Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  He had been riffling through papers. He stopped doing so, and looked up at her.

  “I should like,” she went on, in her coolest, most English voice, “to double this money, and then double it again. For a start.”

  “Mrs. Sinclair. This is Wall Street. Not Las Vegas…”

  “I know that. If I thought I had a chance of doing it at Vegas, I’d go. But I think the odds are higher here.”

  There was a silence, and then quite suddenly, Gould began to smile. He looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time since she had come into the room. He picked up a piece of paper in front of him, on which he had scribbled some notes, tore it carefully in half, and threw it into a wastepaper basket.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “Then perhaps we’d better begin again.”

  Hélène, looking at him, thought: he does have a sense of humor; it is going to work. And she had been right. Their friendship, and their highly successful alliance, had begun then, in that ten-minute meeting that went on for one and a half hours.

  “You do understand what we would be doing?” he had said to her just before she left. “I have to be sure of that.” He hesitated. “The higher the returns, the greater the risk. If we follow this course, you could make substantial gains, and they would increase, of course, as we reinvest. But it is very close to gambling, and the odds are just as bad as they would be—say—at roulette. You could make gains; the likelihood is that you will lose. Are you prepared for that?”

  “I’m prepared for it, yes.”

  “Why are you doing this?” He looked at her closely.

  “Do you need to know that?” She met his gaze levelly, and he was the first to turn away.

  “No,” he said with a small, slightly puzzled frown. “I suppose I don’t.”

  She had not lost; she had won. As her earnings rose, rapidly, so she invested, and reinvested. One million; two million. It was only then that she began to feel safe, and she asked herself sometimes: was she simply making sure that she had enough to deal with Ned Calvert? Or was it something else? Was she also, step by step, ridding herself of the specter of poverty, until the point was reached when she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it could never lie in wait for her again? That it would never reclaim her—or Cat?

  She adjusted the Saint Laurent suit on its padded silk hanger. She closed the closet door on it, and on the memories that it suddenly brought back—of her mother’s pathetically cared for dresses, adjusted, unpicked, resewn, carefully pressed—all those castoffs from Mrs. Calvert.

  She turned away; now, when she was incontestably rich, she sometimes felt poor, and with a bitter sense that her impoverishment was self-inflicted. She had more, but she felt less. She saw herself then, in the small room at the lodginghouse in Paris, hastily packing her few belongings into that cardboard suitcase, and then running down the stairs, running through the streets to the Seine. Then, when she had had nothing, she had felt as if she had everything, as if the world lay cupped in the palm of her hand.

  Ah, but I was happy then, she thought, and turned away, angry with herself.

  She unpacked the rest of her things, hardly conscious of what she was doing. Silk stockings; silk underwear, decorated with Brussels lace. Beside her bed, she placed her little Cartier clock, an exquisite thing of blue cloisonné enamel, with a face of rose quartz. She looked at it, and thought of the old clock on the icebox in the trailer, the old clock, and its little red stickers. Minutes ticking by; time passing.

  She went into the bathroom, and unpacked her washing things, and her makeup. She held the unopened box of Joy, which Stephani had given her, and then, quickly and angrily, threw it away. Toothpaste. Shampoo. French soap, by Guerlain. The small mauve packet of contraceptive pills, the same brand she had been taking day after day for years. Originally prescribed by Mr. Foxworth, when they were still a novel method of contraception. She looked at them with sudden hate, and, on an impulse, opened the packet and pushed the tiny white pills out of their plastic bubble containers. One after another: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday…a whole month’s worth of time, and all of it empty.

  They fell into the washbasin; she turned the tap on fully, and washed them away. What was the point of them now, anyway?

  She went back into the sitting room of her suite and picked up the script Gregory Gertz had given her in Arizona. She had read it once; now that The Runaways was completed, she had promised him she would read it again. She would read it tonight, she decided. He was in New York; they could meet briefly tomorrow to discuss it, after the meeting with Gould. And then she could catch a plane and fly home to Cat.

  This thought usually calmed her, and filled her with a sense of excitement and expectation. But now, for some reason, it did not. She opened the script in front of her and began to read. But the words seemed quite meaningless; the sentences without sense. She shut the script, and looked at the delicate face of the Cartier clock. It was almost seven, almost time for her daily call to Cat.

  She reached for the telephone, hesitated, and then, giving in to the temptation this time, asked to be put through to the international operator.

  Her heart was beating very fast, as it always beat when she did this. How many times had she done it before, from hotel rooms across Europe, hotel rooms across America? No more than fifteen, perhaps, which was not so very much in five years. It felt like a hundred. It felt like a thousand. The first time she had done it she had been in London, in that little red room in Anne Kneale’s house, sitting near the fire, waiting for Lewis, who had gone to a dance in Berkeley Square.

  Her palms felt damp; her mouth was dry; she was shaking a little. She told the operator to do what she always told them to do: let the number ring three times, and then disconnect. She gave her the number in St. Cloud. The operator repeated it; she sounded bored. They always sounded bored. Perhaps they were used to such seemingly pointless requests.

  “I’m connecting you now…”

  “Wait.” Hélène swallowed. “Let it ring, will you? I’ll hang up…”

  The operator still sounded bored. She gave a little sigh.

  “Surely,” she said.

  Hélène sat very still, pressing the receiver tight against her ear. He would not be there. There would be no answer. George would answer, or one of the other servants…What time was it in Paris, anyway? She could not think, her mind could not deal with the numbers of the differential. Ahead. Behind. Morning. Afternoon. Five years. Five hours.

  She listened to the clicks, to the ringing, to the distance.

  Once. Twice. Three times. This time, when she went to hang up, her hands would not move.

  Edouard himself answered on the fifth ring.

  “Yes?”

  It was like an electric shock. A current straight to the heart. There was a silence that went on forever. When he next spoke, his voice was sharp with inquiry. He said, “Hélène?”

  Then she disconnected, very quickly.

  Gould was chairing the meeting, and it was drawing to a close. Unsatisfactorily. He looked down at the papers in front of him; he looked along the length of the conference table: himself, at the head of that table; ranged along it, four other men, and one woman, a woman who was about to make her first mistake in four years of quick-witted, daring, and highly successful business dealings. This fact had already been pointed out to her, by Gould himself, and by the other men in turn: a lawyer, two investment brokers, one investment manager, all of them busy men, whose advice was expensive. Hélène Harte had listened to them—she was still listening to them; or possibly she was not listening at all, it was difficult to tell. Either way, she appeared uninterested.

  Gould looked at her more closely. The lawyer, a man whom he had called in, and who was meeting Hélène Harte for the first time, was rehearsing the arguments again, in the weary manner of a teacher going over the alphabet with a small child. Hélène had her face turned toward him politely. The man speaking had yet to discover that when she was
this calm, and this courteous, she was adamant. Gould, who knew this already, frowned.

  On her right hand, rather than her left, she was wearing a diamond ring. It was the famous ring which Lewis had bought her shortly after their marriage and which had, some years before, been the talk of Boston and New York. The lawyer speaking seemed riveted by this ring. As he went on about the cotton industry and manmade fibers, he appeared to be calculating the possible number of its carats.

  Basically, what Hélène proposed to do was very simple. She was liquidating some of her assets, at a good profit, including the property bought in the South of France in 1963. These she proposed to reinvest in land. This, in itself, was perfectly acceptable. Gould himself had, over the past months, attempted to interest her in numerous excellent land investments: in England, for instance, where agricultural estates could still be bought at a low rate per acre, and where all the signs pointed to a rapid price rise. In New York itself; there was an area on the West Side, two blocks of it, and the word from City Hall was that plans to designate it a redevelopment zone were pending. The technique of buying piecemeal into such an urban site, using a number of fronting companies, and then selling at very high profit, once the area was entirely hers, had been discussed with her some months before. It had just been discussed again, at considerable length. She had merely nodded, and returned to the question of Alabama.

  Using a front company called Hartland Developments, Inc., Hélène proposed to purchase some six hundred acres of cotton fields, adjacent to a small town called Orangeburg, and presently owned by a Major Edward Calvert. This plan was not acceptable. Quite simply, it was crazy.

  When Gould had realized that Hélène was serious in her intentions, he had had rapid and extensive inquiries made on her behalf. The result of those inquiries now lay on the table in front of him, and they did not make happy reading.

  Calvert had, for the past twelve years, invested heavily in plant and machinery; the bulk of his annual crop was no longer picked by hand, and the number of his employees had been consistently falling. He had financed his outlay on plant with bank loans, using his estate as collateral. Had his estates been better managed, had the demand for—and price of—cotton held steady, Calvert might have prospered. As it was, the estate was foundering.

  The two banks to whom the estate and house were mortgaged had seen the warning lights some two years before. Since 1962, Calvert had come under increasing pressure. Interest on his loans mounted monthly; the value of his assets declined year by year. In 1963, he had suffered a bad harvest, adversely affected by weather and plant disease. He was now under threat of foreclosure, and was grasping at the possibility of selling off some of his land like a drowning man grasping at the proverbial branch. As every man around the table had been at pains to point out, he would then be operating with a smaller, depleted estate, and his chances of turnaround were virtually nil. Calvert was trying to buy time: what he was doing was winning a temporary battle that would ensure he lost the war.

  James Gould’s head was aching. The lawyer was still talking. Gould rubbed ineffectively at his temples. The point was, Calvert was going under, and Hélène Harte’s purchase was totally pointless. The land was a bad investment; the price she seemed willing to pay was ludicrous; if it had been any other woman, or man, Gould would have thought they had taken leave of their senses. He could only assume that this was some crazy whim. Women had whims. His own divorce from his second wife had just come through, and that day Gould was not feeling well disposed toward the female sex. Only one thing held his impatience in check: the certain knowledge that Hélène Harte did not have whims. She was a clever, methodical, on occasion devious woman. Which made it all the more incomprehensible.

  To his relief, just as he was about to cut the lawyer off, she did so. She adjusted the diamond ring, leaned forward, and began speaking in that low, oddly accented, husky voice. The voice was both mesmeric and succinct. Occasionally, Gould thought, he would have liked to listen to that voice when it was discussing something other than money.

  “Perhaps I should make one thing clear. I did mention it earlier, but perhaps I should mention it again?”

  The quiet voice cut the rebellious lawyer short. He threw up his hands and leaned back in his chair, looking irritable.

  “My purchase of this land is conditional.” She paused. “I will buy it, at asking price, on condition that my company is enabled to take up the existing bank loans. With the rest of the estate and the house as collateral, as before.”

  The silenced lawyer now gave a snort of derision.

  “The banks will bless you, that’s for sure. They won’t be able to believe their luck. That collateral is virtually worthless, and they know it. Why do you think they’re threatening foreclosure? They know they’re going to get their fingers burned, they’re resigned to that. Now they’re mounting a salvage operation. They’re trying to save the rest of their hand, and probably their arm as well.”

  “Excellent.” Hélène smiled. “Then the deal should be simple to arrange. As you say, the banks in question will accept it.”

  Gould leaned forward. An idea had come to him. “Within the next year,” he began slowly, keeping his eyes on Hélène’s face, “probably sooner, say six months, this Major Calvert is going to default on repayments. What do you intend to do then?”

  “I shall foreclose.”

  “He’ll ask for an extension.”

  “I shall refuse.”

  “I see.”

  Around the table there was a little silence. The investment manager sighed and looked up at the ceiling. One of the lawyers coughed.

  “How long do you intend to give him, precisely?” Gould leaned back in his seat; he tapped the table with his pencil.

  Hélène frowned. She had thought: Let him sweat, and let me watch him doing it. She had thought of a date, an appropriate date: July 15. Happy anniversary, Ned.

  But that date was almost a year away. Now, quite suddenly, it seemed unbearable to wait that long. She wanted it to be over. She looked up, and met Gould’s eyes.

  “Offer him six months. Until the end of next January. Give him the impression we’ll extend, but no guarantees. Will he accept that?”

  “I should think he’d accept just about anything. Under the circumstances. Desperate men don’t read the small print.” Gould spoke dryly. He was, he thought, beginning to understand.

  “And then?” he prompted.

  “Foreclosure at the end of the six months. Or as soon as he defaults. I assume he has no other likely source of funding?”

  “Not a hope in hell.” The lawyer meeting Hélène for the first time leaned forward aggressively. “No one else—with due respect—would be crazy enough to bail him out. The upshot of this is straightforward enough. Six months from now, seven, eight at the most, you’ll be in possession of everything he’s got. A rundown estate. A rundown house. You couldn’t give it away. What’s the sense in that?”

  Hélène’s face had become very set. She said, in a flat concise voice, “It makes sense to me.”

  She bent her head slightly. She was not sure, anymore, if it really did make sense. She ought to have felt triumph, she thought dully, and she felt no triumph, only a sense of dragging fatigue. She stood up, eager suddenly that the meeting should be over. She pulled on her gloves and looked at James Gould.

  “The deeds of sale, the loan transfers—how long will the documentation take?”

  “Not long. It’s ready and waiting to go. The preliminary work has all been done.”

  “Oh, good.” She looked at him a little blankly. “I would like to get it signed and sealed as soon as possible. Thank you, all of you, for your time.”

  She smiled at them then, with that extraordinary smile she had, which had the capacity to light up a room. Several of the men glanced at one another; they all rose, and she turned away to the door. Gould followed her. He escorted her through the outer offices as far as the elevator, saying nothing. He pressed
the button, and then, as she turned to look at him, and began to speak, he felt suddenly that he could stay silent no longer.

  “You know him, Hélène, don’t you?” he said in a quiet voice. “You know this man Calvert, and that’s the reason for all this.”

  She hesitated, but only fractionally. He saw something come into her eyes which he had never seen there before, and it alarmed him. Then she answered, equally quietly.

  “You’re right, of course. Yes. I know him.”

  “But Hélène, why? Why are you doing this?”

  “Why?” She considered the question for a moment. Then she gave a small resigned smile. “He made me the woman I am,” she said. “That’s the reason.” She paused. “Mr. Gould—you asked me that question once before—do you remember, the very first day I came to see you? Do you remember what I said then?”

  “Yes. I do.” Gould looked at her steadily. “You asked me if I needed to know, and I said no.”

  “Say no again. I’d be—very grateful.”

  She leaned forward as she said that, and rested her hand on his arm. Gould wanted to argue; he wanted to protest; but the touch of her hand and the expression in her eyes made him give in. He shrugged.

  “Very well. No.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The doors opened, she turned, and stepped into the elevator. She smiled once more, and the doors closed.

  Gould walked back thoughtfully to the conference room. There, the lawyer who had just experienced Hélène Harte for the first time was in full flood.

  James Gould did not listen to him. He moved to the window. A long way below, across the street, a black limousine was waiting. He watched the figure of Hélène Harte cross the street and climb into the back of the car. He frowned as he watched her.