to understand. Please believe me.’

‘Shhh.’ I extinguished her cigarette and started kissing her. ‘Let’s not talk any more. We’ve both talked more than enough,
and there’s so little time.’

The words were out of my mouth before I’d realized what I’d
said. I saw her eyes widen, heard her sharp intake of breath, and I cursed myself for triggering the big scene I’d made up
my mind to postpone.

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Why do we have so little time?’

And it was then with the greatest reluctance, I told her that her father was transferring me to London.

[5]

‘Get off that wheel,’ said Vicky. ‘Quit. Now’s the time to wash your hands of this mess and start a new life. You don’t want
to go to London, do you?’

‘I guess you’re thinking of us. Well, I agree it’ll be inconvenient, but—’

‘Inconvenient? Did you say
inconvenient
?’

‘But we’ll still see each other! I’ll be coming back to New York regularly on business, and of course you can come to London
as often as you can make it—’

‘An intercontinental love affair – yes, I see,’ said Vicky. ‘How wonderful. How glamorous. What more could I possibly want?’
She started to cry.

‘Vicky—’

‘Oh, shutup! You just don’t live in the real world at all!’ She struggled out of bed and groped for her clothes.

I was groping too – for an understanding of what was going on in her mind. Belatedly I remembered that she had talked of wanting
someone who was more than just an uncommitted lover, and I realized I had to give her the reassurance she needed. To offer
an intercontinental love affair was not enough. I had to convince her I wanted more than just a part-time relationship; I
had to make her an offer which would help her feel more secure.

‘Come to London with me,’ I said abruptly. ‘We’ll live together. I don’t want us to be apart any more than you do.’

She stopped crying and looked at me. ‘But what about the children?’

‘Well …’ I suddenly found I had no idea what to say. ‘Well, I’m sure you love your kids, Vicky, but I somehow thought … if
there was an alternative way of life available to you … I’m sure Cornelius would be happy to help you out—’

‘Let’s get this straight,’ said Vicky. ‘I’m not leaving my children. Where I go, they go.’

‘But I thought you implied on board ship that you hated your life here and only stayed with your children out of guilt!’

‘That’s true. I do feel guilty. I brought those children into the world when I didn’t want them, and what could be more thoroughly
wrong than that? The very least I can do to make amends is to stand by them and make some sort of attempt, no matter how inadequate,
to show them I care.’

‘But if you don’t care, isn’t that just being hypocritical?’

‘My God, it’s easy to tell you’re a childless bachelor! I do care about my children. I love them very much. I love them all
the while I’m hating them for messing up my life and draining me emotionally day after day after day. But if you can’t give
up the life your guilt makes you lead, why should you expect me to give up mine?’

I got out of bed, went to the bathroom and spent three minutes doing some hard thinking. Then I flushed the toilet to provide
myself with an excuse for my absence and returned to the bedroom. She was still wearing only her underclothes but she had
lit another cigarette and was standing tensely by the window.