Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Miles, don’t be ridiculous,’ said Lee sharply. ‘Of course Mr Dashwood is interested in you, he’s known you all your life.’

  ‘Yeah, well I wish he hadn’t. And I’m going out with Jamie, no matter what you say.’

  ‘Miles, I am getting just a little bit tired of your behaviour,’ said Lee. ‘Just cut it out, will you. Mr Dashwood is our guest and he’s always very good to you and you have a duty to be courteous to him.’

  ‘I don’t see . . . why . . .’ Miles’ voice trailed gently off into an exquisite, thunderstruck silence. ‘Gee,’ he said. ‘Gee whizz, I’ll be nice to him. I’ll stay home Saturday, I sure will.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dean. ‘That’s better. That’s my boy.’

  Lee looked at Miles sharply. He caught her eye and smiled at her, his sudden enchantingly sweet smile, his blue eyes wide, guileless.

  ‘I shall really like to see Mr Dashwood,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s real kind to me. I’d forgotten for a minute how kind he was.’

  ‘Miles,’ said Lee. ‘If you as much as say one word about wanting a skateboard to Mr Dashwood, I shall tan your hide. Real hard. I mean it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Miles, ‘you won’t need to. I won’t say one word. I swear it. But he’ll give me one just the same, I guess. He loves giving me things. Things I’m interested in. He’s interested in everything I’m interested in. He even said he’d take me on trips if I wanted to go. To England. He told me so.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll help you with the dishes now, Mom.’

  ‘OK,’ said Lee. She stood up, suddenly feeling sick.

  ‘Lee, are you all right, honey?’ said Dean. ‘You look a bit pale.’

  Lee looked at him, and rushed to the toilet. She vomited violently and sat there on the floor, her head resting on her arm, for a long time.

  Dean banged on the door. ‘Honey, are you OK? What is it?’

  She came out slowly and sat down heavily on the couch.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, Dean. Must have been the swordfish. I’ll be OK. I’ll just go lie down for a while.’

  She lay on the bed, twisting and turning, with waves of panic and dread going through her, rather like the fierce deepening waves of childbirth. She had been wrong, so wrong, to think that she could get away. Because Hugo was there. In the house. Growing up. Becoming more and more visible every day of her life.

  Chapter Six

  London and New York, 1965–7

  ROZ COULD REMEMBER exactly when she had discovered her father didn’t love her. She had been six years old at the time and it was fixed in her memory as indelibly and certainly as her own name, and the fact that she was too tall for her age, and the least pretty girl in Miss Ballantine’s dancing class, and therefore the one chosen to be the prince in the charity concert and not one of the pink and white princesses. And it had been no use her father telling her over and over again that he did love her, and trying to prove it to her with expensive presents and treats and holidays, just as it had been no use Miss Ballantine telling her she had been cast as the prince because she was better at dancing than all the others; she believed neither of them, and indeed she despised them both for trying to convince her of something that she and they knew perfectly well was so patently untrue.

  She knew he didn’t love her because she had heard him say so. Well, perhaps not in so many words, but he had certainly admitted it. He had been having a row with her mother, shortly after she had married Peter Thetford; they had been shouting at one another in the drawing room of the house in Holland Park which Roz and Nanny and Eliza and Thetford all lived in, and which was so small you couldn’t help overhearing everything, and she certainly hadn’t intended not to overhear the row anyway. Rows were a good way of learning things. It was during a row between her mother and Thetford that she had learnt that he regarded her as a stuck-up bitch, and during another that he thought she had robbed him of any possibility of becoming a major force in politics (whatever that might mean). This particular row started when her father returned her to the house in Holland Park after she had spent the weekend with him. She never knew if it was worth the happiness of those weekends for the misery of their endings; they had such fun, the two of them. Sometimes in London, when he took her out shopping and bought her clothes that her mother strongly disapproved of, and to meals in smart restaurants like the Ritz, and let her stay up late, but more often they went to the country, to Marriotts where he was teaching her to ride, and had bought her her own pony called Miss Madam, because that was what Nanny Henry was always calling her. Nearly as excitingly, he took her for rides in some of his very special cars, the old ones with lamps sticking out of their fronts and roofs that opened like the hood of a pram, the Lanchester, and the Ford Model T and the Mercedes 60; he told her that as soon as she was big enough, probably about twelve years old, he would let her drive one of them round the grounds of Marriotts, and that she would find out what driving a real car felt like.

  They had the most wonderful time, those weekends; to have her father to herself seemed to Roz the most perfect happiness. She was very fond of her mother, indeed she supposed she loved her, although she hated Peter Thetford so much she found it very hard to forgive her mother for wanting to go and live with him, and forcing her to go and live with him too. But her father had always seemed to Roz the most perfect person; he was so good-looking, so much more good-looking than most of her friends’ fathers, and he wore such lovely clothes, and he was so good at telling her stories, and making her laugh and just knowing what she would most like to do. But more important than all those things, he seemed to value her company and her opinions; he never sent her off up to the nursery if she didn’t want to go, he would explain things to her about his company and the sort of things he was doing and wanting to do when she was a little tiny girl, and he told her it was never too early to learn and that one day it would be hers, because he was never ever going to have any other children, and that Roz was his heir.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Julian,’ her mother had said the first time he had ever said this, when she had only been four years old, ‘how can you expect her to understand such a thing, and anyway, she’s an heiress, not an heir.’

  And her father had looked at her, not her mother, and smiled, and said, ‘No, she is my heir. Roz will inherit the company, because she is my child and extremely clever and her sex is quite immaterial.’

  She hadn’t understood all the words, but she certainly understood the meaning; that whatever happened, one day her father’s company would be hers, because he thought she was the right person to have it, and no one, no one at all, was going to be able to take it away from her. It was something that made everything else worth while, the awfulness of her parents not being married any more, and seeing so much less of her father, and having to live with Peter Thetford and sometimes even his horrible little boys, with their very short hair and loud rough voices, the kind of boys Nanny Henry called her away from in the park, and also of not being able to live all the time with her father: the certain knowledge that he loved her so much and considered her so special.

  And then it was taken away from her.

  They had got back from Sussex quite late one Sunday evening; her father had returned her to the doorstep, said she was very tired, and her mother had sent her up to Nanny Henry to get ready for bed.

  ‘Do you want a drink, Julian?’ she heard her mother say, and her father said yes, that would be very welcome, and where was the master of the house.

  ‘He’s driving the boys back home.’

  ‘Long way.’

  ‘Yes, but Margaret won’t have them put on the train, and she’s not prepared to come down and get them, so he doesn’t have much choice.’

  ‘I see. And how is the most promising young man in politics since Lloyd George? Or would Aneurin Bevan be more appropriate?’

  ‘Don’t be unpleasant, Julian, please. Peter is a very clever politician. And he’s doing well. Very well.’

  ‘Really? I had h
eard rather the reverse.’

  ‘Had you? Well your informant was clearly in the wrong.’

  ‘And how are you, Eliza?’

  ‘I’m extremely well. Very happy.’

  ‘Good. You don’t look it.’

  ‘Julian, you have no idea how I look when I’m happy. It was not a state I enjoyed very often during our marriage.’

  ‘Well, we won’t discuss that now. Roz doesn’t seem to like Thetford very much.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘What I say.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘How dare you encourage her to talk about such things? To be so disloyal?’

  ‘I didn’t have to encourage her. And I think we should not get on to the topic of disloyalty. Otherwise I might find a few stones to sling at you of that nature.’

  ‘Oh, go to hell.’

  ‘Eliza, I do assure you there was no question of my prompting Roz in any way. She says spontaneously, and quite frequently, that she hates her stepfather and she’d like to come and live with me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘What do you say back?’

  ‘What can I say? I can’t encourage her in that fantasy, can I? I’ve tried to make her feel more warmly towards him. Without success.’

  Roz, listening on the first-floor landing, praying Nanny Henry wouldn’t stop watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium on her television and realize she was home, couldn’t actually remember her father ever trying to do anything of the sort; he sneered at Thetford a lot, and said how dreary he was, and how he wouldn’t know one end of a horse from the other and that sort of thing, but otherwise he was never mentioned between them, it was too depressing on her weekends away.

  ‘Julian,’ she heard her mother say, just casually, ‘Julian how would you feel about having Roz to live with you?’

  Roz’s heart lifted, leapt; she had to bite her fists to keep quiet. She knew how her father would feel; he would love the idea as much as she did. She had always thought her mother would never consider such a thing. If she was willing to let her go back home, as she still thought of Hanover Terrace, then obviously her father would take her. She waited to hear him say it. To say, ‘Well of course I’d love it,’ or something like that. But there was a long, an endless silence. Then:

  ‘Eliza, exactly what do you mean?’

  ‘I mean what I say. I just think it might be better.’

  ‘For her?’

  ‘Well, yes. Of course for her. I mean she isn’t happy here, you’re quite right. And she doesn’t get on with Peter. She’s very awkward. She causes a lot of friction. There’s no doubt about it. She’s rude about the boys, won’t have anything to do with them –’

  ‘Good. Vile little tykes.’

  ‘Julian –’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well anyway, it’s all very difficult.’

  ‘For you?’

  ‘Well, yes. And for Peter. And I thought – well, of course I’d miss her, but, Julian, things aren’t going terribly well. If she was with you more, here less, just for a bit, then it would give us more of a chance. Nanny could come of course –’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I mean, I could have her when Peter wasn’t here. It would be better for her.’

  ‘Really? And for you. And most of all for him. Jesus, Eliza, what a hypocrite you are.’

  ‘Oh, I knew you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Oh, I understand, Eliza. Very well. Roz is making your idyllic new life difficult, and so the best thing is to get rid of her.’

  ‘I’m not trying to get rid of her.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘No, Julian, I’m not. But she does so much prefer you. She adores you. You know she does. And I just can’t do anything right for her. She’s –’ and Roz could hear the suppressed laughter in her voice, slightly shaky, but nonetheless there, ‘she’s just like you.’

  ‘Really? In what way?’

  ‘Oh, every possible way. Hard to please. Impossible to reason with. Shutting people – me out.’

  ‘Poor child. You make her sound very unattractive.’

  ‘Well, she isn’t very attractive, is she? At the moment? Be honest. She’s so morose and awkward.’

  ‘She seems fine to me. I would agree she isn’t very physically attractive at the moment. She’s going through a very plain phase, and she’s so big for her age. It’s a shame, poor child. She has enough problems.’

  ‘Yes, well, that will pass, I’m sure. So what do you think, Julian? Would you – could you have her for a while?’

  Time had stopped for Roz, sitting on the landing in a frozen stillness, her legs cramped underneath her, her fists still crammed into her mouth to stop her making a sound. Surely this was it, the long boring conversation would finish, and her father would say yes of course he would have her, and probably tell her to pack up her things immediately, come back with him now. That was all that mattered, really; it had been very unpleasant hearing him say she was plain (she didn’t mind her mother saying she was unattractive), but she had known really anyway, and if she could only go and live with her father, she would become more beautiful straight away. All the people surrounding him were, it was a kind of magic he seemed to work, and she would be happier and she would smile more so she would look prettier anyway. So all he had to say was yes: so why wasn’t he saying it?

  ‘No, Eliza, it’s absolutely out of the question.’ (What? What? Roz thought she must be hearing wrongly, that she was imagining his words.) ‘I couldn’t have her even if I wanted to, and frankly I don’t. I –’

  But Roz heard no more. She got up, very quickly, and crept up to her bedroom and lay down on her bed fully clothed, with the eiderdown pulled over her, waiting for the tears to come. But they didn’t. She just lay there, silent, and as she lay, her numb legs, which she had been sitting on for so long, came back in a stabbing agony to life. The pain was so bad, she found it hard not to yell out. But it was nothing, nothing at all, compared to the awful, deathly cold hurt throbbing in her head and her heart.

  She had learnt to live with it, of course. You could learn to live with anything. Obviously there was a reason for him not loving her, and she spent a lot of time trying to find it. Was it that she was not pretty? It could be. Her mother was so beautiful, and so was her grandmother, Granny Letitia, and her father was extremely good-looking; it must be horribly disappointing for them to have someone in the family who was so plain. Of course her father wouldn’t want a plain, an ugly person living with him; he couldn’t be expected to. Then maybe it was because she wasn’t clever enough. He was so extremely clever himself, and if he was going to leave her his company (only maybe he wasn’t now, maybe he had changed his mind) she needed to be extremely clever too. Of course he hadn’t said yet that he wasn’t going to give her the company, but if he didn’t think she was good enough to live with him, then he probably wouldn’t think she was good enough to have the company either.

  Or maybe it was because she wasn’t a boy. He had never said he minded, but Nanny Henry (and quite a few other people, mostly Nanny’s friends, but also the Thetford boys, and some of her mother’s luncheon companions, the ladies who arrived at half past twelve and stayed often till about four, drinking wine and eating almost nothing and laughing and talking endlessly) had said it would have been much better if she had been a boy and could take over the company. Or – and this was the most frightening thing of all – maybe he was planning marrying someone else, and having another baby with her. And maybe that baby would be a boy, or a pretty girl, or really really clever and then the company would go to him or her instead.

  Nothing that had happened to Roz could compare with this in awfulness; not even the day that her father had taken her on his knee and held her very tight and said he was terribly sorry, but he and her mother were going to be living in separate houses from then on, because they didn�
��t get on very well any more, or when her mother had told her that she and Peter Thetford were going to get married and be together always. And the worst thing about it of all, she knew, was not finding out that her father didn’t love her; it was finding out that she couldn’t love him in the same way either.

  She couldn’t talk to him about that of course; she couldn’t talk to him about any of it. She simply shut him out, and tried not to let him see how badly she felt. She didn’t want him to know what power he had to hurt her; she wanted him to think she didn’t care what he did. He could buy her as many dresses as he liked, and take her on trips to New York and Paris, and throw extravagant parties for her on her birthdays (one year he took her and her six very best friends to Le Touquet for the day in his own plane which he piloted himself, and bought them all lunch in a very smart restaurant there; another he hired the ballroom at the Ritz, and everyone wore long dresses, even though they were only ten, and instead of a conjuror which most of the girls had, they had a pop group who played all the top hits, and instead of it being in the afternoon it was from six o’clock till ten o’clock at night). He never stopped trying to please her; he got tickets for shows like Camelot and Beyond the Fringe and arranged for her to meet the cast afterwards, and to premieres of films like Lawrence of Arabia and West Side Story and even occasionally to the parties afterwards where the stars went; he took her out to expensive restaurants (by the time she was ten Roz had eaten in practically every restaurant recommended by Egon Ronay – and complained in most of them); he took her to Disneyland; he did (as promised) let her drive some of the cars round the grounds of Marriotts on her twelfth birthday; he bought her not one but two ponies to replace Miss Madam when she was eight, one grey and one chestnut, because she said she couldn’t make up her mind between them, he had her to stay with him in New York most school holidays; and she had only to mention most casually that she wanted a puppy, a kitten, a new bicycle, a new stereo, and it arrived. And Roz would say thank you politely, formally, but never warmly, never showing her pleasure; and she got great satisfaction from seeing the disappointment, the hurt in his eyes. She knew he was desperate to please her, that he was frightened of making her unhappy, and she enjoyed the knowledge. It was the only thing that made her feel safe.