Wicked Pleasures (101 page)

‘Good. I have a lot on today. If you’re free tomorrow that’d be good.’

‘I’m free.’

‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ he said and rang off.

Charlotte put the phone down, trying not to feel aggrieved. A love affair with Gabe was clearly not going to do a great deal to massage her ego.

She had lunch with Fred. He was irritable, drinking red wine. Betsey kept telling him not to, which only served to make him drink more. After a while, tired of being contradicted, even when she said it was two o’clock and it quite plainly was, Betsey retreated to her room for a rest; Charlotte frowned at her grandfather.

‘You shouldn’t be so horrid to her. She’s only trying to look after you.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like it.’

‘You’re a bad-tempered old man,’ said Charlotte companionably. ‘I know it. Charlotte –’

‘Yes?’

‘Oh – nothing.’

‘Try me.’

‘It’s business. Bank business.’

‘Good. I like business. I like bank business even more.’

‘Chris Hill came to see me this morning,’ he said.

‘Oh yes?’ Charlotte felt her heart pounding a little harder.

‘The fool wants to move. To Gresse. They’ve made him an offer he says he can’t refuse.’

‘Well – he’s only human. And he has – what – four daughters? Expensive.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. But I’ve offered to top anything they can offer.’

‘So?’

‘So there’s one thing they’re offering that I can’t.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Shares.’

‘But Chris has shares in Praegers, surely?’

‘Yes he does, but only a very few. Gresse are offering him a large number. And thereby a substantial share in the profits. He says he can’t resist that. Having part of the company, having control.’

‘Well – you can’t offer him shares,’ said Charlotte. ‘Praegers is Praegers.’

‘Well – yes, it is.’ Fred’s old face was sad suddenly, hurt, the lines etched very deep. ‘But with Baby gone, I have to have totally committed partners. Freddy – and you – are very young. Inexperienced. You’ll need support. Guidance. And I certainly need Chris Hill. At this point, more than at any time I can remember. He’s a brilliant man. He holds that trading floor together.’

‘So what are you saying?’ said Charlotte, afraid almost to hear the answer, knowing what it was going to be.

‘Oh,’ he said with a sigh, ‘I don’t quite know. But I can’t afford to lose Chris Hill. That much I do know.’

‘Grandpa.’

‘What?’

‘Grandpa, I’m sorry if this makes you cross. But I just think you should take a hard look at what’s going on. I mean –’

Fred glared at her. ‘If you’re going to start interfering,’ he said, ‘you can go home. I don’t want to listen. And I don’t want to listen because you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Charlotte sighed. It was hopeless. ‘Well – all right,’ she said. ‘But I hope you won’t regret it.’

‘Well I won’t.’ He sighed, and looked at her, his face softer suddenly.

‘I’d like to have you back here, I think,’ he said, ‘with me. The time has come.’

Charlotte hardly slept that night. Not because of Gabe, or even because she was clearly about to be restored to New York, but because of the sudden awful realization of where Freddy and Chris Hill, and Chuck Drew and God knew who else, were going and how they were going to get there.

‘It’s Machiavellian,’ she said to Gabe next day. They were walking in the park, in the afternoon; it was already nearly dusk. He had promised to be round after breakfast and finally arrived well after lunch. ‘I had to do some work,’ he said as if that was entirely satisfactory explanation enough. Charlotte didn’t actually care. She was too strung up to care about anything.

‘Chris Hill has Grandpa over a barrel. He’ll get some shares, obviously. I don’t know how much – seven, ten per cent maybe. Then no doubt the others will move in. Use it as a lever.’

‘He won’t give any to Chuck,’ said Gabe. ‘He doesn’t seem to have too high an opinion of him. Won’t care if he leaves, I should imagine. I can see why. He’s a pretty dull guy.’

‘He’s not always been dull,’ said Charlotte and told him what Baby had told Angie about Chuck’s insider trading, years before.

‘Good God. So why is he still there?’

‘Grandpa forgave him. Apparently. It was a very long time ago.’

‘More to it than that,’ said Gabe. ‘Has to be. Your grandpa never forgave anybody anything. Not if they’d threatened the bank.’

‘Well – I don’t know. I have a feeling Angie does, but – anyway, maybe Chuck’s just going to ask to move into London and oversee it. I daresay Grandpa would agree to that. All these stories about what a disaster it is.’

‘Well, my dad will stay loyal,’ said Gabe. ‘No doubt about that.’

‘Well, no doubt. But if Chris has lots of shares and he doesn’t, might he not feel a little miffed? I would.’

‘Possibly. Tell you what, I think Bart Kegan is in on this thing. He’s very close with Freddy, always buttering him up.’

Bart Kegan was the youngest of the senior partners: good-looking, charming, oily. He was famous for having enough suits to wear a different one every day for at least a month. ‘I loathe Bart,’ said Charlotte.

‘Do you?’ said Gabe. ‘I’m surprised. Most women adore him.’

‘I’m not most women.’

‘No, that’s true.’ For the first time that day he took her hand, kissed it, smiled at her, kissed her mouth.

‘You got some free time now?’

‘I have,’ she said briskly. ‘Don’t tell me you have.’

‘A little. Shall we go back to my place? I’ll cook you dinner.’

‘That’d be nice. Gabe – we ought to try and do something about all this. Would your dad help, do you think?’

Gabe hesitated. Then he shook his head. ‘Not a chance. He’s phobic about politics. That’s why he likes Praegers. He says because it’s family there aren’t any.’

‘There weren’t,’ said Charlotte gloomily. ‘Well – maybe I’ll have to be brave. Talk to Grandpa.’

But she didn’t get a chance. When she got back much later that night, Fred was in hospital. He’d had a second heart attack. And before he had it he’d made seven and a half per cent of Praeger shares over to Chris Hill.

‘You do realize,’ said Gabe when she told him, ‘that they can get rid of you now?’

Max, Spring 1987

Max put his hand up to his face. A red mark stood out on his cheek, where it had been struck.

‘That hurt,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Gemma, ‘it was meant to.’

‘You bitch,’ said Max. ‘You little bitch.’ But he was smiling.

‘Don’t smile.’

‘Gemma, darling, I shall smile if I want to.’

‘And don’t call me darling.’

‘Why not? If I love you.’

‘You don’t love me. You treat me really badly.’ Gemma’s exquisite little face was flushed, her eyes bright with unshed tears. She pushed her mane of dark brown hair back from her forehead, and then stood facing Max, her hands on her narrow hips.

‘You look as if you’re going to whip me,’ he said.

‘I’d like to.’

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘that’d be fun.’

‘Oh Max,’ said Gemma irritably, ‘please don’t start fooling around. I’m so angry and so hurt.’

‘I don’t see why. I’ve taken you out every night this week, next weekend we’re going to stay with your friends in Norfolk, I just organized a dinner party single-handed to celebrate your birthday, I keep giving you the most fantastic fucks, what more can I do?’

‘Max, I want you to come away with me and Mummy and Daddy to Paris this weekend. It’s my birthday treat.’

‘Gemma, I’m sorry but I can’t. I’ve been promising Tommy for months I’ll take him to Hartest. I can’t let him down now.’

‘But why does it have to be this weekend? When it is my actual birthday on Sunday?’

‘Because Alexander is away, and he and Tommy don’t get on.’

‘So you and Tommy are going to spend the weekend alone, in that house?’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Well, am I allowed to come?’

‘No you’re not.’

Gemma looked at him, her eyes very watchful. ‘Sometimes, Max, I think the rumours about you and Tommy might just possibly be true.’

Max walked over to her and grabbed her arm. He felt very frightened suddenly, more than he would have believed possible.

‘What rumours?’ he said and he could hear his voice shake slightly.

‘You know perfectly well what rumours. That you and he are lovers. I think it seems quite feasible, really.’

Max stared at her. He felt weak with relief, and intensely amused. He began to laugh.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that. Well, my darling, I would have thought you would be the first to know that couldn’t be true.’

‘God, Max, I hate you.’

‘No you don’t. You adore me.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Well, we won’t argue about it. Come on, we’re late.’

‘I’m not coming.’

‘Oh yes you are,’ he said, laughing, drawing her into his arms, kissing the top of her head tenderly, ‘and when we get back, you can come a great many times more.’

She did; but long after she had gone to sleep, Max lay beside her, staring into the darkness, living and reliving the moment when she had talked about the rumours about him and Tommy, and wondering just how long he could keep the secret safe within the family.

He wasn’t even sure quite why he was so frightened. At worst it could only be an ugly rumour; Alexander would deny it, obviously. Families like theirs had always attracted scandalous gossip; everyone liked hearing it, but no one really believed it. It would be different of course if there were other claimants to the house and the title, but there weren’t. No cousins, no uncles; really it was absurd to be so neurotic about it. It was in everyone’s interest to confirm him as the next Earl of Caterham. Including Tommy’s. It wasn’t going to do Tommy any good at all to have Max declared as a bastard son, with no right to Hartest. All Tommy wanted was a comfortable lifestyle. Well, maybe a little better than comfortable. Nevertheless Max was frightened, and he supposed it was because of the ugliness of the story. He had loved his mother very much and been proud of her; he might have rejected her since, might have labelled her a tart and Alexander a feeble cuckold, but Max was a snob, and he liked his situation in life, the beautiful house, the proud title. It was coming to mean to him far more than he would ever have imagined; it was reassurance, security, status, all the things that learning about his history, about Tommy even, had robbed him of. That day in Ireland, when Charlotte had told him about Virginia, she had effectively orphaned him; he had lost a father and rejected a mother. All that was left to him after that was the fiction: and it was a reassuring, important fiction. It gave him a past, gave him a background. He had grown very fond of Tommy, but Tommy was not the person he wished to be. And he despised Alexander, as a person; but only Alexander could give him his place in the sun.

He knew that when he had been modelling, fooling around, getting expelled from Eton, taking drugs, he had put himself at risk; he had not been the heir Alexander wanted. At sixteen, eighteen it hadn’t seemed important; now it mattered increasingly to him. The old family joke about Georgina being the
favourite, the one who loved Hartest, the future Earl of Caterham, occasionally seemed just slightly sinister. He was, against every possible odds, a touch anxious about the small George.

He had not really ever thought Alexander would do it, leave the house to anyone but him; but it had been enough of a possibility from time to time to rock his complacency, disturb his self-important ego. And once George had been born, he began to think harder about his relationship with Gemma. The more respectable, the more stable he appeared, the better. He would be twenty-one this year; he was seriously considering becoming engaged to her. She was the kind of girl he could imagine being his wife, being the Countess of Caterham: beautiful, well educated, raised in the right traditions. Her father might be a businessman, but he was a country gentleman as well: charming, hospitable, civilized. And Alexander liked Gemma, approved of her. That was important. God, it made him angry, having to worry about Alexander’s approval. When it was something he so basically despised.

Max sighed and turned over, flung his arm around Gemma. She pushed it off again, frowning slightly in her sleep. She was a selfish little cow. Of course he adored her. And when she was in a good mood, she was fun. And a great lay. There really was no reason against asking her to marry him. No reason at all.

Max determinedly shut the one reason, the one absurd, insane reason not to marry Gemma out of his head, turned his thoughts to the next day at Mortons and what it might bring, and finally went to sleep.

He was sitting scowling at the screen some time in the middle of the next afternoon. He had just gone short on a deal, sold 5,000 shares he hadn’t yet bought and the fucking things were going up, not down. Shit shit shit; he stared at the screen, banging his desk in frustration. He really should have learnt his lesson at Christmas; he had sold 10,000 Australian shares that were dropping like so many stones before lunch on Christmas Eve, confident he could make a huge profit buying them back that afternoon, and then when he’d got back, two bottles of champagne down, you couldn’t get a line to Australia for a million pounds. Everyone was phoning their gran, their mum, their auntie to say Happy Christmas. The Stock Exchange closed before he got through. In the end he gave up and when he went back after the holiday, the shares had gone right up. He had cost Mortons quite a lot of money that holiday; Jake Joseph had laughed and said it was the sign of a good trader that he could cut his losses and just concentrate on the next trade. ‘You’ll have to make it up again over the next few weeks though, my son. Otherwise Daddy-o will not be pleased.’

Max had made it up again in ten days. He was very good at his job. ‘Max! Call on one!’

‘OK.’ He picked up the phone, still staring at the screen. ‘Max Hadleigh.’

‘Hi, Max Hadleigh. It’s Charlotte Welles here.’

‘Charlotte, where are you? I can’t talk to you now, I’m in the middle of a trade.’

‘I’m in New York, and stop showing off.’