Wicked Pleasures

by Penny Vincenzi

  Virginia got very drunk indeed that night. She carried on drinking all the next day, and the next. In a very short time, she was in the clinic again.

  She was sitting in her room reading a week later, the worst over (again), when Alexander walked in, looking remarkably cheerful.

  ‘You look better, darling.’

  ‘I feel better. I’m so sorry, Alexander. So terribly terribly sorry.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This time I won’t, I really really won’t go back.’

  ‘I believe you. We’ll lick it. Together.’

  ‘You’re very good to me, Alexander.’

  ‘Well, I love you. It’s easy.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You look better too.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve had some very good news.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Your father phoned me this morning. He’s reconsidered. He’s made a loan available to me.’

  ‘Alexander, that is just fantastic. I’m so pleased.’

  ‘Well, it should be a boost for you too. Help you through. No more worry about being on the streets.’

  ‘No. Oh, it’s marvellous. Simply marvellous.’ She looked at him thoughtfully, almost awestruck. ‘It’s really an extraordinary volte-face. I wonder whatever made him change his mind.’

  Alexander turned and walked over to the window. ‘God knows,’ he said.

  Chapter 9

  Charlotte, 1974

  Asking her mother That Question, as she always thought of it, was the hardest thing Charlotte ever did. It was much more difficult than the other difficult questions like when she might get a bosom, and what was a tampon for and what exactly was a lesbian, and the awful irony of it was that unlike the other questions, she had to keep asking it, or variations on it, over the years, without ever getting an entirely satisfactory answer.

  That Question had first been put into her head (as indeed had the one about lesbians) by another girl at her school. Charlotte had been eleven when it was put there, and in her last year at Southland Place, the boarding prep school where both she and Georgina had been sent at eight.

  Charlotte and Georgina had been sitting side by side on the bench on the rounders field when the subject was first raised; Georgina’s skinny arms hugging her endlessly long legs, her small pointed chin resting on her knees, Charlotte’s considerably less slender form, glowingly damp from having just scored seven rounders, her dark curls plastered to her plumply pretty little face.

  ‘Shove over, fatty,’ said Rowena Parker not unkindly to Charlotte; ‘I’m zonked.’ Georgina turned to glare at Rowena. ‘Don’t call my sister fatty.’

  ‘Why not? She is a fatty. She’s as fat as you’re thin. Are you two adopted or something?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Charlotte, looking at her more in interest than outrage. ‘Of course we’re not adopted.’

  ‘Well, I never saw two sisters look more different,’ said Rowena. ‘I mean honestly, you’re short and – well certainly not thin, and dark, and she’s tall and skinny and sort of mouse-coloured.’

  ‘Don’t be so rude,’ said Charlotte. ‘Anyway, you don’t look much like your sister either.’

  ‘No, but at least she’s not a foot taller than me and two years younger. I think it’s quite peculiar.’

  ‘Well I think you’re quite peculiar,’ said Charlotte. ‘Come on, Georgina, let’s go and find some tea.’

  ‘Don’t eat all the cake,’ said Rowena. ‘I know you, Charlotte Welles.’

  ‘Stupid cow,’ said Charlotte when they were out of Rowena’s hearing. ‘Well she is a stupid cow,’ said Georgina, ‘but it’s true, Charlotte, isn’t it? We do look very different. I’ve often thought about it myself.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ said Charlotte, turning to stare at her.

  ‘No I’m not. In fact Max said something about it last holidays. He said he was so glad he didn’t look like either of us, because we were both so ugly, and I hit him, and then he said it was true and what was more, we were both so ugly in different ways. And we are.’

  ‘Ugly?’

  ‘Well, I’m ugly. You’re not. But we do look very different.’

  ‘Georgie, you’re not ugly.’

  ‘Well, I’m plain.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re plain,’ said Charlotte staunchly. She was very fond of Georgina; her voice nevertheless lacked any great conviction. Georgina at nine was at best what the French call jolie laide, with a long narrow little face, sharply painful cheekbones, a large mouth and a high forehead; she was extremely tall and angular with legs that looked too fragile to support her, and a set of ribs so prominent they even showed through a T-shirt. Her nickname at school was B (short for Biafra); whenever she got the wishbone or it was her birthday she wished to put on some weight. Charlotte wished precisely the reverse; she was prettily, peachily round, with a tumble of dark curls and dimples, and although she was beginning to grow taller and to slim down a little, she did look, beside the faun-like Georgina, like an engagingly cuddly little puppy. Which was not what she wanted and grossly unfair, as she wailed at least twice a day, since she was painstakingly careful about what she ate, while Georgina could and did consume four Shredded Wheats for breakfast and then some toast and honey, always had seconds of everything including treacle pudding and brought back twice as much tuck after the holidays as Charlotte, none of which ever seemed to touch her skeletal frame.

  ‘Well anyway, we don’t look like sisters. Have you really never thought about it?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlotte, ‘I haven’t. And I’m sure we’d know if we weren’t, you know what Mummy’s like for being open with us, as she puts it.’

  Nevertheless, the thought began from that moment to haunt her.

  She summoned the courage to ask Virginia about it next holidays; she had to wait until they were alone, which wasn’t very often, but one afternoon they were sitting in the old wooden dinghy on the lake, pretending to catch fish, just the two of them. Georgina had gone to play with a friend, and Max was riding with Alexander. It had been a good summer, the endless restoration, reroofing and underpinning of Hartest finally complete.

  It took a lot of courage, the asking; three times she opened her mouth, felt a rush of fear and then shut it again, but finally she got out the word ‘Mummy?’ in a questioning voice, so that Virginia was bound to say ‘Yes, what?’ as she always did, and then she knew she had to go on.

  ‘Well, could I ask you something? Something awkward?’

  ‘Charlotte! Not more about lesbians,’ said Virginia, laughing. ‘Darling, of course you can, and it can’t be awkward, not between you and me. I’m your mother.’

  ‘Are you?’ She felt quite sick when she got that out, sick and breathless; but she met Virginia’s eyes very steadily.

  Virginia stared back without flinching, but she flushed; then she smiled slightly awkwardly.

  ‘Darling, of course I am. What an extraordinary thing to say. Is that the question?’

  ‘Yes. Well, sort of. Sorry. I – well I just had to ask. Some of the girls at school think we’re – adopted.’

  There, she had got it out. Said the word. She sat forward in the boat, staring at her mother’s face.

  ‘Charlotte! What an astonishing question. What on earth, what on earth could make anyone think that?’ She began to look cross now, her golden eyes snapping. ‘Who’s been putting that sort of nonsense into your head?’

  ‘Oh, some stupid girl called Rowena. But –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, you can see why she should think that, can’t you?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Virginia icily. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Mummy, don’t get upset. It doesn’t matter that much.’

  ‘I am not upset and it does matter. Perhaps you could tell me why she thinks it.’

  ‘Well, it’s just that we do look awfully different,’ said Charlotte. ‘All of us, but sp
ecially me and Georgie.’

  ‘Don’t call her that,’ said Virginia automatically. She hated Georgina’s name being shortened.

  ‘Sorry. But she’s about six feet tall and a beanpole and I’m six feet wide and sort of shortish, and I’m dark and she’s mousey. And then Max is blond and good-looking and sort of normal-shaped.’

  ‘Like Daddy.’

  ‘Well, yes. Like Daddy.’

  ‘And you’re dark and pretty. With maybe just a tiny bit of a weight problem. Like I used to have.’

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘And Georgina is exceptionally tall and thin, at the moment, but I understand Granny Caterham is very tall.’

  ‘Yes – she is.’

  ‘And you and Georgina both have my eyes. Which are a very unusual colour. Haven’t you thought of that?’

  ‘No, I s’pose not,’ said Charlotte. She wished she hadn’t said anything, her mother was clearly very upset.

  ‘Darling,’ said Virginia, making a great effort to smile, to appear relaxed, ‘I do promise you you’re not adopted. I gave birth to all of you, personally, and if you don’t believe me, I can introduce you to my nice obstetrician who was there at the time. Well, for Georgina and Max, she was. For you I had a dreadful old trout called Mr Dunwoody, who I’m sure would vouch for me as well. All right? Do you believe me now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, and she did. And she felt much better about it. For a while.

  It was Max who raised That Question again. It was the Easter holidays after his seventh birthday, and he was being sent off to Hawtreys to board, as part of his inevitable progress towards Eton. Max caused his tutors, as he did his parents, considerable anguish; although he was not brilliant or even clever he was certainly not stupid, but he was what his pre-prep headmaster had billed ‘creatively lazy’. Max (rather like his Uncle Baby) set fun at a high premium; he was immensely charming and good-natured, popular, and highly inventive, and he found school work tedious and pointless. Had he devoted even a quarter of the energy he put into avoiding it into his homework, Charlotte told him prissily from time to time, he could have been top of the class in every subject.

  ‘No I couldn’t.’

  ‘Of course you could.’

  ‘Well I don’t want to be a swot like you.’

  Charlotte was always being accused of being a swot; to an extent it was true. She was awesomely clever, and she did actually rather enjoy studying; as a result she did so extraordinarily well that the girls in her class would refer to being ‘first except for Charlotte Welles’. She wasn’t just good at the sciences or arts subjects, she excelled at everything; in the end-of-year exams she had achieved the almost unheard-of distinction of full marks in Latin, maths and French. Maths was her overall favourite, she worked at it for recreation as well as study, working out complex equations and problems in the evenings at school while the other girls wrote to boys, or sewed or watched television.

  ‘I plan to run a business,’ she said when anyone asked her what she was going to do when she grew up. ‘Possibly a bank. Like my grandfather. Or I might be a lawyer.’

  A boy at school called Fanshawe, Max reported, had also said they must be adopted, ‘Because we all look weird in different ways.’ Max had responded by hitting Fanshawe, who had started to blub and said he had heard his mother talking about it. Max said he quite liked the idea, it might mean he had a really interesting father, like a gypsy or a burglar, instead of a boring earl; Georgina looked upset and worried and said she was so frightened of anyone else being her parents it made her feel sick. Charlotte told them both to shut up and that it was all nonsense, that Virginia had told her so; but she still couldn’t quite shake the thought out of her head. It was no good talking to Virginia; she had got so cross the last time (strangely cross, Charlotte thought, reflecting upon it again, almost – what? scared?). And it certainly wasn’t the sort of question she could ask Alexander. There must be some other way.

  Virginia was in London for a few days; Charlotte waited until everybody was busy one morning then went into her mother’s study, and opened the bottom drawer of Virginia’s desk very slowly and carefully, as if its contents might sting her – like Pandora and her box, she thought, irritated with herself at her fear. Her hands were clammy and shaking slightly; and she closed her eyes briefly before taking out her own file, the one labelled Charlotte, and opening it. Her birth certificate was right on the top.

  ‘So you see, it’s true. Mummy wasn’t lying. You can tell Fanshawe, Max, and hit him again if you like. We’re all in order, parents definitely Mummy and Daddy, everything’s fine.’

  ‘Was it your idea to look at the birth certificates?’ said Georgina. ‘You really are clever, Charlotte. You’ll have to be a detective when you grow up.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m going to run a business,’ said Charlotte. ‘A huge powerful business. I should like that.’

  ‘You should get rid of that stupid Freddy,’ said Georgina, ‘and run Grandfather’s bank.’

  ‘Yes, it’d be easy,’ said Max, ‘he’s such a wimp. You could push him in the lake and he’d drown, or get him up a tree and he’d never get down again, and he’d starve to death.’

  Charlotte looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I think there are rather better ways than that,’ she said.

  Chapter 10

  Baby, 1978

  It was Fred III’s birthday. His seventy-fifth birthday. And it was being marked by his retirement. There had been a farewell dinner two days earlier with his colleagues, friends, compatriots and admirers on Wall Street. And now tonight, a huge party for family and friends at the house on Long Island.

  And then he and Betsey were going away on a long vacation, to Bermuda, so that, as he put it, he wouldn’t be messing things up for Baby his first few days alone at the bank.

  Baby could hardly believe it was finally happening. Just when he had given up all hope, Fred had walked into Baby’s office one morning and simply said that he wanted to spend more time on the golf course and would retire in three months’ time, on his birthday. Just like that. And then walked out again, and Baby had heard no more about it for three days when he had announced it to Pete Hoffman (son of Nigel, long since retired) and the other senior partners at the end of a meeting, as calmly as if he had been telling them their half-yearly bonuses were up or he was taking another day off over Thanksgiving.

  Baby hadn’t even dared tell Mary Rose until then; that night he went home with a vast bunch of red roses in one hand and a bottle of very best Bollinger in the other.

  ‘I did it,’ he said, simply. ‘Correction. We did it.’ She didn’t even need to ask him what he meant.

  Every day since then he had been terrified, terrified his father would change his mind, terrified that he would do something stupid, terrified there would be another stock market crisis that would make Fred feel he had to after all stay on and just ‘see it out’, his favourite expression. But the days had turned into weeks, and nothing had happened to change Fred’s mind; and in the last month he had given a series of luncheons for the major clients, the senior partners and Baby, telling them of his decision. The partners had been apparently pleased and highly supportive, pledged their help to Baby, and privately told one another behind extremely closed doors that it was about time too. Pete Hoffman had been particularly delighted; strange, Baby thought at first, until he realized that Pete’s son Gabriel was about to leave Harvard and take his first faltering steps into Wall Street. Fred III had taken against Gabe; he said he was too much impressed with himself by half. As Fred never changed his mind about anyone, this clearly did not bode too well for Gabe’s future with Praegers; with Baby in charge, there could be a better outlook for him. Baby thought Pete could sweat on that one for a bit. He wasn’t too sure about Gabe himself. He could hardly believe it was happening at last. That the bank was to be his. To run, to shape, to work on. Now that it was so near a reality, the prospect excited him more than he would have believed.

  And n
ow, here it was, the Saturday before the Monday, and he was moving out of the Heir’s Room, which would stay empty for a few years until Freddy settled in, and into the dark, massive office with its great mountains of bookshelves, its ancient desk that Frederick I had brought up from Atlanta with him, its ticker-tape machine, silent now, in the corner, its beautiful lamps, switched on night and day – and its memories. They were almost tangible, those memories, Baby thought; he had watched his father standing very still in the doorway for the last time yesterday, reliving so much: his early days, the crash, the accession, the day when Jicks Foster’s call came through – ‘Fred? Fred Praeger? Fred, I need a bank,’ the arrival of Miss Betsey Bradley in the steno pool, the war, the depression, the frenetic growth of the city, and behind and beyond them all, a backdrop to those memories, the vast, almost fearsome ebb and flow of money into the city, the huge power it yielded, and its attendant hopes and fears, defeats and victories, that any good banker can stand in the street and smell and sense with a physical force. Baby’s only real anxiety now was the degree to which he could personally experience that force.

  ‘Baby, you look wonderful!’ said Virginia. ‘About five years younger.’ She had gone into the great yellow and white marquee in search of her children; the space was so big that it took her a few moments to see them all, hanging around the stage, fiddling with the microphone, studying the place cards on the top table. It was a mass of flowers, the marquee, all yellow and white also: great ropes of freesias twisted into moss and twined around the poles, huge urns set with yellow and white roses right around the perimeter of the room, and at either side of the stage, arrangements of smaller yellow and white flowers, all spelling out seventy-five on the tables.