Wicked Pleasures (45 page)

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, no doubt. Quite soon.’

He sensed a tension and changed the subject.

‘What bank does your father own?’

‘It’s called Praegers. It’s an investment bank. It doesn’t have an office over here, so you won’t have heard of it.’

‘No. No, I haven’t. He must be a very powerful man, your father.’

‘Yes, he is. Too powerful for his own good.’ She turned and smiled at him suddenly, and said, ‘We’re giving a ball at Christmas. Why don’t you come?’

‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

Looking back on that moment, remembering her standing there in the reeds, her dark hair wild with the damp air, her pale face at once thoughtful and pleased at his reply, he knew that was the moment it really began.

The ball was held on the Saturday before Christmas; Hartest was in festive mood. There was a most thoughtfully provided full moon, flooding the
parkland silver, the trees lining the Great Drive were all studded with fairy lights and in the centre of the Rotunda stood a vast Christmas tree, twenty feet tall, dressed in turquoise and silver. There was a dinner for two hundred chosen guests before dinner and three hundred more arrived at ten; Virginia and Alexander stood on the front steps receiving them. Charles, who was in the second contingent, thought he had never seen a woman look more classically resplendent as she did, standing there in a black velvet dress with a great sweeping train, and with a drop pearl tiara in her hair. She wore no other jewellery apart from a pearl bracelet; her face, pale and beautiful in the moonlight, with its great tawny eyes, looked exotic, strange, almost unreal.

Alexander in white tie and tails, handsome, charming, laughing, stood by her, showing them both off, his two loves, his wife and his house; Charles was struck by his patent childlike pleasure.

He shook Charles by the hand, said, ‘Charles! How nice. How is the thesis?’ and then turned to the people behind him; Virginia took his hand in both hers and said, ‘It was lovely of you to come. I do hope you can find a friend. If not, come and find me.’

He had been asked to bring a partner, but hadn’t wanted to; he was too intrigued by the whole event to be hampered by some half-known girl. He wanted to be free, to explore, both the party and his hostess’s motives in asking him; he was happy to be alone, he said, when he wrote to accept, he had no particular partner to bring and if that would not foul up numbers too much, then he preferred not to. It was a very grand occasion; there were two discotheques, a live band and a jazz band, there was dancing in the ballroom and in the Rotunda and a cabaret at midnight, supplied by a young man who sang charmingly, and then suddenly switched to brilliant impersonations by request; Charles, intrigued, asked him to do the Queen Mother, and there she stood, quite unmistakable, plump, gracious, smiling, waving, asking banal questions, dressed in a dinner jacket, and looking more herself than in her Hartnell gowns.

At the end, Father Christmas suddenly appeared with a sackful of presents; one for everyone. The men got silk handkerchiefs, the women slim, gilt-edged leather-bound diaries. ‘And what a status symbol they will be,’ Charles heard one girl murmur to another. ‘People will be very sure to let everyone know where they got them, won’t they?’

As Father Christmas disappeared, the jazz band started; the younger guests began to dance. Charles, who had been quite happy until then, felt suddenly a little bereft; he found himself a glass of champagne and went in search (rather hopelessly) of Virginia.

In the event he found her quite easily, sitting on the stairs with a crowd of people; she saw him and stood up, holding out her hand.

‘Charles! How nice. Have you come to ask me to dance? I was hoping you would.’

‘Yes, I have,’ he said, and she led him onto the floor.

She was a superb dancer; she made him feel helpless and hopeless.

‘You’re wonderful,’ he said, standing still, watching her, laughing, ‘you should be on the stage.’

‘Well, I did think of it. But my mother said it was common. I dance with my dad. I taught him to dance, actually. We do a number together. Song and dance.’

‘I’d love to see you.’

‘You wouldn’t. It’s really flash and showy. It would never happen here. It’s very New York.’ The music changed, grew slow; she relaxed against him suddenly, he could feel the length of her body, warm, friendly. She put her arms round his neck, looked into his eyes, and smiled.

‘You have such a nice face, Charles St Mullin. Not exactly handsome –’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t be uppity. I was going to say, but very very sexy. There’s something about that Irish colouring, the blue eyes and the dark hair, that – oh, I like it very much.’

She was quite drunk; she had had a lot of champagne.

‘Yours is quite sexy too,’ he said suddenly, risking it, risking a rebuff.

‘Thank you. Thank you very much. Do you think the rest of me is sexy?’

‘Oh no,’ he said gravely. ‘Dead dull.’

She laughed, and dropped her head onto his shoulder. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m very forward.’

‘Well I do, rather,’ he said. He had meant it as a joke, but he realized, appalled, that she had taken it seriously; she drew back as if he had hit her, looked at him and then turned and fled along the corridor, disappearing into one of the rooms.

Charles followed her, trying all the doors; most of them were locked, and the ones that weren’t seemed to be cupboards; but right at the end was a small sitting room; he thought at first she wasn’t there, but then he saw her, hunched into a chair, by the window, looking out onto the parkland. She heard him come in. ‘Please go away,’ she said, without even turning round.

‘Virginia, you’re crazy. Of course I was joking. Of course I didn’t mean it. It’s – well, it’s –’

‘It’s what?’ she said.

‘It’s just that the biggest division the Atlantic makes between your country and mine is in our senses of humour. Your lot isn’t very good at the flippant remark. You take them too seriously. I should have known. I’m sorry. Of course I don’t think you’re forward, I think you’re beautiful and very sexy. And charming. Please don’t be upset.’

She turned to him then, and he could see, in the moonlight, that she had been crying; great tears still rolled down her face. He was puzzled.

‘Virginia, don’t cry. Please. I meant nothing. Really. You have no reason to be upset.’

‘Oh, but I do,’ she said, and there was a great shuddering sigh, right through her body. ‘I have every reason. But none of them to do with you. I’m sorry. I’m a fool.’

‘You’re not,’ he said, and went and knelt by the chair, taking her hand. ‘You’re not a fool. Foolish, perhaps, but not a fool.’ He reached out and touched her face, brushing the tears away with his fingers; suddenly she took
his hand, and kissed the fingertips. ‘Salty,’ she said. ‘It’s always surprising, isn’t it, that tears are salty.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I suppose it is,’ and then he leant forward and kissed her very gently, on her wet cheeks, and said, ‘I’m so sorry, so very sorry I upset you.’

‘Do you think,’ she said idly, looking down, fiddling with her dress, her lovely head drooping suddenly, ‘do you think we could have lunch one day? In London? I would so like that.’

‘I would like it too,’ he said, ‘I’ll ring you, straight after Christmas, if I may.’

He left soon after that; and all the way back to London, driving his battered, noisy Mini, he wondered why women with everything, and moreover with everything to lose, newly married to one of the wealthiest, most famously charming men in England, should be instigating an affair with a penniless barrister.

They had lunch twice before he took her to bed, in his small flat in Fulham; two lunches, exquisitely arousing affairs, where she sat and looked at him, and listened to him, and talked most politely, of legal matters and his career and his childhood and her own, and the shared interest they discovered in Impressionist paintings, and the comparable delights of Ireland and England and America, and all the while gazing into his eyes with an expression in her own that told of an acute physical hunger.

Charles knew what she wanted, and he wanted it too; it would have been a man of some madness, he said to himself, who would not. But he was terribly afraid. He was afraid of appearing foolish and presumptuous (even while his every instinct told him he was neither); of rebuff (although the same instincts told him that was unlikely too); of having to take her in all her exquisite, expensive beauty to his shabby flat, with the creaky bed and the worn, darned sheets, presented to him by his mother when he moved to London; of the wrath that might be visited upon him, and the retribution extracted from him by the Earl of Caterham, should he come to hear of the turn events had taken; and most of all, perhaps, of not performing in bed as well as the Countess must surely be expecting. Charles had been to bed with a few girls, and indeed considered himself a modestly good performer, but the girls had either been young and naïve, or prostitutes; none of them with remotely the kind of experience that a married woman, who before she had been a married woman had been an American heiress of clearly considerable sophistication, would be bringing to his bed. And yet, and yet, clearly he was what the Countess wanted; and she was equally clearly what he wanted; and so it was, at the end of the second lunch, as she sat, gently massaging his palm with her thumb, snaking one of her long legs around his under the table, her tawny eyes molten with tenderness, that he said, ‘Would you – would you care to progress this thing a little further?’

And yes, she said, yes, she would care very much for that, to progress it as far and as fast as he saw fit; and he said that he had a flat in Fulham, which she was very welcome to visit should she so wish, perhaps one day next week, he
really had to be getting back to chambers now, and she had laughed and said she found it a little hurtful that he so clearly preferred Lionel Craig to her, but that next week would do very nicely.

And a week later, the day carefully chosen to fit in with Lionel Craig’s weekly round of golf, he opened the door of his flat in Parsons Green and showed her in, and she looked round, smiling with pleasure, and said, ‘Let’s go straight into the bedroom, shall we, we don’t want to waste any more time.’

She was determined, efficient, almost detached, undressing straight away, without bashfulness or self-consciousness even. He lay on the bed and watched her: predictably perfect she was, with her long slender body, her surprisingly full breasts, with large, dark nipples, her endlessly good American legs, and then she lay down and said, ‘Now I shall watch you, if I may.’ He had felt foolish then, and turned his back, tearing his clothes off quickly, tumbling into the bed beside her; but she had turned to him with an expression of such tenderness, such pleasure that he felt a surge of confidence and happiness, and took her in his arms and smiled and said, ‘I am not the most experienced man in the world, your ladyship. But I am proud to be of service to you.’

‘I am not very experienced either,’ she said, and began to kiss him; tenderly, searchingly at first, then more greedily. Charles felt his mood change, lift, into absolute certainty of what he was doing; he turned her on her back, looked down into her tawny eyes, and then bent and began to kiss her breasts, slowly, thoughtfully. She lay, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, thrusting her body slowly, gently against him; she did not caress him, did not touch him even, simply followed where he led, carefully, almost dutifully.

But she was eager, desperate for him by the time he entered her, wet, tender, yielding; he sank into her, joyfully, thankfully almost, feeling her tight, taut pleasure, following it with his own. And then it changed for both of them, grew urgent, frantic, fast; he forgot everything, forgot caring for her, forgot pleasing her even, simply tumbled into the quagmire of his own pleasure, thrusting, pushing, drowning in her hot deep places; and then as suddenly it was over, and he came, in a great shuddering, rushing moment, and he cried out and then lay on her, very still, immediately ashamed, shocked, that he had not cared for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘so sorry. I should have waited. But you were so lovely.’

‘It was all right,’ she said, ‘it was fine. It was lovely. Next time, it will be perfect. But this time was good. Don’t be upset, don’t worry, I’m all right, just lie, be still, don’t leave me, don’t, don’t leave me.’

He lay, quite still, waiting while she quietened; then he drew away from her gently and looked at her.

‘Are you really all right?’

‘Yes I’m really all right.’

‘I should have – well, I should have asked you before about –’ His voice trailed off in confusion.

‘Contraception?’ she said, smiling. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m a good American girl, I’m on the pill.’

‘That’s very avant-garde of you,’ said Charles. ‘Hardly anyone here takes it.’

‘I know. We’re an avant-garde nation. It makes such good sense.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He was silent. Then he smiled at her and traced the outline of her breasts with his finger. ‘You are quite amazing, you know. Amazingly beautiful. Amazingly nice. I can’t think what you’re doing here with me.’

‘Having some amazingly nice sex,’ she said simply.

He often tried, after that, to question her about her marriage. He was puzzled by her unfaithfulness. She didn’t seem like a cheat. She didn’t even seem particularly voracious. She was modestly sensual, and after the first time she always climaxed, sometimes more than once, but she was certainly not inventive in bed, she showed none of the outrageous hungers that he might have supposed her to possess, such as would lead her from her marriage bed and into an adulterous one. She simply liked, she said, being with him, knowing him in the biblical sense, and that was as far as it went. She refused to discuss her marriage, or Alexander, refused to reveal whether she was unhappy, refused to discuss her past.

When he broached the subject of what might happen if Alexander found out, she said, ‘He won’t. I promise you he won’t.’

‘But what does he think you’re doing, up here in London, week after week?’