‘You wouldn’t get it, as you put it. Of course you wouldn’t. It’s far too involved and too subtle a problem for you. I told you I didn’t want to discuss it with you. I knew there was no point in it. I think, Angie, you’d better go.’
Angie looked at him in genuine fascination. This was a man she had never seen before. She felt her own heart begin to thud rather pleasurably.
‘I have no intention of going,’ she said calmly. ‘I’m sorry you’re so upset, but I feel, apart from anything else, I have to defend Kendrick’s interest. He’s my – well, almost – my stepson, and he’s extremely nice. Georgina would be very fortunate. Can you just give me one good reason why they shouldn’t get married?’
‘I have to say I find your attitude totally puzzling,’ said Alexander. ‘Apart from anything else, Angie, they’re cousins. Cousins can’t marry.’
‘Oh balls,’ said Angie. ‘Of course they can marry. It’s permitted in the Church of England. The vicar called the banns for some cousins only last Sunday. You’re talking crap, Alexander, high-handed, intolerant crap. I’m surprised at you.’
‘Please don’t talk to me like that,’ he said, and his voice was very icy.
‘I think it’s about time somebody did talk to you like that,’ said Angie coolly. ‘I thought you were a nice, liberal, loving father, and I find you’re just a plain old dyed-in-the-wool tyrant after all. A hidebound, prejudiced, overbearing tyrant. I’ll tell you what I think, Lord Caterham –’ some instinct was warning her now, to hold back, telling her she was on dangerous, deadly ground, but she was too angry, too excited to stop –‘I think you’re just jealous, jealous your favourite daughter is in love with someone else, jealous she’s close to someone, is having a sex life, jealous she wants to leave you…’
Alexander stood quite still, looking at her; he was ashen, his eyes blazing. He took a step towards her suddenly, and Angie felt an abrupt chill, not of fear exactly, but of dread.
‘How dare you,’ he said, very quietly, ‘how dare you, how dare you say such things. Take them back, take them back at once.’
‘I dare because they’re true.’
‘They are not true.’
‘Of course they are true. Look at yourself, Alexander, look at the situation, go on, force yourself, just for once take it head on.’ She was dimly conscious of talking of other things now, of pushing the frontiers of what she dared to make him confront. ‘Stop running away, please, Alexander. Please.’
‘You bitch,’ he said quietly, and she felt a great rush of emotion reaching out from him towards her, and then quite suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her furiously, hard, on the mouth. It was a very sensuous practised kiss; she felt his lips, hot, oddly yielding, his tongue seeking hers out, one of his hands tangling in her hair, then moving gently, agonizingly tender, on her neck. A snake of fire shot through Angie; she clung to him, whispering, almost gasping his name, her body straining frantically, desperately at his, feeling the great white heat of her desire obliterating everything except what she wanted, what she had to have.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘please, Alexander, now, please.’
And he suddenly looked down at her, seemed to realize properly who she was, what he was doing, and his face was quite different again, dead, distant, and he put her away from him and said, ‘No, no, Angie, we can’t, we can’t,’ and ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we can, come on, let’s go somewhere now, please, I have to have you, I do, I do.’ She was flushed, there were tears in her eyes, her fists clenched, and he turned from her and almost ran out of the room, and she followed him, through the Rotunda, down the corridor, into the gun room; she heard the door slam, and she pulled it open and went in after him.
He was standing by the window, his back to her. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, please leave me alone.’
‘I can’t,’ she said, ‘not now, I can’t,’ and she went towards him, turned him round, put her arms up round his neck, pulled his face down towards her, her eyes huge, dark with hunger.
‘I want you,’ she said. ‘Please, Alexander, please, I want you so much, I’m so lonely, so unhappy, it won’t hurt Baby, he’ll never never know.’
And he looked down at her, and said, ‘No, Angie, no, I’m sorry, I’m terribly terribly sorry,’ and she looked back at him, half puzzled, half afraid, and said, ‘Why, Alexander, what is it, I don’t understand?’ and he said, finally, his face infinitely wretched, ‘I have to tell you now, at last. I’m impotent.’
Chapter 44
Virginia, 1960
She looked at him, half puzzled, half afraid; and he said, his face infinitely wretched, ‘I have to tell you now, at last. I’m impotent.’
The room shook, shuddered around Virginia; she stared at him, and then shrank back onto the pillows, her body withdrawing from him as swiftly, as fearfully as her mind.
‘I – I don’t understand.’
‘I’m impotent,’ he said again.
She sat up, reached for her glass of champagne. She drained it, feeling the alcohol hit her bloodstream, reassuring, comforting. The room steadied, the nightmare receded briefly. She held out her glass. ‘May I have some more?’
‘Of course.’ He filled it for her, then his own. He pulled on his robe; she never saw him naked again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘So very very sorry.’
Virginia shivered. Her body, which had been so warm, so hungry a few moments earlier, felt chill and oddly withered.
‘You’re cold,’ he said, ‘here, put your robe on.’
‘Thank you.’ She put it round her shoulders, pulled the covers of the bed up. Her teeth were chattering slightly.
‘Oh darling. Darling –’ He moved towards her; she pulled away.
‘Don’t. Don’t touch me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
There was a long silence. Then she said, ‘Would you open the shutters please?’
‘Of course.’
The warm, golden air filled the room; Virginia looked towards the window at the blue sky, the wheeling gulls. She closed her eyes, opened them again, as if willing the nightmare to recede. It didn’t. Alexander was sitting looking at her, his face concerned, gentle. She felt a panic threatening to overtake her, and fought it back. She met his eyes with great difficulty and said, ‘I think you had better explain.’
‘I’ll try.’ He shifted on the bed, reached for a strawberry, held out the dish to her. She shook her head, feeling sick that he could even think she might be able to swallow, to eat.
‘I don’t quite know how to begin,’ he said. ‘It’s so difficult.’
‘I would say,’ she said, ‘that it isn’t very easy for me.’
‘No. No of course not.’
‘Perhaps I should ask some questions.’
‘Very well.’
‘How long have you – have you known you were –’
‘Impotent? Oh, for a few years. Always, I suppose, in a way. At least, ever since I could have been expected to function normally.’
‘So – you’ve tried to have relationships?’
‘Oh yes. God, I’ve tried. Many times. But – well, I always failed. Always. Or at least where there was any affection, any regard.’
‘But Alexander, you –’
‘Yes?’
‘You have seemed to – want me. You’ve kissed me, held me, just now, you were – oh God.’ She threw her head back, fighting down the tears.
‘Of course I want you. I think you are the most beautiful, desirable woman I have ever known. I want you terribly. And I love you. It’s so very important that you understand that, Virginia. I love you very much.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she said, and for the first time there was anger in her voice. ‘How can you talk of loving me? How could you do this to anyone you loved?’
‘I’ll try to explain. Somehow. But first you must try and believe that I do, I do love you. You are exactly the woman I want to spend my life with. You’re warm and tender, and clever an
d vulnerable. I fell in love with you immediately, that first day, over lunch. I wanted, from that day on, to marry you, to make you my wife.’
‘But –’
‘Virginia, you mustn’t fall into the trap of confusing impotence with a lack of desire. I feel great desire. My body feels it, even displays it – at times. But –’ He looked at her, and there were tears in his eyes; then he bent his head. ‘I looked at you, lying there, and I wanted you almost beyond endurance. I loved holding you, loving you. But I knew – well, I’m sorry. I can only keep saying that.’
‘Have you tried to get help?’
‘Oh, Virginia. Of course I have. I’ve seen doctors, psychiatrists, analysts, sex therapists. I’ve had electrotherapy, drug therapy, psychotherapy. Ever since I realized, the first time I tried to make love to a girl, I have tried to be cured.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Sixteen.’ He looked at her, smiled shakily. ‘Very young. She was a village girl, of course –’
‘Oh of course.’ She sounded bitter. ‘That’s the aristocratic way, isn’t it? In England? Christ. A village girl.’
He met her gaze steadily. ‘Maybe. But I liked her, I was very fond of her, and I had known her for years, her mother worked for us. We played together as children. I had found the homosexual activity at school disgusting, terribly upsetting. But I did feel sexual desire. I keep coming back to that, Virginia, to wanting you to understand. And I wanted to – experience it.’
‘But?’
‘Well – I found it impossible. I failed. Failed totally.’
‘And –’
‘Well, I tried again. With another girl. It was the same. I began to worry. But I thought it was inexperience, not knowing quite what I was doing. Oh Christ.’ He looked away from her.
‘So when did you try to get help? Did you talk to your – no, I suppose not, not your parents, your father –’
‘My father! Dear Christ, Virginia, had it not been for my father, I would be making love to you now. Or so they have told me, the shrinks. Or many of them. He – oh God, I don’t want, I can’t talk about that, not now –’
His eyes looking at her had tears in them again. She put her hand on his. For the first time she felt pity. ‘It’s all right. Another time.’
‘Perhaps.’ There was another silence. ‘So – I started on this long, terrible path. I saw our GP. He was bluff, foolishly optimistic, told me to relax, that it would be all right. Then he sent me to a specialist. He gave me some bloody silly exercises to do before I attempted to make love. The shame, the absurdity of it made me worse. I tried again, with a girl at Oxford. But I was beginning to be very afraid, that word would get round. So I would dodge the issue, draw back. Literally.’ He laughed briefly, savagely. It was an ugly sound. Virginia pulled the covers further up around her.
‘Well, I don’t think I need to go on. I’ve done the rounds, that’s all I can say. Tried everything. They say it’s hopeless.’
‘And have you never, ever –’ She kept failing to say what she wanted to; the words were too ugly, too frightening.
‘Oh, like all impotent men, or most, I’ve achieved something with a few prostitutes. A doctor suggested that, and it worked. I was astonished, elated even. But with someone I care about at all, it’s no use. I’m a classic case, they tell me. Absolutely classic. If I dislike, despise someone, I can make love to them. You might,’ he said, with a slight smile, ‘you might take some comfort from that.’
Virginia lay and looked again out of the window. So many emotions were raging in her, she was incapable of feeling any of them clearly. Disgust, fear, anger, shock; they all merged into a kind of wild panic, in which she trod, almost submerged, battling to maintain some kind of sanity.
She was silent for a long time; then she said, ‘But Alexander, I can understand that you are – impotent. That you are capable of feeling love, desire even. What I can’t understand is how you could do what you have done to me. Tricked me. Trapped me. When you say you love me.’
‘Well,’ he said, and there was a great softness and tenderness in his eyes, and an odd humour as well, ‘well you see, I wanted a wife. Very badly. For many reasons. And I fell in love with you. And I chose you.’
‘But that’s – that’s horrible.’
‘Why? I have much to offer. As you know. You wanted it. Quite badly, I suspect.’
‘Alexander, this is absurd. Whatever I wanted, had I known about this, about you, I would never, ever have married you.’
‘No,’ he said with a sigh, ‘no, I realize that. Although I do flatter myself that you wanted me along with the rest. You were in love with me, weren’t you, Virginia? It wasn’t just the house, the title, and all that?’
‘Alexander, of course it wasn’t. Of course I fell in love with you. It wasn’t the house and the title at all.’
‘Ah, now here you are beginning to depart from the truth a little. And I begin to feel just slightly less guilty. Of course you wanted the title, the status – and of course you will want the house.’
‘Alexander, I don’t intend ever to see the house. I’m going home.’
‘Well, we shall see.’
‘There is nothing to see,’ she said, and her face was shocked at his words. ‘Of course I am going.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘so I was wrong. You didn’t – you don’t love me.’
‘Alexander, I can’t love you. Not now.’
‘Why not? Nothing has changed.’
‘Well of course it’s changed,’ she cried out in an agony of frustration. ‘You’ve tricked me. You are not who – what – I thought you were.’
‘Nonsense. I am precisely what you thought I was. In all respects but one. One which I suggest we can overcome. Together.’
‘You mean –’her eyes were hopeful, eager even –‘you mean, you think I can help you to – to be better?’
‘No, I fear you cannot do that. I know you cannot. I have to tell you that in all informed opinion – from several countries, including your own – you are doomed to failure. And because I find the failure so very painful, heartbreaking, I would prefer it that you did not attempt to go that particular route.’
‘Then I don’t know what you mean. And I can’t consider staying. I want to go home. I want to go home now.’ Suddenly her icy calm cracked; tears rose in her throat, choked her, welled into her eyes. She began to cry and then to sob hysterically. She lay back, beating the bed with her fists, lashing out at Alexander as he tried to get near her, to comfort her. He looked at her first with pity and infinite regret and then, as her hysteria increased, almost with fear.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘please don’t.’
‘Get away!’ screamed Virginia. ‘Get away. Get out of my sight. You’re disgusting. I loathe you. It’s terrible what you’ve done, terrible.’
‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘don’t say that. It’s not so terrible.’
She was so shocked, she stopped crying.
‘Of course it’s terrible. How can you say that?’
‘Because it’s true. Listen to me. Please listen.’
She sat silent again, great tears rolling silently down her face.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I do love you. I really do love you. I loved you straight away, and then I loved you more. And more. I loved your gentleness, your vulnerability, your great honesty. I loved your beauty and your charm. I thought you were a perfect perfect wife for me. And I wanted you. I wanted you so much. And I knew we could be happy together.’
‘Alexander, this is –’
‘Please bear with me. Virginia, I do have a lot to offer. Be honest. Forget the sex thing.’
‘But –’
‘Forget it,’ he said, and his eyes were pleading, and oddly sad. ‘I know you wanted the rest, Virginia. I know you did. I know you were dazzled by the thought of being a countess, the mistress of Hartest. Be honest, isn’t it true?’
‘Well –’
‘Isn’t it?’
�
�I – I suppose so.’
‘You were. I know you began actually to want that as much as you wanted me. I found that hurtful initially, but – well, it helped me make my decision. It was success for you. You’ve been so put down by your father, in the shadow of your brother, always slightly mocked in the family, discounted however gently by the circle your parents move in, and I came along with this great glittering prize and all your family, all your friends, the press, everyone, was suddenly admiring, impressed, in awe of you. Virginia Praeger, her family’s second best, was to be the Countess of Caterham, mistress of one of the most beautiful houses in England, mother of the future earl. It was a dazzling prospect, wasn’t it, Virginia? Admit it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and for the first time there was a coolness in her eyes. ‘Yes it was. But –’
‘And there were days, lots of days, more and more of them recently, when you weren’t quite quite sure about me. I saw you looking at me, consideringly, sometimes, and I knew what you were thinking, and I knew you were stifling it. But I never ever felt for a single moment that I was not quite sure about you. I loved you on that very first day and I never felt so much as a flicker of doubt.’
‘You have a very strange way of showing it,’ she said. She felt calmer again. ‘May I have some more champagne?’
‘The bottle’s empty. Shall we have some more?’
‘Yes. Call room service.’ Looking back she was to see her alcohol dependence began at that moment.
‘Shall I get some more strawberries?’
‘No, I hate strawberries. Get some raspberries.’ Suddenly for some reason she felt light-headed, almost happy. She knew it wouldn’t last, that the horror would return, but just for that moment, she felt good: indulged, greedy, powerful.
‘Very well.’
He ordered; then returned to the bed.
‘Are you still cold?’
‘No. No, I’m not.’
‘It’s a beautiful day.’
‘Yes.’ She got out of bed, walked over to the window. The water of the Canale di San Marco stretched below and beyond her, an incredible shimmering blue; on either side of her stood the golden buildings of Venice, etched into the sky, echoed in the water below them. She tried to feel wretched, harmed – and failed; the beauty drove away the darkness. Alexander looked at her. ‘Do you like it? Do you like Venice?’
Wicked Pleasures Page 67
