Wicked Pleasures

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘No of course not. Gabe…’

  ‘Yes, Charlotte.’

  ‘Gabe, I’m sorry if I – well, if I –’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said, and he sounded very amused. ‘Now what are you trying to say?’

  ‘If I’m a bit – well, bossy sometimes. I’ll try and be more – amenable in future.’

  ‘Charlotte,’ said Gabe, ‘if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s amenable females. Why do you think I fell in love with you? Because you’re so bloody stroppy, that’s why.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Charlotte meekly.

  Fred III looked very old and very frail suddenly. She supposed it was the fear of losing Betsey. Betsey actually looked better than he did, she had some colour in her cheeks, and the combative gleam in her eye whenever the nurse came in to check her pulse, her blood pressure, her ankles and the bruises and swellings on her head, where she had hit it when she had fallen, indicated to Charlotte a greater sense of well-being than her appearance initially indicated.

  She spent her days in the sun room, reading, talking to Fred, doing her tapestry. She was delighted to see Charlotte; she told her she was looking very well, but a little thin.

  ‘We’ll feed you up while you’re here, darling.’

  ‘How’s the bank?’ asked Fred, over lunch. ‘Everything going all right? Getting on with Drew OK, are you? I’ll have you back in New York this autumn.’

  ‘You’ve been saying that ever since the spring,’ said Charlotte.

  Fred glared at her and poured himself a bourbon.

  After lunch Betsey sent Fred off for a nap. ‘My accident has taken it out of him, dear,’ she said, ‘and I must confess I’m finding him a little trying. He will fuss. I think really it would be better if he went to the bank, at least a couple of days a week. But he won’t hear of it.’

  While the nurse was putting Betsey to bed, after supper, Fred poured himself and Charlotte a glass of Armagnac and lit a cigar.

  ‘She’s very frail,’ he said. ‘I worry about her. I miss the bank, of course, and I’d like to be there, maybe just a couple of days a week. But I wouldn’t leave her. Not at the moment. She likes to have me here.’

  By the end of her stay with them, Charlotte was able to engineer a compromise whereby at the beginning of October, Fred would go back to the bank two days a week.

  ‘I have to get this thing settled,’ he said moodily. ‘I really do. I’m not going to live for ever. And the bank’s vulnerable. I must establish a good modus operandi, for taking care of it until such time as you and Freddy are able to take it over.’

  ‘Is – Chris Hill firmly settled again?’ asked Charlotte. ‘No more flirtations with anyone else?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Fred, looking very pleased with himself. ‘Good man. But it’s a lopsided arrangement, him having those shares, and I know that. You didn’t think I hadn’t thought it through, did you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Freddy and you getting on all right?’ he said after a pause, his face obscured by cigar smoke, as it always was when the answer to a question was important to him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad he’s having that experience over there. Good for him. Anyway, I shall be back in Pine Street in a week or so, and then once I’ve got it straight, your grandmother and I are going on a world cruise. She’s dreamed of one all her life, and I don’t want her to miss out on it. I’ve got the tickets as a matter of fact. Kind of a second honeymoon, I thought. We sail on October fifteenth.’

  ‘It sounds gorgeous,’ said Charlotte politely.

  ‘Yes, I think it will be. I can’t stand holidays of course, but as I say, I think I owe it to your grandmother. She’s done a bit for me in her time.’

  ‘She certainly has,’ said Charlotte.

  Gabe came out on the Sunday, for lunch. Charlotte had confided in Betsey that she was in love and Betsey, always excited by romance, insisted she asked him over. Charlotte had been nervous about the effect on her grandfather of knowing she was having a relationship with someone at Praegers, but he was rather touchingly pleased that it was Gabe.

  ‘Your grandfather was one of the first partners in the bank,’ he said to Gabe, ‘I’d like to see that tradition continue. I’ve relied on your father’s support a great deal over the years. He’s a very clever banker. I shall miss him.’

  Neither Charlotte nor Gabe betrayed by so much as a flickering eyelid that they considered it hard to imagine that Pete Hoffman would not outlast Fred III at the bank.

  After lunch, Charlotte and Gabe walked along the shore.

  ‘Quite the little blue-eyed girl, aren’t you?’ he said. He sounded sombre. ‘Oh for God’s sake, Gabe,’ said Charlotte. ‘For the thousandth time, I can’t help it.’

  ‘No, but I can,’ said Gabe.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can help being there.’

  ‘Gabe, what are you talking about?’ said Charlotte.

  Gabe turned to look at her. ‘I don’t know that I could stand working at Praegers,’ he said, ‘when you’re running it. You and Freddy. It would be – hard.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Then you’re very stupid,’ said Gabe, and he sounded genuinely angry. ‘How can I work for a bank, even as a partner, when my – when you are its chairman? It would be intolerable. I couldn’t stand it.’

  He stopped, threw some stones into the rolling ocean. Charlotte looked at him. His face was dark, intent on its task. She smiled suddenly, thinking of the other times she had seen that look. She took his hand, started dragging him up towards the dunes.

  ‘Come on. Up here.’

  He followed, still half angry; Charlotte turned as she reached the dunes, put her arms up, around him, pulled his face down to hers.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘It won’t matter.’

  ‘It will matter,’ said Gabe, ‘but I love you too.’

  He started to kiss her, his mouth hungry, greedy; very slowly, but determinedly, he pushed her down onto the sand.

  ‘There are people coming,’ said Charlotte, pointing down the endless shoreline. ‘Look.’ Three, or was it four, tiny figures were moving slowly but relentlessly towards them.

  ‘We must beat them to it then,’ said Gabe. He was lying in the sand now, cradling her beside him in the crook of his arm; his other hand was working at the zip of her jeans. He had it down; Charlotte raised her hips, eased herself out of them. The sand felt soft and very cool beneath her bare buttocks.

  Gabe had undone his fly; his penis was large, erect. Charlotte wriggled down, took it in her mouth, started working at it, licking, teasing, tugging. She felt her own excitement mounting, rising; her breathing quickened. Gabe’s hands were in her hair, holding her head; she heard him moaning.

  ‘Oh, I love you,’ said Gabe suddenly, and pulled her up, turned her over, pushed, thrust into her. She rose up to him, felt with incredible speed and urgency her climax growing, growing, leaping; she flung her arms out, her head back, clutching the grass on the dunes. Above her a gull soared, high, swift, swooping, like her own pleasure; she followed it with her eyes, with her body, pulling, reaching, circling Gabe; and then it came, a great burst of light, bright wrenching pleasure, and the gull and she cried out together, in a strange lonely triumph, and Gabe held her to him, close, tight, and she felt him following her; and as they lay, their pleasure eased and softened, she heard voices and laughter, and she looked into his eyes, his dark, probing eyes, and said, ‘We only just made it.’ And laughed aloud with happiness and triumph.

  ‘That was a first for me,’ he said, kissing her gently.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I had to keep my watch on,’ he said.

  Later they swam, diving endlessly beneath the great gentle rollers; and then lay, their skin salty and cool in the autumn sun.

  ‘What a day,’ said Gabe. ‘What a good day,’ and he smiled
at her, and took her hand and kissed her fingers and said, ‘Charlotte …’ and she said, ‘Yes Gabe?’ and he said, ‘I really have to go now, I have work to do,’ and instead of being angry or even upset, she laughed, laughed aloud, because she knew him so well, and what she knew was what she loved.

  ‘What a very nice young man,’ Betsey said, over supper. ‘Are you going to marry him, Charlotte?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte, carefully vague, and then she added, ‘he’s married already really.’

  ‘Oh darling, no!’ said Betsey, looking shocked.

  ‘To Praegers,’ said Charlotte, and laughed, and Betsey laughed too and said she had learnt long ago to see Praegers not as a wife, but a mistress.

  ‘And the wife, if she is clever, always has the last laugh.’

  ‘Then I must try to be clever,’ said Charlotte, smiling at her.

  It was bad in the office, Gabe had said. Chris Hill, secure, arrogant in his position, was throwing his weight about, waiting impatiently for Fred to finally go, for Freddy to come back, for power. The surging soaring stock market, the apparently ceaseless boom, the rise day on day of the Dow Jones, all added to his image of a man who could not lose. His following, the degree of confidence felt in him at Praegers, was immense. Pete Hoffman, on the other hand, angered, hurt by the tip of balance in the boardroom, demoralized by the lack of recognition from Fred, was waiting simply these days for retirement, too tired, too damaged to fight.

  ‘But he would, wouldn’t he?’ said Charlotte. ‘He would fight, if he had the power and the shares and the clout, he would fight with us, with me.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gabe, ‘I really don’t.’

  She tried very gently talking to Fred, suggesting Pete was offered shares as well, to restore the balance of power. Fred, a little less gently, told her she did not entirely know what she was talking about, that he had it under control, that he was working things out. And every day he hesitated, every day he grew older and frailer, every day the danger increased.

  The night before she left for England, she was talking to her grandfather after dinner. Betsey was peacefully asleep; every day she grew stronger.

  Fred lit a cigar.

  ‘How do you see things out there in the markets?’ he said. ‘How does your friend Gabe see them?’

  Charlotte was flattered by his interest. ‘I think he sees it as a peak,’ she said. ‘Oh really? And does he see a trough following it?’

  ‘Oh – not a trough. But he says it can’t go on rising for ever.

  The Dow Jones is pushing three thousand, isn’t it? That’s awfully high.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Fred looked at her, drawing on his cigar. ‘And London?’

  ‘Well, it’s just as dizzy. The FT is at –’

  ‘Yes yes, I know what it’s at,’ said Fred impatiently. ‘And I know Chuck thinks it’s built on rock. But have you picked up any feeling that it might not last in Britain much longer? From anywhere else?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘Everyone I know thinks it’ll go on for ever. The Tories getting back in was crucial; steadied everything down again. And you know how the City feels about Lawson, they love him. He’s the Messiah as far as they’re concerned.’

  ‘Well I don’t know.’ The cigar had gone out; Fred spent a while lighting it again. ‘There are some small but vital signs out there. I had dinner with Trump the other week. He’s selling quite a bit. Much more significantly, Goldsmith is getting out of everything. Selling his stock, his houses, the lot. Well, he’s a little eccentric these days, of course. Obsessed with this AIDS business. I don’t know. I just have a feeling –’ He puffed out the smoke, his face suddenly obscured. Charlotte sat listening, a sudden sense of chill in her body. ‘I just have a feeling there might be a dip ahead. I think it’s all overheating. And people have got too damn greedy.’

  ‘Do I have to worry?’ said Charlotte lightly, giving him a kiss. ‘Should I be selling my shares?’

  ‘Oh no, darling. You don’t have to worry. You’re quite safe. And so is Praegers.’

  It was 22 September.

  On her return she went down to Hartest. Georgina was distraught. George was no better. He would recover for a bit, and then become ill again. He didn’t look well. Even Charlotte could see that. He was very thin, and fretful, and his skin was dry and rough-looking.

  ‘It’s the dehydration,’ said Georgina miserably. ‘Poor little boy.’

  Dr Rogers had said if he wasn’t better in a few days, he would admit him to hospital as an in-patient.

  Alexander seemed equally distraught. ‘He’s been so good,’ said Georgina, ‘he pushes him around in his pram for hours, trying to get him off to sleep, and the other night when I was up with him he heard me and came and sat with me for hours.’

  ‘Well, he’s very fond of George,’ said Charlotte, ‘and he is his grandchild after all.’

  Alexander wasn’t looking very well himself. He was very thin, and pale, and he had shadows under his eyes. He had been upset about Gemma and Max, he told Charlotte: ‘That was no way to behave. She was a sweet little thing. I’m ashamed of Max, Charlotte, I really am.’

  ‘Well,’ said Charlotte, ‘I know all that, but if he didn’t in the end want to take things further, then it was best to break it off. And at least everyone who said he was going to marry her for her money has been proved wrong. That would have been really bad.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was any question of that,’ said Alexander. His voice was sharp suddenly. ‘And why should he need to worry about money anyway?’

  ‘Well, I suppose Hartest is a big expense,’ said Charlotte carefully, ‘and –’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Alexander. His eyes were very hard suddenly. ‘Hartest pays its way. It always has done. I resent very much the implication that Max might need some kind of a handout to keep it going.’

  ‘Oh Daddy, don’t be silly,’ said Charlotte. ‘Of course he doesn’t need it. I didn’t mean that. But Gemma was – is – jolly rich, you know. Anyway, Daddy, I think it’s probably for the best. Max is very young, much too young to get married.’

  ‘She was doing him good,’ said Alexander fretfully. ‘He’d steadied down a lot. I had so hoped – well, there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlotte. She kissed him. He looked at her and said suddenly, ‘Did your grandfather say anything about me while you were there?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlotte, surprised, ‘no he didn’t. Except to ask after you, of course. Why, was there some reason he should have?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Alexander quickly. ‘No reason at all.’ It was 27 September.

  Chapter 59

  Georgina, September–October 1987

  Georgina had never been frightened before, she realized. She had never had this kind of awful, black nightmare filling her. Everything else receded in the face of it, of what was happening to George; to the endless pitiful sound of him vomiting, to his cries of pain, his wailing, his increasingly thin little body.

  Some days he was fine; that was the strange thing. He would eat, smile, keep the food down. She was still breast feeding him, of course; he only had a modest amount of solid food: scrambled eggs, a little soup, apple sauce, yogurt. And that was all home-grown and cooked; it wasn’t as if she was relying on some terrible mass-produced stuff.

  There had been all that awful publicity recently, about baby food – any food – being contaminated by the animal rights people; she wouldn’t have risked it anyway, even if she had been living in a high-rise flat in a London street, rather than safely at Hartest, with their own cows and chickens and vegetables. She cooked, increasingly carefully, kept soup, vegetable puree in the freezer; refusing to allow Nanny or Mrs Tallow to help her. Well, she had to be as careful as it was possible to be. And anyway, it certainly wasn’t his food. He had had allergy tests, of course: and horrible things called barium meals and barium enemas, his poor little body probed and abused by doctors tryi
ng to solve the puzzle. Everything was negative.

  ‘I’m so afraid it’s something like – well something really dreadful,’ she told Martin on one of her increasingly rare walks with him, ‘some disease. Something inherent.’

  ‘You mean like leukaemia?’ he said, putting his arm round her.

  ‘Well – yes,’ said Georgina. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Have they suggested it might be?’

  ‘No. No, they haven’t. But they are going to do some extra blood tests. I know that’s what they think.’

  She stared at him; his face was blurred through her tears. ‘I love him so much, Martin. I didn’t know what love was, before. You can’t imagine.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said and he smiled at her very gently, ‘oh Georgina, I think I can.’

  For several days after that George seemed better. He hadn’t been sick for days; he had been sleeping; he had been guzzling greedily at her breasts. She felt much better. Maybe it was over. Maybe it was just one of those extraordinary, inexplicable things that would never be solved.

  She slept with him beside her; he didn’t wake at all in the night; in the morning he was almost rosy. She bathed him, smiling with pleasure at him, even while she grieved over his little legs, so round and dimpled a few weeks ago, now strangely straight.

  ‘You’re going to be well now, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re going to be all right for Mummy.’

  George smiled radiantly at her.

  She went downstairs; the kitchen was empty. George was obviously hungry; she decided to give him some Farex with his apple sauce. He loved that.

  There was ajar of apple sauce in the fridge, carefully covered; she had made it yesterday. She got it out, mixed it with the Farex and a little Hartest yogurt.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘here, darling, lovely lovely, your favourite.’

  George smiled at her, savoured the food, smacking his small lips. She smiled, happy. This was the fourth day. He was obviously getting much much better.

  Suddenly George was sick. Violently, horribly sick. Several times. He was obviously in pain; his legs were drawn up and he was screaming.