The Rich Are Different

by Susan Howatch

  “Mummy’ll be down in a minute,” Alan explained. “She’s late because she’s been working so hard. My mother,” he added, “thinks it’s bourgeois for women to lead idle unproductive lives. Tell me, Mr. Sullivan, do you think the bourgeoisie are more of a threat than the aristocracy to the development of true socialism?”

  I saw the smugness in his eyes and knew he was showing off. The precocious little kid! He was barely six years old, the same age as my younger son Tony who had the good sense to talk about trains, cowboys and baseball.

  “Sonny,” I drawled, “we don’t have that kind of problem where I come from.” I wandered over to take a look at the knight. “Who’s this guy?” I demanded as I heard the patter of his feet behind me.

  “Do you like him? I do!” His voice became eager as he forgot the bourgeoisie. “That’s a brass rubbing from an old church, and the knight’s called Sir Roger de Trumpington.”

  He was looking up at me enthusiastically with Paul’s bright dark eyes. A lump formed in my throat. I could almost hear Paul say, “You’re too damned sentimental, Steve!” but that only made the lump more painful. In the end I just said, “Your daddy would have been so pleased with you.”

  A stillness smoothed all expression from his face. He backed away. “Mummy!” he called frantically. “Where are you? Why don’t you come down?” And he dashed up the stairs as if I’d turned into a monster who’d tried to gobble him up.

  I sighed. I’d forgotten that the English hate any display of sentiment, and I was still staring ruefully at the stern face of Sir Roger de Trumpington when a slight sound made me look up.

  Dinah was at the head of the stairs.

  I sucked in my breath with a rasp. She’d lost a lot of weight, but instead of making her look flat the loss only emphasized the curves that hadn’t disappeared, and those curves were now all in the right places. Her silvery dress rippled as she walked. She wore silver high-heeled slippers, a silverish circlet around her sleek dark hair and a huge diamond ring on the highly manicured fourth finger of her right hand. Her long diamond earrings swayed languidly, and smoke from her diamond-studded cigarette holder curled upward with style. Her lips were moistly scarlet, her eyes heavily shadowed, her long lashes jungle-thick. When she smiled I thought my welcome was going to be formal and cool, but when she spoke, her voice—ah, that seductive English accent!—was as warm and winning as it had been on the phone.

  “Steve! Handsome as ever!”

  “Miss Theda Bara? Or is it Miss Clara Bow? How’s Hollywood these days?”

  We laughed. As our hands clasped she said, amused, “I was determined to be the juiciest steak on the slab!”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Don’t you still look at women as if they were meat in a butcher’s shop?”

  “You bet!” I said good-naturedly, realizing I was being teased, but I couldn’t help being impressed by how much trouble she’d taken to look sizzling. In fact I thought it was damned nice of her to put on such a big production when we’d never exactly been the best of friends.

  “You’ll have a drink, of course,” she said, and suddenly a white cloth was whipped off an ice bucket and there was the magnum of champagne she had promised me on the day Paul died.

  “So you remembered!” I was agog with admiration.

  “Of course! Do open it, Steve—men open champagne bottles so much better than women do.”

  “Why, sure!” It was a long time since I’d heard that kind of remark. As I broke the seal it occurred to me that European women really did have a great deal to offer.

  The champagne was the prelude to a remarkable evening. We couldn’t empty the magnum but we ate all the caviar before taking a cab to the Savoy, where we continued dinner in that room overlooking the river. Dinah was obviously a regular customer, because when the maître d’ saw her he bowed low and we were immediately ushered to the best table by the window. We ordered Scotch salmon for the fish course and then I salivated among the clarets on the wine list before choosing a Château Latour 1920 to accompany our roast beef. I could see that Dinah was surprised I was able to discuss the wines competently with the wine waiter. American ignorance about wine is notorious—which was why Paul made me study the subject thoroughly when I was with him in England. It was all part of the plan to kid the English I was tame and civilized.

  “So how’s the world treating you?” I inquired when we had dealt with the preliminaries and were free to catch up on each other’s news.

  We chatted in a bright breezy fashion for some time. I had on my best European manners and she had on her best blasé English accent. She said she was making rather a lot of money—naturally I wasn’t so crassly American as to ask how much—and the salon was doing frightfully well and they’d just bought another warehouse and the payroll kept expanding, and it was just too exhausting, darling, honestly, but all rather fun. Apparently her friend Harriet had the big house where all the business entertaining was done, but once a month there were house parties at Mallingham—rather divine, darling, and everyone adored the house—but otherwise she never saw Mallingham, she was just too busy in London making all the filthy money, so vulgar, darling, but what could one do? One got caught up in a materialistic treadmill and one simply couldn’t get off. Yes, she was still a sort of socialist, but let’s be honest, darling, it was rather heaven being rich, the Webbs should have tried it sometime, not to mention Lenin, Trotsky and that horrid man Stalin. And talking of Communists, how accidental was Bruce Clayton’s accidental death, and what really did happen at One Willow Street when cool, calm, collected Terence O’Reilly suddenly decided to assassinate everyone in sight?

  I had had a great deal to drink, but I still had my wits about me. I fed her the story I’d told my partners and admitted that O’Reilly was the archconspirator instead of a religious lunatic.

  “And where did Greg Da Costa fit into it all?”

  I explained Greg’s passive role.

  “But if he didn’t put up the money who did?”

  I put the blame squarely on the Soviet government, and was just becoming nervous when she smiled brilliantly and said in a bright voice, “Well, now that that’s all over, Steve darling, can I have my deed back?”

  “Deed?” I said, still weak with relief that she had swallowed the foreign-government theory.

  “Deed, Steve. D-E-E-D. The deed conveying Mallingham to Paul.”

  “Oh, the conveyance. Yeah. … Dinah, I’m sorry but it never did turn up.”

  “What!” Her brittle manner cracked at the seams.

  “Wait, here’s what I think happened.” I did feel guilty that I’d forgotten all about the damned deed, so I made a valiant attempt to explain. “Bart Mayers, who was killed shortly after Paul, was assigned to destroy all Paul’s private correspondence, which was kept among the secret files in the vaults. It seems clear to me that—”

  “He burned the deed to Mallingham along with my correspondence with Paul.” All affectation was gone. Suddenly she was tense, direct and natural. “But, Steve, what the hell am I going to do? I must get this business straightened out. Perhaps if I wrote to Cornelius—”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  She looked at me steadily. I forgot I was in Europe. Suddenly I was a New Yorker again, pushing for the best way to fix an awkward deal. “Look,” I said. “Sit tight. You don’t need that deed—you’re not going to sell or lease or mortgage Mallingham. Act as if you own the place, and in fifty years’ time when you kick the bucket nobody’s going to know what the true story is. They’ll just assume Paul conveyed the property to you and the deed got lost somewhere along the line.”

  “But legally—”

  “Legally you’ve even got the statute of limitations running in your favor. What’s the limit in England for real estate? Twelve years? Well, if you sit tight till 1938 the land will be yours anyway.”

  “I don’t think so, Steve. I’ve been into all this. I don’t think the statute of limitations wo
uld start to run until Cornelius knows he owns Mallingham. You see, I’m concealing the truth from him and that constitutes some sort of fraudulent deception. But if I gave him notice that he was the owner—if I wrote and offered to buy it from him—”

  “Dinah, you were dead right about that kid back in 1926. He’s poison. Take my advice, sit tight and let the Mallingham ownership ride for a few decades.”

  “But—”

  “Look at it this way. You’re not committing a criminal offense. Keeping your mouth shut may be a deception within the meaning of the statute, but it’s not criminal fraud. That deed’s destroyed. You’ve had nearly three years of uninterrupted peace at Mallingham and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have at least thirty more. But if you start dealing with Cornelius, I can guarantee you’re opening a can of worms. I can think of several reasons why he’d be only too happy to kick you in the teeth.”

  “So could Paul.” She shuddered, then laughed in an effort to be debonair. “You did change your mind about him, didn’t you!” she said amused. “Why? Tell me the whole story—or is it unfit for publication?”

  “Honey, I could talk about that kid till dawn breaks over Green Park—which reminds me, I’ve got a great view of the park from my suite at the Ritz and half a bottle of the best scotch around. Why don’t you come back there with me now and let me tell you everything you want to know?”

  “Sweet of you,” drawled Dinah, beating a double-quick retreat behind her blasé façade. “But I really do have to get home. I’m due in Birmingham tomorrow on business and I’ll have to get up at some unearthly hour to catch the train.”

  The acuteness of my disappointment startled me. “Ah, come on, Dinah!” I exclaimed, scooping together all my charm. “I’m looking forward to telling you the inside story of my life at Willow and Wall!”

  “And I’m looking forward to hearing it!” she said, matching my charm ounce for ounce. “Come up to Mallingham next weekend and we can talk to our heart’s content.”

  I almost swallowed my glass of port. Setting it down with care, I said smoothly with as much English understatement as I could muster, “How kind of you to invite me! I accept with pleasure—thank you very much.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but I was beginning to think I sounded just like Paul.

  Well, I knew I was following in Paul’s footsteps—of course I knew that, and she knew it too. But she was a grown woman now, not the baby she had been when Paul seduced her, and I had no doubt she could handle a fast weekend with one hand tied behind her back. I certainly knew I could. After all, I was now nearly forty-two years old, and I couldn’t imagine getting my fingers burned no matter how far I fooled around with a new flame.

  So I escorted Dinah home, kissed her good night affectionately and took myself back to the Ritz without bitterness. Progress had been made. The weekend loomed lasciviously ahead, and I was as happy as a puppy dog with six tails.

  “Rule Britannia!” I sang as I tipped my astonished cab driver ten shillings, and taking off my top hat I flung it joyously into the air at the moon.

  Six

  I

  THE TRAIN DREW INTO Norwich at eleven-thirty and I was leaping onto the platform even before the wheels had stopped. I was wearing my English tweeds and feeling overheated. I’d forgotten how warm March could be in England, but I had some lighter clothes in my small suitcase. My valet had wanted me to take a whole wardrobe, but as the really important business of the weekend was going to be conducted in my birthday suit. I was determined to travel light.

  Tossing my ticket at the collector, I plunged outside and immediately saw her sitting in a very pale Hispano-Suiza. This time her cigarette holder was scarlet, to match her lips.

  “Dinah!” I darted forward, looked the wrong way crossing the road and nearly got mowed down by a bus. “I love your car!” I gasped, leaping in and giving her a kiss.

  “Let’s hope you love my driving!”

  We roared away through the streets of Norwich. She was wearing a mustard-colored skirt and jacket, a chocolate-brown blouse submerged beneath rows of pearls, and a matching hat set at a jaunty angle.

  “You look very smart!” I shouted at her as we zipped around a corner and plunged downhill. Norwich is a very hilly town.

  “You too!” she shouted back.

  “Do I look English?”

  “What’s wrong with looking like an American?”

  “I want to merge with the English,” I said, slipping an arm around her shoulders, “in every sense of the word.”

  “You’ll end up buried with them if you try and seduce me while we’re driving through Norwich at top speed!”

  With a sigh I sank back in my seat to admire the scenery. That wasn’t hard. The countryside was pretty. It took a while to get out of Norwich, because the traffic was heavy, but eventually we entered farming country and passed cute little fields fringed with hedges. I lost count of all the thatched cottages, and we passed a string of huge churches which made me realize how religious they must have been in the old days. It was boating country. At Wroxham and Horning the river was stuffed with sailboats and motor cruisers and I remembered Paul talking with enthusiasm about the miles of inland waterways between Norwich and the sea.

  “We’re coming into Broadland now,” said Dinah. “You’ve heard of the Norfolk Broads, haven’t you?”

  I somehow managed to avoid making the obvious crack. Paul would have been proud of me.

  We bowled along past little lanes and signboards painted with wonderful old English names like Potter Heigham and Hickling, and I was just thinking about lunch and glancing surreptitiously at my watch when Dinah said, “This is the road to Mallingham,” and we turned off onto a rural route. Sheep were dotted in windswept fields and when I glanced up at the huge blue-and-white sky I felt the sea wind on my face and sensed the freedom of wide-open spaces. I could see little, because the road twisted secretively behind high hedgerows, and I was just thinking I could bear the suspense no longer when we arrived in the cutest little village of them all. It was like an illustration from a picture book. Openmouthed with admiration, I gazed at the village green, the gaggle of cottages, and the gigantic gray church. There were even real people walking around. A couple of old-timers were sidling into a pub called the Eel and Ham.

  “It’s wonderful!” I cried excited. “It’s just like the “movies. Jesus, if only I’d brought my camera! This is just the greatest little place!”

  Dinah snuffled. I was offering her a handkerchief before I realized she wasn’t about to sneeze. She was trying to keep a straight face.

  “Hell!” I said annoyed. “I forgot my British understatement.”

  “Oh, Steve!” she said laughing. “What’s wrong with a good slice of American enthusiasm? Please, please don’t feel you have to pretend to be English!”

  “Well, I don’t want you to think I’m some untamed uncivilized wild animal.”

  “Darling,” she drawled as we careered through a ruined gateway, “I wouldn’t want to think of you in any other way. Here’s Mallingham Hall.”

  It wasn’t a bit as I’d thought it would be. I’d expected a real British stately home, but Mallingham Hall was just a little house about a quarter of the size of my home on Long Island. Yet it had character, I could see that at once. Beyond the driveway the house seemed to grow out of the soil as if it had been nurtured by some gifted gardener, and as we drew nearer I saw the honeysuckle around the front door, the ivy crawling over the flint walls and the moss clinging to the dark thatched roof. Long churchlike windows peered at me. I felt as if I were being carefully appraised by an elder statesman, and once I sensed the personality of the house I found it easy to yield to its low-keyed Old-World charm.

  “How old is it?” I said respectfully.

  “The foundations are pre-Conquest, but most of it’s much younger than that. The great hall is over six hundred years old.”

  I tried to imagine six hundred years and gave up. I can visua
lize a million-dollar bond issue with no trouble at all, but I can’t visualize huge spans of time. “Six hundred years!” I repeated, laying on the admiration too thickly to conceal that the number meant nothing to me, and when she looked quizzical I said with haste, “I like it, Dinah. I really do.”

  “I know.” For the first time that day she ditched her blasé manner and gave me her warmest smile. “I’m glad, Steve. Come in and I’ll show you around.”

  The big hall had a beamed ceiling. They certainly knew how to build rafters six hundred years ago. At either end of the hall was a string of little rooms, nothing grand but comfortable and cozy, like her London home. Everything was smartly painted and in tiptop shape. Beyond the living room a stone terrace stood above a lawn which sloped to a small reedy lake, and as I paused by the window I saw Alan playing near the boathouse.

  It was Alan who showed me to the guest room while Dinah went to the kitchens to check some domestic details with her housekeeper. The room had a view over the lake, a sink in one corner but no sign of any other useful facility, so after I’d unpacked my suitcase I asked Alan where the bathroom was. He looked surprised but escorted me to an imposing room where a large bath stood in solitary splendor on four little legs. For one bad moment I wondered if the plumbing arrangements were as old as the great hall.

  “Where’s the …” I couldn’t think of the polite English word.

  “The lavatory,” said Alan reprovingly, “is at the end of the corridor.”

  I could see I’d have to brush up my English vocabulary, to say nothing of my memories of English bathrooms.

  We had lunch. Alan and his nurse joined us for steak-and-kidney pie and chocolate pudding, but afterward Dinah and I were left alone with the port.

  “I thought maybe you’d like to do some sailing this afternoon,” she suggested as I lit her cigarette. “The weather’s improved, there’s just the right amount of wind and we could sail up to Horsey Mill.”