Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘And if I made a promise?’

  ‘I don’t think you could keep it.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, well.’ He was oddly flat, unemotional.

  ‘I think it really is hopeless.’

  He sighed. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And it isn’t all your fault either.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re right. Nearly, but not all.’

  ‘You were right about me. I did neglect you – well, our marriage. I cared too much about the store, my own life, everything. I am terribly, terribly ambitious. I didn’t know I was, but you set it free, made me that way.’

  ‘I know. I blame myself.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you should. Not really. And then there’s Roz. That could never, ever have worked.’

  ‘No. Of all the pain I feel that is worst. That the two of you couldn’t somehow have lived together, worked together.’

  ‘You didn’t help, you know.’

  ‘I tried.’

  ‘Now Julian,’ said Phaedria, looking at him, suddenly so angry that her lassitude and sadness left her, ‘that is a lie. You did not try. You made things a hundred, a thousand times worse. Why do you have to deceive yourself about it? About everything?’

  ‘I don’t think I am deceiving myself,’ he said. ‘I think I really tried.’

  ‘Well in that case, you really don’t know what you are saying. Or, as usual you’re lying. You just cannot tell the truth, Julian, can you? You just can’t. Truth is a total stranger to you.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t find it easy. But for you, because I love you, I’d like to try. Will you let me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, puzzled. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to listen to me. Let me tell you about myself.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, intrigued by the notion, momentarily removed from her misery and her anger. ‘Well, I think you should answer some questions, rather than just talk. That way you’re less likely to get carried away. Why did you marry me?’

  ‘Because I fell in love with you. And I found you very arousing sexually.’

  ‘Was that all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘It flattered my vanity, I suppose, that someone so young, so beautiful, should want to marry me.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I was lonely.’

  ‘It’s getting less pretty, isn’t it? Is that all?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and she could see the struggle he was having, to fight through to the truth. ‘I rather liked the idea of the to-do it would cause.’

  Phaedria looked at him, her eyes first cool, then suddenly filled with amusement. She smiled at him for the first time. ‘I like this game.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I do. Can I sit down beside you?’

  ‘No. Stay over there. I need to see your face.’

  ‘This really is an inquisition, isn’t it?’

  ‘It was your idea. OK. Now then, did you really not think there would be a problem with Roz?’

  ‘I really didn’t.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I’m quite sure,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘I had no idea she felt so strongly about me. Or rather the company, and her place in it.’

  ‘We’ll come back to that one. Did you find being married to me as you’d expected?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You were much more difficult.’

  ‘Good.’ She drained her glass; she felt pleasantly dizzy, and strangely powerful. She had forgotten about the baby, about why she was here; this was the most fascinating conversation of her entire life.

  ‘Did you – did you sleep with anyone else, apart from Camilla?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really no?’

  ‘Really no.’

  ‘What about Regency?’

  ‘No. I didn’t sleep with her. She – she didn’t want to know,’ he added painfully, dragging the words out.’

  ‘Julian,’ she said, and she had to pour another glass of wine, drink half of it before she could face her own question, even, quite apart from the answer, ‘what is it about Camilla? Why do you go back to her again and again? Do you love her? Or is it just sex?’

  He was silent for a long time, not evading the question, just thinking. Then he sighed and said, ‘I suppose, in an odd way, I do love her.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and it was like a cry of pain, of fright, in the big room.

  ‘No,’ he said, moving towards her, holding out his arms. ‘No, you don’t understand. Don’t look like that, darling, please don’t. Come here.’

  ‘No,’ she said, staring at him, her eyes hard behind her tears. ‘I won’t. Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me.’

  ‘All right. But may I go on?’

  ‘I suppose you have to.’

  ‘I do love her. She isn’t just an easy lay, as she once told me she refused to be. I’m terribly fond of her. She’s very loyal to me, she’s very fond of me, she’s often picked me up when I’ve been down. I’ve known her for a very long time, and we’ve worked together for a very long time, and she means a great deal to me. And – well, I need her. I need her sexually. She – oh Phaedria, I can’t go on with this. Can’t we leave the question of Camilla?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘of course not. We can’t. Tell me, Julian, tell me what it is. Why do you need her? What does she do for you? I have to know, I have to.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, with a heavy sigh, ‘I’ll tell you. I don’t know what good it will do, but I’ll tell you. At various stages in my life, when I have been under very heavy pressure of one kind or another, I – I have become impotent. When I feel threatened. Textbook stuff, I suppose. Camilla,’ he added with his lips twitching, ‘is very strong on textbook stuff.’

  ‘So you mean she cures you? Helps you get it up? My God.’

  ‘Phaedria, don’t sound so crude.’

  ‘I feel crude,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s disgusting. I’m your wife, Julian, or I was. Surely if you had a sexual problem, you could have turned to me. Was that why – why you didn’t sleep with me all those weeks?’

  ‘Of course. I didn’t dare try. I was under such strain, with the failure of Lifestyle, the situation with you and Roz, your own success, all those ridiculous stories about you in the papers. Of course I didn’t believe them, but they hurt just the same. I was so afraid.’

  ‘But why, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. Don’t ask me why not. It’s too complex.’

  ‘So you turned to Camilla?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And lied?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked at him, a wealth of pain in her eyes. ‘Why didn’t you try being truthful? Talking to me. Not going to her. Aren’t I worth it?’

  ‘You are. Yes. Infinitely.’

  ‘I still can’t understand you going to her. When you’re supposed to love me.’

  ‘I do love you.’

  ‘You can’t. You simply can’t.’

  ‘I do. Do you love me?’

  She was taken aback by the suddenness of the change of direction.

  ‘Yes. Yes I think I do.’

  ‘Did you sleep with Sassoon?’

  ‘No. No I didn’t.’

  ‘Did you want to?’ The questions were coming faster, harder; he was flushed himself now, breathing heavily.

  ‘No. Not at all. Why were you so jealous of him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s not the truth.’

  ‘Because Eliza loved him.’

  ‘Do you still love Eliza?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said suddenly, looking at her in astonishment. ‘Yes, I think I do. I didn’t love her when I was married to her, but I have loved her greatly since. And I always will. She has a hold on my heart,’ he added, ‘as you do.’

  ‘I seem to be sharing your heart with quite a few people. Anyone else while
we’re on the subject?’

  ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘No, not now.’

  There was a silence. Then: ‘Why did you marry me, Phaedria?’

  ‘I wanted to.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why, though?’

  ‘I thought you were clever. Interesting. I just – loved you. You made me feel safe.’ She finished her wine. ‘That’s ironic, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ He looked at her piercingly, suddenly. ‘Phaedria, why have you come here? Tonight? So late. There is a reason, isn’t there? It’s not just a desire to talk, to discuss the formalities of a divorce. The lawyers can do that. There’s something else. Please tell me.’

  She was taken aback, thrown off her guard by the switch from past to present. She stood up. ‘No. There was something, but I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to tell you. Not now. I’m going. I’m sorry, Julian, I really did love you, maybe I still do, in a way, but I can’t live with you. You’re better on your own, and so am I.’

  ‘Well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘perhaps you’re right. I love you too. Very much. How ridiculous this is.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, light-hearted, ‘it is quite ridiculous. I shall miss you dreadfully, horribly.’ And she smiled at him, suddenly, a warm, friendly, loving smile. ‘Perhaps we can be friends. Loving friends.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, catching her mood. ‘That would be nice. But how loving, I wonder? And what kind of love?’ And he looked at her, his eyes dancing, and as he looked Phaedria suddenly felt herself physically assaulted by a bolt of desire. It filled her, it consumed her, it was like a great, fierce fever, and she looked back at him, startled, helpless with it.

  ‘Come here,’ he said lightly, ‘let me kiss you good night. But not, please not, goodbye.’

  And she moved towards him, her eyes still fixed on his, wondering that he could not see, feel how she felt. Perhaps, perhaps, if she could only get out of the room, the house now, quickly, she would be safe, and he would never need to know; she raised her face to his, thinking in one moment, one moment, it will be all right, it will be over, but he touched her and it was like a charge; she shuddered, looked up at him, into his eyes, and she saw at once that he had known, had felt it too. She moved into his arms, drew his head down towards her.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said, ‘you make me so angry,’ and very gently, very slowly, she began to kiss him.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘I love you so much. Please say you love me too.’

  ‘I do,’ she said, ‘you know I do.’

  ‘Come along,’ he said, ‘come along to bed.’ And unprotesting, childlike, she took his hand and followed him, and all the way upstairs he talked to her, endlessly, telling her he loved her, he wanted her, he had missed her, and she listened, enchanted, caught once more, helplessly, in the spell of sensuality with which he had first ensnared her; she lay on their bed, and looked at him, her eyes never leaving his as he undressed her, stroking, kissing, sucking each of the places he knew most aroused her, her neck, the hollow of her throat, her shoulders, her breasts: lingering there, feeling the leaping, quivering response, and then urgent suddenly, he was tearing off his own clothes, telling her over and over again how he wanted her, how he loved her, and then, swiftly, unable to wait any longer, he was in her, and she felt him grow, seek, yearn for release, and it came so suddenly, so fiercely, they cried out together, and then he was lying, looking at her, with tears in his eyes, and for the first time since she had known him, she felt he was vulnerable and that she was safe.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever leave me. Tomorrow we will begin again.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can. I love you too. But I still don’t quite know.’

  ‘You will,’ he said. ‘You will. Promise me you will.’

  ‘I can’t promise you,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’ But she fell asleep, sweetly and untroubled.

  In the morning she felt extremely ill. She slithered out of bed and into the bathroom; she was sick over and over again. It must have been the wine, she thought, she had not felt so bad before; she should not have drunk it; she would give it up at once. She stood up and looked at herself in the long mirror, so slender, so small breasted, and reflected upon the secret within her body, and how it would change it, how the breasts would become veined and heavy, and the flat stomach swollen and ripe. She remembered with a gentle shock that she had still not told Julian, that he had no idea what they had accomplished, and she smiled at the pleasure it would give him, and the promise it brought to their life. She washed her face, brushed her hair, and walked back into the bedroom, into the sunlight, where he lay still asleep, to wake him and tell him.

  ‘Julian,’ she said, bending over, kissing his cheek, his hair, ‘Julian, wake up. I have something lovely to tell you.’

  He turned, still half asleep, and looked at her and she was to remember that look for the rest of her life: first love, then pain, then panic; and then he cried out, hideously loud, and she said, ‘What, what is it?’ but he couldn’t speak, he was beyond it, he tried, but it was quite quite impossible.

  Julian fought death for days. He lay in intensive care, after not one but three massive coronaries, battling against it, pushing it away. Phaedria sat with him, watching him drowning in it, sinking, gasping, surfacing, seeing him afraid, and more than afraid, frantic, trying to speak to her, impotent, helpless.

  ‘He’s trying to tell me something,’ she kept saying to the doctors, ‘he’s trying to talk to me, he’s desperate, can’t you see, how can I help him, can’t you do something?’

  And no, they said, really there was nothing, he was beyond speech, it often happened, people did appear to be desperate to talk and usually it was nothing important, they had nothing to say, not really, there was nothing to worry about, she was doing all that could be done, just being there, calming him. But she knew she was doing nothing of the sort.

  She felt afraid herself, contaminated by his fear; she talked to him endlessly, she told him she loved him, she told him about the baby, she tried to calm him, to give him courage, hope, faith. And all the time, his eyes looked at her in a deep despair.

  He died, looking at her still, his hand in hers, her gaze locked in his. And afterwards, as she gazed down at the still, sterile shell that he had suddenly become, all the charm, the grace, the tenderness shockingly gone, she realized with a piercing sense of grief and shock that she had hardly known him at all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  London and Sussex, 1985

  WOMEN ARE NOT asked to bear any pain greater than that of losing a child; Letitia had been asked to bear it twice already and she was not sure that she could stand it again. She lay in her brass-headed bed in First Street and felt she would never sleep again; she could not cry, she would not cry, she was afraid of tears, of the sweeping wave of pain that they released. She was fighting to hold back that wave, to control it, she knew if it came she would sink, drown in it. In a few days perhaps, she would be able to manage it; for now, dry-eyed, breathing a little heavily with what felt like a physical effort, she lay and held it at bay.

  She was helped in her struggle by her thoughts of the rest of the family; of Phaedria, widowed before she had begun properly to know what marriage was, and with the added pain of a pregnancy to endure alone. Letitia had no doubt that she would come through; she was tough, and she was brave, but that did not diminish her grief and her misery. And there was grief; Letitia was almost relieved to see that grief. She had always felt that Phaedria had loved Julian, that she had married him for that reason, not for the money, the power, the fairy-tale transformation scene he could work upon her life, but she had been alone in her judgement at the beginning and had sometimes over the past two years begun to doubt it. Whether or not the marriage had been a success she had no real idea; the last few weeks of it had been very sad. She had, at least, been with him when he died, whe
n he had been taken ill; there must have been a reconciliation of some kind. But it had clearly been brief; when Letitia, summoning a strength from she knew not where, had gone to visit Phaedria at the house the night after Julian died, all she had said over and over again, her voice cracked with pain was, ‘I didn’t tell him, Letitia, he didn’t know. I didn’t tell him, he didn’t know.’

  She had thought at first that Phaedria had meant she hadn’t told Julian she loved him, but later when she had tried to give her a brandy, a sleeping pill, anything to calm her, she had said no, no, the least, the very least she could do was take care of her baby, of Julian’s baby, and Letitia had looked at her shocked and still with pity and wept with her for a long time.

  And then there was Roz. Roz had reacted strangely: angrily, fiercely, when she was first told the news that Julian was in intensive care and not expected to live. C. J. had broken it to her, and then phoned Letitia in despair, saying Roz was raging, screaming, blaming Phaedria, saying it would never have happened had she not married Julian, saying she should be there with him, not Phaedria, and then, when Phaedria had said of course she should come, should see him, should say goodbye to him, had said, icy cold, ‘I do not intend to share him with her now.’

  She had stood throughout the funeral stony-faced; she had not wept at all, until the moment when she tossed a small bunch of white roses on to the coffin as it went into the ground. Then she turned swiftly and ran, sobbing as she went, into the trees at the back of the graveyard, and would not come out, would not speak to anyone until the last car had left, insisting that everyone, her mother, her husband, her grandmother should go and leave her alone, and then she walked, slowly, heavily, an almost ghostly figure towards her own car and drove very fast away.

  The funeral had been in Sussex, in the small church where Julian and Phaedria had been married; there had been hundreds of people there: from the village, from London, from all over the world they had come, his staff, his colleagues, his rivals, his friends. And of course his family.

  Phaedria had kept the service very simple; the only dramatic gesture she made was when she placed some keys in the grave, on top of the coffin, nestling in her own flowers, white lilies, with a card that said simply ‘From Phaedria, with my special love.’