Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  And then, ‘How about you?’ he asked, as finally the carré arrived, and he began to carve it, to put slices of it, pinkly perfect, onto her plate. ‘How is it going, the great fashion empire that I’m not allowed even a smidgeon of?’ And she said oh, fine, really, but it really was one long crisis after another, the latest being that the new line of cotton knits she was doing for the spring, absolutely dependent on some yarn arriving undyed from Hong Kong, had in fact gone horribly wrong because the yarn had been dyed and half the colours were totally out and she had sent them back and was battling for redress, and meanwhile time was hurtling by and she had already passed one deadline and if Benetton got what she knew was something very similar into their shops long before she did, she would lose considerable sales, and she was also in dispute with the landlord in Bristol where she was hoping to open in the spring. ‘But you know,’ she said, ‘one fights on. It’s half the – well, I was going to say fun, which of course it isn’t, but it sharpens everything, I find, makes me go on caring a hundred and one per cent.’

  ‘Absolutely right,’ he said, munching through a huge mouthful of spinach. ‘Of course it does. Christ, Harriet, I’m proud of you. You’re a – what is it Mungo says? A star. A real star. Brave and tough and clever. I wish you were my daughter.’ Harriet blushed, surprised at the praise, and dropped her fork.

  ‘Goodness, Theo,’ she said, ‘praise indeed. Shit, that was my last bite of lamb.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding out his own fork to her mouth, a slice of succulent lamb on it, ‘have mine,’ and she opened her mouth to take it and, as she did so, met his eyes, and they were very strange those eyes, tender, amused and at the same time thoughtful, and distinctly sensuous, moving over her face as if for the first time, drinking her in, and it was one of the most sexually disturbing incidents she had ever known. Then she shook herself and thought that this was Theo, for Christ’s sake, Theo who had been around for always, her father’s best friend, an old man, and then she met his eyes again, probing hers, and she knew of course that he wasn’t an old man at all, he was a vital, forceful, very sexy, oddly ageless one, and it was as if she had only just met him. She looked down and pushed what was left of the food on her plate with her knife and when she looked up again he was still staring at her, half amused, half startled, just as she was.

  ‘Harriet?’ he said gently, and it was both question and statement, and she said ‘Yes, what?’ quite aggressively, but he was not deceived, merely smiled rather self-confidently, called the waiter over and said, ‘Do you have any champagne?’

  ‘Theo!’ said Harriet reprovingly. ‘Really! At the end of the meal!’

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Champagne is wonderful at the end of the meal. And besides, we have something to celebrate, don’t we?’

  ‘What?’ she said, deliberately misunderstanding.

  ‘Recognizing each other,’ he said simply, ‘after all these years. Now then, what shall we talk about?’

  ‘Mungo?’ said Harriet hopefully, thinking that this would restore him to his rightful position as father figure, generations older.

  ‘If you like. What shall we say about him?’

  ‘Well –’ She was more flustered still, anxious, her pleasure gone. ‘Well, I just thought –’

  ‘I know what you thought, my darling. You thought you would remind me that Mungo is your age, and I am his father. Right?’

  ‘No of course not,’ said Harriet irritably, trying to crush the joy at being called his darling. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘All right. We’ll talk about Mungo. Do you like Mungo?’

  ‘Yes of course I do. I think he’s lovely.’

  ‘But you’ve never been in love with him?’

  ‘No, never. I’ve never been in love with any of them,’ she said, relaxing again, the champagne lifting, easing her.

  ‘Any of who?’

  ‘The three of them. Mungo, Rufus, Oliver. They all seem like – well, like brothers. Baby brothers.’

  ‘Ah. We used to dream of you falling in love with Mungo, your father and I. I can see it’s a nonsense now. That you don’t like young men very much at all.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘no I don’t. I like people who’ve done things, know things, fought, suffered a bit.’

  ‘Ah. Like Bill Bryant.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with a heavy sigh, ‘yes, that’s right. Daddy told you, I suppose? The whole sad story?’

  ‘He did. And I was sorry. And sad. But you’re better without him, Harriet.’

  ‘Oh don’t!’ she said, angry suddenly, ‘don’t you start, Theo.’

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘Telling me he’s a bad lot, that I should never have got involved, that he’s famously charming, famously wicked, plays around, likes young girls –’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘nothing like that. Of course he is, of course he does. But I’m like that myself, I play around, I like young girls, I certainly wouldn’t criticize that. No, it’s that he’s a playboy, he drifts about, he’s not a worker, a fighter like you, Harriet, not what you want, not what you need.’

  ‘Yes he was,’ she said, stubbornly, ‘you don’t understand, nobody could.’ She scowled at him, angry that he dared to pronounce on her, remembering Bill Bryant, rich, hedonistic, with whom she’d had an affair the year before, with his easy lazy charm, his dazzling lifestyle, his prodigious appetite for pleasure, in and out of bed. She would have died for Bill, given up everything for him, had he asked her, but he hadn’t; it had ended in horrific grief because he had not loved her, had only used her, and then moved on. But suddenly now, in a moment of pure revelation, she realized that Theo was right, that had Bill asked her to marry him (unthinkable, unimaginable) it would have been a disaster, a dreadful awful mistake, he would never have accepted her as she was, would have wanted to change her, possess her totally.

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked, would it?’ she said, staring at Theo, and he said no, of course it wouldn’t, and there was a long silence and then she said, ‘God, I should have talked to you before,’ and he said, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t have listened, you’d have said I was a silly old fart.’ ‘Quite probably,’ she said, and laughed, and he patted her hand and refilled her glass.

  ‘You seem to understand me rather well,’ she said, half amused, half serious. ‘I hadn’t realized.’

  ‘I think I understand you very well.’

  ‘But not as well as Cressida?’

  ‘Oh, there’s not a lot to understand about Cressida,’ he said, ‘just a sweet, straightforward, nicely brought-up girl.’

  ‘Your favourite.’

  ‘Of course not my favourite.’

  ‘You always acted like she was.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you were always going off with Merlin. And it was awful for me. I had to settle for what was left.’

  ‘You’re a devious old bastard,’ she said lightly, ‘but you’re lovely.’

  ‘I wish you really thought so,’ he said.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘Theo, I do,’ said Harriet, smiling at him rather determinedly, trying desperately to keep the mood light, easy. ‘And what does it matter anyway?’

  ‘It matters,’ he said, very low, very serious suddenly, ‘because I care about you. I think you’re glorious.’

  ‘Theo, don’t,’ said Harriet, feeling within the depths of her something lurch, rise unbidden, against her will.

  ‘Why not? Why the hell not?’

  ‘Well, because – oh you know why not.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said suddenly, ‘this is absurd. Let’s go.’

  ‘All right,’ said Harriet quietly. ‘All right, Theo. It might be best.’ She signalled to the waiter for the bill.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Asking for the bill.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I want to pay it. I’d like to. Please.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Harriet.’
He stood up; his hand as he drained his glass was shaking.

  ‘Why are you so angry?’ she said, startled.

  ‘I’m angry,’ he said, ‘because I’m hurt. Because you so plainly think I’m a fool. Because you’re so ready to dismiss me. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’

  ‘Theo,’ said Harriet reaching out, trying to take his hand, pulling him down again, ‘the last thing I think you is a fool. I was just trying to – to handle things. Badly, obviously. I was – well, I was very shaken myself just now.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A little while ago. While we were still eating. I realized –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I realized what – what might happen. If I let it. Let myself.’

  ‘And you won’t?’

  ‘Theo, how can I? How can I possibly? When you’re –’

  ‘When I’m an old man?’ His eyes were angry again, hurt, harsh.

  ‘No. Not an old man. But you are practically another father to me. When you’ve seen me learn to walk, talk, lose my teeth –’

  ‘Get your bosoms,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What!’ said Harriet, laughing, blushing at the same time.

  ‘I shall never forget you getting your bosoms.’

  ‘Theo! You really are a dirty old man.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I’d been away for six months, and I’d left a little girl behind, miserable, awkward – God, you were awkward, Harriet.’

  ‘You’d have been awkward with –’

  ‘I know, with Cressida for a sister.’

  ‘You knew!’

  ‘Of course I knew. Anyone would have known. Don’t be absurd. Anyway, I came down for the day and went into the garden to find your parents, and there you were standing by the swimming pool, with just knickers on and two gorgeous little rosy buds, slightly uneven, they were, one bigger than the other, see how well I remember, and you didn’t see me, and I stood there and got the most enormous erection, I couldn’t move, and you dived into the pool and I turned away and stood there, taking deep breaths and thinking Christ Almighty, she’s grown up, and then your mother appeared, and I somehow managed to talk myself down. It was one of the most profoundly moving moments of my life.’

  ‘Literally,’ said Harriet. She felt very odd, excited, touched, almost tearful.

  ‘Literally. And ever since –’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Ever since you’ve been hoping to catch me by the pool again just in my knickers.’

  ‘Or anywhere. Without them as well. If possible. Shit,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Same old thing,’ he said, grinning slightly shamefacedly. ‘Just remembering it all. Remembering you. I do have trouble with it.’

  ‘Oh, Theo,’ said Harriet helplessly, feeling herself softening, moistening, dangerously sweet. ‘If only.’

  ‘If only what?’

  ‘If only I’d only just met you.’

  ‘Would that be different?’ he asked and his voice was odd, wary.

  ‘Of course it would. Quite different.’

  ‘And what would you want to do? If you’d only just met me?’

  ‘I would want,’ she said in a great surge of courage mixed with a rush of desire, ‘I would want to go to bed with you.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ he said, ‘dear God. Dear sweet Jesus. Look at me, Harriet, look at me.’

  And she looked at him. And then she was lost.

  It was so ridiculous when she had known him so long …

  It was doomed of course; there was no way it could work. James would have been outraged, Maggie appalled, all the young horrified. ‘Mungo would lynch me if he knew,’ Theo said as they lay one night entwined in one another’s arms, kissing lazily in the sweet aftermath of love.

  ‘They’d all lynch us.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Probably not. No. No, not at all.’

  The sex was wonderful: wild, clever, original, beautiful. But it wasn’t just sex, it was his very self, she told him, in all his complex, difficult, absorbed, absorbing passions. He took her to the opera in San Francisco, in Sydney, to the ballet in New York, and once in London, greatly daring, he made love to her in his box at the Opera House during a performance of Salome. ‘Listen,’ he said, as the curtain came down to great roars of applause, ‘they must all have been watching us.’ He took her to the races with him in Sydney and Longchamps, shouting, punching the air with excitement when the horses he had backed won, growling, scowling when they did not, and he also read aloud to her in bed, poetry usually, but sometimes from Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, his hands moving idly over her, filling her body with longing even as his deep musical voice filled her head. Seldom was a poem, a chapter, a passage completed, the book would be dropped, flung aside, or simply lost in the bed. ‘I wonder how many copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls have been fucked on,’ Theo said one night, fishing the crushed copy from beneath him, laughing, ‘and how pleased dear old Papa would have been had he only known.’ They could seldom meet in London, and so she met him in a myriad different places all over the world, making long, exhausting plane journeys to Australia, to Mexico, to Barbados just to spend perhaps forty-eight hours with him. She realized again and again how vulnerable he was, even in his immense selfishness, how badly he needed people, needed affection, tenderness, how great his capacity for giving it. He cared for her as she had never been cared for, not dutifully, not mechanically, but thoughtfully, imaginatively, delightedly. ‘I want to spoil you,’ he said simply one night, as they shared a rare dinner in London. ‘You deserve it, and you need it.’

  She found that as arousing as his intense, burning sensuality, the fact that he should mind about her so much. She told him everything, trusted him with her very soul: with all her most intimate, private fears, joys, griefs, from her earliest childhood. She told him of her jealousy of Cressida, her unrequited adoration for her father, her desperate need for success. She even told him about Biggles, fearing even as she did so that he would belittle the grief and pain of that loss. He didn’t. ‘I had a puppy once,’ he said smiling at her, wiping the tears that still flowed at the dreadful memory, ‘my father sent him away, while I was at school. I just came home one day and he was gone, I never knew where. I thought I would like to kill myself.’

  She could not have enough of him; she was distracted from everything, from her work, her friends, her very self. Always vain, concerned about her appearance, her style, she failed for months to go shopping, even to get her hair done. Everyone noticed, teased her about what was obviously a secret lover; she smiled, carefully vague, terrified they would guess. She had, Theo told her, accomplished the impossible and made him neglect his work too.

  ‘I love you,’ he said one night, as they sat watching the sun sink into the Mexican ocean. ‘I love you as I haven’t loved anyone since Deirdre. You fill my heart, Harriet, and I simply can’t believe it.’

  ‘You fill mine too,’ she said, putting her hand into his. ‘Absolutely and utterly.’

  But things went wrong. They began to fight, angry with themselves and one another; starved of one another so much of the time, when they managed to be together they were frantic, desperate, overpossessive.

  He found her youth troubling, hurtful, tormenting, she found his past, his experience worse. ‘How can you wonder that I’m jealous, that I wonder where you’ve been, when you’ve had all these women, all these wives?’ she would cry, when he’d been missing, hadn’t phoned, hadn’t been where he’d said he would be, and ‘Sweet Jesus, Harriet,’ he would say, ‘I love you, how can you even imply I’m playing around?’ And ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he would shout at her, ‘do you know how hard it is to believe you’re not in bed with some boy, some beautiful young boy,’ and she would cry, ‘But Theo, I love you, only you, and I don’t sleep around.’ They agreed, after a while, that they must tell everyone, make it official, but they put it off, over and over again, afraid of ridicule, of outrage, an
d then fought because the fear was greater than the love.

  ‘All right,’ he said one night, as they sat seething and apart, after a dinner with Mungo and Cressida and James and Maggie, after agreeing to tell them, after totally failing, after a harrowingly complex ruse to meet later, at his house in The Boltons, ‘all right, we’re cowardly and feeble and pathetic and all the things you say. I’m sorry for my share in that. I’m sorry. You’re not so brave either, are you? Are you, Harriet? The fault is in both of us.’

  ‘I know, I know it is,’ she said, brushing away the hot angry tears. ‘I’m sorry too. I don’t know why it’s so hard. I can’t understand it. Can’t understand myself.’

  ‘I understand it,’ he said, suddenly gentle, coming over to her, wiping away the tears with his finger. ‘It’s because it does seem so wrong, so incestuous somehow.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, that’s exactly right. Of course it does.’

  ‘We’ve let ourselves think that. But it isn’t. It isn’t at all. Harriet, look at me. I love you. I love you very much.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she said, ‘I really really do.’

  ‘Perhaps we should get married,’ he said suddenly, and staring at him, her eyes wide with astonishment and something close to horror, she said, ‘Now that really would be awful, terrible.’

  ‘I’ve never had quite such a turndown,’ he said, trying to make light of it and then seeing she was deathly, deadly serious, ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why so awful, why terrible? What’s so wrong with it?’

  ‘Theo, I’m not going to be Mrs Buchan the Fifth,’ said Harriet with something close to distaste.

  ‘Why not, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Because it’s – well, it’s not what I’m about. I’m not going to be Mrs anybody, and especially not Mrs Buchan the Fifth.’

  ‘That’s a filthy thing to say.’

  ‘Well it’s true.’