AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  1971

  ‘She says she won’t see you,’ said Fleur. Her voice was very flat, carefully casual. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right. It isn’t your fault. Does she give a reason?’

  ‘She says she’s paranoid about the press. Well, I suppose that’s reasonable.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s done quite a bit for her, over the years, the press has. Arguably more than it’s harmed her. Fleur, do you have any marmalade in this terribly smart kitchen of yours?’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah, sure, over there, look, that whitish jar.’

  ‘Fleur, I’m sorry, but this is not marmalade. It’s syrup playing hard to get with some citrus flavouring. I’ll have to go and find some.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have jelly or something?’

  ‘For breakfast? Oh, sorry, I forgot you call jam jelly over here. No, I couldn’t. I’ll go down to the deli, see what I can find. Need anything else?’

  ‘Yes, some milk, I need some more coffee. Intravenously. Then I have to go to work. You got plenty of change?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He went out, and bumped into Tina in the doorway; her bulk, arguably greater than his own, quivered against him. Magnus put his hands on her shoulders to steady her, smiled into her slightly protuberant eyes.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry. Forgive me.’

  ‘Miss Fitz!’ said Tina, in a voice of awe, looking at him as he disappeared down the stairs. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fleur casually, ‘just a friend.’

  ‘A friend? You can have a man like that in your apartment and say he’s your friend?’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ said Fleur, slightly irritably. ‘Tina, he’s twice my age, I should think. Not my type. Very nice, but a friend.’

  ‘Then, honey, let me loose on him. That man is sex on legs. I’ll give him a little more than friendship, just about right away. He married?’

  ‘No, Tina, he isn’t married.’

  ‘He spend the night here?’

  ‘Yes, Tina, he spent part of the night here. On the couch.’

  ‘Lordy, Lordy,’ said Tina, and went over to the sink, shaking her head.

  Magnus reappeared, his arms full of milk, bagels, orange juice – but no marmalade.

  ‘They didn’t have any,’ he said mournfully, smiling at Tina. ‘I’m sorry I knocked you over like that.’

  As he had scarcely even disturbed Tina’s mass, this was an acutely flattering remark. Tina bridled at him, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘You can knock me over any time,’ she said. ‘And what did the deli not have?’

  ‘Cooper’s Oxford marmalade,’ said Magnus. ‘I can’t live without it.’

  ‘Is that some special kind?’ said Tina. ‘Do something for you?’

  ‘It certainly does,’ said Magnus. ‘It does a great deal for me anyway.’

  ‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Tina. ‘Zabars they’d have it. Or Bloomies. Want me to go out now, Miss Fitz, and find some for the gentleman?’

  ‘I most certainly do not,’ said Fleur. ‘I want you to get on with waxing the kitchen floor, Tina. Thank you. Magnus, I have to go when I’ve had my coffee. Will you be able to –’

  ‘Miss Fitz, don’t you worry about the gentleman,’ said Tina, ‘I’ll take great care of him. Anything he wants, I’ll provide.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful,’ said Magnus solemnly, ‘but I have to check into my hotel. Right away. My secretary fouled up my hotel bookings and Fleur here took pity on me, took me in.’

  ‘I’m telling you I’m sure she didn’t mind one tiny little bit,’ said Tina.

  ‘Well not till now,’ said Fleur shortly.

  She sat in the cab going downtown with Magnus and his luggage, feeling irritable and generally upset. She had been so sure Rose would see them, had predicted it so confidently, had wanted so much to impress him, and here she was forced to say sorry, got it wrong, silly me: he would probably doubt all the other things she had told him as well. She had even put in a preliminary request to get the following week off, so she could go to LA with him, deliver Rose into his lap like some glittering prize: now there didn’t seem much point.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘my aunts aren’t too much like Rose Sharon, but at least they’ll be interesting.’

  ‘I think I’ll probably have a much nicer time with your aunts,’ said Magnus. ‘I like the sound of Miss Sharon less and less.’

  ‘Oh God!’ cried Chloe. ‘Oh God, God, don’t, don’t, no, no, shit, oh. God, please, please, God it’s – it’s –’ and then she cried out, loudly, wordlessly, and then the sound died away, and she lay back, gasping, fighting for breath, slowly restored to calm, her fists unclenching, her body limp, still.

  ‘For a girl who assured me she was frigid,’ said Ludovic Ingram, ‘you’re learning very fast.’

  Chloe opened her eyes, looked into his; put out her finger, traced the shape of his face.

  ‘You’re a great teacher,’ she said simply and shifted slightly beneath him; deep within her it started, stirred again, the wonderful, insistent, pulling brightness; she moved, it moved with her, stronger, more insistent. ‘God, Ludo,’ she said, and reached around him again, pulling him into her, searching, longing for his force, his strength.

  ‘Chloe!’ he said, laughing, ‘Chloe, my darling, I can’t.’

  ‘No you must,’ she said, ‘it’s there, it’s there, please, Ludovic, please.’

  He smiled into her eyes and said, ‘OK, just for you,’ and he was moving in her again, a little fragile at first, then growing, wonderfully growing, and she could feel it, the strong sweet pushing of him in her, at her, working on the sensation, caressing it, tending it, and he was kissing her, his mouth gently, wonderfully erotic on hers, his tongue exploring her, as it had explored other parts of her, and the memory inspired her, prompted her, and she moved, suddenly frantically, and the sensation in her sharpened, peaked, grew, peaked again, and there were endless rivulets of pleasure now, feeding off one another, and she felt it would go on for ever, for eternity, and then as she rose, rose again, to meet him, crying out, calling his name, he suddenly collapsed on her with a great groan and said, ‘Chloe, you are wearing me out. Now this is quite enough for now.’

  She lay beside him on the pillow, smiling, released at last, happy, sweetly weary, gently used, and could not believe how happy she was.

  Sex was wonderful; she could hardly believe she could have lived for so long with all this potential for pleasure within her and not known about it. She could not have enough; she was frantic for it. Starved of it right through her marriage, she now ran appalling risks to assuage her appetite. She would go to Ludovic’s flat in the Albany at lunch-time, early in the evening, first thing in the morning even, any time when she knew Piers would be occupied, and within minutes of arriving she would be naked, in bed with him, exploring, discovering, abandoning herself to pleasure. She shocked herself, at the departure from the nicely brought-up girl, the beautifully behaved young matron she had always been; and at the same time she was proud, exultant at herself and the things she could achieve.

  She became swiftly familiar with her own body; what it liked, where it responded most swiftly. She loved what it could do, what she could do for Ludovic as well as he for her. Modesty, inhibition did not exist, after the first few times: he led, and she followed willingly, laughing, crying, shouting with pleasure. She did not always come swiftly; sometimes it took her a long time, and she would lie, clinging to him, sweating, whimpering with frustration. They were the best times in the end; the orgasm when she finally reached it, found it, tumbling over her in great drenching sheets of pleasure.

  She was so happy, so alive, she had no room, no time for guilt. Piers came back, full as usual of excuses, of protestations of love, and she listened, smiling politely, f
eeling detached as if he were simply a rather distant acquaintance; thinking, remembering only how she had felt the day before when on the third time Ludovic had made love to her he had brought her to her own personal edge of pleasure and tipped her over into it. And she had lain there afterwards, weeping sweet, tender tears of relief and of triumph, staring up into his face, soft with delight of his own, his eyes smiling down into hers, his fingers tracing gently, tenderly the shape of her face, his voice telling her over and over that he loved her, and she had thought she had never even dreamed of such happiness. ‘How did you know?’ she said, gazing at him almost in awe after the first time. ‘How did you know I could do this?’

  ‘Not you,’ he said, laughing. ‘Me. Don’t flatter yourself. I did it.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, laughing back, ‘oh, all right, how did you know you could do it?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I watched you, and I loved you and I knew, I knew you weren’t – what were the words you used? – oh yes, “numb”. I knew no one like you could be numb.’

  ‘And I don’t even feel bad,’ she said.

  ‘Why should you feel bad?’ he said.

  And she said why, because of Piers, and he said she was not to feel bad, that Piers had made her feel bad enough for long enough, and she owed herself a little, no, a great deal of pleasure. She gave herself up to pleasure: she ceased to worry about anything. She turned her back on the book, on Magnus Phillips, on her mother, even on Joe, who she felt being so close to her must surely guess her sweet, terrible secret. She went through the days automatically, caring for her children, seeing to her household, accompanying Piers to functions, attending to his needs, nurturing his ego, soothing his anxieties.

  He had come back from Los Angeles anxious, distracted: he told her it was because of a new project he was working on and she did not entirely believe him, but she was too caught up in her own concerns to properly care. He was at once withdrawn from her, yet increasingly dependent; demanding her attention, her time, while (mercifully, God how mercifully) leaving her with a tender kiss each night to sleep alone in his dressing room. She had no idea why, and she had no desire to ask, she was simply grateful that in a rare act of generosity, fate had freed her to celebrate her new discoveries about herself.

  And she was, as well as glowing, sleekly warm, with sexual pleasure, in love with Ludovic. The emotions he evoked in her were the ones she had first known with Piers, but deeper, stronger, more confident. She felt within her a great well of happiness, of belonging, of being absolutely at peace with herself and with him. That too eased her guilt, made her feel more joyful, less afraid. And he loved her too, he told her tenderly over and over again, had always loved her, always would, and helpless, dizzy with happiness, she allowed herself to know it was true.

  It was hard to believe entirely in the niceness, the sheer uncomplicatedness of Ludovic. She kept thinking she must find a flaw in him, some hidden awful darkness that no one had expected. But weeks went by and she saw more and more of him, and still she found none. He did not even pressure her in any way to proceed with their relationship, to take decisions on it: he told her that they had enough for now, and time would take care of the rest. And for now, she found that quite easy, quite acceptable; clearly they must move on, she could not go on for ever living with one man and loving another, but just for a while she was satisfied, they both were, with what they had discovered and what they could enjoy.

  He was forty years old, most amicably divorced from his wife, the daughter of an earl, who had left him for an American folk singer (‘You know how these guys love English class’). He was, as well as dazzlingly good-looking and very rich, brilliantly clever, and had left Eton for Balliol on a scholarship and proceeded to get a First in law. After a comparatively short pupillage, he had gone into chambers with another Balliol man; within five years they were up and running, star names in a starry profession. Ludovic had a talent for self-publicity; he attracted attention. His first notorious case had been defending a high-profile banker in a libel case against a Sunday newspaper; he had won him damages of forty thousand pounds, and a grovelling apology in print. From then on, he was made. He belonged to that rare (and fortunate) breed of people who are popular with both sexes; women fell determinedly in love with him, but men liked him enormously also, respecting his brilliant mind, his capacity to amuse and his awe-inspiring prowess on the squash court and at the sails of his yacht. He led a charmed life; his only sorrow (on the departure of his wife) being that he had as yet no children. He owned a beautiful house in Hampshire where he kept his boat, and a charming flat in the Albany; he dressed well, rode adequately, and was greatly sought after at the dinner tables of London.

  And he was, unbelievably, in love with her.

  Things had gone very quiet on the book. Spies put out by Ludovic and Joe in the trade reported a six-month, possibly a year’s delay in publication. ‘I wouldn’t like to bank on it,’ said Ludovic to Joe, ‘but it seems just possible they’ve been scared off. A libel action is an extremely expensive thing, and publishers are not newspapers, they don’t have that kind of telephone-number money.’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t bank on it either,’ said Joe. ‘Magnus Phillips doesn’t scare easy.’

  ‘Well, that’s true, but it’s not just Magnus we’re dealing with, after all. It’s the publishers and the publishers’ lawyers. And quite possibly the lawyers of some of his witnesses.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Joe, ‘but I don’t feel very confident about it myself. What does Piers say?’

  ‘Very little. Extremely reluctant to talk about it. Says he leaves it in our hands. Extraordinary when the story could be so damaging.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a kind of death wish,’ said Joe.

  Fleur was beginning to feel uneasy about Magnus Phillips. She wasn’t sure what about, what had prompted it; but she just knew all was not well, was beginning to regret being quite so reckless with her information.

  He was so secretive for a start: disappearing off to places for days on end (Chicago last week, upstate New York this and with no apparent interest in going to LA or San Francisco) without telling her who he was seeing or why. He told her he always worked like that, and she told him he wouldn’t be working at all on this particular tack without her help. He laughed and told her not to flatter herself, that he was a great detective; and then more seriously that she would get to hear all about it, all in good time.

  ‘Would you show your clients the first line of your ads without working out the rest of it?’

  ‘That’s different,’ said Fleur. He had met her from work on his return from Chicago, told her he owed her a drink while refusing to tell her why.

  ‘It’s exactly the same. Did they like my fridge idea?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Fleur untruthfully.

  She had been struggling over a copyline for a new fridge which had absolutely nothing to commend it but the fact that it was more expensive than any other fridge on the market; Magnus had found her desperate one evening, beating her brains out, read the research and said, ‘Just say exactly that. That it’s the most expensive fridge on the market.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So anyone who’s got it can afford it. Is rich. Has money to burn. Or freeze. It’s the pure silk of fridges. How about that?’

  ‘It’s fucking brilliant,’ said Fleur, staring at him.

  He smiled at her suddenly. ‘It’s sweet the way you do that.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Swear when you’re excited. Does any other kind of excitement have that sort of effect on you, or is it just verbal?’

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it,’ said Fleur briefly. There was no way she was going to get into that kind of territory with the devious bastard.

  Her aunts had been charmed by him, especially Kate.

  ‘He seems so keen
to put the record straight,’ she said ecstatically to Fleur, ‘so anxious to present Brendan in the best possible light. I told him to go and see Father Cash, and he was most enthusiastic about the idea.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Fleur.

  ‘Yes, and he sent me the most beautiful bouquet of flowers next day, and a note saying he hoped I might have time to see him again if necessary. He is one of nature’s gentleman, Fleur, no doubt about it.’

  ‘I’d say there was quite a bit of doubt,’ said Fleur.

  She worried about his ability to make people talk: even Reuben, to whom she had been forced to introduce Magnus one evening in the lobby of the agency, saying Magnus was an old friend of her mother’s.

  Magnus had promised to buy her a drink, dinner even, and had promptly invited Reuben too, to Fleur’s intense irritation; it became even more intense as she discovered a passion in Reuben (entirely unsuspected) for motorbikes and she finally went home alone in a cab, leaving them in the midst of an animated discussion about throttles.

  ‘Nice guy,’ said Reuben next day.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Fleur.

  ‘I like your boyfriend,’ said Magnus. ‘He’s one of the good guys.’

  ‘I’m glad you liked him so much,’ said Fleur. ‘The feeling was mutual. He rather seems to prefer you to me.’

  ‘Oh, not entirely. I’m sure you can give him things I could only dream of.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were interested in motorbikes?’ said Fleur irritably to Reuben.