Wicked Pleasures Read online

  Jeremy was not strong himself; he had bronchial trouble, and doctors feared consumption. He looked, at thirty-five, a middle-aged man; he feared for the future of his bank.

  His oldest daughter, Corinna, was a beauty, with great dark eyes and a cloud of massing dark red ringlets; moreover, being sole heiress to a considerable fortune, she was a great prize. No one could understand why she decided, therefore, not to marry any one of the handsome, charming boys who were paying her court, but a serious, albeit handsome young man with a stammer, no money and a desk at the bank, called Frederick Praeger.

  They were married in 1852, Jeremy made Frederick a partner in the bank and the two young people settled down to a first year of rather stormy bliss, after which Corinna settled down as a young hostess in Savannah society. Frederick prospered on his own account, investing hugely both for himself and on behalf of his clients in the railroads that were being built the length and breadth of the country; Jeremy watched his progress and the development of the bank and was pleased with what he saw. Frederick was showing himself worthy of his position both as son-in-law and successor.

  And then as the 1850s drew to a close the talk was all of war. Of war between North and South. The South was complacent, certain not only that it could, but that it would, win, that its generals – the mighty Beauregard, and Johnston and Lee – were unbeatable, that the Yankees were a bunch of upstarts who didn’t know how to fight. Most Southern citizens were unconcerned by the imminent prospect of the conflict; but Jeremy Milton had friends and associates in the North, and he knew they had superior weapons, communications and men certainly as brave, certainly as well trained as the Confederate Army. And they also had more money. Far more money.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said to Frederick, ‘I don’t like it at all. Oh, we shall no doubt do well out of it. Wars are great for banks. The build-up beforehand and the reconstruction afterwards. But I am fearful for the South. Fearful for this town. Fearful for you and my daughter. I think you should send Corinna to the North if and when the war starts.’

  So Corinna and her father spent the war years in Philadelphia. Frederick joined the Confederates and did not rejoin them until early 1866 – thin, a little frail from continuous onslaughts of dysentery, but safely, wonderfully alive. The family had survived. It had also survived with much of its fortune intact. From the beginning of the war, Frederick had continued to invest in the railroads. And despite the defeat, the siege, the shelling, the burning of Atlanta, the great steel arteries had survived, and were now pumping lifeblood back into the South. What was more, he had for the two years immediately before the war sold huge consignments of cotton direct to Liverpool and had the money banked there, where no one could touch it. Now he reclaimed it; thousands of dollars. And then there was Atlanta to rebuild. The whole of the South to rebuild. New industries, and vigour. The Praegers had returned to Savannah, one of the few fortunate families who were not impoverished; on the phoenix-like rebirth of the South, they grew richer still.

  In 1867 Corinna became pregnant; she was a little old at thirty-two to be bearing children, the doctor said, but she was strong and in good health, all should be absolutely well. The Praegers were delighted; perhaps at last the longed-for son was to be given to them. Jeremy was as excited as they; he had dreamed of a grandchild, a successor, ever since Corinna’s marriage.

  And indeed, the son was born: a large, lusty child, with Corinna’s dark blue eyes and Frederick’s blond hair; but he brought grief in his wake, not joy. Corinna, who had seemed to weather a long, hard labour with her customary courage and stoicism, took him in her arms, gazed adoringly into his small, cross face and then abruptly and without warning haemorrhaged and died before anything could be done to save her.

  Jeremy, already frail, had a mild stroke a week later, and never quite recovered his full faculties. Frederick was left with the responsibility of raising the baby.

  He hired nurses, housekeepers, governesses, and in time the household was restored to order, but he was desperately unhappy himself; Corinna’s memory lived on in the house and haunted him, and the sight of his feebly shuffling father-in-law filled him with a bleak misery, from which there seemed no escape. He lived on in this nightmare for four years, the bank his only refuge; in 1872 Jeremy died, the bank became Praegers and Frederick moved to New York.

  The move was an immediate success.

  Frederick had no serious business struggles; communications had opened up enormously, many of his clients had offices in New York and were delighted to find him there, and the economy was growing at a formidable rate.

  The building, on Pine Street parallel to Wall Street, was beautiful, built in brownstone, with elaborate cornices on the ceilings, marble fireplaces in the larger rooms, carved shutters at the tall windows, and a great deal of fine panelling, and he furnished it charmingly, as much like a house as he was able, with lamps from Tiffany, furniture from the antique showrooms of both Atlanta and New York, Indian carpets; it was a point of pride at Praegers that there were always fresh flowers in every room, and the walls were lined not only with financial reference books but the works of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walter Scott, Shakespeare. Clients liked to go there, it was a small, gracious world in itself, a pleasant place to be, and to pass time as well as receive excellent business advice.

  New York was a heady place; the world’s first department store had been opened there by Alexander T. Stewart, followed by Lord and Taylors, Cooper-Siegel and Macys, developing slightly frenetically into what was known as Lady’s Mile. The building work was formidable; Frederick watched St Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity Church go up, as well as a wealth of other fine commercial and civic constructions such as the Metropolitan Museum and Carnegie Hall. Accustomed to the gentle and genteel pace of Southern life, Frederick found the fast, acquisitive atmosphere of New York, and the potentially dangerous but heady multi-racial mix that lay beneath the city’s booming fortunes, inspiring and stimulating. His formidable capacity for work, his commercial foresight and his personal, rather serious charm brought him success both business and personal; realising early that he could not compete with the great giants of Wall Street, and that he had a genuine advantage in being able to give a more personal service than they, he specialized, taking as his clients companies in the publishing and the communications business, the flourishing cable companies along with book publishers and the growing magazine market. One of his first New York based clients was a young man called Irwin Dudley, who published romances and sold them to the young working-class women of America by the million; over dinner one night the two men conceived of a new publication for their readers, a weekly story paper, many of the works being serials, thus ensuring a steady flow of readers. When Love Story was launched upon a hungry female public in 1885, the first issue had to be reprinted three times; a sister paper, Real Romance, purporting to be true stories and incorporating an advice column for the lovelorn, sold out so quickly that emergency paper supplies had to be rushed in from mills in the South as New York could not service the huge order at such short notice. Frederick, who had seen fit to underwrite Dudleys with Praeger capital, was a director of the company, and his own fortune increased gratifyingly as a result.

  But he had many many clients; Praegers flourished, and so did he, as the more ambitious hostesses of New York discovered the rarest of rare social jewels: an unattached, attractive man. He was invited everywhere; as sought after at dinner tables as on the boards of the great flourishing building and railroad companies that were among his clients, admired, revered almost, happier again than he would have believed. But any of the dozens of young women who were settled at his side at dinner, who met him at theatres, concerts, summer garden parties, with matrimony in mind were set for disappointment. Frederick had only one love in his life (apart from his son and the memory of Corinna) and that was Praegers. The bank occupied not only his intellect, but his emotions; he viewed it not so much as a company but a favourite child, the sub
ject of his first thought in the morning and his last one at night, and very frequently even of his dreams. In vain did the New York debutantes and their mothers hint that his baby son must need a mother, that the Upper East side mansion must seem large and empty without a mistress, that he himself must find his leisure hours empty and chill; he would smile at them all in the slightly sorrowful manner he had perfected and say that no, no, they were fine, that the baby’s nursemaids and governess were doing a wonderful job, that his housekeeper ran the house with energy and skill, that he was left no time by his friends to feel lonely.

  His only concern was the small Frederick, increasingly naughty, even before his first birthday. Frederick was a beautiful, charming child; his nurse idolized him, and the young governess, specifically hired to teach him his letters and numbers, thought he was so wonderful that she managed to persuade herself that it must be her own fault, not Frederick’s, that he found the mastery of them rather more difficult than might have been expected.

  A benign conspiracy built up over the years, concealing young Frederick’s just slightly limited intelligence; but by the time he was thirteen and due to go to school, facts had to be faced. Of course he could go to the Collegiate school, and indeed Mr Praeger would add lustre to the parental roll, but young Fred was clearly not going to be one of the star pupils. He sat, comfortably and cheerfully, very near the bottom of the class for five years, popular, happy, a star on the sports field to be sure, with a particular talent for athletics and tennis, and managed, with the addition of some vigorous extra coaching, to just about scrape through his final examinations. His years at Yale were spent similarly, with sex added to the range of his accomplishments; but he was at twenty-one so good-looking, so amusing, so infinitely socially desirable, that it was comfortably easy for his father to ignore his limited intellect and install him in what came to be known as the Heir’s Room at Praegers (next to his father’s office), especially fitted out to young Fred’s specification, with antique furniture, Indian carpets and the very latest in modern technology, including a ticker-tape machine and a telephone on which he spent much of the day talking to his friends. He spent most of his time buying and selling his own stock, taking exceedingly long lunch hours and showing a great many young ladies around the bank, greatly overstating his own role in it.

  Early in 1894 Frederick I died suddenly and unexpectedly, of a heart attack, still not entirely blind to his son’s shortcomings, but convinced that he had many years in which to improve young Fred’s banking skills. It was his one great folly; Frederick II was in fact rather less well equipped to run Praegers than the boys who ran messages all day long between the bank and the Stock Exchange in Wall Street. This did not greatly concern him; he looked at the assets of the bank, found it inconceivable that they should be in any way vulnerable, and proceeded to fritter them away (literally at times, so great was his penchant for gambling, both on and off the floor of the Stock Exchange) to rather less than 40 per cent over the next five years. Clients abandoned Praegers; portfolios shrank; partners resigned; returns on equity were down almost to break-even point. The senior partners were heard to remark to one another over luncheon that it was as well old Mr Frederick had died, it would break his heart to see what was happening.

  Mercifully for everyone concerned, a happy event occurred. Young Frederick fell in love, with a wholly delightful young person called Arabella English. Arabella, whose father was employed (in quite a lofty capacity) in Morgans, understood banking, and had heard a great deal about the tragedy of what was happening at Praegers. On receiving a proposal of marriage from Frederick II she accepted it with immense graciousness and pleasure, advised him to talk to her father the next day, and in the intervening twelve hours suggested to her father that he might, as tactfully as possible, suggest a more dedicated approach to the bank by her Frederick, if he genuinely desired to marry her. So in love was Frederick, so desperate to gain the approval of old Mr English, that he would probably have obeyed if English had told him to hang from the sixth floor by his ankles for ten minutes every morning in order to improve his business performance.

  The reform was dramatic. Frederick II was in his office by ten each day, and stayed there until well after four (long hours indeed for those golden days), in growing command of the market; he lunched only with clients; he read only the financial papers (once breakfast was over); he managed to approximate as closely as was possible for a person of his abilities to a first-rate banker. When Frederick Praeger III was born in 1903, there was once again a considerable inheritance for the young princeling.

  Frederick III was an interesting child; he had, along with the classic Praeger blond good looks, all the instinctive skills for making money displayed by his grandfather, combined with a formidable talent for politicking. Those around him became vividly aware of both qualities when at the age of seven he asked his nursemaid to give him a quarter to put in the school charity box. His mother, he explained, untruthfully but moist-eyed with earnestness, was too busy with her social arrangements to see to such minutiae, and the nanny, incensed (as any good nanny would be) by such a display of maternal selfishness, promptly gave him fifty cents. Frederick invested this in a packet of peppermint humbugs, bought on the way to school, the chauffeur having been persuaded to stop for a moment so that he could buy an extra apple for his lunch box. The peppermint humbugs were then sold for a penny apiece to the other children; Frederick returned at the end of the day one dollar fifty up on his initial investment. By mid-term he had made over twenty dollars. He did not need twenty dollars; he just liked the knowledge that he could earn them at will.

  By the time he was twenty-five he was buying and selling the equivalent of peppermint humbugs at the bank with equal skill, and playing off the rather intense relationship he had with Nigel Hoffman – one of the senior partners who was also his godfather, his department head and a man of considerable brilliance – against the more prickly one with his father, who was already uncomfortably aware that when it came to both skill and hunch, his son and heir was considerably his superior. Young Fred would eat lunch with Hoffman one day, tell him he felt his father was holding him back, treating him like a child; the next he would confide over dinner to his father that he felt Hoffman expected too much of him. As a result Fred II became over-protective, anxious not to burden him with too much responsibility, and Hoffman gave him an ever freer rein. If he made a mistake, young Frederick could blame Hoffman; if he did well, he could point out that he deserved more responsibility than his father gave him. He couldn’t lose.

  By the time Fred-the-Third, as he was always called, fell in love with Betsey Bradley, who was working as a stenographer at Praegers, he was in a more powerful position than anyone at the bank, including his father, who had finally abdicated his position in everything but name, and was spending most of his waking hours on the golf course and playing backgammon at the Racquet Club.

  Fred III had pulled off a particularly remarkable coup and secured Fosters Land as an account, thus greatly increasing his standing both within and without Praegers. Fosters was a vast, billion-dollar development company, whose awesomely young chief executive, Jackson ‘Jicks’ Foster, had been at Harvard with Fred, and had called him one morning and dropped his gift into Fred’s possession as casually as if it had been a pair of cufflinks. Outside the Praeger specialty as it was, Fred still managed the business superbly, and the friendship between him and Jicks Foster was never shadowed for a day by any professional cloud. When Frederick III brought Betsey home for the first time and announced that she was the only girl in the world for him, his mother was not happy. Arabella wasn’t unkind to Betsey, rather the reverse, she was charming and gracious and went out of her way to draw her out and encourage her to talk. Nevertheless, she confided to Frederick II that night that there was no way on God’s earth that she was going to allow young Fred to marry Betsey, she would wreck his future, and be no kind of a wife to him at all.

  Arabella spoke very firml
y to young Fred about his choice of bride, saying much the same things as she had said to his father; young Fred looked at her coldly and said he loved Betsey, she was the wife he needed, and if Arabella wasn’t going to accept her, then he would have to think very hard about severing connections with his parents altogether.

  The rift between Fred III and his mother caused by his marriage was papered over, but never properly repaired; and its far-reaching effect on Fred was to send him out of his way to hire and promote young men from the less well-to-do and aristocratic families, partly to irritate his mother, but partly from a deep conviction that the streetwise and hungry would work harder and more cannily for him than the over-indulged upper classes. Which in turn had its effect on the personality of Praegers, giving it a rougher, tougher profile than most of its fellows on Wall Street. But perhaps the greatest irony of all, as Fred III often remarked, was that Betsey in the fullness of time proved to be just as big a snob as her mother-in-law, and spent long hours reading etiquette books and getting herself put on to charity committees as well – although never the same ones as Arabella.

  The young couple settled down to a surprisingly tranquil existence; Betsey had been reared to look after her man, and look after him she did, in every possible way, running his home with an aplomb that impressed even Arabella. She was not only efficient, sharp and tough, she was warm and loving and a tender and caring mother to Baby Fred born in 1935 and Virginia in 1938. It was a source of great heartbreak to both her and Fred, who had planned for a huge family, that after the birth of Virginia, when Betsey very nearly died, the doctor insisted on a hysterectomy.