I was secretly afraid of so many things that it always amazed me when people occasionally remarked how bold I was. Of course they seldom meant it as a compliment, but there are nevertheless times when it is an advantage to be considered a tigress instead of a quivering jellyfish. If people believe you’re brave you may not only half believe them but even draw a spurious courage from their delusion.
The list of my fears stretched endlessly into the furthest reaches of my mind. They were all there, the big fears, the little fears, the real and the imaginary, the boundless and the groundless. I used to examine them minutely with loving care on my sleepless nights. I was afraid of being alone and unloved, although this fear had lessened considerably since Alan was born. I was. afraid of dying. I was afraid of being poor. I was afraid of my business failing with the result that I would lose Mallingham, and losing Mallingham was my most racking fear of all. I could not conceive of a world without my home, the one place in a hostile world where I could retreat and feel secure. I felt I would have no stability without Mallingham, and I was mortally afraid of instability and its attendant demons of alienation and madness. My worst nightmare was of dying destitute in a lunatic asylum and being buried not at Mallingham but in some pauper’s grave where I would be quite unable to rest in peace.
It will be obvious from this catalogue of neuroses that it was as well I had to work to save Mallingham, for if I had been wealthy enough to be a lady of leisure with all the time I needed to indulge my fears I would soon have become as eccentric as my father.
The irony of my situation was that I had always yearned to be ordinary. I believe this is a common desire among children from eccentric families, and certainly when I was obliged to put my father to bed after one of his chamber-music orgies I longed to return to my grandparents’ Lincolnshire vicarage, where I had once spent two quiet, well-regulated, blissfully conventional years. After my father’s third divorce I did go through a brief phase of vowing never to get married, but in fact I longed for a husband, children and the trappings of a respectable married life.
It was not until I was up at Girton and contemptuously labeled “bluestocking” by young men who barely knew me that I realized sadly that I might be too well educated to receive a marriage proposal. It seemed men were prepared to overlook feminine intelligence only if the woman was beautiful, and since I was fat and plain I saw no alternative but to abandon my dreams of a romantic white wedding, a tall dark handsome hero of a bridegroom and a leisurely honeymoon spent cruising the Greek Isles in a private yacht. Sinking myself in my studies, I became the bluestocking that everyone had already decided I was, and pretended with a nobility as false as it was nauseating that I was “above” a sybaritic life. I had actually convinced myself I was happy in this role when my father died, but in the harsh events which followed I found I could no longer afford to cut myself off from men and wander around in an intellectual haze. I had to go down on my knees and crawl to those men for whatever help I could get.
I was told that Mallingham would have to be sold, and when I protested that I would work my fingers to the bone to buy it and keep it, I was told it was not suitable for a young girl to live alone and unchaperoned in a big house, not suitable for a young girl of my class to go into any form of business, and most definitely not suitable for a young girl of my station in life to be anything except a wife and mother or, if I were less fortunate, a spinster teaching in some old maid’s school.
These masculine rulings were presented to me in the great hall at Mallingham after my father’s funeral. Philip Hurst, Geoffrey’s father, was there with his partner, and there were solicitors representing my half sister and half brother. The vicar was standing by the fireplace with his hands folded, and the local doctor who had attended my father during his last illness stood beside him.
When they had finished I stood up. For the first time in all my encounters with the opposite sex my anger was stronger than my fear.
“You bloody men!” I shouted, and saw them flinch at my language. “How dare you speak to me as if I were a lunatic in need of a keeper! How dare you speak to me as if I had no pride or self-respect! And how dare you say things to me that you’d never dare say to any man!”
They gaped at me. I despised them. “You listen to me!” I said furiously. “I’m going to keep my home! I’m going to make the money! And I’m going to make you all look damned fools if it’s the last thing I ever do!”
One of them laughed. I shall always remember that. It gave me the courage to go on.
“Don’t talk to me of losing everything I have!” I cried. “I’m not interested in losing! The word ‘losing’ doesn’t form part of my vocabulary! I’m only interested in winning!”
“But, my dear …” Philip Hurst made a helpless gesture with his hands, and because I knew he was the only one in the room who cared what happened to me I did not interrupt him as he fumbled for his words. “You’d need a millionaire to help you out of this mess.”
“Then I shall find one,” I said, and walked out of the room.
An hour later I bicycled to the nearest telephone and asked my friend Harriet, who worked on the “Personalities of the Week” page of The Illustrated London News, if there were any foreign millionaires in London at the time. I thought a foreigner, being more ignorant of the social structure than a native millionaire, might be more lenient towards my eccentric ambition.
“And it’s got to be someone who might like to help a girl in distress,” I concluded to Harriet.
“Well, there’s Paul Van Zale. He’s an American banker.”
“Good. He’ll do.”
“But Di, his reputation’s awful!”
“So much the better!” I said, and began to hatch my plans.
Since it was clear by this time that I had no hope of living a respectable conventional life, I saw no point in hoping for a respectable conventional relationship with any member of the opposite sex. I knew I would have to sleep with Paul Van Zale, but for Mallingham I was prepared to sacrifice my virginity; it hardly seemed worth hanging on to it for a wedding night which would never take place. Besides, I have to admit that by that time (I was twenty-one) I was curious to discover whether copulation was as fascinating as everyone seemed to think it was. I was no longer religious, so I was determined to have no moral qualms; I knew enough about Freudian theory to tell myself it was unhealthy to be prudish; and I was certainly desperate enough to sleep with a complete stranger. My one worry was whether Paul Van Zale would be desperate enough to sleep with me, but I reassured myself by remembering my father’s dictum that middle-aged men always found young girls attractive.
The more I thought about Paul Van Zale, the more determined I became to detest him. As I was wheeled into his office in a food hamper I even thought, Wretched man, forcing me to endure all this! I had never seen a photograph of him, but I was convinced he would be short, fat and bald. Even the thought of his American accent made me shudder.
But then the lid of the hamper was flung open. I struggled to my feet, looked across the room and saw him.
That was when my miracle happened, and my miracle was not that Mallingham was saved but that I found someone to love at last, and in loving Paul I overcame my deep-rooted fear of men and for the first time in my life was able to enjoy being female.
III
He left me. I’d known he would. From the beginning be had been honest, never making promises he had no intention of keeping, but his honesty only made him the more irresistible to me. After my disillusionment with men I saw clearly how my father had always lied to his wives, and after I had realized that “no man would ever want to marry me I consoled myself by deciding marriage was nothing but a sham. I knew what happened to people who promised to love each other for ever and ever, and I told myself I wanted no part in such romantic twaddle. If Paul had been less than honest with me I could never have trusted him, but his dread of romance with its accompanying delusions not only matched mine but surpassed it. His
dread was genuine, whereas mine was merely a pose I struck to preserve my self-esteem, yet when romance came it was I who was realistic enough to accept it, while he, the self-styled realist, was the one who retreated into fantasy by refusing to believe our lives had been altered.
The first time I noticed his occasional inability to face the facts was when he let me become pregnant. I had made no secret about wanting a baby, and since I was unable to live a conventional existence it must surely have been obvious to him that I had no choice but to have the baby out of wedlock. In the circumstances I would have thought that even the stupidest man would have guessed I wanted part of him to remain behind when he eventually had to leave, but I was wrong. He never guessed. I still thought his shock and anger on learning the news were quite uncalled for, but because by that time I was terrified of him leaving me I made renewed efforts to be the model mistress so that he would have no further cause for complaint.
I could well remember what kind of feminine behavior my father had found intolerable. He had not liked inquisitive women who had pried into his past, he had detested jealous women who had intruded upon his present, and he had loathed clinging women who had tried to chain themselves to his future. So I never asked Paul too closely about his background, and always tried to convey the impression that he was free to leave whenever he wished.
But he stayed, and as he stayed my expectations changed. Thinking myself to be fundamentally unattractive I had at first expected nothing from him beyond a little affection, yet slowly as his affection increased and I came to realize that in his eyes I was very far from being unattractive, I could not help but wonder if he might be able to love me a little as well. Our long holiday together on the Norfolk Broads that autumn was as memorable as any honeymoon, and although I still knew he would one day return to America I had become convinced that our separation would be only temporary. That was why, when he finally had to leave, I was able to scrape together the courage to let him go without too many humiliating tears.
He promised to write to me but did not. I was a part of his life, yet he tried to pretend to himself I had never existed. I was set aside together with his passion for European civilization and his romantic vision of traveling sideways in time, and in this rejection of his true nature I saw that his pride in his honesty was misplaced and his so-called realism was a fraud.
Or so it seemed to me as I waited daily for the letters which never came.
It would be too boring to chronicle the sleepless nights, the endless tears, the black despair, the suicidal inclinations, the impotent rage and the frustrated passion which overwhelmed me at this point. Those days do me no credit and I prefer not to dwell on them, but I do remember thinking that there was nothing more demeaning than building one’s life around the daily visit of the postman. I felt as if Paul had given me self-respect only to tear it to shreds afterwards, and as those tortured days passed and the baby stirred more vigorously within me I saw myself as the world saw me, a stupid naïve young woman who had been discarded by an elderly roué, a girl who had “got into trouble” in the best tradition of the Victorian kitchenmaid while society applauded this just retribution for her sins.
The picture repulsed me, and amidst all my despair I felt the first faint stirrings of defiance.
Early in the new year Paul’s London partner Hal Beecher wrote to say that the American business manager and market-research specialist had arrived in London to launch Diana Slade Cosmetics. Did I wish to confer with them? They would be delighted to meet me, but naturally they would quite understand if I preferred to remain in seclusion.
Reading between the courteous lines, I saw that Mr. Beecher was kindly giving me the chance to be no more than the nominal head of my business while Paul’s money allowed me to cower at Mallingham, as anonymous as the most pathetic of discarded mistresses.
I was face to face with my future, but as I looked out over Mallingham Broad with Hal Beecher’s letter in my shaking hand I knew there could be no turning aside. Either I abandoned all self-respect and sank into ignominious obscurity or else I went out into the world to fight to the last ditch.
On January the tenth, 1923, when I was nearly seven months pregnant, I packed a suitcase, ordered Mr. Oakes to drive me to the station in the pony trap, and caught the train to London.
IV
Paul did write to me then. He apologized for not having written before, explained that he had been very busy and expressed the hope that I was well. Having disposed of the necessary platitudes, he proceeded to inform me in the smoothest and most ruefully charming of styles that while he hoped we would always maintain a cordial business relationship he was afraid our personal relationship would have to end; he had reached this decision for my sake because he felt he could not offer me what I wanted and therefore, felt obliged to set me free to find someone more suitable. There was no need for me to worry about money—or about working myself to the bone in the world of commerce. Hal Beecher would send me all the money I needed to live quietly at Mallingham and enjoy motherhood to the full.
When I had finished reading the lavish compliments and fond farewells in the last paragraph I permitted myself the smallest of cynical smiles and wrote back:
MY DEAREST PAUL,
How sweet of you to write such a divine letter! I think you’re absolutely right about ending our personal relationship and it’s wonderful of you to be so sensible and self-sacrificing for my sake. But darling, I’m just the tiniest bit distressed about the logic behind all your chivalrous offers of financial help. Are you really implying that it’s better to be a kept woman than an emancipated one? “O tempora!” as Cicero would have said, “O mores!” Still, at least you weren’t misguided enough to offer me Mallingham as a gift before I’ve had the chance to repay you with interest. Lots of love, darling—I’d write more but I’m too busy working myself to the bone in the world of commerce.
DINAH
There was no reply to this letter, but at least he never said to me as everyone else did, “You can’t do this!” Perhaps he was the only person who knew I was quite capable of launching a business when I was seven months pregnant.
Hofstadt and Baker, the two Americans who were supposed to give me my commercial start in life, quickly decided that I was a dangerous lunatic, and although Hal Beecher did not share these views there was no doubt my behavior sent him into a flap. To do him credit he was extremely worried about my status as a fallen woman. He was a respectable American gentleman of fifty-five, and my plight struck all manner of responsive chords in his decent puritan bosom. When he found out I was staying in Chelsea with Harriet, he commented unhappily that Chelsea was too avant-garde and offered me a room in his house in Mayfair.
“I’m sure my wife would be delighted …”
I was sure his wife would be horrified. No woman in her right mind would welcome a girl who had just finished an affair with a man of her husband’s generation. “Thank you, Hal, but it’s really not necessary.” I reassured him by revealing that Harriet was Lady Harriet, the daughter of a marquess. Americans are always so impressed by titles.
No sooner had I succeeded in soothing Hal Beecher than both Hursts, father and son, stormed up to London to carry me back to Norfolk, and by the time I had convinced them of the futility of their mission it was a relief to escape to Harriet’s little flat, drink some strong tea and put my feet up. I was an uncomfortable shape by that time and I tired more easily than usual.
Harriet had been a year ahead of me at Cambridge, so she had obtained her degree in history before my father’s death had concluded my varsity education. Unknown to Hal Beecher she was the rebel of her aristocratic family, and having turned her back on the idiocy of a debutante season she had decided to earn her living. Her family had been shocked, but Harriet had had no regrets. She was employed, she had her own home, and independence, as all young men have known for centuries, is very sweet.
Harriet was thin and rangy, with a long bony face, dark bobbed hair and tawn
y eyes which Robin, the pale poet who lived in the flat below, called “twilight pools of infinite wisdom.” Robin was a very bad poet and lived on a war pension; he had been invalided home from the front in 1917, suffered a nervous breakdown and escaped from his country home to drown his shell-shock in Chelsea. The friend who lived with him, a tough little Cockney and football fanatic, was called Cedric.
In the flat above us lived Dulcie, an unmarried mother who had a nine-month-old daughter; Joan, who worked as a cigarette girl in a nightclub; and Joan’s lover, a ragtime musician called Eddie. Dulcie had an allowance, and although she would never divulge its source we suspected that a certain M.P. was responsible. Joan and Eddie had taken her in after they had found her crying on a bench in Kensington Gardens, and soon she was looking after their flat and cooking their meals for them. I thought they were a splendid advertisement for a ménage à trois, but Cedric prophesied darkly that it would never last.
I liked Cedric. He took me to the flicks once or twice—a move which made Robin cross, but since he despised the cinema he had no excuse to be annoyed. I was also interested in Cedric because he was a salesman for a cosmetics company called Persepolis.
He lost his job just before Alan was born. Returning home one afternoon from Hal’s office in Milk Street, I had just stepped into the hall of the house when Cedric flung open the door of his flat, grabbed me by the arm and marched me straight into his sitting room.
“Oh Gawd, Dinah, I’m desperate—Persepolis is on the skids, they’re guillotining all the staff and my head’s just rolled into the ruddy basket! Christ, what am I going to do? Nobody can get a job nowadays, men with large families can’t even get a job, and I’ve got no real education and, oh Christ, we’ll never be able to live on that ruddy Robin’s pension, not with him drinking like a fish the way he does. Dinah, can you …?”
The Rich Are Different Page 29