Wicked Pleasures

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘My reluctance? Mr Praeger, I don’t quite understand. There was no reluctance on my part.’ Lady Caterham was looking at him with a chilly near-distaste.

  Baby stared at her. ‘But…’

  She sounded impatient. ‘Mr Praeger, if somebody tells you they don’t want to meet you, you don’t push it. As you might possibly say. Even if – especially if, I would say – that person has married your son.’

  ‘Lady Caterham, I do assure you Virginia would not have said that. She longed to meet you. To have you here. I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, Mr Praeger, she may have told you that.’ The deep voice was growing impatient. ‘But I do assure you, the message came over very loud and clear. I was not welcome at Hartest, and never would be. I have to say I found the items in various gossip columns, implying that I had refused to come, very hurtful. Your sister had a lot of friends in the press, I understand.’

  ‘You could have sued,’ said Baby mildly, ‘if what they were saying really wasn’t true.’

  ‘Mr Praeger, I am not a rich American. I have better things to do with my money than throw it into the coffers of a national newspaper. I can tell you that any effort I could have made to correct anything your sister’s friends wrote would only have rebounded on me badly.’

  ‘Not if it wasn’t true,’ said Baby again.

  ‘Some things are very hard to prove. Anyway, let’s not get sidetracked into that one. I preferred to retain some dignity over it.’

  ‘But – I still don’t see how the confusion arose,’ said Baby. ‘The idea that she didn’t want to see you. Did she write to you or something? Who told you?’

  ‘No, we never had any contact,’ said Lady Caterham. She was looking increasingly distant. ‘Never. She never even thanked me for giving her the Caterham tiara. Of course it was hers by right, but even so, I would have liked – well. Never mind. It’s too late now. I’m only glad to have been allowed to meet my grandchildren, albeit a little late. I’m sorry, Mr Praeger, to talk like this about your sister at such a time, but you are clearly under some considerable misapprehensions.’

  ‘Yes, clearly I am. And I have to admit to being totally baffled –’

  ‘I also, Mr Praeger.’ She smiled at him suddenly. ‘I can’t imagine how I could have struck such terror into someone. Do I look like a monster?’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Baby politely. ‘But – who did tell you? If it wasn’t Virginia.’

  She sighed. ‘My son of course. Alexander. Who else? And very upset and saddened he was by it too.’

  He went to find Alexander. He had to. He had always been so sorry for Virginia, in her rejection by Lady Caterham. She had minded so much. What on earth was Alexander playing at? Fucking up the relationship, pretending it came from Lady Caterham, telling Virginia lies. Alexander was sitting in his study, working at some papers. He still looked dreadful. Baby felt a pang of remorse, tempted to withdraw, and then went in and shut the door.

  ‘Alexander …’

  ‘Yes, Baby?’

  ‘I have to talk to you. It’s about Virginia and – and your mother.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ The blue eyes were very cold suddenly.

  ‘Alexander, why on earth did you tell her those lies?’

  ‘What lies? To whom?’

  ‘To Virginia. About your mother refusing to come and see her?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, Alexander, come on. Virginia was always talking about it. It was a source of terrible sadness to her. Now your mother says she would have welcomed Virginia.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  Baby stared at him. ‘What’s true?’

  ‘She would have welcomed her. Virginia was obsessively jealous of her. She refused to meet her.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I just don’t believe you.’

  Alexander shrugged. ‘Look – I’m sorry. But it’s true. Baby – I know you loved Virginia very much. So did I. Very very much. Always. I would have done anything for her. I did. But she had – a darker side. She was an alcoholic. As you know. But that wasn’t all. There are many things she couldn’t handle. And like all alcoholics, she – well she lied. A great deal. I didn’t mind. I knew it all and I loved her anyway. But I had to face these things. And I think you should too. She was – not entirely balanced, Baby. I’ve never admitted it to anyone before. But I think you have to know. I’m sorry.’ He looked up at Baby, and there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘But –’said Baby. ‘But you see I –’

  ‘Baby,’ said Alexander, ‘Baby, I am finding it very hard to get through this. All of it. I’d rather we left it for now. If you don’t mind. I did my best for her, you know. My very best.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Baby slowly. ‘Yes, I really think you did. I’m sorry, Alexander. Very sorry.’

  He left the study and went for a walk in the woods, wretchedly shocked and unhappy, and realized that in some strange way he had lost Virginia not once now but twice.

  He went straight to the office when he got back to New York, desperate for work, for something to think about other than Virginia. Amongst all the other letters on his desk was one with an English postmark. It was from Angie.

  Chapter 14

  Angie, 1980

  Angie often thought how terrible it was that her first reaction to the news of Virginia’s death had been pleasure. She hadn’t actually thought she was quite that bad a person. She had felt other more suitable emotions very soon afterwards, sorrow, a sense of very real gratitude, and regret that she had never tried to heal the rift between them. But initially there had been a stab of intense delight, and it had come, that stab, because it gave her a valid reason for getting in touch with Baby.

  She had not thought she had actually loved Baby. She had always imagined that she was simply using him: his money, his patent adoration of her, his ability to give her fun. She liked him, she liked him enormously, and she found him immensely attractive – although his capacity actually to deliver the sexual goods was a little disappointing. She really did like those blond, aristocratic, WASP looks best; she had sampled sexy intellectuals, randily intense Jews, bits of rough, blacks, Arabs, and they all had this that or the other going for them. (Especially the Arabs at the moment; the last one she’d gone out with had worn a money belt beneath all his clothes which he’d removed with some reluctance; there was five million pounds in it, he’d told her. She hadn’t believed him and had sat there, stark naked, making him count it in front of her, noticing with some interest that his erection remained rampantly rigid throughout; he obviously found the money as exciting as she did.) But at the end of the day Angie liked breeding; and Baby had had plenty of that. And she had also liked the way he treated her, the respect he gave her, the way he had talked to her, told her things, asked what she would like to do, and not just in bed, but where she wished to eat, walk, stay. Pretending he was the greatest stud since Casanova had been a small price to pay for that, for being treated like a lady. He had been a bit of a soft touch, a slight sucker, which she didn’t actually approve of; the way he had just come up with the money for Mrs Wicks (never cancelled, in spite of everything), paid for her holidays, believed all the lies she had told him. But actually she hadn’t told him that many. She’d liked him too much. And when it had been over, and she had watched his father wiping the extremely expensive floor with him, she had expected only to feel scorn, distaste, perhaps a little nostalgia; and she had felt real pain, genuine grief and loneliness, and she had been glad she had agreed to go to England, not merely because her fee was higher, but because it meant there was no danger of running into him, no frequent stories to read about him in the financial press (and occasionally the gossip columns), she could just begin again, start life on her own, and try to pretend she had never known him.

  She had done well; she had arrived back in England with the first cheque from Fred III and a very good idea. It wasn’t entirely original, but it was good. She combed the then rapidly gentrifying streets o
f the less fashionable parts of London – Battersea, Clapham, Peckham – for ungentrified houses. If they were bang next door to gentrified ones, so much the better. And she would post letters through the doors, saying she was looking for just such a house and could offer them what was very slightly below the market price. She could do that because she was going to be buying them direct and would thus save them agents’ fees. For every hundred letters she delivered, she would get roughly ten replies; from each of the ten, she would find two houses. This was 1970; the property market had gone mad. She reckoned to buy a small threebedroomed terrace house for £10,000, tart it up – and she did it nicely, Virginia had given her standards, no bubble glass in the windows or phoney Georgian doors for her – put in a bathroom and a fitted kitchen, set a couple of tubs by the front door and sell it for £15,000 three months later. And she did it over and over again, dozens of times. When the property slump came briefly in 1972, she simply held her fire; it didn’t last long. In four years she had doubled Fred’s capital; before she was thirty she was a millionaire.

  She was never tempted to move into a higher price bracket; the profits might be larger, but so, she said, were the risks. And there weren’t so many houses. She did get involved briefly in the flat market, buying three-and four-storey houses and converting them, but it was more complex, the conversions were often a nightmare. She could work in the small houses, the chi-chi cottages, with builders she knew personally. The whole thing could be easily controlled. And she liked it, she liked watching dingy little houses, and even rows of dingy little houses, growing pretty and graceful under her skilful eye.

  She had bought herself a rather beautiful house in St John’s Wood, in 1975, a small, early Victorian villa, covered in wisteria, with the original shutters, cornices and fireplaces, and an exquisitely planted courtyard at the back, filled with small trees, including a fig, vines and shrubs and several charming stone statues. The house stood quite high above the street and had a large, light basement; Angie converted that into a flat for Mrs Wicks.

  She had never been happy, seeing her in the rest home; Angie had the deep conviction of her class that you should look after your own. She went and fetched Mrs Wicks one Saturday afternoon, told them at the home that she would like to leave the standing order running, as a token of her appreciation – well, she thought Baby wouldn’t miss it, and the home had done well by Mrs Wicks – and drove her back to London.

  ‘You can do exactly what you like here, Gran,’ she said, ‘have a different man in every night, keep cats or budgies or tropical fish, give French lessons, just please yourself. You can keep your pension, no need to give me any rent of course, and if you need a bit of extra, just ask. I’ve got plenty. Only thing you’re not to do is interfere in my life, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Mrs Wicks cheerfully. ‘I’ll do for you, darling, keep you nice and spick and span. I’d like that. This is very good of you, Angie.’

  ‘You were good to me,’ said Angie.

  Mrs Wicks was very happy in St John’s Wood once she had settled down. She and Angie went on some shopping sprees, and she bought herself a lot of silk blouses and what she called smart trousers, and the one thing she had always wanted, a fur coat. It was a mink and Angie told her she’d got it very cheaply; it actually cost over a thousand pounds. It had to be extremely warm for her to go out without it. She had her hair dyed red and styled every week at the salon in St John’s Wood High Street and her nails done as well. She still smoked forty a day, but she used a cigarette holder, ‘Like my friend Marje Proops,’ she told Angie. She had advanced on Mrs Proops, who had then lived in St John’s Wood and often shopped in the High Street, one Saturday afternoon and told her she admired her more than any woman in the world, and that included the Queen and Barbara Castle; Marje had been charmed and they had a cup of tea and a pastry together in Gloriette and from then on Mrs Wicks modelled herself on Marje, and even got glasses like hers and changed the wedding ring she had worn for forty-nine years for a wide band exactly like her heroine’s. She was sixty-seven years old, but she looked younger every year; she had always been very slim, but poverty had aged her. Released from worry about the rent and Mr Wicks she looked quite girlish at times.

  She was bored for a while, once she had got used to her new life, and the hairdresser and the shopping; but then one morning, as she walked rather slowly down the road, enjoying the sunshine and wondering what she might do for the eight hours or so before Angie came home, she saw the woman who lived next door to them, standing at her gate.

  ‘Good morning!’ she said. ‘Lovely day!’

  ‘Won’t last,’ said Mrs Wicks. ‘Rain coming in from the west.’

  She always said that, whatever the forecast, whatever the weather. It impressed people.

  ‘Oh really.’ The woman was very smart-looking, dressed in a white suit. ‘Look, I hope you don’t mind my approaching you, but I gather you work for the young woman next door. I wondered if you were fully occupied.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Mrs Wicks truthfully.

  ‘Well you see,’ said the woman, ‘my char has left me, just like that, these people have no concept of loyalty –’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Wicks.

  ‘And I do have to have someone, naturally, it’s a big house –’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Mrs Wicks. She got out her cigarettes and her holder. ‘Smoke?’

  ‘No thank you. So I – well I wondered if you might have a little time to spare.’

  Mrs Wicks looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Well, I might. What are you paying?’

  ‘Four shillings.’

  ‘Oh I couldn’t do it for that.’

  ‘Really? Well I’m afraid that’s my top rate. What a shame.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Wicks.

  ‘What does Mrs – Miss –?’

  ‘Burbank. Miss. Well, I live in, you see. So it’s different. But it’s the equivalent of five bob. We worked it out.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I see. Er, would you be able to iron?’

  ‘Probably. If you paid me.’

  ‘And come in each day for a couple of hours?’

  ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  ‘Well – maybe I could do five shillings.’

  ‘Well, please yourself,’ said Mrs Wicks. ‘Right. Yes, let’s agree on that. When could you start?’

  Mrs Wicks was feeling very bored. ‘Now,’ she said.

  Angie was slightly irritated. ‘We’re supposed to be going up in the world, Gran. You can’t go charring for neighbours.’

  Mrs Wicks was indignant. ‘Course I can. I like housework, and she’s paying me five bob an hour. That’s well over the rate. She wanted to know what you did for a living.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I said you were a doctor.’

  ‘Gran! What on earth for?’

  ‘I knew it would impress her. Stuck-up cow.’

  Mrs Hill had huge delusions of grandeur, and treated Mrs Wicks with a gracious condescension at first; she also followed her round the house watching her, telling her she had left smears on the taps – ‘It’s so difficult to clean real gold plate’ – and not replaced the ornaments in exactly the right places – ‘A great many hours have gone into arranging those, Mrs Wicks, my husband is quite an artist.’ Mrs Wicks dealt with the condescension by the simple expedient of wearing her mink coat to work, handing it to Mrs Hill and telling her to hang it up carefully.

  Mrs Hill looked at it and said what a very nice coat it was, and a wonderfully good imitation.

  ‘That’s no imitation,’ said Mrs Wicks, ‘that’s the real thing.’

  ‘Oh Mrs Wicks, I don’t think so. I do know mink when I see it.’

  ‘’Fraid you don’t,’ said Mrs Wicks cheerfully, ‘it come from Maxwell Croft, and if you don’t believe me I can show you the bill.’

  Mrs Hill went a little pale and said that would not be necessary.

  After three more sessions of being followed around as she worked, Mrs Wicks han
ded Mrs Hill a duster from her overall pocket, and told her she would be leaving. ‘You’ve obviously got the time to do it yourself, you’re wasting your money paying me.’

  Mrs Hill said she was sorry, and left her alone; she told several friends about her wonderful new char and two of them approached her. In no time she was working full time, always arriving in her mink coat and the diamond watch Angie had given her for Christmas, both of which she handed over to her employers as she arrived. ‘I don’t want to get them messed up,’ she would say.

  Very often in the afternoons she would go to bingo in Maida Vale, where she was inordinately lucky; it was rare for her not to win something each week; and once a week she went to a ballroom dancing class in Paddington, where she met several gentlemen friends; one of them took her out to tea every Sunday, to the restaurant in Regent’s Park, and then on to the cinema. His name was Clifford Parks and he told her she was the most ladylike person he had ever met. Angie liked him, and often gave him a drink when he brought Mrs Wicks back; he had assured her quietly that he had every respect for her grandmother and she was not to worry. Angie said she wouldn’t worry.

  In the evenings if Angie was home on her own, they ate TV suppers in Mrs Wicks’s kitchen diner, which was much cosier she said than Angie’s dining room; if Angie gave a dinner party Mrs Wicks would put on a black dress and wait on the guests, which she did with surprising skill. And about once a week Angie would take Mrs Wicks out to a posh restaurant and teach her about good food; at the end of the first year the mink coat had been hung up in the cloakrooms of the Ritz, Claridges, Grosvenor House, the Caprice, Rules, Wheelers, the Meridiana, San Frediano and the Gavroche.

  Through all her fun and success, Angie never forgot about Baby; never ceased to compare him (albeit not always favourably) with other lovers, other friends, never ceased to wonder what would have happened if they had not been parted, or indeed if they were to meet again. The prospect tantalized, fascinated her; as time went by it became almost an obsession.

  And now Virginia’s death had made it attainable; and she could not pass the opportunity by.