Wicked Pleasures (51 page)

‘Well I could
ask
him,’ said the voice, making it very plain that it was an extremely foolish idea, ‘but you’d be better calling him. He’s
very
busy.’

‘Yes, but I do need to speak to him quite urgently,’ said Max. He was beginning to feel desperate.

‘Well I told you,’ said the voice, sounding more disdainful than ever, ‘you can call at nine.’

‘Will he definitely be there?’

‘Well obviously I can’t say
definitely
. He should be. I can’t do any more than that.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Max, slamming the phone down.

He went reluctantly to dinner with his cousins and Baby and Mary Rose; it was hard to imagine what he could have wanted to do less. In the event, it was fun. Baby was pathetically pleased to see him, and poured a great deal of very nice wine into him, Melissa was adoring, Kendrick was languidly funny, and Freddy was out. Max, who understood, rather better than Charlotte appeared to, Freddy’s hostility towards all of them these days, was sympathetic to his absence. He felt he would have done just the same. Mary Rose was tired and asked to be excused soon after dinner; the four of them played Liar Dice for a while, which Max won, and then, made reckless by the wine, he told them about his problems getting through to Dusty Winchester.

‘Whatever do you want to talk to that old tart about?’ said Baby.

‘Oh – Grandmama said he was a great friend of Mummy’s and he might be able to help me. I’m thinking of going into that field,’ said Max.

‘Really? You must be mad. Anyway, pull rank,’ said Baby. ‘He’ll be on the line before you can say viscount.’

Max didn’t like the old tart idea too much, indeed it haunted his dreams that night, but at nine o’clock sharp he took Baby’s advice.

‘Good morning,’ he said to the first reverent voice. ‘This is the Viscount Hadleigh calling. I’d like to speak to Mr Winchester urgently, please.’

Dusty Winchester was on the phone in seconds.

‘Max! It’s so good to meet you. Your mother talked about you so much. She was so proud of you. Come on in and sit down.’

Dusty Winchester came across his black and white Japanoiserie-styled office, holding out his hand to Max. He was tall, with dark, close-cropped hair and piercingly blue eyes. He was dressed entirely in white, white linen suit, white silk shirt, white leather shoes; only his tie, brilliant peacock blue, patterned abstractly in white, broke the monotony. Even his watch, diamond-studded by Cartier, had a white strap. Max smiled at him, charmed, while recognizing with an instinct finely honed in the bedrooms and studios of Eton that Dusty Winchester clearly did not have the right sexual inclinations to be father to anyone.

‘How do you do, Mr Winchester. It’s very good of you to see me, sir.’ Nothing sophisticated New Yorkers liked better than old-fashioned English manners.

‘Not at all, Max, not at all. Would you like coffee? Coke? I am having rosehip tea, would you like to try that? It’s very nice.’

‘Oh I’ll try that,’ said Max. ‘I like funny teas and things. My father has a whole armoury of them at home at Hartest.’

‘Oh, that house!’ said Dusty. ‘Such a lovely, lovely thing. Your mother was always promising to ask me over, and then cancelling me at the last minute. There was one ball I was actually going to attend, but then Suky, that’s my wife, wasn’t well at the last minute, so we couldn’t go.’

Max’s confidence about Dusty Winchester’s inclinations was only slightly shaken by the revelation about Suky; he made a note to ask Melissa if such things were common in New York. Melissa was a powerhouse of knowledge about social mores, far in advance of her years. He returned to the subject of Hartest.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is very beautiful. You really should come and see it. I know my father would be delighted to show it to you. He loves it more than anything in the world, you know. Far more than any of us.’

He expected the usual protestations, but they didn’t come.

‘Yes,’ said Dusty, and his voice was serious, even slightly sad, ‘yes, I know, that’s so.’

Max looked at him, startled; the angular face smiled quickly, carefully.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Max. Talking about your mother does make me sad. Terribly sad. I miss her. I miss her so much.’

‘Tell me about her,’ said Max. ‘I mean, tell me what she was like as a friend. You see –’he had his speech word-perfect now, it did seem to go down awfully
well –‘I was so young when she died, still a little boy, and I’m trying to bring her alive as she might have been if I’d grown up, been a little older.’

‘Well, that’s very charming. Very charming.’ Dusty Winchester smiled and picked up the large black mirror that served as tea tray in his office. ‘Max, why don’t we go and sit on the balcony? It’s a lovely day, and the view of the park is just gorgeous.’

There were black canvas chairs on the balcony; he motioned Max towards one and climbed himself into a black hammock, strung between two chrome poles. He swung there gently, sipping his tea and gazing out over Central Park. Then he looked at Max.

‘I really loved your mother,’ he said quietly. ‘Very very much. We were so close. She was such fun, Max, so brilliant and so warm.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Max, ‘I do remember that.’ In fact, Dusty’s remarks puzzled him; the mother he remembered had been cool, almost distant. Warmth had been Alexander’s domain.

‘And she was such a good friend. So thoughtful. We were so close, she and I. So very close. I have to tell you,’ he added, smiling conspiratorially at Max, ‘that Suky was a little jealous of your mother. I had to be careful, after my marriage, not to be quite so overt in my friendship with her. Which was difficult. I came to rely on her greatly. There was nothing we didn’t talk about. Absolutely nothing.’

Max sat looking at him politely. This was a lot more interesting than Betsey’s reminiscences.

‘Your mother was a lovely lady. Beautiful. And such fun. Oh we had such fun together. We both adored going to Radio City, and we used to sneak off there sometimes together. And we went to dance classes, tap dance classes together, that was tremendous. She was very much better than I was, of course, she had such a talent for it, I often said to her that if she hadn’t married your father, become the Countess, she could have earned her living as a dancer.’

‘But then,’ said Max, smiling, leaning back, crossing his long legs, aware of Dusty’s eyes, lingering, however briefly, on his crotch, ‘then she wouldn’t have had me. Or the others. And been the Countess. She liked being a countess, you know. Everyone said so.’

‘Indeed she did. And it became her. She was very aristocratic. Everyone said she was more English than the English in the end.’

‘Really? Where did they say that?’

‘Oh, everywhere,’ said Dusty vaguely. ‘And yes, she did like it. But – well, it wasn’t entirely easy for her.’

‘Really?’ said Max. The guy was obviously more loony than he’d thought. ‘In what way? It seemed pretty nice to me. Having Hartest, and the title, and everything.’

‘Yes of course,’ said Dusty. He seemed to consciously pull himself together again. ‘But I always felt there was such a lot of sadness in her. She would never talk about herself very much. She was very – brave.’

He looked up irritably as the secretary, a surprisingly large, flashy creature with an immense bosom, came out to the balcony. ‘Yes, Irene dear, what is it?’

‘Dusty, Mrs Gershman is here. I don’t think we should keep her waiting.’

‘Can’t Noel see her?’

‘She won’t see him. She says only you will do.’

‘Oh. Oh well.’ He sighed. ‘Max, forgive me. I’m very busy as you can see. If you want to talk some more, we could have dinner next week some time. How would that be?’

‘I won’t be here,’ said Max, ‘I have to go back to England. But maybe later in the year.’

‘That would be very nice.’

‘Er – Mr Winchester?’

‘Yes, Max.’

‘Is there anyone else you think might be able to talk to me about her? Bring her alive?’

‘Why not talk to Michael Halston? He was a good friend, too, and he knows just about everybody anybody ever knew. He was the gossip writer on the New York
Mail
, you know. He isn’t there any longer, he’s gone out to live in the depths of Maine, but he’d love to talk to you, I’m sure.’

‘Do you have a number for him?’

‘Yes I do. Let me see now, here we are, Freeport 71234. Call him. And be sure to tell him Dusty says hallo.’

‘OK, so what’s this really all about?’ Michael Halston looked at Max, a sharp amusement in his dark brown eyes.

‘I told you,’ said Max.

‘Yes, I know what you told me, and it’s the biggest load of hogwash I ever heard. You’re playing for much higher stakes than trying to establish who your mother’s friends were, and how they passed the time between breakfast and dinner. What do you want to know, Max, and why? If you tell me, I’ll try and help you. If not, you can get right back on the train to New York City. I’m a busy man, and I don’t like people trying to make a monkey out of me.’

‘Well I –’ Max looked at him thoughtfully. He quite liked Halston. He was tough, and he was shrewd, but he was straightforward. He wondered if he could trust him enough to tell him the whole story. Probably not. The man was a journalist. He might splash it all over the New York
Mail
or his new novel. He sighed.

‘It’s very difficult,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Halston smiled. ‘When you sighed then, and looked kind of baffled, you reminded me absolutely of your mother.’

Max started to smile back, and then to his absolute horror, felt his eyes fill with tears. Suddenly, sharply, he remembered his mother: and sitting there, in front of this stranger, he couldn’t crush the memories any more the way he had been doing, they rushed in on him, like a physical force, he remembered her vividly, and he remembered her clearly all of a sudden, and truthfully; she ceased in that moment, for that moment, to be a hostile monster and became herself again, the way she had really looked and sounded, the way she had smiled at him when he was telling her something, stopped whatever she was
doing and given him her full attention. The way she indicated the chair next to her at the table when Alexander was out and said, ‘Be my dinner date tonight, Max,’ and poured him a glass of watered-down wine even when he was quite little, and asked him if it was a good one. The way she always laughed at his stupid, puerile jokes, and the way she was never shocked at his bad reports, but would smile at him gently behind Alexander’s back while he droned on and on about wasting his opportunities and his talents; the way she brought him clothes from London and New York and would always always know what he’d really like and what would suit him; the way she enjoyed the music he enjoyed, and never complained it was a dreadful noise, the way most mothers did.

They way she liked to tie his stock before he went hunting, and would pat his bottom and kiss him and say ‘Don’t ride too dangerously, Max’ as he ran out to the stables; the way she sided with him, most unfairly, against the girls when they were all fighting, because she said he was outnumbered.

And the way he had been so proud of her, longing for her to come to school to pick him up because she was so much more beautiful, so much better dressed than all the other mothers; the way she drove her car, just a bit too fast, when they were alone together, the music playing terribly loud: ‘I don’t do this with anyone else, Max,’ she would say, ‘this is our fun, our secret.’

And he wondered if she had been driving too fast, playing the music terribly loudly the night she had died, and he remembered that the very last thing he had said to her was ‘I might’ when she had told him on the phone to be sure to let her know the very first exeat she could come and see him, because he had been so upset that she wouldn’t come home to take him back to school.

And he remembered the dreadful, awful sound of the first clods of earth dropping on the coffin, from his father’s hand, and the sensation he had experienced of being physically torn and twisted somewhere in the depths of his body, as he had watched it going into the ground, and he looked at Michael Halston and the great tears filled his eyes and spilled over, splashing down into the glass of beer he held in his hand.

‘Hey,’ said Michael Halston, ‘hey, what did I say?’

‘Nothing,’ said Max. His lips were quivering and his voice sounded strangled and odd; he felt utterly humiliated. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Max,’ said Michael Halston. ‘Don’t apologize. I understand. I think. You’ve lost your mother. And you were right, you weren’t very old. You must miss her like hell. And I brought her back for you rather painfully. I like it that you’re sad. That you’re crying. I like it much better than all that schmaltzy claptrap you were feeding me before.’

Max smiled at him rather shakily. ‘Thank you. Yes, you’re right. You did bring her back.’ He got a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. ‘That’s better.’

‘Finish your beer. Have another. Why don’t we walk round the garden? I have some new neighbours, arrived just today.’

He led Max towards a wide stream that ran through the middle of his large lush garden; sitting on it, resplendently stupid, were a large Canadian goose and her five goslings.

‘Aren’t they great? I hope they stay. I had some ducklings earlier, but they left me.’

‘Yes, they’re very nice.’ Max looked at him doubtfully. Halston was the epitome of smart town mouse doing some country visiting, with his close-cropped grey hair, his beige linen suit, his Piaget bracelet watch. ‘I – wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in birds.’

‘Max, after a life spent studying people’s foolishness, greed and adultery in the fleshpots of the world’s fleshiest city, I find birds ineffably charming.’

‘It’s a nice house,’ said Max, looking back at the low white clapboard building, with its high, dormered roofs and great windows, open on four sides to the lush Maine countryside, ‘I really like it.’

‘Thank you. I do too. My ex-wife likes it so much she’s considering coming back to live with me. I’m considering letting her. Come on, let’s go and have some more beer, and you can tell me what’s bothering you. Or not, as the case might be.