The Rich Are Different

by Susan Howatch

  I wrote: “I’ll skin him alive!” but I could neither laugh nor smile. It was too painful.

  Presently the swelling on my right side subsided and I was just thinking with relief that I was on the road to recovery when I awoke one night with a searing pain in the groin.

  I had never been more frightened in my life. Old Wilkins was hauled out of the bed and chauffeured to my door. One of the nicest things about being rich is that a doctor is always available in a crisis.

  “I’m going to be impotent,” I said, sweating, “aren’t I?”

  “No, Mr. Van Zale,” said Dr. Wilkins. “I give you my word that you will not be impotent as the result of this illness.”

  I did not believe him. I was in despair. “Does this happen often with mumps?”

  “It’s not uncommon.” He was writing another prescription for the pain.

  “You’ve had other patients with this complication?”

  “Several.”

  “And can you solemnly promise me that each one was capable of sexual intercourse afterwards?”

  “They even fathered children.” He took pity on me and gave a thin smile. “It could be worse, you know,” he said kindly. “You do have two testicles.”

  I blanched as he left the room.

  “This is a dreadful disease!” I cried afterward to Alicia. “I never knew it could attack the genitals! Why does no one ever tell you these things?”

  “You had a sheltered upbringing, Cornelius. I did too, I guess, but I remember Ralph saying once that it could make men impotent. Isn’t it nice to know he was wrong?”

  I dreamed of castration. Wilkins called daily and became so annoyed at my refusal to believe his assurances that he himself offered to call in a second opinion. Realizing that I was behaving like a coward, I declined.

  The next day the other testicle became affected.

  “Well, you’re certainly having a bad time,” said Dr. Wilkins, scribbling nonchalantly on his prescription pad. “But perhaps this is better than encephalitis or damage to the pancreas. Has your wife bought a new nightgown yet to celebrate the end of your convalescence?”

  I hated him. When he had gone I turned my face to the wall and didn’t speak for twelve hours. It was the nadir of my illness.

  Two days later I began to improve, and within a week I began to feel there might after all be hope for the future. Long dreary days of convalescence passed while I became increasingly nervous and examined myself with minute care in the bathroom (I couldn’t quite summon the courage to masturbate), but at last I was pronounced fit and the moment of truth arrived. The night before I was due to return to work Alicia arrayed herself in a black satin nightgown, forced me to drink two glasses of champagne and beckoned me into bed.

  “I know I’m going to be impotent,” I muttered. “My balls have shrunk.”

  “Nonsense, Cornelius, how could they? They just seem that way because they’ve been swollen to twice their normal size.”

  “But suppose I’m little better than a eunuch?”

  “Oh, do stop being so silly, darling! You’re just saying that to spite Dr. Wilkins.”

  I laughed, and as I gazed at Alicia through the haze of champagne I thought I had never seen her look more beautiful. She had a neat exquisite body with slim legs and hips, white unblemished skin and small round firm breasts.

  “God, what hell it is to be celibate!” I cried with passion, and promptly forgot the mumps.

  My ordeal was over, and when I reached the office the next day I was in such high spirits that I even accepted Steve’s offer of a drink when he arrived with the news that Emily had given birth to a daughter.

  “To my niece!” I said, raising my glass to his with a smile, and it was only when he smiled back saying, “My daughter!” that I wondered if he was still corresponding with Dinah Slade.

  Six

  I

  ON MY RETURN FROM my honeymoon I had planned to tell Steve what Emily herself had felt unable to say: that he was not to humiliate her by adopting Miss Slade as a pen pal. Because of my illness this conversation never took place, and before my return to the office Emily had already informed me that she and Steve had settled the matter and that I was on no account to mention Miss Slade to him.

  I might have disregarded this order, but there were so many matters demanding my attention when I returned to work that I took her words at their face value—a value which, as I later realized, was nil. I ought to have guessed that Steve, hating to see Emily upset as much as I did, had decided to keep his English correspondence to himself.

  Matters might have turned out differently if only I hadn’t been entombed for weeks with that disgusting disease.

  The mumps had also removed me from the financial arena, and it was depressing to return to the bank and find that the economic picture was bleaker than ever. I had read the papers daily during my convalescence, but their pathetic optimism, geared to repair the broken American spirit, hardly reflected the long-term prognosis which Martin Cookson was only too willing to give me. That summer a series of banking failures swept Europe as the tidal wave of the Wall Street Crash inundated European shores, and the economic structure of the world tottered. In September another landmark was wiped out: the British pound went off the gold standard, and one look at my partners’ faces told me exactly how a tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition would have greeted the news of some fearful new heresy.

  America clung to the gold standard, but within six months the gold reserve was cut in half and new unthinkable national nightmares were hovering in the wings.

  “My God, are we never going to hit rock bottom?” said Sam appalled.

  But people were beginning to have a clearer idea of what rock bottom was. Between April and September American industry began to unravel, production falling, payrolls contracting, construction contracts cut by a third. The streets were choked with the unemployed. I used to see them waiting for a free meal, the line stretching block after block, as I rode downtown every day in my Cadillac to the bank at Willow and Wall.

  “Increase the charity donations,” I ordered my chief aide, and to Alicia I said, “We must do something about the poor.”

  We gave a charity ball and I doubled the amount raised out of my own pocket, but I was almost wondering if I too ought to tighten my belt. The investment bankers’ market was drying up. It was hardly the right moment to launch new schemes for capital investment, and the number of issues was dwindling.

  The one bright spot in this depressing landscape was that at long last I managed to see my daughter. My personal lawyers had been dozing during my illness and when I found no progress had been made in the custody struggle I fired them and hired a new firm. Soon I won permission to see my daughter, but Vivienne, who was still in Florida, took no notice of the New York ruling. I was on the point of heading for Key West with a full entourage of lawyers when Emily achieved a great coup by persuading Vivienne to soften her attitude.

  Emily had taken care to remain on speaking terms with Vivienne; now she reaped the reward of her farsighted diplomacy. Although Vivienne declined the kind invitation to the christening of Emily’s baby, she agreed that Vicky could travel north with her nurse to spend one week with her Aunt Emily on Long Island. The only condition Vivienne set to the bargain was that my child was under no circumstances to cross the threshold of my home.

  Vicky was nine months old. When I walked into the nursery she glanced up from her toys and I looked into my own gray eyes. She had just enough curly blond hair to support a pink bow.

  “Vicky!”

  She smiled absent-mindedly, crawled to the edge of the rug to retrieve a block and returned to build a new castle.

  Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, I watched her in silence, and soon she became sufficiently interested to bash her blocks aside and clamber into my lap. Nervousness overcame me. I was afraid of scaring her by a careless move, but eventually I summoned the courage to give her a hug.

  She gurgled and pul
led my ear hard. When I shook my head vigorously we both laughed.

  “My, what a talent you have for children, Cornelius!” said Emily, impressed.

  Alicia turned away without a word, and I knew she was thinking of the little boy she had never seen.

  “We’re going to reopen this whole custody mess,” I said to her afterward. “There’s no reason on earth why you shouldn’t see your boys sometimes. I’ll arm my new lawyers to the teeth and send them out into the field with their guns blazing.”

  My lawyers blazed away obediently, but it was uphill work and the opposition was still fierce. They were still wrangling when my attention became diverted by the Banking and Currency Committee of the Senate. President Hoover, convinced that the sickliness of the stock market was the deliberately engineered result of a small group of men who were selling short, had become determined to assume the role of scalp-hunter on Wall Street.

  It was the end of another era, the era when Wall Street had had Washington in its hip pocket. Gone was Morgan’s famous direct line to the White House. Wall Street’s power was on the ebb. When the Senate formally authorized the Banking and Currency Committee to investigate Wall Street, a group of bankers including Lamont of Morgan’s protested to the President, but Hoover showed them the door. In the midst of this icy struggle a rumor flew around that there was a French plot to force America off the gold standard, and the market crashed sickeningly. Unemployment was coasting smoothly toward ten million, with no ceiling in sight. Gold was rushing away like water cascading down a drain. Industrial stocks were down to a fifth of their 1929 peak and were still falling. It was said that Americans were hoarding coins under their beds.

  It was 1932 and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were Deflation, Demoralization, Destitution and Despair. It was also an election year, and Hoover, aware of the failure of his policy not to interfere with the economy, was scrabbling for new ways to boost his reputation.

  Far away at the back of my mind I could remember Martin Cookson prophesying that someday the public would demand a scapegoat for the debacle of 1929 and decide that the ideal candidates for the role were the investment bankers.

  At the start of the Wall Street investigation, when the Senate merely empowered the committee to investigate short selling, we all sighed with relief. Richard Whitney, the Morgan broker and president of the Exchange, could handle that. It was true there were certain unpleasant senators, such as Brookhart of Iowa, who threatened legislation which would put an investment banker in the penitentiary for pegging the price of a security on the Stock Exchange while unloading it on the public, but we preferred not to listen to him.

  “Cheap bloodlust,” said Lewis disdainfully, “is so very unattractive in politicians.”

  The inquiry crept on. In April and May of 1932 the nasty practices of pool operators began to come to light, and as the senators prised up stone after stone of the market graveyard everyone watched the slugs crawl into the light of day. The climax came when Walter Sachs of Goldman, Sachs, one of the leading investment banks, was cross-examined about the questionable practices of his company’s investment affiliates. A shudder ran through the investment banking community, and a partners’ meeting was held at Van Zale’s.

  “They’re gunning for us,” said Martin.

  “They say Lee, Higginson is next on the agenda—and God knows what they’ll turn up there,” said Steve. “Ivar Kreuger turned Lee, Higginson inside out, and once the committee exposes his frauds they’ll crucify the firm.”

  We all paused to consider what would happen if the committee started exhuming the affairs of Van Zale Participations. It was very quiet. Everyone looked unhealthily pale.

  “At least you had the brains to send your brothers to Australia, Steve,” said Clay Linden at last. “The committee can hardly haul them back to Washington to testify.”

  “But what about me?” said Steve. “What am I going to do when I’m hauled up before the committee? All you guys can get away with saying that you never saw the books, but once I admit I plowed through the entire disaster my knowledge is imputed to you and the bank goes up in smoke.”

  “Steve’s right,” said Martin. “It would be fatal if he were forced to give evidence. Steve, you’d better go back to Europe and the sooner the better.”

  “Oh my God,” I said before I could stop myself, but although my partners looked at me curiously they decided I was just exhibiting a touch of youthful hysteria. Only Steve understood. His glance, wry and cynical, met mine and flicked away.

  “I don’t want to go to London,” he said, not looking at me. “My place is here in New York and I don’t want to get tied up with the London office. If I’ve got to go back to Europe let me base myself in Paris and work on a survey of European economic prospects. That would be a legitimate temporary assignment and would be useful to us in the future.”

  I gazed at him with a new respect, and for the first time in my life I almost liked him. Certainly it gave me new hope for his marriage.

  There was no rush for Steve to leave, since we had had no confirmation that Van Zale’s was to be investigated, but to avoid any accusation that he was fleeing the country he did begin his preparations for the move. Emily was excited about spending time in Europe and began to reminisce about the summer she had spent there after she had graduated from college. Her little girl, Rosemary Louise, was a year old by this time and almost as pretty as Vicky; Steve’s boys, according to Emily, dutifully showered their new sister with affection; and the Sullivan family’s future appeared to stretch ahead endlessly into a rosy haze.

  However, the writing was on the wall for the investment bankers of Wall Street, and on the twenty-fourth of January, 1933, we were all brought one step nearer to public chastisement for our past sins. The special subcommittee of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, which had now been pursuing its investigation for eight months, appointed a new counsel and we came face to face at last with Mr. Ferdinand Pecora, the Sicilian immigrant who intended to beat the mighty bankers of the Eastern Seaboard to their aristocratic knees.

  David had met his Goliath. The fight was on.

  II

  Meanwhile America was swaying on the brink of anarchy, crashing from one ghastliness to the next, with twelve million now unemployed, the fanners in open revolt, banks failing daily and Roosevelt’s supporters still singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” On the day before the inauguration of our new President banks remained open in only ten states and there was not only insufficient gold left to back the currency but insufficient cash in the Treasury to meet the government payroll.

  It was rock bottom at last. We were bankrupt.

  Roosevelt came to power, closed all the banks against Lamont’s advice and took America off the gold standard. A year before we would all have shouted that this was heresy, but since we now saw that this might well be the only cure we decided that the heresy had to be acceptable. Morgan of Morgan’s was even brave enough to say he welcomed it.

  Roosevelt went on, flailing around like a butcher with a meat ax, bashing everything in sight and splitting every well-worn tradition to pieces. Half the time I suspect he had no idea what he was doing, for his ignorance of economics was frightening, but he was certainly a success at demonstrating the principle that any action was better than none. In July he even started chopping up economic theory by selling gold at whatever price caught his fancy, and I believe we might all have been in hysterics at this mad behavior if we hadn’t been so mesmerized by Pecora. Gradually as the investigation deepened Roosevelt faded into the background, America’s convulsions were no more than an apocalyptic backdrop and all we could see was Pecora sharpening his sword.

  Pecora was a crusader, a progressive, a fighter for truth, honesty and fair play. He spoke for the millions who wanted to know what had really been going on during the glittering months of the Great Bull Market, and when he saw the investment bankers cowering in their tarnished palaces he began to hammer on those closed doors of pri
vilege and power.

  “That dreadful little man Pecora!” said Lewis, looking down his nose. “I thought gangsters were the only items Sicily exported to this country!”

  We all tittered but, like Lewis himself, we were all scared to death. Wall Street trembled, and in the exclusive clubs uptown, in the hallowed corridors of the Metropolitan, the University and the Knickerbocker, there was many an old Porcellian who could not bring himself to voice the upstart’s name.

  It soon became obvious to us that it wasn’t enough just to ensure that all three Sullivan brothers were out of the country. Pecora demolished the investment banking firm of Halsey, Stuart, laid waste the National City Company and even slit open the affairs of the House of Morgan from end to end. Nothing was sacrosanct, no one was spared. Finally, when we heard that he had extorted both the articles of partnership and the banking records from Morgan’s, we knew it was vital to head him away from Van Zale’s. It wouldn’t have taken Pecora long to make a connection between my broker’s acquisition of the Van Zale Participations shares and my enhanced power in the revised articles of partnership, and once the trust’s books were exposed Pecora would scalp us all.

  “But how can we possibly head him off?” said Martin in despair. “He’s absolutely incorruptible and he’s bound to want to investigate us.”

  Lewis could only mutter something about buying up the senators on the subcommittee. He had been in a state of gibbering terror ever since Pecora had exposed the income tax evasions of Charles Mitchell, the president of the National City Bank.

  I suddenly saw my chance. If I could save us from Pecora my power in the firm would not merely double but quadruple.

  “Suppose,” I said vaguely, “that Pecora receives a diversion he can’t ignore. His time is limited. He knows that Congress and the public are going to lose interest in the investigation eventually, so he wants every victim he picks to provide a first-class scandal. We’ve covered up the trust mess pretty well. He can’t know for sure that we could provide him with banner headlines. If he hears that another front-rank Yankee house offers better publicity value, don’t you think it’s possible that he might pass us by?”