A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  Adam shielded his eyes against the sun. The baroque stone staircase was massed with tourists, smothered in fragrant pink-blossomed azaleas. At first he could distinguish no one between the clutch of souvenir-hawkers and jewellery-vendors crowding the bottom dozen steps, and then Jerome moved, stepping out of the way of a young priest, and Adam grinned. ‘It’s Jerry all right. Come on.’

  Taking Francince’s hand, he began to quicken his pace, running lightly down the sun-warmed steps, calling ‘Jerry! Jerry!’

  Jerome turned his head, betraying not the slightest surprise at seeing them. He was wearing a double-breasted grey silk suit, carefully tailored to disguise his increasing weight, a grey silk tie, and sported a white carnation in his buttonhole.

  ‘Adam, old chap. Nice to see you,’ he said warmly as they ran up to him. He caught hold of Francine’s hands, gave her a long and appraising look from the top of her sun-gold curls to the tips of her elegantly shod feet, and then kissed her with relish on both cheeks.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Adam asked, as Jerome reluctantly released a laughing Francine from his embrace.

  ‘We’re not,’ Jerome said with no sign of regret. ‘We’re simply passing through on our way to Capri and lingering only because Elizabeth insists it would be sacrilege to be in Rome and not visit the Raphael Rooms at the Vatican.’

  Adam felt a rush of heat to his groin. Beth. Still loyally and lovingly accompanying Jerome wherever he chose to go. He looked beyond Jerome across the crowded Piazza di Spagna.

  She was striding gaily towards them, her ivory-pale hair sweeping her shoulders, a scarlet cotton skirt swirling around naked sun-tanned legs. Her sandals were high-heeled and delicate, her white blouse silk and Parisian. For years Jerome had been trying to hurry her into womanhood, and now, at fifteen, effortlessly and without help, she had left the gracelessness of childhood behind her.

  He was aware of an overwhelming feeling of relief. She was breathtakingly beautiful, innocently sensual, and pleasure surged through him at the mere sight of her. But it wasn’t perverted pleasure. He no longer felt like a paedophile. The emotion he felt now he could come to terms with, even though it would still have to be suppressed.

  She saw him and her face lit with joy. ‘Uncle Adam! Francine!’ she cried, breaking into a run, throwing herself into his open arms. He hugged her tight, feeling again all the love he had always felt for her, ever since she had been a baby. All too soon she drew away from him, her eyes shining. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you again!’ She turned to Francine, kissing her affectionately on both cheeks. ‘He’s been hiding away from us ever since Daddy’s forty-fifth birthday party, Francine! We can’t persuade him to join us in Nice, but maybe you can.’

  ‘I will do my best,’ Francine said, her cornflower-blue eyes sparkling. The South of France was always fun. Nice, for a few weeks at the end of the summer, would be a very good idea.

  ‘Let me take advantage of this very fortuitous meeting,’ Jerome said, taking Francine’s hand and placing it firmly in the crook of his arm ‘We have five hours before we leave for Naples. Five hours in which Elizabeth was intent on dragging me round as many museums and art galleries as possible. Now I no longer need to do so.’ He smiled benignly. ‘Adam is far better equipped than I to suffer the rigours of the Vatican Museum. He can escort Elizabeth, and we …’ – he looked down at Francine and patted her hand – ‘… can enjoy a long cold drink at the Hassler.’

  Adam gave Francine a quick glance and saw that she was perfectly happy to keep Jerome company for a few hours.

  ‘OK,’ he said, suppressing the elation he felt. ‘We’ll meet up at two o’clock at Il Buco on the Via Sant’Ignazio.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jerome said with relish, ‘Tuscan campagna and crostini and those delicious little almond biscuits that you dip into the wine. Benissimo!’

  With Francine prettily decorating his arm, he took his leave of them, sauntering back up the Spanish Steps to the Hassler, his equilibrium restored.

  Adam looked at Beth and grinned. ‘Where to first?’ he asked, aware that in her high heels she was nearly as tall as he was. ‘Do you want to go to the Raphael Rooms first, or take a stroll?’.

  ‘A stroll, I think,’ she said, happily linking her arm in his, quite unaware that the action added another two or three years to her age, making her look more like a girlfriend than a daughter or niece.

  They wandered into the maze of narrow cobbled streets that led away from the Piazza, a not very tall, toughly built man who moved with the ease of a useful-looking middleweight, in spite of his slight limp, and a tall slender girl carrying herself with natural grace and pride, burnished gold hair swinging glossily to her shoulders.

  ‘It’s a pity you aren’t staying in Rome,’ Adam said, aware of the number of heads that kept turning in their direction. Italian male eyes flagrantly admiring of her, envious of him.

  There was a pang of regret in her voice that went far deeper than disappointment that their holiday could not be shared as she said: ‘Daddy doesn’t like sightseeing holidays. He’ll be much happier at the Hotel Quisisana in Capri. Lots of his cronies will be there, and he’ll be able to swim and sunbathe and gossip to his heart’s content.’

  ‘And you?’ Adam asked, his honey-brown eyes darkening. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Oh, I will swim and sunbathe as well,’ she said with a little laugh and a shrug of her shoulders.

  Adam’s mouth tightened. He knew what she would do. She would sit quietly in the background while Jerome enjoyed himself, flirting and exchanging scandalous stories with his cronies about mutual friends.

  They crossed the Via del Tritone heading in the direction of the Fontana di Trevi ‘What about your music?’ he asked brusquely. ‘Do you still play?’

  She averted her eyes quickly from his before he could see the flare of unhappiness that flashed through them. ‘I still play,’ she said. ‘I have a Steinway concert grand in my suite at the Negresco.’

  There was a strange note in her voice that he couldn’t define. It was almost a note of defiance. He wondered how hard a battle she’d had to fight before Jerome had agreed to her having the Steinway.

  ‘What about your tuition?’ he asked relentlessly. ‘Are your teachers good?’

  ‘I don’t have tuition any longer,’ she said, her eyes still avoiding his, her voice carefully controlled. ‘We’re very rarely in the same place more than two or three weeks at a time, and so it isn’t possible.’

  They had reached the fountain. Spray blew softly against their cheeks, the breeze from the water coolly refreshing. Her hair was pushed away from her face with tortoiseshell combs; her profile, as she kept her face stubbornly averted from his, so lovely and pure that he felt his breath tighten in his chest. There was no bitterness in her voice. He doubted if she even admitted to herself that Jerome had let her down. Yet he could sense and feel the unhappiness that his insensitivity was causing her. His jaw hardened.

  ‘Let me speak to him,’ he said as a group of tourists laughingly tossed coins into the fountain to ensure that they would one day return to Rome. ‘He has to be made to see what a thoughtless bastard he’s being.’

  She shook her head vehemently, the sunlight dancing in her hair, meshing it to silver. ‘No, you musn’t do that, Adam. His feelings would be terribly hurt. He sees himself as giving me a marvellous life, and he does. I live like a queen. Sumptuous hotel suites, yacht cruises, dresses from Schiaparelli and Worth. How can you possibly accuse him of being thoughtless or uncaring?’

  ‘Because the hotel suites and the yacht cruises and the clothes mean nothing at all to you, and your music does. It isn’t too late for you to return to the Royal Academy in London. Jerry has his princess for company now. There is no reason why you should feel guilty or that you are letting him down.’

  She shook her head again, this time resignedly. ‘No, Luisa is a darling, but Daddy isn’t the most important person in her life, and she isn’t in his. He would be dreadfully
lonely if I returned to London without him.’

  ‘Then, he can return with you,’ Adam said with unconcealed exasperation. ‘The house in Eaton Place is still fully staffed, though God knows why. Jerry can’t have spent more than half a dozen days there in the last five years.’

  ‘Neither of us wants to return to Eaton Place,’ she said, her eyes clouding. ‘It holds too many memories.’

  ‘Then, let Jerry do what he always does. Move into a hotel suite. The Dorchester is only five minutes from the Academy. It would be ideal.’

  He could see the longing in her eyes, but then she said with finality: ‘No, he would hate it. Perhaps if things change between him and Luisa and they decide to marry, then I will. If not.…’ She gave a philosophical shrug of her shoulders, saying with determined gaiety: ‘Let’s toss coins into the fountain and then walk across to the Vatican. The popes were very astute when it came to art, weren’t they? Fancy having Raphaels on the walls of your dining-room, Botticellis on the walls of your bedroom, and Michaelangelo above your head when you prayed!’

  He knew better than to continue talking about music and London. There had been the same note of determination in her voice when she had rejected his suggestions that he had heard so often in Jerome’s. Her mind was made up and, no matter how unhappy her decision privately made her, she would not change it. Not until she could do so with a clear conscience.

  They strolled in easy intimacy over the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, tourists among a stream of other tourists, all making their way to St Peter’s Square.

  It was one of the most perfect mornings Adam could remember. They refused to be side-tracked by the other marvels in the museum, feasting their eyes on Raphael and Raphael alone. When they emerged once more into the sunlight, they boughtice-creams, walking along the banks of the Tiber until Adam realized with a shock that it was nearly two-thirty and that Francine and Jerome had already been waiting for them for thirty minutes. Flagging down a taxi, they arrived at II Buco’s as the waiter was serving Jerome his dessert.

  ‘I thought you’d both disappeared into the bowels of the Vatican, never to be seen again,’ he said unperturbedly, helping himself to a lavish spoonful of cream.

  ‘We forgot the time,’ Elizabeth said, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. ‘We’ve had the most glorious morning, Daddy. I didn’t want it ever to end!’

  The maítre d’hótel handed Adam a leather-bound menu, eyeing Elizabeth admiringly, and Jerome said to Adam: ‘Try the pasta con porcini. Its’s delicious.’

  None of them saw the expression on Francine’s face. She had been delighted to see them return, about to chastise them playfully for their lateness. As Elizabeth innocently said what a glorious morning she and Adam had shared, she sat suddenly very still, as if she had been slapped, fettucini slithering from her fork.

  Adam had the same glow about him as Elizabeth. He was grinning broadly at something Jerome was saying to him, his thick shock of auburn hair bleached almost blond by the sun. But his eyes weren’t on Jerome. They were on Elizabeth. As were the eyes of the maítre d’hótel and the eyes of the businessmen enjoying lunch at a nearby table. For the first time Francine realized that Elizabeth was no longer a child. She was only fifteen, but because of her lifestyle, because of the sophistication Jerome had thrust upon her, she was a woman. And it was as a woman, a highly desirable woman, that she was now being looked at by the maítre d’hótel and their fellow-diners. And by Adam.

  Francine’s eyes narrowed. Nice no longer seemed such a good idea. She was quite sure that Elizabeth’s remarks had been guileless. But for how long would they be guileless? With a Frenchwoman’s hard-headed common sense, Francine judged it best that Adam and Elizabeth did not meet again too often. One could never tell, n’est ce pas? And it was better to be safe than to be sorry.

  They did meet again over the next years, often. Adam now regarded the lust that Beth inflamed in him as normal, if not desirable. He no longer felt like a dirty old man or a sexual pervert. These things happened. Sometimes it was a cousin or an aunt that aroused emotions that had to be suppressed and that, eventually, died. It was nothing he need be ashamed of. As long as no one but himself knew of it.

  In the autumn of 1931 he asked Francine to marry him, and both Jerome and Beth attended the lavish engagement-party held at the Savoy Hotel in London. Francine, with a Parisienne’s reluctance to live anywhere but in Paris, spent the winter and spring trying to persuade Adam to lease a house in the sixteenth arrondissement, telling him that he could easily conduct his business affairs from Paris. Adam showed no sign of being persuaded. His directorships were with London companies, he was London-based, and he had no desire to spend two days out of every seven travelling backwards and forwards between Croydon and Le Bourget.

  It was Easter when Francine said that she had found the perfect house and that, once he had also seen it, all his objections would be overcome. He had seen it. And he had known he was not going to take it. If Francine wished to marry an Englishman, then she would have to accommodate herself to the idea of living in England. Tempers had been fraught on the drive back from Chantilly to her Montmartre apartment. He knew that Jerome was staying at the George V over Easter and he was tempted to abandon Francine to her illhumour and enjoy dinner with him there.

  There was something about the set of Adam’s jaw and the quality of his silence that prompted Francine to think that she had probably gone too far. The wedding was to be in June, and whether they lived in Paris or London, or Timbuktu, she did not want him to change his mind about it.

  ‘I am sorry chéri,’ she said conciliatorily, slipping her arm through his as they drew up outside her Montmartre apartment. ‘It was too big a house anyway. What does it matter? We will forget it.’

  Adam, who had no desire to prolong the quarrel, gave her an affectionate grin. ‘OK,’ he said, knowing that he had won the battle and could afford to be magnanimous. ‘Pax.’ With his arm around her shoulders, he led her past the concierge and into her elegantly furnished apartment, and bed.

  Jerome was feeling unusually tired. He liked Paris, spending nearly as much time there as he did in Nice, but he was beginning to think that Easter was too early in the year for him to enjoy it to the full. The air was damp, the breezes chill.

  ‘We’ll go back south tomorrow,’ he said to Elizabeth as she came into his room to see if he was ready to go down for dinner, her cream silk dress rustling around her knees in a myriad of tiny pleats, her hair falling in a long smooth wave to her shoulders. As he spoke, the diamond cufflink he had been in the act of inserting into his shirt-cuff fell from his grasp, rolling across the pale beige carpet.

  Elizabeth bent down and scooped it up. ‘The Prince of Wales is attending Luisa’s party on Friday. I thought you were looking forward to meeting him?’

  ‘Not enough to suffer another three days of cold and damp,’ Jerome said, making no attempt to take the cufflink from her and to finish dressing. ‘I feel so cold that I doubt if I’m ever going to be warm again.’

  Elizabeth looked at him with concern. A light rain had fallen for most of the afternoon, but it wasn’t cold. She suddenly realized how overpoweringly warm it was in his suite and realized that he had turned the central heating up to maximum.

  ‘Are you feeling unwell?’ she asked, a slight frown puckering her brow as she slipped his cufflink into his shirt-cuff and fastened it for him.

  ‘No,’ Jerome lied. Illnesses were tedious, and he had no intention of succumbing to one. ‘Let’s go down for dinner. I shall ask reception to make reservations for us at the Mamounia, Tangier. We’ll travel down to Marseilles by train tomorrow and make the crossing tomorrow evening.’

  ‘But if you’re not feeling well,’ Elizabeth began, undeceived by his lie. His face was white and pinched and there were lines of strain around his eyes.

  ‘I am perfectly well,’ Jerome said indignantly, rising to his feet and slipping his arms into the dinner-jacket she held out for him. ‘All I need
is a little North African sun.’

  She knew better than to argue with him. She would telephone his Paris doctor and ask him to make a visit early next morning. Her father would be furious with her, but at least then she would know if he was fit enough to travel.

  ‘Perhaps Adam and Francine will join us in Tangier,’ Jerome said as they sat at a window table, overlooking the darkened terrace garden.

  ‘I shouldn’t be too hopeful.’ Elizabeth smiled as the waiter took their orders. ‘The wedding is only two months away, and they are being very busy house-hunting.’

  ‘Francine is being very busy house-hunting,’ her father corrected, a twinge of pain darkening his eyes. ‘Adam has no intention of living anywhere else but where he is living now.’

  ‘Daddy! Are you all right?’ Elizabeth asked, forgetting all about Adam and Francine, aware only of the effort the last few words had caused him.

  He tried to smile, but it was more a grimace. ‘No,’ he said, and there was a look almost of fear in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but I feel most odd.…’

  She was already halfway round the table to him when he pitched forward, sending cutlery and glasses flying.

  ‘Daddy!’

  He was still seated, the top half of his body prone on the disarranged table, his arms hanging limply at his side. She clutched hold of him, her eyes wide with terror. ‘Daddy! Daddy! Can you hear me?’

  The maítre d’hótel and an army of waiters were running towards them. His chair was being pulled back. Someone was easing him to the floor, undoing his collar. She could hear the words ‘Un docteur! Une ambulance! Vite!’

  ‘Oh God! Don’t die, please don’t die!’ she sobbed, kneeling at his side, her hands still clutching at his powerful shoulders, tears pouring down her cheeks. He was inert. His eyes closed. His face waxen. She stared up at the circle of waiters and diners who had gathered round them. ‘Oh, where is the doctor? Why doesn’t he come?’ she gasped, distraught.