Sins of the Fathers (74 page)

I stopped as the recognition engulfed me. I knew there would be a sign then, a sign which pointed the way to the inevitable
moment when I would have to make the decision sealing my future, and as I spun round I saw the departures board and read the
letters which spelt London.

Instantly I visualized the plane which would take me to England. I saw it as clearly as Roland had seen his Dark Tower, and
suddenly I knew that
this was the time
, this was the place, this was where I had to choose whether to pursue my ambition or abandon it, this was where Roland had
been forced to meet his destiny by raising the magic horn to his lips.

Someone called my name. I looked back and found
she was there
dressed in white in contrast to the black hooded figure of my fantasies, and the palomino mink was wrapped very tightly around
her as if to ward off the chill of death. And as she ran towards me, weaving in and out of the crowds, she held out her arms
and cried: ‘Scott! Don’t go!’

Then a voice said remotely far above us: ‘British Overseas Airways announce the departure of their flight 510 to London …’

She was in my arms. For a moment nothing mattered but that, and I saw so clearly then what I had to do.

‘Oh Scott, please – you mustn’t go, you mustn’t! Can’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you understand?’

‘… and will all passengers in possession of boarding passes please proceed to …’

‘I’d give up everything, I’d go to London with you, but it would be pointless because the central problem crippling you would
still be unsolved, and so long as that problem exists there’ll never be enough room for me in your life—’

‘… Air France announce the departure of their flight to Paris, Rome, Beirut …’

‘Forgive yourself, forgive my father, end it, let go, stay, survive – I’ll help you, I swear it, stay with me and I know we
can make it together, I know we can, I know it—’

I knew it too. The sane rational part of my brain knew it. The part that loved Vicky knew it. I looked down at the passport
in my hand, I looked down at the boarding pass, I took the boarding pass between my fingers to tear it in two, but then the
past stepped in to paralyse me and my fingers never moved.

The magic horn was at my lips but the fanfare of life was never sounded and as I struggled in vain for the one breath that
would set me free I saw not the destiny I wanted but the destiny I could not avoid move forward to encircle my life and draw
me on to the Dark Tower.

‘I can’t stay,’ I whispered. ‘I want to but I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’

She recoiled from me. ‘Then I can do no more. I can’t help you. I can’t reach you. And I can never see you again.’

We said nothing else. She looked at me numbly, too appalled to show deep emotion, too spent to attempt the futility of rational
argument, but finally she stumbled away from me towards the exit.

‘This is the final call for British Overseas Airways flight 510 to London …’

I walked through the great hall, I walked to the furthest reaches of that wasteland of concrete and glass, I walked with Roland
and as Roland to the very end of that myth I had made my own, I walked to the Dark Tower and went inside.

‘First-class, sir? This way, please. The seat by the window … May I take your coat?’

I sat down and waited and after a while someone started talking to me again.

‘Would you like a drink, sir, before we take off?’ said the pretty stewardess at my side.

I looked at her and longed for death. The pain of living was more than I could endure.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll have a drink. Bring me a double martini on the rocks.’

[1]

‘Good morning,’ said the disembodied voice. ‘This is Mr Van Zale’s private wire. May I help you?’

‘This is Mrs Foxworth,’ I said. ‘Get him.’

There was a shocked silence. Even frivolous society women were supposed to know how to address a very important executive
secretary with respect.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Foxworth, but Mr Van Zale is in a meeting—’

‘Get him out, please.’

‘But—’

‘GET HIM OUT!’

She gasped. Then the hold button was pressed and the line went dead. After lighting another cigarette I found a second dime
to use if the operator demanded more money, but the silence remained uninterrupted until the line was reopened and my father
said breathlessly: ‘Vicky? Sweetheart, what’s happened? Where are you calling from? Are you still up in Boston at the Ritz
Carlton?’

‘I’m at Kennedy Airport.’

‘But what’s happened? Is it Scott? Did his plane crash? Is he—’

‘Scott’s on his way to London,’ I said, ‘and now I think it’s time you started picking up the pieces of the mess you’ve made
of his life and mine. Get out here right away, please. I’ll be waiting in the hall of the International Arrivals Building.’

‘But sweetheart – honey – sure I understand that you must be very upset and of course I’ll come out to you just as soon as
I can, but I’m in the middle of a very important meeting, and—’

‘Screw the meeting! This is
my life
we’re talking about! You get out here right away or I’m taking the very next plane to London …’

[2]

Three quarters of an hour later my father’s Cadillac halted by the kerb and my father, flanked by two aides and a bodyguard,
was assisted out
on to the sidewalk by his chauffeur. I was waiting, the mink coat slung over my arm like a dead weight. I had had some coffee
since concluding the phone call and had put on fresh make-up to disguise how much I’d cried earlier.

The chief aide darted over to me. ‘Perhaps the VIP Lounge, Mrs Foxworth—’

‘Totally unnecessary. We’ll sit in the bar.’

‘His asthma—’

‘Oh, don’t hand me all that garbage about his asthma! Come along, Father. I’ll buy you a brandy and you’ll soon feel better.’

My father just looked at me with furious eyes and began to wheeze something in his best asthmatic whisper but I interrupted
him.

‘Wait in the car, please, both of you,’ I said to the aides, and to the bodyguard I added: ‘You can come with us but you’re
to sit on the other side of the room.’

The three men looked at me as if I’d grown horns and a tail. Then they looked at my father. He nodded painfully. He was a
greyish colour and his breathing was unpleasantly audible.

‘Come along, Father,’ I said gripping his arm. ‘This way.’

We reached the bar and I settled him in a corner before I bought a martini and a double brandy.

The bodyguard withdrew with a glass of beer to a distant table. We were alone.

‘I shouldn’t drink this,’ whispered my father. But he drank it. He took a small sip, than a larger one, and finally started
fussing around, dusting his cuffs, clearing his throat and fingering a spot on the table. When he had finally decided on an
appropriate speech he said meekly, not looking at me: ‘I’m sorry if you’re upset about Scott. Of course I don’t approve of
you calling up in hysterics, dragging me out of a vital meeting and hauling me over here to the airport, but I do understand
that women often behave neurotically when they’re crossed in love, and I’m prepared to make allowances for you. But now it’s
important that you calm down, behave sensibly and see this business in proportion. I guess you think I sent Scott to London
to bust up your affair with him. Well, that’s not true. I was motivated purely by business considerations. I never interfere
with your private life nowadays. I fully accept that you’re a grown woman and entitled to live as you please.’

He stopped and looked at me directly. His eyes were clear and candid, his expression sincere. Earnestness permeated every
inflexion of his voice. I was nauseated.

I said: ‘Have you quite finished?’

‘But sweetheart—’

‘Don’t you “sweetheart” me!’ I shouted. ‘What you’re really saying is that having messed up Scott’s life to the point where
he’s incapable of behaving rationally, you now intend to wash your hands, like Pontius Pilate, and say piously: “I’m innocent!
All this has nothing to do with me!”’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

‘You don’t understand that we’re all living with the consequences of what you’ve done?’

‘But I’ve done nothing wrong! All I’ve ever wanted was the best for you and Scott—’

‘Then why did you brainwash Scott into hating the father who loved him?’

‘Oh, but—’

‘You’re going to deny it?’

‘You don’t understand! You see, that’s not the way it was at all—’

‘That was the way it was, Father. It wasn’t the way it ought to have been. But that was the way it really was.’

‘I was justified. Steve didn’t deserve Scott. He’d forfeited his rights.’

‘I don’t believe that. That’s what you wanted to believe at the time, but—’

‘Steve didn’t care. Why should he? He was always fathering children all over the place – what was it to him whether he had
one son more or less? Anyway Scott needed to be taken care of. I thought it was justice. I thought it was as if God intended—’

‘You and your God!’ I cried. ‘Don’t you talk to me about your view of God and morality! You did a selfish wicked thing, and
it’s time someone came right out and told you so! Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You’ve crippled Scott so that he’s incapable
of leading a normal life! You’ve maimed him!’

‘Sheer feminine nonsense. You pull yourself together, please, and stop being so hysterical. Scott’s a brilliantly successful
man.’

‘
Success
? You call that
success
?’

‘Certainly I do!’

‘Well, what a price to pay!’

‘Now look here, Vicky—’

‘You’ve ruined him, Father. That’s the truth. It’s a truth you’re apparently unable to face, but that doesn’t stop it from
being true. You’ve ruined him.’

‘How can I have ruined him?’ shouted my father. ‘All I ever wanted—’

‘Don’t repeat that crap about wanting the best for him. All you ever
wanted was the best for you. But tell me this: if you wanted a son so much back in the thirties, why the hell didn’t you go
out and get one of your own? Why did you stay married year after year to that cold bitch of a wife who always made you so
unhappy?’

My father flinched. He made no attempt to explain but misery radiated from him, creating an aura of shame and despair which
made me recoil appalled.

‘Ah Vicky,’ he said. ‘If only you knew. If only you knew.’

But I did know. I saw it all, every detail of the landscape he had moved through during his marriage. I knew it so well. I’d
been there myself.

All my rage vanished and only the love remained.

[3]

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said. ‘I felt so guilty, so useless, such a failure. I was the inadequate partner in a wonderful
marriage. I had to watch things fall apart and know that it was all my fault. You wouldn’t know what that was like. You wouldn’t
understand.’

‘
I wouldn’t understand
? Daddy, have you no idea, no idea at all, what happened in my two marriages?’

We stared at one another. We stared for a long, long time. Then he said, faltering over his words: ‘Then you’ll understand
… the way things really were.’

‘The more of a failure you felt the more important it was that there should be people in your life – preferably children –
who should go on loving you and thinking of you as a hero.’

‘Yes.’

‘That was why you stopped at nothing to get Scott away from Steve.’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew it was wrong but you couldn’t help yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘You figured that so long as you were the best possible father to Scott everything would come right in the end and no one
would be hurt.’

‘Yes. That was it. That was the way things ought to have been. I moved heaven and earth to make things come out that way.
I don’t know – don’t really understand – what happened … I did try so very hard.’

I finished my martini and rose to my feet.

‘Where are you going?’ said my father in panic.

‘To get another round of drinks.’

When I returned he was sitting very still, a slight delicate figure hunched in his black overcoat, no longer a monster but
merely the kind of failure he himself had always so openly despised, pathetic and pitiable, miserable and misguided. I neither
criticized nor condemned; I was too conscious of my own failures. Even with Scott I had failed in the end. I had failed to
keep him, failed to cure him, failed perhaps to love him enough … Tears pricked my eyes again, but then I remembered Sebastian
saying: ‘Be angry! Get mad!’ and I told myself fiercely: no. It wasn’t I who had failed Scott. It was he who had failed me.

I looked at my father and wondered how much he knew. ‘How well do you understand Scott, Daddy?’ I said abruptly.

My father’s tired face seemed to age still further before my eyes. ‘Too well,’ he said.

‘Are you sure?’ I took a sip of the new martini. ‘What I can’t understand is why you allowed yourself to be manipulated by
him for so long.’

‘He wasn’t manipulating me.’

‘But—’

‘You’ve got it all wrong, Vicky, just like everyone else. Scott wasn’t manipulating me. I was manipulating him. I fooled everyone,
even Scott himself, all the way along the line.’

[4]

I was shattered. I stared at him. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Are you still unable to see the way things really were?’

‘I think we must be talking at cross-purposes – or perhaps there’s been some sort of fundamental misunderstanding—’

‘I doubt that, but let’s just re-check the situation from Scott’s point of view to make sure neither of us has missed a trick.
Scott thought, didn’t he, that if he went into the bank, worked like a slave and dedicated himself to being indispensable
to me, he’d achieve the apparently impossible feat of coaxing me to hand over the bank to him in the end. He had this extraordinary
theory, which he implied to me over numerous late-night chess sessions, that I’d eventually feel compelled to give him the
bank out of guilt; I was supposed to make a grand gesture of atonement when the time came for me to retire … why are you looking
at me like that? Don’t you agree with me?’

All I could say was: ‘So you knew. You knew everything.’

‘Of course! Scott made himself perfectly clear in his own indirect mystical way. Funny what garbage these intellectuals dream
up when they put their minds to it. They have weaknesses for high-flown theories which exist only in the imagination, and
of course Scott loves all that kind of thing – myth, allegory, medieval junk, general hocus-pocus … I never could see the
attraction myself, but if he wanted to pull the medieval wool over his eyes, who was I to stop him?’

I felt sick. I just said: ‘Go on.’

‘I won’t say I don’t feel guilty about the past,’ said my father. ‘That would be a lie. Steve and I had the dirtiest of fights
and I didn’t win it by being a pillar of chivalry, but there are two points which ought to be remembered here before anyone
starts calling me a villain – or before I start setting up the cross of a guilty conscience to ensure my crucifixion. Number
one: if I hadn’t cut Steve’s throat he would certainly have cut mine. And number two: since Paul had clearly marked me as
his successor I had more right to that bank than Steve Sullivan. Those two facts always seem to get lost in the shuffle. I
can’t think why. They’re very important. They’re the reason why, although I feel guilty about some aspects of the past, I
can’t bring myself to regret what I did. Certainly I could never feel so riddled with guilt that I’d have some kind of nervous
breakdown and carelessly toss my whole life’s work away to soothe my conscience … Are you still with me? And are you beginning
to see the situation not from Scott’s point of view but from mine?’

I couldn’t speak but I nodded.

‘Good,’ said my father, ‘because now we come to the heart of the matter which is this: I’d never pass the bank to a man of
whom I fundamentally disapproved, but when all was said and done, I didn’t fundamentally disapprove of Scott. In other words,
when all was said and done, I didn’t need the kind of unreal convoluted intellectual motivation that Scott was always trying
to foster in me.’

‘You mean you wanted – you wanted always—’

‘Yes,’ said my father. ‘Always. I always wanted Scott to have the bank.’

I stared at him. My mouth was bone dry. ‘Daddy, you must never, never let him know that. You must never tell him that he’s
spent all these years dedicating himself to giving his father’s enemy what that enemy’s wanted most. If he knew his quest
was nothing but a grand illusion it would destroy him.’

‘Do you think so? I wonder. Scott’s very tough. I’ve always admired how tough he is … You do understand now, though, don’t
you? I
wasn’t motivated by guilt. Guilt just didn’t enter into it. I wanted Scott to have the bank because—’

‘Because he was the younger brother you never had and the son you always wanted and you thought of him as belonging entirely
to you. As far as you were concerned his connection with Steve was just a biological accident.’

‘That’s right,’ said my father. ‘I wanted Scott to have the bank because I loved him. Strange how simple it sounds when I
say it outright like that. I’ve never said it out loud before – I hardly even liked to acknowledge it to myself, because I
was so afraid I might later betray just how I felt.’

‘You mean you had to cover up the truth.’

‘Why, yes, if I was ever going to get what I wanted, I couldn’t afford to let the truth get out! You can see, can’t you, what
a difficult situation I was in? First of all I had to think of Alicia, who naturally wanted me to make Sebastian my heir.
I could hardly let her know I wanted to pass over Sebastian and in fact didn’t care much for either of her sons … However,
Alicia was really just a side-issue. The main problem, I saw from the start, was going to be Scott himself.’