The Rich Are Different

by Susan Howatch

  I had not envisioned death for Greg Da Costa, only a judicious prison sentence, but when I considered the situation I saw that the mills of God had, as usual, ground suitably small. Greg had been an accessory before the fact of Paul’s murder. During my infatuation with Vivienne I had turned a blind eye to this by pretending that his role in the conspiracy had been negligible, but in law accessories before the fact invariably meet the same fate as the principal participants in the crime.

  Having faced this truth squarely, I shed no tears for Greg Da Costa. I even went so far as to hope he was rotting in hell, and I was still trying to beat back this highly un-Christian attitude when I arrived home from the office to discover that Alicia had gone to the hospital.

  I felt ill not only with anxiety for her safety but with an agonizing frustration because there was nothing I could do. We had carefully discussed how we would behave when the baby came. She did not want me at the hospital before or after the birth. I was not to visit her there, though I could phone her, and when the time came for her to leave I was merely to send the car so that she could come home by herself. She wanted to be alone. She did not want to involve me. I was to go on leading my normal life, and eventually she would rejoin me as if nothing had happened. She had said this course of action would be the least painful for all concerned, and she had said it with such finality that I had not dared argue with her.

  I could eat no dinner, and when I tried to drink I felt so sick I stopped. I kept thinking of Foxworth. My own experience of paternity, remote and unsatisfying as it was, made me feel sympathetic toward him, and at eleven I called him in Albany. He hung up on me, but sometime after midnight he called back, apologized and said he would phone the hospital to make sure he was told of the delivery.

  Nobody told me. At dawn, unable to bear my tension any longer, I too phoned the hospital and was told Alicia had had a second son. I asked over and over again if they were sure she had survived, and finally they became so exasperated that they cut off the call. Afterward I held my head in my hands and stared at the floor. Then I went out. It was a Sunday, so I did not have to go to work, and on reaching the hospital I paced up and down outside it for a long time while I decided what to do. I wanted desperately to see her, but I was afraid I might upset her if I broke our agreement. Instead I called her from a pay phone.

  “Everything’s all right,” she said in her most expressionless voice. “There’s nothing for you to worry about. Thank you for calling.”

  “I love you,” I said, but she had hung up. Everyone seemed to be hanging up on me. At home once more I had a short drink and wrote her a long letter saying how much I loved her. I would have sent flowers, but she had forbidden it. However, I thought I might give her a present later. She looked lovely in diamonds.

  I called her every day. She thanked me for the letter but did not write back. We talked about the weather and whether we should go away for the weekend at Easter. I wanted to ask if she had seen the baby in spite of her decision, but that would have broken our agreement, so I only asked if she was getting on well. She said the doctor was very pleased with her.

  On the tenth day after the birth she left the hospital, and when I came home from the office at six-thirty she was waiting for me in the upstairs drawing room. The glasses of milk and tomato juice sat side by side on the table. She wore a fussy cream-colored dress which I had never seen before and a neat mask of powder, rouge and lipstick. It was very odd to see her with a flat stomach.

  Sitting down, we talked rapidly as if the thought of silence terrified us, and once the glasses were empty we rushed to my rooms as if we were late for some vital engagement. As usual I had a shower, but when I emerged from the bathroom I found that the bedroom was empty. I dressed quickly and went to look for her. She had disappeared. I had to accost six servants before I found a maid who remembered seeing Mrs. Van Zale wandering down the hallway leading to the east wing.

  I found her in the nursery which Vivienne had designed for Vicky and which for a few weeks had belonged to Sebastian. She was sitting on a little stool in the middle of the room with her arms wound tightly around her body. I heard her dry racking sobs before I crossed the threshold.

  Kneeling down beside her, I held her close for a long time. When she stopped crying all she said was, “I feel so empty.”

  “Where is he? I’ll go and get him.”

  “No, you can’t. He’s in Albany. Ralph came down yesterday with Sebastian and Nurse. They tried to see me, but I couldn’t, couldn’t—It would have been unbearable. I would have died from the pain of it.”

  “Did you ever see him?”

  “No. I was too afraid of loving him more than I already did. I’ve been so afraid, Cornelius, so afraid of disintegrating, not being able to go through with it, failing you—”

  “You couldn’t fail me. I’ll do anything you want, anything at all. What can I do? Please tell me, let me help.”

  “Talk to me. Talk about our dreams. Just talk.”

  I began to talk about our six sons, one more than the Rockefellers, and our one daughter. I chose schools for them all and outlined their interests and hobbies. I had just married our daughter to a leading partner of the House of Morgan when Alicia said, “I have to wash my face. All my silly makeup’s smudged,” and we returned to our room. After her face was clean she took off the fussy dress and put on a plain black one.

  “I’m ready for dinner now,” she said, so we went to the dining room and ate broiled sole, her favorite fish, with peas and wild rice.

  Later that night when she was lying in my arms I wished she was well enough for me to make love to her properly, but I knew we had to wait several weeks before the doctor could sanction such a reunion. I sighed. She sighed with me and I knew her thoughts reflected mine.

  “We can have a baby right away,” I said. “I mean, we can have one just as soon as you want after you feel you’ve recovered from this pregnancy.”

  “Oh no,” she said clearly in the darkness. “That wouldn’t be right at all, Cornelius. For the next year you come first. I think it’s time you had a break from coping with pregnant women, and since I have approximately twenty-five child-bearing years ahead of me there’s no need for us to hurry. I want your children more than anything else in the world, but for a short time I want to be alone with you without any little third person coming between us.”

  However, contrary to Alicia’s intentions I was to have no respite from pregnant women, and just when I was preparing to launch myself into a normal sexual relationship with my wife I had a strained unhappy telephone call from my sister Emily.

  III

  “He’s been hearing from Dinah Slade,” she said.

  We were drinking tea at her home on Long Island. It was a Saturday afternoon and I had driven to see her after my morning’s work at the office. Steve was in Chicago on business, but on the lawn below the terrace his two sons Scott and Tony were playing baseball with a bunch of local friends. As we sat in the main sitting room with the garden doors open we could hear their distant shouts, but once Emily mentioned Dinah Slade I no longer noticed the noise. I set down my teacup carefully in its saucer and stared at my sister. She was wearing a flowing white dress and looked lovelier than ever. The baby was due in two months’ time.

  My voice said, “How did you find out she’d been writing to him?”

  “He showed me the letter.” She bent her head, and her golden hair, longer now and waved in the latest fashion, swung forward to frame her face. “She sent him photographs of her twins. He showed me those too.”

  I could no longer control myself. Springing to my feet, I began to pace furiously around the room. “How dare he humiliate you like that!” I shouted.

  “But he was right to be honest and open, Cornelius! I was glad he felt he could discuss her with me. After all, it’s just as if she’d been his wife for a short time.”

  “Emily, you must demand that this correspondence cease!”

  “Cornelius
—dearest, do calm down and be sensible, for my sake! It’s sweet of you to be so upset on my behalf, but you’re not being very practical. Of course I’d like to tell him never to write to her, but since he obviously wants to acknowledge the photos isn’t it better that he should do so with my consent instead of behind my back? When I married Steve I decided that the one way to lose him would be to be too possessive. I reconciled myself to the fact that he’d had lots of affairs by telling myself they were all past, even his affair with Dinah Slade, but the trouble with Dinah Slade is—”

  “—she’s the only one shameless enough to present him with illegitimate twins!”

  “And they’re so cute, Cornelius!” Emily’s calm façade crumbled as her eyes filled with tears. “I just know Steve’s going to want to see them someday, and once he sees Dinah Slade again … Cornelius, I know I’m being ridiculous, but I’m terrified of her. Perhaps it would be better if we met. I keep picturing her as some irresistible femme fatale, whereas in reality she’s probably just a nice sensible English girl with some eccentric views on marriage. Maybe I’d even like her! I have these fantasies in which Steve and I visit Mallingham and Steve plays with the children while Dinah and I discuss the Peloponnesian Wars—Steve told me she majored in classics just as I did, so we’d probably have a lot in common even though we’ve chosen to follow different careers.”

  “Exactly!” I cried, unable to tolerate her extraordinary monologue a second longer. “You have no career! You’re a real woman, not a woman masquerading as a man!”

  “Cornelius, what on earth are you talking about?” exclaimed Emily, so offended that she forgot her tears. “Of course I have a career! My career is raising children to be mature worthwhile people, but I quite understand that not all women can share my own particular gifts and inclinations. Do you expect all men to be bankers? There are all kinds of women, Cornelius, and no one kind has the monopoly on femininity!”

  “Uh-huh. Sure. Emily, all I was trying to say was that I like your kind best. Am I allowed no personal preferences?”

  “Preferences yes. Prejudices no,” said Emily, sounding more and more like my mother every minute. She was about to say more when we were interrupted. Little Tony Sullivan trailed through the garden doors, sank down next to Emily on the couch and leaned wearily against her.

  “Emily, I don’t feel too good.”

  “Don’t you, darling? Hm, you do feel a bit hot. I’d better take your temperature. Excuse me, Cornelius.”

  She left the room. Tony and I eyed each other until in an effort to be friendly I sat down beside him. “I saw you playing baseball just now,” I said. “Is that your favorite game?”

  “Yep.”

  “I follow the Cincinnati Reds. I guess you go for the Giants, do you, or the Yankees in the American League?”

  “No, the Dodgers.”

  We talked about the Dodgers’ prospects for the coming season. He asked me if I had ever seen Babe Ruth play, and we were becoming very sociable when Emily returned with the thermometer.

  “Here you are, Tony. Cornelius, help yourself to another cup of tea.”

  Tony Sullivan had a temperature of a hundred and one. Long afterward I remembered him as he sat on the couch with the thermometer in his mouth and watched me with Steve’s bright-blue eyes.

  “You’d better be in bed!” Emily said perturbed as she shook the mercury down. “Excuse me again, Cornelius.”

  “Of course.” I said goodbye to Tony and added that I hoped he would soon feel better.

  By the time Emily reappeared I was anxious to return to Alicia, so we did not linger on the subject of Dinah Slade. Emily said she felt better now that she had discussed her worst fears, and I told her to make it crystal clear to Steve that she did not approve of his conducting a nostalgic correspondence with his ex-mistress.

  “An exchange of photographs and a card at Christmas, is just within the limits of decency,” I said strongly. “Any communication beyond that is outside the moral pale. There’s a limit to what you should put up with, Emily. Remember that.”

  That night I talked on the phone for two hours to Sam. Emily’s worries might be allayed, but mine were burgeoning with the speed of bacteria in a hot climate. Sam told me I was getting neurotic and ought to watch myself.

  “Neil, this is just a broad with three kids who likes to keep in touch with her old lover! What’s the big deal?”

  “She wants him back.”

  “Trash! Knowing her, she’s probably got at least three new lovers and is angling for a fourth!”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said without conviction and went right on worrying about Emily. Usually I saw her once a week and spoke to her regularly on the phone, but the next day I took Alicia away on our long-delayed honeymoon and once we’d set sail from Florida I forgot everyone back home in New York. I even forgot Dinah Slade. On our cruise through the West Indies our days were filled with sun and turquoise seas and silver sands and palm-fringed beaches, and our nights were no less exotic. I have idyllic memories of secluded coves and the gleaming coolness of the sand before it was covered by the warm moonlit sea. I remember the tide washing over us as we made love by the waters edge and I remember the steamy seclusion of our cabin at high noon. And always I remember Alicia, her gray-green eyes no longer as cold as some northern sea but as shining as the brilliantly colored Caribbean waters, her manner no longer chilly but as sultry as the volcano at Guadeloupe.

  I hated to see Florida again and I hated to think of New York waiting for me in the north. I even hated it when Alicia’s health took its usual monthly digression, because I felt we should have brought back more than just our memories of such a perfect honeymoon.

  “But there’ll be other honeymoons!” said Alicia, and we resolved to conceive our first child the following February during our second Caribbean cruise.

  I was still wishing with a sigh that I was back on the yacht when I fell ill.

  It was twenty days since I had seen Tony Sullivan and when I felt the first pains it never occurred to me to remember him. It was my first day back at the office and I had so much work to do that I wasn’t even able to find the time to call Emily to ask how she was. In fact I was so busy that I decided I couldn’t spare the time to be ill, so I took no notice of my symptoms.

  The pains spread from my back to my neck and head. On the second afternoon of my malaise, when I nearly fainted at my desk, I reluctantly yielded to the inevitable and went home to bed.

  I had a temperature of a hundred and three. Alicia called the doctor and within half an hour Dr. Wilkins was listening to my chest to find out what was wrong.

  By this time I was convinced I had infantile paralysis and would never walk again. Alternatively I suspected I had brain fever and would spend the rest of my life as a vegetable, so when Wilkins seemed more puzzled than alarmed by my symptoms I felt exasperated. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man with an unflappable bedside manner which I always tried hard to dent. I never succeeded. During each one of my winter respiratory illnesses he had remained unperturbed in the face of my fractiousness, and I soon discovered that this new illness was hardly about to alter our relationship.

  “Am I going to be ill for weeks?” I demanded.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think that’s likely, Mr. Van Zale. Whereabouts in your head is the pain located?”

  “Everywhere. Particularly the right side. Is it some sort of stroke? A cerebral hemorrhage?”

  “I doubt it, Mr. Van Zale, since you’re in full possession of your faculties. Is your neck stiff?”

  “Yes, that hurts, too.”

  He started feeling behind my ears and prodding below my jaw.

  “Ouch!” Twisting away from him, I pressed my hand against my neck, and when my fingers touched a lump behind my ear I froze. I had read somewhere that one of the most horrible diseases known to man could begin in the form of lumps in the head and neck.

  “Is it cancer?” I said wildly.

  “No,
Mr. Van Zale. Open your mouth, please. Wider. Wider still … Ah! Yes, I thought so.”

  I had cried out in pain. Something had happened to my salivary glands. I pressed my tongue against them in agony and insisted that he tell me truthfully how long I had to live.

  “Probably another fifty years,” said Dr. Wilkins politely, folding his stethoscope and taking out his prescription pad. “You have mumps, Mr. Van Zale. I’ll give you something for the pain.”

  “Mumps!” I was outraged. “That’s a kid’s disease!”

  “Yes, and it can be very unpleasant for adults. You must stay in bed for at least a week, and on no account should you get up even when your fever subsides.”

  “But I have my work! I’ve got to get back to the office! Surely if I have no fever—”

  “Mr. Van Zale,” said Dr. Wilkins charmingly, “do you really want to run the risk of encephalitis? Of course, the brain damage in mumps cases is always reversible, but I assure you it’s the most unpleasant complication.”

  I sank back onto my pillows.

  Unfortunately my ordeal had hardly begun. My fever continued and my discomfort increased. The right side of my face became swollen until I looked like a circus freak; flesh swung pendulously from my jaw. I could no longer open my mouth, and all consumption of solid food was impossible. My most striking accomplishment lay in sucking liquid through a straw. I was just thinking in agony how fortunate it was that only one side of my face was affected when I felt the lumps swell behind my other ear and knew that the left side of my face too was doomed.

  For a long time I refused to let anyone but my valet see me, but eventually Alicia forced her way in.

  “Cornelius!” She was horrified.

  I tried to open my mouth. My salivary glands screamed. Wincing, I prayed for the pain to die away, but it was several seconds before I could reach for my pad and pencil to conduct the conversation. Of course I was quite unable to talk.

  “I don’t know whether I should tell you this,” said Alicia, “but I’ve been talking to Emily and she says you must have caught it from Tony. I hope you can forgive him.”