Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  Only he couldn’t because he didn’t have the faintest idea where he might be.

  In Marcia Galbraith’s desk was a small bundle of letters all addressed to her friend, Dorothy Kelly. She took care that Dorothy never saw her letters; you never knew, someone might try to tempt her back to California, or Ohio, and away from Nassau and Marcia. And besides, she needed looking after, now that her mind was going, and she and Little Ed and Larissa were all so devoted to her, protecting her from reality. She didn’t want to be bothered with things like letters.

  Among the bundle were two from Father Kennedy in Los Angeles, and one forwarded (via Los Angeles) from Hugo Dashwood in New York.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sussex, 1983

  THE NIGHT BEFORE her wedding, Phaedria ran away.

  She didn’t run very far, but she ran nonetheless, and she would probably have run a lot further, made her escape altogether, had it not been for the intervention of the man she was widely rumoured to be unhealthily close to for a bride, David Sassoon, and his erstwhile mistress and her bridegroom’s first wife, Eliza Garrylaig.

  There was a vast house party at Marriotts; every bedroom was full and various children of varying ages were sleeping on floors, in box rooms, even the attics.

  Fortunately the weather was lyrically warm; the gardens had rushed into an excess of roses, lilac, lupins, delphiniums; the beautiful old walls of the courtyard behind the house were covered with thick, sweet clouds of honeysuckle.

  Out on the back lawns were two immense marquees filled with flowers, in urns and baskets, and clambering up the moss-covered pillars that supported the structures; and on the lake, below the lawns, floated two white Victorian riverboats, structured largely of ornate wrought iron, and filled, like the marquees, with flowers. Every hotel for miles around was filled with wedding guests.

  Over a thousand people had been invited; and were coming from all over the world: friends and family, and business colleagues and associates from Europe, America, Australia, Japan. ‘You’re never going to get married again,’ Phaedria had said firmly, ‘I want everyone who’s ever known you to be there.’

  The wedding ceremony itself was to be inevitably small and modest, set for ten thirty in the morning in the registry office in Haywards Heath, with only Letitia, Augustus Blenheim (who had left Prosper Merimee with great reluctance and a feeling that the occasion hardly warranted it) and Roz and C. J. present. But at two there was to be a blessing in the village church, attended by a hundred or so family and close friends, and then at three a second ceremony in one of the marquees, with a blessing, music both secular and sacred, and an address.

  A small string orchestra was to play, a choir of boy sopranos to sing, and one of the great new young actors of the British stage, Piers Tobias, was to recite the Desiderata.

  After the afternoon reception, in the gardens, the guests were to dine and dance in the marquees and the boats; there were two groups and a discotheque, and a superb jazz band who had been specially briefed to play the Charleston at half-hourly intervals for Letitia’s particular delectation.

  At midnight there was to be a firework display, to the accompaniment of Handel’s firework music, played by the village band.

  Phaedria was to wear a dress by Karl Lagerfeld, and her ten small bridesmaids to wear its replica in miniature; they were to carry not bouquets but garlands of flowers, which were hopefully to rope them together and prevent the small ones from straying too far during the second ceremony, which would clearly lack for them the novelty of the first. Phaedria and Julian were to ride back from the village church in an open laundau, pulled by the beloved Grettisaga (‘I’m surprised you’re not insisting on having her in the church,’ Julian had said), and the children in a series of governess carts, drawn by white ponies.

  All this Phaedria had orchestrated herself; and now she was tired, and she was frightened, and quite quite certain that she was making a dreadful mistake. She had had supper in the kitchen with Letitia and Madeleine Emerson and her girls, and Eliza and Peveril, who had both been charmed and delighted to have been invited (‘Well, as if I wouldn’t want you there,’ Phaedria had said when Eliza phoned her, laughing, to thank her and congratulate her on her style), and had sat in an increasing silence while everybody chattered and laughed and gossiped and then had pleaded a headache and gone upstairs to her room. Julian was flying down in the morning – (‘Well, darling, I don’t want to see you on the night before the wedding, it’s unlucky and besides I might be tempted to try and seduce you before our wedding night’).

  She lay on her bed, and looked out at the moon in a state of first panic and then misery; what had she done, how had she come to be in this situation, to be marrying this difficult, fearsome man forty years older than she was, to be taking on the responsibility of running five households, to be forced into almost daily contact with a stepdaughter who loathed her, to be heavily involved with a most daunting commercial venture on the basis of the most sketchy knowledge and experience; to have planned a day of such tortuous complexity it would be not just one but a series of miracles if nothing went wrong; and why was there now nobody, nobody at all, who would say, as perhaps a mother, a friend, even might, ‘There, there, all will be well, don’t fret, you’ve done wonderfully.’

  Unbidden, the thought of Charles came into her head; he seemed at this distance sanity, normality, kindness, safety. The thought and the memories made her tears start; she sat up on the bed, sobs catching her breath, and knew she had to get away, that what lay ahead was not to be borne, that she could not go through with it. She went to her door and listened; it was silent downstairs now, everyone had gone to bed.

  She decided to go at once, quickly, silently, without fuss; by the morning she could be far far away. They could still have a wonderful party without her, it would not be a total disaster, there was still the food (oh, the food, how the food had worn her out), the wine, the music, the dancing – and Julian to host it, charmingly, confidently, brilliantly. He did not really need her; he did not need anybody. She knew that now. However close to him she grew, however much of himself he let her see, there was still so much more that was hidden, secret, mysterious, his own.

  She loved him, she had lived with him in the most extraordinary and passionate physical closeness, she had fought with him, laughed with him, hated him, studied him, for six months and still she did not understand him, had seen little of him that he did not wish her to see, knew little of him that he did not wish her to know.

  And so she could not, would not marry him, it was too dangerous, too foolish, too wrong. She would go, and in a few months, weeks even, he would move on to another woman, another body, another set of emotions. And it would not matter to him, not really, not at all. Down the stairs she crept, and out of the front door; she went briefly to the stables, and stroked, kissed Grettisaga and Spring Collection tenderly on their dear, beloved faces (‘I will come back for you’), and then walked quickly to the front of the house. Her Mercedes was parked there; she got into it and, weeping quite hard now, moved off down the drive.

  But before she even reached the lane she had to stop. Her tears blinded her, and her heart was thudding so hard, her ears pounding, she felt faint. She pulled in to the side, leant her head on her arms on the steering wheel and sobbed: for everything, for things she had known she cared about and things she had never consciously considered; for Charles, of course, for the golden lost days of Oxford, for her own youth, so strangely and suddenly gone, for her mother, just a distant, confused memory, for her job, for Bristol, for Brian, for her freedom, for days untrammelled by the fierce rigorous demands of the man she had so foolishly, so mistakenly, agreed to marry.

  She sat there for a long time, crying harshly, desperately; she felt she knew for the first time in her life precisely where her heart was, and that it was truly breaking; and she did not know what to do.

  Out of the darkness she saw first Eliza’s face, startled, concerned; and then David S
assoon’s, tender, anxious. They were together, and why she did not even begin to wonder, walking up the drive; they had seen her car and heard her crying, and now they were with her. They told her to get in the back seat and they got in beside her, one each side, and held her, and David stroked her hair and kissed her poor, ravaged face, and Eliza held her hands and said, over and over again, as if to a small child, ‘Shush, shush, don’t cry, there, there, it’s all right, shush,’ and gradually she calmed, stopped sobbing, just sat there, looking at them, huge tears rolling down her face.

  ‘I have to get away,’ she said, when she could speak. ‘I have to go,’ and neither of them argued, or told her not to be silly, merely sat and looked interested, and then, when she was a little calmer still, Eliza said, yes, of course she must if she really wanted to, but why.

  ‘Because I can’t marry Julian. I can’t live with him. He doesn’t love me and he doesn’t need me, and I can’t deal with another day of this dreadful, demanding, tyrant of a life of his.’

  ‘He loves you,’ said David. ‘He does, you know.’

  And how did he know, she said, irritated out of her grief, how could he possibly know, he scarcely knew Julian at all, it was ridiculous to make such a statement, and he said, oh, no he could tell, she was wrong, he had worked with Julian for a very long time, and that he had indeed changed astonishingly, greatly, that he had seen him with many relationships with many women and never before had he known him so unsure of himself, so softened, so happy.

  And Eliza said yes, it was true: ‘He never loved me, you know, he was fond of me, and I amused him, but he didn’t love me. I see him with you, and he does love you. He is behaving quite quite differently; the way he gave up Camilla like that, so decisively, so irrevocably, the very next day, that was extraordinary. She has had such a hold on him for so many years, and it was ended, just like that, just because of you. Leave if you must, if you feel you can’t stay, but in the knowledge that he does love you, and he does need you.’

  Phaedria looked at her, silent, very still.

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  She sighed. ‘I hope so. I do hope so. Because I really do love him. Most of the time, anyway. When I can get near him for five minutes.’

  ‘That life must be terrible,’ said David, holding out not one but two handkerchiefs. ‘Go on, use them, I always carry at least three, don’t I, Eliza? I couldn’t stand it, all that powerful machinery, endlessly turning, pushing you on to the next project, the next company, the next country.’

  Phaedria looked at him, blowing her nose, her eyes at last dry, swollen and sore. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what it’s like. I feel as if I’m some poor helpless creature, a little bird, being crushed in it, dragged relentlessly, all broken, on and on.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eliza, ‘I remember that feeling. But you’ve done something I never did, you’ve become part of the machinery. The crucial bit, that drives the rest. You’re finding out how it works, and you may in time find out how to control it. Remember that.’

  ‘It’s not making me very popular with your daughter,’ said Phaedria with a weak smile, ‘becoming part of it all.’

  ‘Oh, Roz is impossible. I apologize for her. But I do have to say in her defence, Phaedria, that it must be difficult for her. She does adore Julian. Always has. She’s bound to be jealous of you.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Phaedria with a sigh, ‘and I do try so hard, but I just don’t seem to be getting anywhere. It’s very hard to cope with.’

  ‘Roz is very difficult,’ said David, ‘but I’m very fond of her. I was her first fan, wasn’t I, Eliza?’

  ‘Oh, you were,’ said Eliza. You did a lot for her. I don’t think she ever realised how much.’

  ‘She had a schoolgirl crush on me,’ said David to Phaedria, asked me to take her out to dinner one night, and kissed me in the car. It was very sweet. Goodness knows what might have happened if that old – if your fiancé hadn’t shipped me off to New York . . .’

  ‘Yes, well, let’s not talk about that,’ said Eliza. ‘You know it upsets me. And it’s got nothing to do with the matter in hand. Roz will come round, Phaedria, really she will.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Phaedria. ‘Apart from anything else, I know we’d get on. I’d like her if she’d let me. She’s exactly the sort of woman I admire: self confident and terribly positive, and – well, gutsy.’

  ‘I would have thought you possessed plenty of those qualities yourself,’ said Eliza, patting her hand. ‘You wouldn’t have taken Julian on if you didn’t. Anyway,’ she went on more briskly, ‘I don’t wonder you’re sitting here weeping. Whoever you were marrying. The organization of this circus tomorrow, absolutely amazing. And you’ve done it all virtually single-handed. Honestly, Phaedria, I’d back you against the whole of the Morell empire any day. Is Julian impressed? He ought to be.’

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ said Phaedria with a sigh, ‘but he doesn’t say so.’

  ‘No.’

  David looked at her thoughtfully. ‘What you ought to do really,’ he said, ‘is go up to London now and see the old bugger. Beard him in his den. Tell him how you feel. No wonder you got stage fright, here all on your own. Why don’t you do that?’

  ‘I’d quite like to in a way,’ said Phaedria, ‘and you’re right, it is being alone here that’s made me feel so bad, but I’m just too tired.’

  ‘I’ll drive you. Eliza can tell everyone we’ve just run off together. That’ll get the rumours going.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, David,’ said Eliza tartly, ‘why should Phaedria want rumours flying about on the eve of her wedding? What good would that do?’

  ‘I do like the idea though,’ said Phaedria with a weak giggle, ‘everyone would think we’d eloped.’

  ‘Phaedria,’ said Eliza, very serious, ‘there are a few rumours about you and David already, as you very possibly know.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Totally unfounded, unfortunately,’ said David with a sigh.

  ‘Be quiet, David. Phaedria, do be careful, be very careful. Julian has a fearsome jealousy. And he does dreadful things in revenge. As David and I know to our cost.’

  ‘Yes. Letitia told me. And you weren’t even married to him any more.’

  Eliza laughed. ‘No, I had another husband in between, even. Darling Letitia. She really doesn’t mind blackening Julian’s name one bit, does she? Don’t you adore her though?’

  ‘Oh, I think she’s wonderful.’

  ‘Well look,’ said David, ‘are we eloping or not? I honestly don’t mind driving you to London. Or alternatively I’ll drive you somewhere else altogether. In the opposite direction. Just say the word.’

  ‘No,’ said Phaedria. ‘No, I feel much better now. I’ll come back. I haven’t really got much choice.’

  ‘You have, Phaedria, you have,’ said Eliza, taking her hand again. ‘Exercise it if you want to. Don’t stay because of us.’

  ‘I’m not. Truly. But thank you. Both of you. For helping me see.’

  ‘Right,’ said David briskly, ‘well, we were just going to crack a bottle, weren’t we Eliza, to toast the bride. How much nicer to do it with her. Come on, Phaedria, let me at least drive you back to the house, and then you can join us in the kitchen.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like that. Where’s – I mean should we find – ?’

  ‘Peveril?’ said Eliza, ‘don’t worry, I’m not running away from him either. He sleeps so soundly, dear old darling, and he snores so loudly, I just get desperate sometimes. And I’m a night owl. I knew David was coming down late tonight, so I waited up to see him. Old friends. Nothing more, are we, my angel?’

  ‘Nothing more.’

  Phaedria looked at them, so strangely close, so relaxed with one another, and wondered whether or not they were telling the truth. Well, it really didn’t matter, and they had been good friends to her that night. She relaxed suddenly, feeling just rather sweetly and pleasantly
tired, and said, ‘Come on, then, let’s go. I’ll get the champagne. There’s enough in the cellars to incapacitate the whole of Sussex.’

  ‘I think she’ll be all right now,’ said Eliza to David, while Phaedria disappeared into the kitchen for the glasses. ‘Thank God we found her. Although why we should do the old bastard any favours I really don’t know.’

  ‘I think we’ve done her one, actually,’ said David. ‘I think she likes it all, really. I think it suits her.’

  And the next day, when Phaedria Morell drifted across the lawns of her beautiful house, greeting her guests with charm and grace, sparkling and radiant in her wild silk, lace-strewn dress, with fresh white roses woven into the massing clouds of her dark hair, very few people would have disagreed with him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Eleuthera, London and Los Angeles, 1983–4

  JULIAN TOOK PHAEDRIA to the house on Eleuthera in the Bahamas for their honeymoon. It was a low, white mansion, set just above a small curving bay, the palm trees hanging gently over the silvery white of the beach; she fell instantly in love with it.

  Julian flew them in himself to the villagey airfield at Marsh Harbour in the small plane he kept at Nassau; she had sat gazing spellbound for the entire flight at the fairy tale sea beneath her, the strange variations in the colour of the water, the mystical, uninhabited, almost swamplike green islands, the dark dark blue swathes of the deep waters, the pink etching round the small white patches of land set in the blue-green sea.

  ‘That’s the coral,’ he said, ‘that you can see. Tomorrow we’ll go snorkelling on the reef near the house. Then you can meet the fish.’

  That evening, they wandered along the beach, picking up coconuts and conch shells, looking at the slick of moonlight on the sea; Phaedria sank down suddenly, laughing, on the warm white sand and said, ‘This is a cliché of a honeymoon, Julian Morell.’