The Rich Are Different and Sins of the Fathers by Susan Howatch

There can’t be any better way to spend a wet Bank Holiday weekend than curled up with one of Howatch’s family sagas. These two chunksters follow four generations of the Van Zale banking family from the 1920s to the 1960s. As the book opens Paul Van Zale, powerful and charismatic founder of the family fortunes, is about to begin a tempestuous relationship with his new protegee Dinah Slade, who wants to rescue her own family fortunes and save her ancestral home by starting a cosmetics business. The other narrators are Paul’s long-suffering wife Sylvia and his business rival Steve Sullivan. Steve becomes involved in a deadly power struggle with Paul’s chosen heir Cornelius, which will cast its shadow over the next generation.

Sins of the Fathers focuses on Cornelius as he struggles to control not only his business but his family’s turbulent lives, in particular the life of his beautiful, troubled daughter Vicky. Howatch’s method of dividing the narration between different characters works particularly well here as we see Vicky from the perspective of the men in her life and her stepmother Alicia before finally getting to hear her side of the story.

A writer needs tremendous storytelling talent to make a saga on this scale work, and Susan Howatch has exactly what it takes. She knows how to hook her readers in with an intriguing premise; when to pause the action for the backstory they have been waiting for; how to bring minor characters to life with just a few brushstrokes and peel away the layers of major characters one by one. She provides surprise after surprise, twist after twist. And while there are juicy love scenes and juicier confrontations galore, she knows how to make plain old narrative sparkle. No-one can tell it like Susan Howatch does.

I’ll give an example. Paul Van Zale is recounting how he met his third wife, Sylvia.

I cast around among my vast circle of acquaintances and saw only the rich society women with their empty heads and emptier lives, the fortune-hunters who wanted only to help me spend my money, and the social climbers who fancied the notion of being the third Mrs Paul Van Zale. I went to parties and dinners, soirees and balls, and my suitors were continually lying in wait to suffocate me with their eagerness. How do women always know when a man is looking for a wife? I had been a bachelor for four years yet never was I as oppressed by willing women as I was during that summer of 1911.

I had just given up all hope of finding anyone suitable when the miracle happened. I went to a garden party out on the Island, and while I was talking to three eager females, I glanced beyond them across the lawn and saw a woman standing alone, watching me. As soon as my glance met hers she blushed and turned away.

Only a woman of the most sterling virtue ever turned her back on Paul Van Zale. I ran after her, but she had disappeared. I began to question people wildly. At last someone said: ‘Oh, you must mean Mrs Woodard. I think I saw her going into the rose-garden.’

‘She has a husband?’ It seemed like the last straw.

‘I believe she’s a widow.’

Not even winged Mercury could have sped faster to the rose-garden.

At this point a lesser writer would stop for the obligatory scene in the rose-garden. Not Howatch. She never wastes time on anything the reader can work out for themselves. She skips the scene in the rose-garden along with most of Paul and Sylvia’s courtship, focusing immediately on the issue which will loom largest for them as a couple: whether or not to have children. The next line is:

She was perfect. I kept thinking there must be some flaw but there was none. She thought there was, because a doctor had told her she would probably never carry a child longer than three months; after three miscarriages she had been advised not to have another child and she was sure, she confided to me painfully, that I would want children.

‘Definitely not.’

‘But I should feel I was failing you in some way – ‘

‘Never.’

Howatch deals with dramatisation equally skilfully. I’ll analyse a scene in Sins of the Fathers to show what I mean. I’ll try to make it as spoiler-free as possible by referring to the protagonists as Rich Society Wife (of which there are quite a few in this book) and Investment Banker (of which ditto). The scene opens as the pair are having drinks in Rich Society Wife’s Fifth Avenue mansion. This is already a scene you can’t wait to read: Rich Society Wife, who is narrating, has been given permission by her husband to take a lover (they’re not sleeping together due to various problems but don’t want to divorce) and has decided to seduce Investment Banker. She thinks she can trust him not to boast of his conquest all over town. Why? Because he’s a close business associate of her husband. And also one of his best and oldest friends.

Investment Banker (IB) has a scotch. Rich Society Wife (RSW) has a martini. RSW decides to explain herself. She feels a bit awkward about it:

Unable to look at him I finished my martini and listened to a calm sensible woman who could not possibly be me talking nonchalantly about the difficulty of committing adultery. ‘Of course it’s very awkward. I’ve got to be totally discreet and that’s why I can only choose someone who would be loyal to [my husband]. You may think it absurd – even bizarre – that I could only ask someone loyal to [my husband] to do something which would appear to be the ultimate disloyalty, but – ‘

‘ – but what more loyal gesture could one imagine? If the man looked after his wife’s friend when the friend himself was apparently unwilling to do so, wouldn’t he in fact be doing everyone the greatest possible favour?’

Twist #1. IB sees exactly where RSW is coming from and seems eager for the job. But wait:

‘What an enormous compliment!’ Without the slightest hesitation he took my hand and raised it to his lips before sitting down beside me on the couch. ‘I’m immensely flattered! Thank you very much. However – ‘

‘You’re not interested.’ I did not know how I was going to endure my humiliation. My face was already hot with shame as I stared down at my hands, but just as I was wondering in despair how I was ever going to face seeing him again he said wryly: ‘You underestimate yourself. If you were any woman bu [your husband's] wife I assure you I wouldn’t have waited all these years for an invitation.’

Twist #2: As IB seems to be backing off, RSW is more interested than ever:

I felt hot but the heat no longer sprang from embarrassment.

IB decides it’s time to tell it like it is:

‘It’s all very well to say that you’ve both discussed this in a civilized fashion, but the truth is there is no civilized way of discussing adultery. It’s a primitive subject dealing with primitive emotions, and the people who get into the worst messes are always the people who think they’re operating under these so-called civilized agreements. Never, never tell him if you’re unfaithful to him, and make very, very sure you’re never found out.’

…With his free hand he reached for his cigarette. ‘I think if we were careful,’ he said, ‘there’d be a ninety-nine per cent chance that we’d never be found out. It’s only in the canons of literature that adultery inevitably has disastrous consequences. However, there would always be that slight risk, and frankly it’s a risk I just can’t afford to take. I do a lot of business on Wall Street with [your husband] and his good will is vital to me.’

Fair enough. RSW bursts into tears. IB wonders if she just wanted someone to confide in. IB decides he’d better go ‘before I do something very foolish.’

He doesn’t go, though, instead he just stands around. RSW finally asks him to leave:

‘As you wish.’ He moved towards the door. ‘Forgive me, but I’m sure this is the wisest course for both of us.’

I nodded, my head bent over my clasped hands, and waited for the noise of the closing door. The wait seemed interminable but at last I heard the soft click of the lock signalling to me that I was alone.

‘Oh God!’ I cried aloud in despair, and the tears streamed through my fingers as my whole body shook with sobs.

His hand touched my shoulder.

I gasped. The shock was so great that it transformed that delicate gesture into an electrifying act of violence.

‘I locked the door,’ he said, and took me in his arms.

Twist #3 – the locked door – actually makes perfect psychological sense. We see the scene from RSW’s point of view and she is slightly too naive to understand what is going on. She thinks that when IB points out just how dangerous their liaison would be, he is turning her down. Actually what he’s saying is ‘Look, this sounds like fun, but there would be risks, and if it all goes pear-shaped I won’t be able to do much to help you out.’ He then keeps giving her opportunities to stop him from leaving, and when she doesn’t take them, he decides to take the situation in hand by locking the door, banking on the fact that she won’t be outraged (she isn’t, although the situation goes through a few more twists and turns before they finally end up in bed). It’s a scene where both characters seem to lay their cards on the table, but is actually rich in subtext and sexual undercurrents.

I was slightly disappointed with the treatment of the two major female characters in this saga, Dinah Slade and Vicky Van Zale. Dinah is that archetypal character of the 1970s (The Rich Are Different was published in 1977), the female tycoon. So I was sorry that after proving herself a match for Paul Van Zale in both bedroom and boardroom, she chooses (unwisely) to give up a lot of her power to a husband later in the book. Vicky, Cornelius’s pampered daughter, has a very different kind of struggle ahead of her: born into wealth and privilege, dominated by father, husbands and lovers, she never really manages to break free. Ultimately fulfilment for her is about picking the right man rather than learning to stand alone.

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I borrowed The Rich Are Different and Sins of the Fathers from the library.

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Tags: sins of the fathers, susan howatch, the rich are different