Bloodline

The façade of White’s was the epitome of discretion. The wide bow-windows looking out on St James’s Street were meant to accommodate those within rather than to satisfy the curiosity of the outsiders passing by. A short flight of steps led to the entrance but, aside from members and their guests, few people ever got past the door. The rooms in the club were large and impressive, burnished with the dark, rich patina of time. The furniture was old and comfortable – leather couches, newspaper racks, priceless antique tables and deep, stuffed armchairs that had held the posteriors of half a dozen Prime Ministers. There was a backgammon room with a large, open fireplace behind a bronze-covered rail, and a formal curved staircase led to the dining-room upstairs. The dining-room ran across the entire breadth of the house, and contained one huge mahogany table which seated thirty persons, and five side tables. At any luncheon or dinner the room contained some of the most influential men in the world.

Sir Alec Nichols, Member of Parliament, was seated at one of the small corner tables, having lunch with a guest, Jon Swinton. Sir Alec’s father had been a baronet, and his father and grandfather before him. They had all belonged to White’s. Sir Alec was a thin, pale man in his late forties, with a sensitive aristocratic face and an engaging smile. He had just motored in from his country estate in Gloucestershire, and was dressed in a tweed sports jacket and slacks, with loafers. His guest wore a pin-stripe suit with a loud, checked shirt and a red tie, and seemed out of place in this quiet, rich atmosphere.

‘They really do you proud here,’ Jon Swinton said, his mouth full, as he chewed the remains of a large veal chop on his plate.

Sir Alec nodded. ‘Yes. Things have changed since Voltaire said, “The British have a hundred religions and only one sauce.”’

Jon Swinton looked up. ‘Who’s Voltaire?’

Sir Alec said, embarrassed, ‘A – a French chap.’

‘Oh.’ Jon Swinton washed his food down with a swallow of wine. He laid down his knife and fork and wiped a napkin across his mouth. ‘Well, now, Sir Alec. Time for you and I to talk a little business.’

Alec Nichols said softly, ‘I told you two weeks ago I’m working everything out, Mr Swinton. I need a bit more time.’

A waiter walked over to the table, balancing a high stack of wooden cigar boxes. He skilfully set them down on the table.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Jon Swinton said. He examined the labels on the boxes, whistled in admiration, pulled out several cigars which he put in his breast-pocket, then lit one. Neither the waiter nor Sir Alec showed any reaction to this breach of manners. The waiter nodded to Sir Alec, and carried the cigars to another table.

‘My employers have been very lenient with you, Sir Alec. Now, I’m afraid, they’ve got impatient.’ He picked up the burned match, leaned forward and dropped it into Sir Alec’s glass of wine. ‘Between you and I, they’re not nice people when they’re upset. You don’t want to get them down on you, you know what I mean?’

‘I simply don’t have the money right now.’

Jon Swinton laughed loudly. ‘Come off it, chum. Your mum was a Roffe, right? You’ve got a thousand-acre farm, a posh town house in Knightsbridge, a Rolls-Royce and a bloody Bentley. You’re not exactly on the dole then, are you?’

Sir Alec looked around, pained, and said quietly, ‘None of them is a liquid asset. I can’t –’

Swinton winked and said, ‘I’ll bet that sweet little wife of yours, Vivian, is a liquid asset, eh? She’s got a great pair of Bristols.’

Sir Alec flushed. Vivian’s name on this man’s lips was a sacrilege. Alec thought of Vivian as he had left her that morning, still sweetly asleep. They had separate bedrooms, and one of Alec Nichols’s great joys was to go into Vivian’s room for one of his ‘visits’. Some times, when Alec awakened early, he would walk into Vivian’s bedroom while she was asleep and simply stare at her. Awake or asleep, she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She slept in the nude, and her soft, curved body would be half exposed as she curled into the sheets. She was blonde, with wide, pale blue eyes and skin like cream. Vivian had been a minor actress when Sir Alec had first met her at a charity ball. He had been enchanted by her looks, but what had drawn him to her was her easy, outgoing personality. She was twenty years younger than Alec, and filled with a zest for living. Where Alec was shy and introverted, Vivian was gregarious and vivacious. Alec had been unable to get her out of his mind, but it had taken him two weeks to summon up nerve enough to telephone her. To his surprise and delight Vivian had accepted his invitation. Alec had taken her to a play at the Old Vic, and then to dinner at the Mirabelle. Vivian lived in a dreary little basement flat in Notting Hill, and when Alec had brought her home, she had said, ‘Would you like to come in then?’ He had stayed the night, and it had changed his whole life. It was the first time that any woman had been able to bring him to a climax. He had never experienced anything like Vivian. She was velvet tongue and trailing golden hair and moist, pulsing, demanding depths that Alec explored until he was drained. He could become aroused simply thinking about her.

There was something else. She made him laugh, she made him come alive. She poked fun at Alec because he was shy and a bit stodgy, and he adored it. He was with her as often as Vivian would permit it. When Alec took Vivian to a party, she was always the centre of attention. Alec was proud of that, but jealous of the young men gathered around her, and he could not help wondering how many of them she had been to bed with.

On the nights when Vivian could not see him because she had another engagement, Alec was frantic with jealousy. He would drive to her flat and park down the block, to see what time she came home, and whom she was with. Alec knew that he was behaving like a fool, and yet he could not help himself. He was in the grip of something too strong to break.

He realized that Vivian was wrong for him, that it was out of the question for him to marry her. He was a respected Member of Parliament, with a brilliant future. He was part of the Roffe dynasty, on the board of directors of the company. Vivian had no background to help her cope with Alec’s world. Her mother and father had been second-rate music-hall artists, playing the provincial circuit. Vivian had had no education except for what she had picked up in the streets, or backstage. Alec knew that she was promiscuous and superficial. She was shrewd but not particularly intelligent. And yet Alec was obsessed with her. He fought it. He tried to stop seeing her, but it was no use. He was happy when he was with her, and he was miserable when he was without her. In the end he proposed to her because he had to, and when Vivian accepted, Sir Alec Nichols was ecstatic.

His new bride moved into the family home, a beautiful old Robert Adam house in Gloucestershire, a Georgian mansion with Doric columns and a long sweeping driveway. It was set amid the green of a thousand acres of lush farmland, with its own private shooting, and running streams to fish. At the back of the house was a park that had been laid out by ‘Capability Brown’.

The interior of the house was stunning. The large front hall had a stone floor and walls of painted wood. There were pairs of old lanterns and marble-topped Adam gilt-wood tables and mahogany chairs. The library had original eighteenth-century built-in bookcases, and a pair of pedestal tables by Henry Holland, and chairs designed by Thomas Hope. The drawing-room was a mixture of Hepplewhite and Chippendale, with a Wilton carpet, and a pair of Waterford glass chandeliers. There was a huge dining-room that could seat forty guests, and a smoking-room. On the second floor were six bedrooms, each with an Adam fireplace, and on the third floor were the servants’ quarters.

Six weeks after she had moved into the house, Vivian said, ‘Let’s get out of this place. Alec.’

He looked at her, puzzled. ‘You mean you’d like to go up to London for a few days?’

‘I mean I want to move back to London.’

Alec looked out of the window at the emerald-green meadows, where he had played as a child, and at the giant sycamore and oak trees, and he said hesitantly, ‘Vivian, it’s so peaceful here. I –’

And she said, ‘I know, luv. That’s what I can’t stand – the fucking peace!’

They moved to London the following week.

Alec had an elegant four-storey town house in Wilton Crescent, off Knightsbridge, with a lovely drawing-room, a study, a large dining-room, and at the back of the house, a picture window that overlooked a grotto, with a waterfall and statues and white benches set amid a beautiful formal garden. Upstairs were a magnificent master suite and four smaller bedrooms.

Vivian and Alec shared the master suite for two weeks, until one morning Vivian said, ‘I love you, Alec, but you do snore, you know.’ Alec had not known. ‘I really must sleep alone, luv. You don’t mind, do you?’

Alec minded deeply. He loved the feel of her soft body in bed, warm against him. But deep inside, Alec knew that he did not excite Vivian sexually the way other men excited her. That was why she did not want him in her bed. So now he said, ‘Of course I understand, darling.’

At Alec’s insistence, Vivian kept the master suite, and he moved into one of the small guest bedrooms.

In the beginning, Vivian had gone to the House of Commons and had sat in the Visitors’ Gallery on days when Alec was to speak. He would look up at her and be filled with a deep, ineffable pride. She was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman there. And then came the day when Alec finished his speech and looking up for Vivian’s approval, saw only an empty seat.

Alec blamed himself for the fact that Vivian was restless. His friends were older than Vivian, too conservative for her. He encouraged her to invite her young companions to the house, and brought them together with his friends. The results were disastrous.

Alec kept telling himself that when Vivian had a child, she would settle down and change. But one day, somehow – and Alec could not bear to know how – she picked up a vaginal infection and had to have a hysterectomy. Alec had longed for a son. The news had shattered him, but Vivian was unperturbed.

‘Don’t worry, luv,’ she said, smiling. ‘They took out the nursery, but they left in the playpen.’

He looked at her for a long moment, then turned and walked away.

Vivian loved to go on buying sprees. She spent money indiscriminately, recklessly, on clothes and jewellery and cars, and Alec did not have the heart to stop her. He told himself that she had grown up in poverty, hungry for beautiful things. He wanted to buy them for her. Unfortunately, he could not afford it. His salary was consumed by taxes. His fortune lay in his shares of stock in Roffe and Sons but those shares were restricted. He tried to explain that to Vivian but she was not interested. Business discussions bored her. And so Alec let her carry on.

He had first learned of her gambling when Tod Michaels, the owner of Tod’s Club, a disreputable gambling place in Soho, had dropped in to see him.

‘I have your wife’s IOUs here for a thousand pounds, Sir Alec. She had a rotten run at roulette.’

Alec had been shocked. He had paid off the IOUs and had had a confrontation with Vivian that evening. ‘We simply can’t afford it,’ he had told her. ‘You’re spending more than I’m making.’

She had been very contrite. ‘I’m sorry, angel. Baby’s been bad.’

And she had walked over to him and put her arms around him and pressed her body against his, and he had forgotten his anger.

Alec had spent a memorable night in her bed. He was sure now that there would be no more problems.

Two weeks later Tod Michaels had come to visit Alec again. This time Vivian’s IOUs were five thousand pounds. Alec was furious. ‘Why did you let her have credit?’ he demanded.

‘She’s your wife, Sir Alec,’ Michaels had replied blandly. ‘How would it look if we refused her?’

‘I’ll – I’ll have to get the money,’ Alec had said. ‘I don’t have that much cash at the moment.’

‘Please! Consider it a loan. Pay it back when you can.’

Alec had been greatly relieved. ‘That’s very generous of you, Mr Michaels.’

It was not until a month later that Alec learned that Vivian had gambled away another twenty-five thousand pounds, and that he was being charged interest at the rate of ten per cent a week. He was horrified. There was no way he could raise that much cash. There was nothing that he could even sell. The houses, the beautiful antiques, the cars, all belonged to Roffe and Sons. His anger frightened Vivian enough so that she promised not to gamble any more. But it was too late. Alec found himself in the hands of loan sharks. No matter how much Alec gave them, he could not manage to pay off the debt. It kept mounting each month, instead of getting smaller, and it had been going on for almost a year.

When Tod Michael’s hoodlums first began to press him for the money, Alec had threatened to go to the police commissioner. ‘I have connections in the highest quarters,’ Alec had said.