Wicked Pleasures (18 page)

‘They will all think you are brave and strong and they will be pleased to have you home,’ he said, kissing her gently. ‘Angie’s in there, she’s dying to see you, she needs your help and opinion on so many things. Lady Price Somebody or other is driving her mad. Come in, Virginia, don’t be frightened. And I’ll be with you.’

She tried to work, because she knew it would help, but it was very hard. She was emotionally and physically weak. She was aware of what a strain she was putting on Angie, even to insist on trying, but she couldn’t help it. In fact things were very bad; they had scarcely any clients left. Perversely she didn’t mind; she told Angie they could start again, that it would be fun.

It wasn’t much fun though; it took weeks to get even one client. Then she found it hard to concentrate, to care even, and lost her again. Which upset her horribly, sent her into paroxysms first of weeping, then of rage.

She was sitting at her desk, next morning, staring out of the window, wondering if life was ever going to be anything remotely the same again, when Angie came in. She looked tense, oddly defiant.

‘I have to talk to you,’ she said.

‘Yes? What about?’

‘I’ve decided to leave.’

Virginia stared at her, trying to make sense of what she had heard. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘It isn’t very difficult,’ said Angie, and there was a degree of impatience and something else – scorn? – in her voice that hurt Virginia almost more than anything else. ‘I’m leaving. I’m sorry, when you’re so down, but I am.’

‘Angie, you can’t,’ said Virginia, ‘I need you so much at the moment.’

‘Well I’m sorry,’ said Angie again, ‘but I really have tried very hard, Virginia, to be a support and everything. But it’s been – well, never mind what it’s been. The thing is, I want to move on. M. Wetherly has offered me a job in America. It’s a big opportunity, and I really want to go.’

‘But Angie –’Virginia stopped suddenly. There was no future in crying, or arguing. She could see very clearly, in Angie’s green, clear-sighted eyes, what she was actually saying. That she had had enough. More than enough. And hurt as she was, she did not feel she could entirely blame her.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘of course you must go. I can’t expect you to stay here looking after me for ever.’

‘No,’ said Angie. ‘I’m afraid you can’t.’

That stung badly; Virginia stared back at her, hoping the pain didn’t show.

‘Well,’ she said again, forcing herself to sound bright, ‘you’ll be able to meet Baby at last. I’ll tell him you’re coming, and that he must take care of you.’

‘Oh, I don’t need taking care of,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll be fine, just fine.’

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, and she was aware of the edge in her voice as she spoke, ‘yes, I think you probably will.’

Angie left for America a month later, flew into Kennedy at dusk on a cold, windy evening, and as she struggled wearily out of what seemed like hours in Immigration, her luggage on a trolley, thinking how foolish she had been not to wait until M. Wetherly had come back from a trip to the Bahamas before embarking on her new life, the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life stepped forward, smiling at her, taking her trolley. He was broadly built, and very tall, and dressed in an extremely well-cut grey suit with a cream button-down-collar shirt and a red tie. His teeth were almost unnaturally white and even, his skin almost too perfectly tanned, his eyes almost unbelievably blue, and as she stood there staring at him, literally weak at the knees, he said, ‘You
are
Angie, aren’t you? I’m Baby Praeger. Virgy told me to be sure to meet you, and I can tell you now I’ve seen you, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

Baby, 1967–8

‘Bloody Dempster,’ said Alexander, flinging the
Daily Mail
across the room. ‘Why can’t he leave us all alone? God knows the trouble this will cause.’

‘Because he’s paid not to leave us all alone,’ said Virginia, who was fond of Nigel Dempster and had benefited from time to time from publicity in his column. ‘Digging dirt is his job. He always says that if there’s no story he can’t write it. We should all keep our noses cleaner. And if you’re talking about your mother, I hope it makes her feel at least a little uncomfortable.’

‘It won’t,’ said Alexander shortly.

Nanny came in. ‘Your ladyship, the baby is crying,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ll want to feed him.’

‘I suppose I will, Nanny,’ said Virginia. ‘I’ll come up.’

‘You do realize that it’s a quarter past nine,’ said Nanny with a wealth of meaning in her voice.

‘Yes I do, Nanny. Thank you.’

‘I’ll get him up then,’ said Nanny with a heavy sigh. ‘I hope we won’t regret it later. As he’s a boy.’ She left the room, her back rigid with disapproval. Virginia winked at Alexander and stood up.

‘What on earth was that about?’ said Alexander.

‘Babies don’t get fed at a quarter past nine,’ said Virginia. ‘They get fed at ten. And two. And six. And ten again. The most dreadful things happen otherwise. Everybody knows that.’

‘I seem to remember Charlotte and Georgina being fed more or less when they wanted it.’

‘Yes they were. But as Nanny says, this baby is a boy. He has to be brought up properly right from the beginning. No newfangled demand feeding for him. He’s got to go to Eton, after all.’ She smiled at Alexander’s slightly bemused expression and went over and kissed him. ‘Don’t worry, darling. He’ll survive it.’

The baby was christened Maximilian Frederick Alexander six weeks later. He was a most engaging child, blond and blue-eyed like Alexander, and smiled squintily at anyone who came into his rather hazy orbit. He was a quiet and peaceful baby, needing a feed only every five hours; Nanny, who might have been expected to be pleased by this, said it was confusing and she never knew where she was, one night she had to get up at three to give him his bottle and the next night at four. When Max, as everyone called him, obliged her by sleeping right through the night from ten till seven in the morning when he was only six weeks old, she was very put out, and said she had always known that this kind of thing would lead to trouble later.

Sitting gazing out at the endless wastes of the Arctic below him, Baby, who as godfather had attended the christening, ordered a double bourbon. He always needed something strong before he faced the combination of Mary Rose and his father. They were a formidable team.

Initially he knew Fred III had not especially liked Mary Rose; what Baby had seen then as a tantalizing coolness, Fred had interpreted (correctly, Baby reflected gloomily, gulping gratefully at the bourbon) as coldness, distance, lack of any sense of fun. But as time went by, it became borne in upon Fred that Mary Rose was a brilliantly successful company wife. Fred lost no opportunity to point this out to Baby. Not only did she entertain tirelessly for the bank, she associated herself very publicly with causes and charities which would benefit it. And if there was one thing Fred cared about more than his wife and children it was Praegers. He had grown up watching his father managing the bank less than brilliantly, had heard tales from the older members of staff how near it had come to being entirely lost, and he had a morbid fear of this happening again, and of his own son being a less than perfect guardian for Praegers. Baby knew this; and he realized as the years went by that he was not the natural instinctive banker his father was. He lacked his flair, his vision, his sense of timing. The knowledge made him nervous; and so did Fred’s highly visible monitoring of his increasingly weak performance. And the further
realization that Fred and Mary Rose seemed to be joined in a critical conspiracy was undermining Baby’s confidence seriously. As the criticism mounted, he took refuge in other things, other pursuits, mainly that of fun. He sought out old friends from his bachelor days, spent weekends sailing with them, evenings playing poker, going to old haunts, getting drunk. And being who he was, high profile, word go around. And Fred had been very displeased and Mary Rose had been very displeased; and the two of them had formed an alliance which as far as Baby was concerned was painful.

But over the past few months he had been working very hard to redeem himself. Partly because he knew he had to if he was to take over Praegers before reaching his own retirement age, and partly for another reason altogether: a very different, happier, but equally powerful reason for becoming his own man, in command of his own destiny. He had shunned the poker games and the drinking clubs; had worked late and worked hard, had joined Mary Rose on her charity committees, had spent long hours discussing Praegers’ future and the way it should go with Fred.

And it was beginning to work; winning him back Fred’s respect, increasing his self-confidence, improving his own performance as a result. Nevertheless, he still frequently felt like a naughty child on probation; and after an absence, an escape from the surveillance, such as he had just enjoyed, going back oppressed him.

There was of course another, happier aspect to the situation …

That spring Fred III and Betsey suggested Virginia brought all the children to stay for the Easter vacation. Fred’s love affair with Charlotte had burgeoned during her long stay with her grandparents while Virginia had been ill; he had spoilt her outrageously, and had even taken the unprecedented move of taking an afternoon out from the bank (‘He certainly never did that for me,’ Betsey had remarked tartly) and escorted her to the theatre or the movies; they had seen
Mame
and
Cabaret
and the all-black version of
Hello Dolly
which was the great rage on Broadway, and he had taken her to Radio City which she adored, and the Beatles’ all-cartoon movie,
Yellow Submarine
. He also took her to Lord and Taylor’s and Saks and Bonwits and bought her stacks of clothes, anything she fancied; Betsey said, half amused, half shocked, that Charlotte was the only child she had ever actually known who had her own Chanel bag, and she had stopped Fred III from buying Charlotte a fur coat with great difficulty.

And then he had bought her a pony, to ride on Long Island; he was called Mr P., a rather round, steady little bay, who was kept at livery at Toppings Farm, where all the Hampton children rode. Charlotte had a natural seat and a lot of courage, and she and Fred rode together in the countryside, and on the South Shore; and he had taken her sailing with him, in his boat at Sag Harbor, and even begun to instruct her in golf, and had a set of tiny clubs made for her. He thought she was altogether quite wonderful, and the whole thing made Mary Rose very cross.

And now, Betsey had said on the phone to Virginia, he had got a new pony in mind for Charlotte, since she was growing out of Mr P., and besides she was just dying to get her hands on Max.

‘And you could have a holiday, Nanny darling,’ said Virginia, discussing the prospective visit with Nanny. ‘You look tired.’

‘I don’t know that I’d be able to relax,’ said Nanny darkly, ‘with Max over there. He might pick something up.’ She still viewed America as a dangerous subcontinent, on a par with the Australian outback or the African bush. ‘Nanny, Max will be fine. And his grandmother is so longing to get to know him.’

‘That’s another worry,’ said Nanny, ‘he’ll be picking up American ways.’

‘Well he is half American. And he’s a little young to be chewing gum or saying gee whizz.’

‘Well, he’s your child I suppose, madam,’ said Nanny, in tones that implied that Max was not really anything of the sort.
‘And you must decide.’

‘Yes, I think so. And I have actually decided that we shall go.’

‘And will his lordship be going?’

‘Well yes, I expect so. You know he doesn’t like me out of his sight.’

‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ said Nanny.

Virginia wasn’t quite sure what she was going to think about.

But his lordship didn’t go to New York. He walked into Virginia’s study that evening and said he was going to visit his mother for Easter instead. ‘She hasn’t been well. I’m worried about her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Virginia with difficulty. ‘What’s been wrong?’

‘Oh, just flu. But she’s getting on, you know.’

‘Alexander, she’s sixty-two. She’s a comparatively young woman.’

‘Well, she would appreciate a visit. So I’m going.’

‘Alexander, don’t you think – well, couldn’t I come with you? Heal this stupid rift? I’m ready to hold out the olive branch if she’ll take it.’

‘Virginia, we’ve had this discussion so many times. It isn’t a question of a rift, and I don’t think it’s a good idea.’