“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 grayish color, 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, then 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 inflection 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.
III
“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, of what happened in my two marriages?”
We stared at each other. 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.”
IV
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 recheck 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 him
self 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 these 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.”
“I suppose,” I said slowly, “you were afraid he’d walk out on you and disappear into the blue if he knew his ambition consisted in giving you what you wanted.”
“No, you’re going too far too fast. You’re overlooking the crucial fact that for years and years I didn’t realize Scott was hostile to me. We’d grown very close before the war, and after the war when he came home he gave me no indication whatsoever that his feelings for me might have changed. No, the problem as I saw it then was not that he might cut himself off from me and disappear into the blue if he found out the truth; I just thought that if he knew he could get the bank comparatively effortlessly, he would lose interest in being a banker and turn to some other profession to prove to himself that he was a better, smarter, and wiser man than his father ever was.”
“I think I understand. You’re saying Scott needed a struggle. He needed to punish himself by taking on some back-breaking task.”
“Well, I’m no expert on psychology, and I didn’t put him in deep analysis, but instinct told me that he wanted to believe—had to believe—we were engaged in some big mythological battle, and that if I was ever to get what I wanted I’d have to play along with him. I had to let Scott jump through these self-imposed imaginary hoops—and why not? They didn’t strike me at the time as being sinister. They were entirely compatible with my theory that he was mixed up about his father and this was his way of straightening himself out. Let me repeat that he never showed any sign of hostility, never. He was as efficient at deceiving me, you see, as I was at deceiving him.”
“When did you start to see through him?”
“Nineteen-fifty-five. Up till then everything had worked out just fine, although looking back, I’m surprised how effectively I succeeded in creating this illusion that I couldn’t possibly regard Scott as my successor. There were two clues which provided a complete giveaway of the way things really were. The first was that I did take Scott into the firm. People like Emily thought it was sheer Christian charity, but of course that was nonsense—I’d never have hired him unless I wanted him. And the second clue was that I never fired him. Sam wanted him fired. A lot of people have wanted Scott out of the way at some time or other, but I kept him safe and helped him through every stage of the game—until in the end, of course, I realized I’d been digging my own grave.”
My father stopped talking. He was breathing better now, and his face, although pale and drawn, was less gray. He drank some more brandy, and around us I could hear the hum of the airport, the shuffle of people coming and going, the murmur of conversation and the drone of the announcements from the public-address system.
I said, “What happened in 1955?”
“I discovered Tony Sullivan had left behind a posthumous letter.” My father thought for a moment before adding carefully, “It presented Steve’s view of the past. Of course I’d raised Scott on mine.”
“But why should Scott have rejected your view and adopted Steve’s?”
“Tony’s letter was very convincing.” My father paused as if to reconsider this statement but finally confirmed it by repeating, “Very convincing. It was biased and inaccurate, naturally, but—”
“Was it? But Tony was always so honest! I’d have thought he would have been the last person to invent a web of lies!”
“That’s true, and of course that’s why the letter would have influenced Scott so much. However, there are different ways of looking at the truth, and as I’ve already said, although I admit I had a rough fight with Steve, I’ve never at heart regretted it because I’ve always considered my actions were justified.”
“Scott believes you killed Steve.”
My father went white. “He told you that? But …”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t take that too seriously. Scott’s neurotic about his father, and it’s so obvious that he’s got the past out of proportion.”
I sighed and made an effort to turn the conversation back to the present. Steve’s death might have been a tragedy, but as far as I was concerned there was no reason why I should now dwell on all the sordid details. I was interested in Scott, not his father. “When did Scott see this letter of Tony’s?” I demanded abruptly.
“After Tony was killed in 1944, but unfortunately I didn’t realize the letter existed till 1955. However, as soon as I saw the letter, I knew Scott was certain to be hostile to me—I knew I had to fire him.”
“But then why didn’t you? What happened?”
“Well, you see, Vicky,” said my father, suddenly looking very old and tired, “I’m not really as tough as I always want to believe I am. In fact, sometimes I’m so weak I just can’t face the truth at all. Scott wasn’t the only one here who found a certain course of action psychologically necessary to him.”
“In other words, you couldn’t face firing him.”
“Oh, I faced it! I always fire partners as soon as I no longer trust them one hundred percent—it’s a reflex action, and so much quicker and cleaner than keeping them on and agonizing over them until they make another attempt to stab me in the back. No, I faced firing Scott, but I convinced myself it was unnecessary. I thought I could handle him. It was probably the worst decision I’ve ever made.”
“But I still don’t understand why—”
“I was going through a bad time in my private life, and I just couldn’t bear the thought that I wouldn’t have Scott around anymore. Anyway, I still thought he was fond of me. I had to believe that, you see. That was my myth. It was necessary to me. It protected me from a reality I couldn’t bear to face.”
“But you knew he was hostile!”
“I knew he wanted the bank not just to straighten himself out but to avenge his father. I knew he was out for justice, but I thought: Okay, so he wants a little justice, and why not? And I figured I could still work out a solution that would keep everyone happy. I had this idea that he could be a caretaker for the bank in between the time when I retired and the time when my grandsons were old enough to take charge. I still didn’t really see him as hostile. Maybe a little antagonistic … tough-minded … difficult … but not actively hostile. Right up to the end I believed he was fond of me in his own way, despite everything.”
Sins of the Fathers Page 68