Wicked Pleasures

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘No, Angie, I’ve been thinking a bit about that. If – as – I’m going to have two children, I don’t think I can be quite as much the career woman as I have been lately. Don’t look like that, it’s all right, I’m not going to pack it in and take to weaving my own nappies. And you’re certainly going to be busier than ever. But I do think we should ease off a bit. Not get any bigger at least. So I’ve made a conscious decision that for the next year or so we’ll only take on jobs – and people – we really like the look of. How does that sound?’

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ said Angie, trying to appear enthusiastic.

  A few days later Alexander came up to Eaton Place. Virginia was upstairs when he arrived, having a rest after lunch. She was, despite all her protestations, feeling extremely unwell. Alexander on the other hand looked wonderful, tanned and happy, and very relaxed.

  ‘Hallo, Angie my dear, how are you?’ he said, wandering through the big office, idly leafing through the colour swatches on her desk. ‘Ghastly, most of these things, aren’t they? Virginia once threatened to let her skills loose on Hartest. Fortunately I managed to dissuade her – tactfully, I hope.’

  ‘Don’t you like what she does?’ asked Angie, genuinely surprised.

  ‘Not much of it, no, between you and me. Oh, I’m sure it’s very clever, but I have to say that most of it is very vulgar. Well, let’s say it’s not for me. Anyway, where is she?’

  ‘She’s lying down for a bit. She doesn’t feel terribly well.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid pregnancy doesn’t really suit her,’ said Alexander with a sigh. ‘Let’s hope this time we have a boy, and she can relax.’

  ‘Can’t – couldn’t a girl inherit Hartest?’ asked Angie, half seriously.

  Alexander turned to her, and she was genuinely startled by the expression on his face. It was almost fiercely intense, and beneath the smile he forced it to wear, bleak and sad; his mouth had a tight white line round it.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, ‘it’s completely out of the question. It isn’t just Hartest, it’s the title. There has to be a male heir, it’s imperative. I – and Virginia of course – both understand that. It is our prime role at the moment, to provide an heir.’

  ‘But surely,’ said Angie, genuinely intrigued and puzzled by his emotion, ‘I can see it would be ideal – important even, but if she – you – don’t have a boy, you don’t. I imagine a girl – well Charlotte – could inherit the title, couldn’t she? Or is there a cousin or anything?’

  ‘There is no cousin, and I have no intention of allowing the name of Caterham to die out through being passed down a female line,’ said Alexander. He was making a great effort now to sound more lighthearted; only his eyes, harsh and sad, gave him away. ‘That seems to me to be taking female emancipation a little too far. No, we shall have a boy, of course we shall. My friend the Earl of Dudley has five daughters to date. I believe he is confident there is a boy on the way now. Anyway, it certainly isn’t anything you should bother your extremely pretty little head about. Now I shall go and see the mother of my future son and heir to try to persuade her to come to Hartest for a few weeks until she’s feeling better.’

  ‘Oh, do,’ said Angie, ‘I can easily hold the fort here, there’s nothing special going on. I’ll be happy to cope, really.’

  ‘I’m sure you will. And thank you.’ He was his old self now, easy and charming; but Angie felt chilled, somehow, disturbed by their conversation.

  Later that afternoon she wanted a telephone number urgently; a client phoned in a fury, saying the builders were insisting on re-laying a floor and it was not in the specification Virginia had sent her. Angie knew it was and she wanted to contact the architect to get him to confirm it to the client. The number was not for some reason on the Rolodex, nor in any of the files; worried, thinking Virginia would be well rested, and that Alexander had gone, she went out into the hall and quietly up the stairs to the wide landing where Virginia’s bedroom stood, at the front of the house, overlooking the square. She waited before knocking, hoping to hear movement inside, or Virginia’s radio on – she listened constantly to classical music on the Third Programme; instead she heard Virginia’s voice: fretful, faintly fractious, but with the steely underlying note that Angie had come to know extremely well. Never being over-scrupulous in matters of personal privacy, Angie listened.

  ‘Alexander, please listen to me. I don’t think you’re taking me very seriously. I want to have the baby at home. Not here, but at Hartest. I think, well I know, I shall cope better, feel less frightened.’

  ‘What, in the house?’

  ‘Yes, in the house.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Supposing something went wrong.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t. I’ve already talked to a gynaecologist about it.’

  ‘Mr Dunwoody?’

  ‘Not Mr Dunwoody. I never want to see Mr Dunwoody again.’

  ‘But darling, he’s the best.’

  ‘Not for me he’s not. No, I’ve found a lovely female obstetrician. She’s only about five years older than me, she’s terribly sympathetic, and she’s going to do lots for me. She’s called Lydia Paget.’

  ‘Virginia, Mr Dunwoody is the finest obstetrician you could possibly have.’

  ‘Alexander, he is nothing of the sort. He took me to hell and back. And I don’t like him and I don’t like his attitude. It’s patronizing. Lydia Paget is like me; I can relate to her. Now don’t look like that, Alexander, this is the twentieth century. She’s not an old crone from the village with a birthing stool. She may be a woman, but she is a consultant. At Queen Charlotte’s. Well, she was. Now she’s in Swindon, at the hospital there, and she has a private practice herself. And the main difference between her and Mr Dunwoody is that she’s had a baby. Two actually. One the old-fashioned way, one the new. And she says she certainly knows which way she preferred. She really does know what she’s talking about. And she’s done a lot of work on psychoprophylaxis, on handling the birthing process yourself, natural pain relief –’

  ‘Oh Virginia, don’t start giving me all that American claptrap jargon …’

  ‘Alexander, it’s not American claptrap, and the very least you can do, surely, is listen to me, try to understand how I feel. I’m doing this for you, if you’d care to remember, and I get the strong impression that you don’t care about my feelings, my fears, at all.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘I’m not being absurd. I just don’t see why you won’t agree to it. I’m not asking very much. I want to have the baby at Hartest, in my own surroundings, and Lydia Paget is willing to help me, to deliver the baby there, and to see I get the right sort of education.’

  ‘Virginia, I just don’t want you to have the baby there. I’m sorry. All right, you can be in the care of this woman if you like, provided I am satisfied she is properly qualified, but I don’t want you giving birth at Hartest.’

  ‘Why on earth not? You of all people should like the idea. I’m sure that until the last decade or two all the Earls of Caterham have been born there.’

  ‘I daresay. But I’m afraid I don’t like it. I know it sounds odd, but I find it very unattractive.’

  ‘Alexander, you don’t have to be there. You don’t have to be in the county if you don’t want to. Or even the country. Anyway, it’s a big house, you won’t hear me screaming or anything.’

  ‘That’s not the point. I just would rather you had the baby in hospital.’

  ‘Alexander,’ said Virginia, an odd note coming into her voice, ‘either I have this baby at Hartest, or I don’t have it at all.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ said Alexander, and Angie could hear the floorboards creaking as he started pacing up and down; she fled swiftly down the stairs. She was just opening the door at the bottom of the office steps when she heard Alexander shouting, ‘All right, have the bloody baby at Hartest. But don’t blame me if something goes wrong and you have to have another and ano
ther and another.’

  ‘Angie? This is Virginia. I had to call you quickly. I wanted you to be the very first to know. I’ve had the baby. Half an hour ago. It was marvellous. She’s a little bit early, I know, about ten days. But she’s fine. Six pounds. She’s beautiful. Really beautiful. What? No, I don’t mind a bit that it’s a girl. It was so easy, I could do it six more times. Sorry? Oh, he’s out riding. He doesn’t even know yet. I woke up and it had started and I told Alexander to call Mrs Paget, she’s been staying at the Lodge, and he said once she was here he’d go out for a while, and the baby just slithered out about an hour after that. This new way of doing it is wonderful. Absolutely no problem at all, it hardly hurt, just very hard work. I was actually smiling while she was being born. Oh, yes, and she’s called Georgina. Very very long and skinny. And she doesn’t look like anyone in the family at all. Now I want you to come down and see me very soon. Promise you’ll come. I’ll get Alexander to meet you at the station, or even drive you down. Oh, Angie, I’m so happy. Now I must phone my mother. I’ll tell you the best thing too, I beat Mary Rose to it after all. Her baby’s due this week, and I thought she’d have hers first, and start gloating all over again. Bye, Angie darling, see you in a few days.’

  It was ten days later that Angie arrived at Hartest, on a perfect early spring day; carrying a large bunch of lilies, and a bottle of champagne, she caught a lunchtime train from Paddington to Swindon, and was standing rather uncertainly outside the station, looking for the chauffeur who she had been told would meet her, when she heard a great hooting and saw across the yard a rather old Bentley, with a radiant Alexander at the wheel. He got out and gave her a hug and then held open the other door for her; he was dressed as she had never seen him, in brown cords and a checked shirt and navy guernsey; his blond hair was untidy, and he looked a completely different person from the rather tense one who came to the house in Eaton Place, relaxed, smiling, and at least five years younger.

  ‘You look lovely,’ he said as the car pulled away, ‘and it’s sweet of you to come. What glorious flowers. Virginia will be pleased. And champagne too, how thoughtful. I think if you don’t mind we’ll put that away for a few weeks, Mrs Paget feels she shouldn’t be drinking at the moment, or certainly very little, and she keeps trying to make an excuse to have some champagne. Of course she’s got lots to celebrate, but still. Have you had lunch? Because Mrs Tallow has kept you something in case.’

  ‘I have, thank you,’ said Angie, ‘I had a pork pie on the train.’

  ‘Poor you, was it foul?’

  ‘No, it was fine,’ said Angie, who was still young enough, and had been deprived enough in her childhood, to like almost any food and could never see what was wrong with half the stuff that Virginia and M. Wetherly and other over-privileged people pushed away from them claiming it was disgusting.

  ‘Good. Now I came to fetch you myself because Harold Tallow, who doubles as butler and driver for us, is terribly busy, with Virginia’s parents arriving tomorrow, and besides I wanted to be the person to show you Hartest for the very first time.’ He sounded excited, overwrought almost, like a small boy on the verge of a treat.

  ‘Well, that was very kind,’ said Angie, ‘thank you. I didn’t know Virginia’s parents were coming, I could easily have come next week.’

  ‘Angie, Virginia was dying to see you and show you the baby. She adores you, you know she does. She was all set to come and meet you, drive herself –’

  ‘She’s that well?’

  ‘She’s that well. It has been an amazingly different experience. I have to admit I was opposed to all this – I was going to say nonsense – natural stuff, home birth and so on, but I was wrong. She is up and about, happy and strong, feeding the baby herself, discussing the next time already.’

  ‘Well that’s wonderful,’ said Angie. ‘I’m pleased.’

  Alexander didn’t talk very much after that. They drove through the centre of Marlborough, which Alexander described as a classically perfect town, and which looked to Angie rather like a child’s model, with its wide square set with haphazardly uniform red-brick houses and buildings, and then pulled out of it and up the hill signposted Salisbury Plain and Calne. A few miles on, the road divided into two, one fork dropping down below the great sheet of blank, almost bleak landscape that was the Plain and the other stretching straight ahead of them. Alexander took the higher road, waving vaguely in the direction of Avebury and the stone circles. ‘Ever seen those, or Stonehenge?’

  Angie shook her head; she was beginning to feel a little strange, almost bewitched by this silent journey through a countryside she had never imagined in England, so grand and majestic was it, and oddly nervous; after another fifteen minutes or so, Alexander turned into a lane that dropped abruptly from the road, dipping into the centre of the landscape, suddenly a softer, gentler place, oddly protected from the huge expanse of sky and grass that had been stretching as if into infinity. The lane was narrow, twisting, up and down hill; a couple of miles or so further, and he turned off again; large wrought-iron gates with stone columns stood open, and they were safter still, driving under a tunnel of trees, so dense that even without their leaves it was dim, peaceful, drenched with spring sounds and fleeting sunlight and birdsong.

  ‘Goodness,’ she said, ‘it’s so different,’ and he turned towards her and smiled and said, ‘Yes, isn’t it, like some exquisite secret,’ and her eyes met his, and for a brief moment something passed between them, something sweet, warm, excited, and quite indecipherable in terms of any human emotion Angie had ever known. She turned back to the road in front of her; it was lighter now, becoming broader, the trees further back, and there was a second pair of gates, bigger, grander, with a lodge on either side, a pair of perfect low, grey buildings, and the road wound past them off to the right, dipping downwards slightly. Another moment or so and Alexander stopped the car, turned off the engine. Angie looked at him, oddly nervous; he smiled at her, reached out, patted her small hands, knotted in her lap.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’m not about to seduce you. Just to introduce you to my –’ he paused, corrected himself carefully – ‘one of my greatest pleasures.’

  ‘Pleasures?’ said Angie slightly doubtfully. She wondered what on earth he was getting at; it seemed slightly creepy suddenly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘pleasures.’ He paused and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Pleasure is a very important factor in one’s life, don’t you think?’

  ‘Well – yes,’ she said, slightly warily.

  ‘I have always made a distinction, between innocent and wicked pleasures,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘and Hartest for me is at once my greatest and most innocent pleasure.’

  Angie wound down her window, and the air rushed in, sweet, heady, earthy, with the noise of birdsong filling every corner of it; she put out her hand and it was as if she could touch the day, so rich and gold and drenched with recent rain.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘that’s exactly what I want people to do, drink it in, feel it, be ready for the next bit.’

  ‘And what’s the next bit?’ asked Angie, smiling at him, liking him as she had never liked him before, charmed by his childlike delight and pride in his possession, his land, his countryside, patently suddenly his major reason for existence.

  ‘The next bit is the house,’ he said, and he paused, staring ahead of him for a moment more, his face blank, before starting the engine again, gently, almost reluctantly, and easing the car very slowly forward. Angie was still looking to the side at the woods when the car turned quite sharply to the left; her head turned, and she saw Hartest and gasped aloud with shock and pleasure; it lay below them, about a quarter of a mile away, at the bottom of a long straight drive, with meadows rolling away from it, studded with sheep and deer, and to the right a lake, a lazy oval of blue surrounded with rushes, and in one corner a run-down wooden building with a landing stage and a boat tied to it. Beyond the lake further to the right was a wood, and wi
nding lazily from that, a river, flowing through the parkland and under an exquisite bridge, with three arches and what looked to her like a dilapidated building on either side of it.

  Angie had known what the house looked like, had seen in many photographs the curving double flight of steps leading up to the great front door, the pillars studding the front, the rows of perfect windows, the dome looming from the centre of the roof; but the pictures had meant nothing, she could see now, nothing at all, without the colours, the tenderly pale grey of the stone, etched, carved into the blue sky, the darker colour of the roof, the white-grey of the great curving gravel drive in front of the steps, the soft sheen of the windows reflecting the day, or the precise location in which the house lay, gentle, enfolding countryside, marked out by man as the place for it to be.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Angie, ‘oh God, it’s beautiful,’ and she felt, almost irritated, tears come into her eyes, and he saw them and smiled at her again and said, ‘I’m so glad you like it so much. It makes sense for me of everything I do.’

  Looking back on that remark, she realized it told her more about Alexander than anything else he ever said to her.

  They drove very slowly down the Great Drive, as Robert Adam had designated it, and pulled round in front of the steps; two golden retrievers ran down to greet them, whining and slobbering ecstatically, and leaping at the car and Alexander as if they had not set eyes on him for several extremely long years. Alexander shouted at them repeatedly to get down, and as they continued to leap, got out, struggling through the flailing paws and slavering tongues, opened the door on Angie’s side, and gestured for her to go up the steps. Angie looked up, awed, feeling (again to her irritation) that she couldn’t possibly have any business there, and then felt instantly better as Virginia appeared, smiling, waving, shouting out, ‘Angie, Angie, I’m so glad you’re here.’