AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  She fell asleep immediately she had settled into the cab and given the driver the address, waking to find him shaking her and looking in through the door at her in an oddly kindly way.

  ‘Lady, we’re back. Twenty dollars. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Joe wasn’t there when she called his room; he had left a message to say he would be back at tea-time. She was relieved: she couldn’t face yet describing what had happened or sharing her emotions about Fleur with anyone. Not even Joe. She went up to her room. She lay in the bath for a long time, ordered some tea and a sandwich from room service and climbed into bed; she had thought she might not be able to sleep again, but she did, easily and dreamlessly, and woke to hear the telephone ringing. For a moment she thought she was at home: ‘Caroline Hunterton,’ she said, picking up the receiver.

  ‘Hallo, this is Fleur.’

  ‘Fleur, how are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m OK. I just called to let you have the time and place of the funeral. My aunts would like you to be there.’

  ‘I see.’ Fleur was obviously anxious that she should not think it was any wish of hers.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Sorrows, in Sheepshead Bay. Just off Avenue Z. The day after tomorrow, two o’clock.’

  ‘All right, Fleur. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  The phone went dead. Oh well, thought Caroline, what did I expect, gratitude, friendliness? Yes, she thought, yes, I suppose I did, a word of thanks might have been nice. She sighed; she and Fleur obviously had a long way to go.

  The funeral took a long time; a full requiem mass. Caroline, who was not familiar with the Catholic Church, was surprised; Church of England funerals were swift, easy affairs compared with this. And yet she liked it, liked the sense of there being more to the ceremony than just dispatching someone with the greatest possible speed and ease; this was more like death itself, difficult, drawn out, but important and meaningful. Afterwards they went and stood round the grave while Kathleen’s coffin was lowered into it; she stood in between Kate and Edna, with no sense that she was not part of the family, tears in her eyes. Fleur stood apart from them all, her face tight and closed. She did not cry.

  Afterwards Caroline went up to her.

  Fleur looked at her, hostile, rude. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Fleur, we have to talk.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘I see why, Fleur.’ It was amazing how easy it was to keep her temper with this awkward rude child, when her other daughter, so gently, so compliantly polite, drove her into a fury of irritation. ‘Because of my promise to your grandmother. Because I want to see you are looked after.’

  ‘My grandmother is dead. She won’t know.’

  ‘No, but I will know. And I don’t like breaking promises.’

  ‘Oh, really. Well I’m surprised.’ The tense white face was working suddenly, the voice shaky with unshed tears. ‘I would have thought a mother who could just hand over her baby, never see her again, never want to know where she was even, I would have thought that sort of person would be real good at breaking promises. I’ll be fine, Lady Hunterton, just fine; I’d rather go on the streets than start taking anything from you now.’

  ‘Fleur!’ It was Kate, who had heard the end of this speech, and come over to them, looking shocked. ‘Fleur, how dare you speak to Mrs – Lady – Hunterton like that? When she has been so good to you. To your grandmother –’

  ‘Good! You call sitting by a bed for twelve hours good, when there have been seventeen years of absolutely nothing, no letters, no visits, no nothing. Well, I’m not going to be taken in by her, even if you are. She’s one big sham. Standing there crying when a little bit of help might have kept Grandma alive. I have to get home now. I have schoolwork to do.’

  She went running off, almost blindly, through the graves; Caroline looked after her, white-faced, her hand over her mouth, trying to stop crying out.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Kate’s face was gentle. ‘She’s terribly upset. She loved our mother so much. She’s done everything for her, all her life.’

  ‘I know,’ said Caroline. ‘I understand. Just. Could you – could you tell her something from me, please? So that she feels a little – well, just a very little less hostile towards me. Could you tell her a day hasn’t passed since she was born that I haven’t thought about her, and that her father and I made a pact that he should never tell me where she was, or I would have come after her to find her and take her back.’

  ‘Yes.’ Kate’s rather peevish face was oddly gentle. ‘Yes, I will. I’ll tell her. I don’t know how much she’ll understand but I will tell her. And in time I do know she’ll come round. She’s a nice child really. Very nice.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Caroline with a shaky smile.

  She was alone in the hotel when the message came. It was the day after the funeral. Joe had gone to Washington for two days to see Bobby Kennedy; he would get back next morning and then they were to go home. Caroline was tired and depressed. She had given up hope of getting through to Fleur; she had phoned the house in Sheepshead Bay and Kate had answered the phone and said she would go and get Fleur and had then come back, clearly embarrassed, and said that Fleur was out, and she would try and get her to call.

  Joe had been patient, gentle, undemanding; he had done a great deal of listening, about Kathleen’s death and the funeral and Fleur, and some counselling (mostly in favour of doing nothing, nothing at all and waiting for Fleur to come round). Apart from that he had left her alone, had not once tried to pressure her into any kind of commitment to him. Caroline was touched and relieved by this, and felt illogically guilty at the same time; when she said as much (her judgement just slightly impaired by the double brandy he had insisted she drank before she went to bed) he had laughed and said there was plenty of time for her to think about him, when she began to feel better. Caroline told him she wasn’t going to feel better and he said that was against human nature and that she would. Caroline said that unless Fleur came round just a little, made a move towards her, however, slight, she would never feel better again.

  ‘Now listen, my darling. That child has had a dreadful – what – six months. She holds you in some way personally responsible for some of it. At the same time she wants you and she needs you and she simply can’t let herself admit it. Or let you know it either. She’s fighting a huge battle with herself. With life. Just be patient.’

  ‘I’m not a patient person,’ said Caroline.

  She had phoned twice and spoken to Nanny. Everyone was fine, Nanny said, although Sir William was very tired, and Chloe was looking forward to the ball. Would she like to speak to Chloe?

  Caroline felt that of all the people in the world she would not like to speak to, Chloe was the leader by a long head. She made an excuse and rang off.

  ‘Lady Hunterton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a message for you. From Miss FitzPatrick. She didn’t want to speak to you. She says could you meet her in the foyer here in half an hour.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caroline, ‘yes, thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll be there.’

  ‘I just wanted to apologize.’ Fleur’s eyes were wary, but brave. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. You were very – kind to me at the hospital. And it was good of you to come.’

  She had obviously been rehearsing this speech; Caroline found it slightly difficult not to smile.

  ‘That’s all right, Fleur. I hope I helped a bit.’

  ‘Yes, you did. A bit.’

  ‘Good. Shall we have tea?’

  ‘Oh well, I’m busy. I don’t have a lot of time.’

  ‘Really? What are you so busy with?’

  ‘Oh – schoolwork. I have exams soon.’

  ‘Do y
ou like school?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  Caroline looked at her carefully. ‘Look, there are a few things we have to sort out. Don’t you think? It’s all right, I don’t have the slightest intention of taking you home to England with me and sending you off to boarding school –’

  ‘Does your daughter go to boarding school?’ The use of the word ‘daughter’ was clearly deliberate: making it plain that Fleur did not regard herself in that light.

  ‘Yes, she does. She likes it. Who told you I had a daughter?’

  ‘Miss duGrath.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes, well all right. Maybe I could spare a little time. But I do have to get back.’

  ‘Come on then. There’s something actually called the Tea Room here. They serve the most delicious cakes and hot buttered toast.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Well, I am.

  ‘Now then,’ said Caroline, when Fleur was sitting opposite her, drinking her tea and resisting (clearly with some difficulty) the pile of gateaux confronting her, ‘now then, what is it best for us to do?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, I want to help you. Make sure you go to college, have a chance of a good career. I do have – money, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I realize that. I – well, that is –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t write you more before. When you sent the money for the abortion.’

  ‘That’s all right. I understand.’ Caroline was silent, terrified of taking a wrong step. ‘Are you – all right now?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘No, I can see you’re all right physically. But it must have been very traumatic.’

  ‘Oh, no. No, not really.’ She was looking down, crumbling a pastry into dust; Caroline tried to take her hand. Fleur snatched it away. ‘I told you. I’m all right.’ She turned her head, looked round the restaurant rather wildly; Caroline saw her eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘look, you don’t have to talk about it now. But I had an abortion, when I was younger than you. Oh, physically I was all right, it was – well, properly done. But I’ve never got over it, and I never will. I needed to talk about it, and for a long time I couldn’t. When I finally found someone who would listen it all seemed better. Not all right but better.’

  Fleur looked at her with frank curiosity. ‘Why did you have to have an abortion?’

  ‘Oh, because I was stupid. But what happened to you was far worse. Surely.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fleur, oddly awkward, ‘yes, it was bad. Really bad.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘All right.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Did you really love my father?’ said Fleur suddenly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Caroline and her eyes were soft, cloudy, far away. ‘I really loved him. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. Before or since. It was so terribly, terribly sad, what happened to us.’

  ‘What did happen?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘A little. Grandma told me a little. But maybe I should hear some more of it from you.’

  ‘Oh. Dear God, no wonder you hate me. Well, I’ll tell you.’

  She began to talk; she told Fleur about how happy she and Brendan had been, how much they had loved one another, how they had planned to get married. How she had become pregnant and how Brendan had never known; how she had married William and then how Brendan had come back.

  ‘It was impossible, quite impossible, that I could go with him. I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave William. Not by then. It was too late. But I could give your father something. I could give him you. That seemed to make things better.’

  ‘I just don’t know,’ said Fleur, staring at her, digesting all this with difficulty, ‘I just still don’t know how you could give me away. As if I was a package or something.’

  ‘I don’t know either,’ said Caroline. ‘But you have to remember I was very young and very alone, and it seemed the only thing to do. I thought it was best. And I was terribly wrong. I’m so sorry, so very sorry. As I said to your Aunt Kate, not a day has passed since then that I haven’t thought about you and longed for you.’ She looked up, her eyes bright with tears.

  Fleur was still staring at her, silent. Then she smiled, a quick, odd little smile. ‘Maybe we should try to get to know each a little,’ was all she said.

  ‘Oh, God, I don’t want to go home,’ said Caroline. ‘I just don’t want to go home. I just love New York so much. I feel happy here. It feels like home.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t home, as you’d soon find out,’ said Joe. ‘It’s a tough, hard, unfriendly place, and not for the likes of you. Besides, you’re only happy because you got your daughter back. It’s got nothing to do with New York. If she’d been in Indochina you’d have felt you wanted to stay there.’

  ‘I suppose so. What a wise man you are, Joe. Thank you for everything. Everything. I don’t know what I’d have done, how I’d have got through it without you.’

  ‘Oh, you’d have got through,’ he said, looking at her with a rather odd expression in his green eyes. ‘You were born getting through. You don’t really need anybody, Caroline, anybody at all.’

  They were sitting having dinner; their plane left in the morning. Caroline, uneasily aware it was the last night in the hotel, the last night with Joe, released at last from tension, fear, grief, knew she was in an awkward, potentially dangerous situation and didn’t know how to deal with it. Joe was in an uncharacteristically awkward mood: silent, uncommunicative, contradicting almost everything she said.

  She looked at him and decided she had to confront the situation head on, force it to a conclusion. ‘Joe,’ she said, refilling her glass. ‘Joe, we have to talk.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I think we’ve done quite enough of that. We’ve talked an entire week away.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but not about us.’

  ‘No, just about you. You and Fleur and her aunts and her grandmother and her father, and her birthday, and how wonderful it was that you’d been able to celebrate her birthday for the first time and take her out to lunch, and whether she’d rather have a bracelet or a necklace for a present. It’s taken up a great deal of time.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right. I should have realized. I guess I’m not quite as unselfish as I thought. I imagined I could get through this week like some sort of cross between a guardian angel and Sir Galahad and there just hasn’t been quite enough in it for me.’

  ‘No. No, I can see that. Well’ – Caroline took a deep breath, tried to sound light-hearted, amusing, amused – ‘well it’s all over now. We have tonight. We can talk about you all night. Tell me about Kennedy. You never really –’

  ‘Caroline, for fuck’s sake, I don’t want to talk about Kennedy. I don’t want to talk at all. I want to go to bed with you and screw you into the ground.’

  Caroline looked at him; a shaft of physical longing shot through her, so strong, so hard, she moved in her seat, swallowed, looked away. Then she looked back at Joe. Her eyes were very clear, very candid. ‘Well –’ she said, and the invitation hung in the air, waiting to be taken.

  ‘No, Caroline,’ he said, and the words were literally shocking; she sat staring at him, feeling cold, slightly sick, ‘no, I don’t want to do it on your terms. I don’t want to be told that now you’ve finished everything else you had to do, and you’re feeling much better and your daughter is on her way to forgiving you, and before you get home to your husband and your other commitments, you could fit me into your schedule, spare me a little time even, and open your elegant long legs for me. That’s all a bit too orderly, a bit too pragmatic for me. Fra
nkly, Caroline, I find it a turn-off. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going up to my room. I have work to do.’

  They ate breakfast together but in silence. Joe was polite, distracted, dividing his attention between the New York Times and some typewritten pages he was correcting. Caroline sat watching him, half angry, half remorseful. Then she finished her coffee and stood up.

  ‘I’m going to finish packing,’ she said, ‘We have to leave in about half an hour.’

  ‘Fine.’ He didn’t even look up. She went over to the lift, up to her room, moved about it, putting last-minute things into her case. She ached, throbbed with sexual energy and frustration. It was a physical pain, and the only way to bear it was to keep moving around. The thought of Joe and what she had not had with him was almost unbearable. And now there was no chance, no chance at all; she had blown it. She had taken no more trouble over him, given him no more time, than one of the doormen at the hotel; she had used him relentlessly for more than a week, and now she was getting what she deserved.

  The fact he hadn’t had to come with her was irrelevant really. He had come, he had wanted to help her, he had helped her, and he had been helping her for weeks and months, more than a year. She did not necessarily owe him any sexual favours, indeed they seemed a total irrelevance, but she certainly owed him some gratitude and some grace.

  She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes before they left. He was probably back in his room. She owed him an apology at the very least, an acknowledgement that she understood what he had been saying. She went along the corridor and knocked on his door.

  ‘Joe? It’s me. Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure. It’s unlocked.’

  She went in and looked at him; he was staring out of the window, his back to her.

  ‘Joe, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, turning to face her, infinitely weary. ‘I didn’t have to come.’

  ‘No, but you did. And in spite of what you said I couldn’t have managed without you. I’ve been very selfish and you’re right to be angry. It was just that Fleur needed my time –’