Wicked Pleasures (85 page)

Baby was in a furious temper, frightened by the incident with his leg, badly hungover, miserable at the prospect of several more days in the country with no access to medical advice. She had called Dr Curtis who had been good-natured at being disturbed over the holiday, and he had told her there was no need to worry particularly, that it was probably a freak thing, and that he would see Baby as soon as they were back in London. Baby told her to ask him if he would see him that day, if he travelled up, and to her intense relief Dr Curtis told her he wouldn’t, which made Baby crosser than ever. She had left him inquiring of anyone who cared to listen what he was paying the fucking doctors for; as she thankfully shut the front door she heard Mrs Wicks telling him he should watch his language, there were children in the house. God, she thought, casting her mind longingly back to her life in St John’s Wood before the twins had been born, how did anyone survive family life?

She drove much too fast over to Hartest; she always found speed a sexual release. It was slightly foggy and very icy, but she didn’t care; she was so upset she felt a car crash would be almost welcome.

Alexander was alone, reading in the library when she arrived; Max and Charlotte had both gone over to visit Gemma and her parents, the Mortons.
He got up to greet her and took her hand, bent to kiss her. In her overcharged state even that served to increase her physical misery. She wondered how Alexander had stood his enforced celibacy since Virginia died; or maybe he hadn’t stood it at all, maybe he had had a girlfriend or two. If he had, it had been very discreetly managed. Or maybe he wasn’t very strongly sexed, or maybe when you were older you didn’t mind so much. Then she realized Alexander was very white and he looked shaken.

‘What is it, Alexander, what’s the matter?’

‘Oh – I just had an upset with Georgina. She’s gone off with Kendrick. For the day, she said. Then they just drove away. Didn’t say so much as goodbye. I have to tell you, Angie, I’m very angry. With both of them.’

‘Whatever about?’ said Angie. She was so shocked she forgot the purpose of her visit to Hartest had been to collect them. ‘The upset, I mean. You and Georgina are such good friends.’

‘I know that. Oh, you don’t want to hear. It’s so annoying for you, too, when you’ve come all this way to collect them.’ He tried to smile at her.

‘It doesn’t matter. I can wait. She’s not –’an awful thought struck her –‘she’s not pregnant, is she?’

‘No,’ he said grimly. ‘Not this time.’

‘What do you mean? Is she in the habit of being pregnant?’

‘Well – she was expelled from her school for – for being in bed with some boy. And then it emerged, yes, that she was pregnant. She had to have an abortion. I wasn’t very good with her, I’m afraid. Virginia had only just died.’

‘I suppose,’ said Angie slightly drily, ‘that just might have had something to do with it. Her getting pregnant, I mean.’

‘What? Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said quickly.

‘So what’s the matter today then?’ she said, relieved that it couldn’t be anything too serious. ‘What’s the fuss about?’

‘Well – well yes, you do have to know. You’re involved. Or at any rate Baby is. She and Kendrick want to get married. Of course it’s absurd, out of the question. I told them so.’

‘She and Kendrick. But that’s great, Alexander. Why shouldn’t they? I can’t think of anything nicer, really.’

‘It’s quite impossible,’ he said heavily. ‘The whole thing has been an appalling shock.’

‘But why a shock? You must have realized they were having a relationship? This is just a very nice logical development.’

‘Of course I didn’t realize they were having a relationship.’

‘Then,’ she said coolly, ‘you’re a fool. It’s been going on for months and months.’

‘I think,’ he said, looking at her with great distaste, ‘if you’ve known that you might have had the courtesy to inform me.’

‘I think if you needed informing, you’re a very blind man. What on earth did you think was going on? They’re always together. Did you really not think they were sleeping together?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘of course I didn’t.’

‘Well what
did
you think was going on?’

‘I thought they were – well, just very good friends. They’ve grown up together, they’re more like brother and sister. I could see they were fond of each other, of course. But I had no idea they – God, it’s frightful. I would have stopped it had I realized.’

‘Alexander, this is something out of the dark ages,’ said Angie. She was beginning to feel slightly bewildered. ‘Why should you have stopped it?’

‘Because I don’t like it,’ he said shortly, and his face was very dark now, very heavy. ‘I just don’t like it.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake. And anyway, you can’t stop her, she’s over eighteen. As a matter of fact I encouraged Kendrick to ask you if they could get engaged.’

‘You?’ he said and his face was heavy with distaste. ‘You did that?’

‘Yes I did. I thought it would be the correct and – and courteous thing to do.’

‘You have nothing to do with any of this,’ he said and his expression was so close to hatred she was quite shocked. ‘Nothing. And of course I can stop it. Georgina is still heavily financially dependent on me.’

‘Kendrick isn’t exactly poverty stricken,’ said Angie. ‘And how dare you say I have nothing to do with this? I am very close to Kendrick. I just don’t get it, Alexander, I don’t see why you are so opposed to it.’

For the first time since she had known him he looked really angry. His whole body had tautened, his face had entirely lost its gentle, rather vague expression. He looked at her with an intense hostility in his dark blue eyes.

‘You wouldn’t get it, as you put it. Of course you wouldn’t. It’s far too involved and too subtle a problem for you. I told you I didn’t want to discuss it with you. I knew there was no point in it. I think, Angie, you’d better go.’

Angie looked at him in genuine fascination. This was a man she had never seen before. She felt her own heart begin to thud rather pleasurably.

‘I have no intention of going,’ she said calmly. ‘I’m sorry you’re so upset, but I feel, apart from anything else, I have to defend Kendrick’s interest. He’s my – well, almost – my stepson, and he’s extremely nice. Georgina would be very fortunate. Can you just give me one good reason why they shouldn’t get married?’

‘I have to say I find your attitude totally puzzling,’ said Alexander. ‘Apart from anything else, Angie, they’re cousins. Cousins can’t marry.’

‘Oh balls,’ said Angie. ‘Of course they can marry. It’s permitted in the Church of England. The vicar called the banns for some cousins only last Sunday. You’re talking crap, Alexander, high-handed, intolerant crap. I’m surprised at you.’

‘Please don’t talk to me like that,’ he said, and his voice was very icy.

‘I think it’s about time somebody did talk to you like that,’ said Angie coolly. ‘I thought you were a nice, liberal, loving father, and I find you’re just a plain old dyed-in-the-wool tyrant after all. A hidebound, prejudiced, overbearing tyrant. I’ll tell you what I think, Lord Caterham –’ some instinct was warning her now, to hold back, telling her she was on dangerous, deadly ground, but she was too angry, too excited to stop –‘I think you’re just jealous, jealous your favourite daughter is in love with someone else, jealous she’s close to someone, is having a sex life, jealous she wants to leave you…’

Alexander stood quite still, looking at her; he was ashen, his eyes blazing. He took a step towards her suddenly, and Angie felt an abrupt chill, not of fear exactly, but of dread.

‘How dare you,’ he said, very quietly, ‘how dare you, how dare you say such things. Take them back, take them back at once.’

‘I dare because they’re true.’

‘They are not true.’

‘Of course they are true. Look at yourself, Alexander, look at the situation, go on, force yourself, just for once take it head on.’ She was dimly conscious of talking of other things now, of pushing the frontiers of what she dared to make him confront. ‘Stop running away, please, Alexander. Please.’

‘You bitch,’ he said quietly, and she felt a great rush of emotion reaching out from him towards her, and then quite suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her furiously, hard, on the mouth. It was a very sensuous practised kiss; she felt his lips, hot, oddly yielding, his tongue seeking hers out, one of his hands tangling in her hair, then moving gently, agonizingly tender, on her neck. A snake of fire shot through Angie; she clung to him, whispering, almost gasping his name, her body straining frantically, desperately at his, feeling the great white heat of her desire obliterating everything except what she wanted, what she had to have.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘please, Alexander, now, please.’

And he suddenly looked down at her, seemed to realize properly who she was, what he was doing, and his face was quite different again, dead, distant, and he put her away from him and said, ‘No, no, Angie, we can’t, we can’t,’ and ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we can, come on, let’s go somewhere now, please, I have to have you, I do, I do.’ She was flushed, there were tears in her eyes, her fists clenched, and he turned from her and almost ran out of the room, and she followed him, through the Rotunda, down the corridor, into the gun room; she heard the door slam, and she pulled it open and went in after him.

He was standing by the window, his back to her. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, please leave me alone.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, ‘not now, I can’t,’ and she went towards him, turned him round, put her arms up round his neck, pulled his face down towards her, her eyes huge, dark with hunger.

‘I want you,’ she said. ‘Please, Alexander, please, I want you so much, I’m so lonely, so unhappy, it won’t hurt Baby, he’ll never never know.’

And he looked down at her, and said, ‘No, Angie, no, I’m sorry, I’m terribly terribly sorry,’ and she looked back at him, half puzzled, half afraid, and said, ‘Why, Alexander, what is it, I don’t understand?’ and he said, finally, his face infinitely wretched, ‘I have to tell you now, at last. I’m impotent.’

Virginia, 1960

She looked at him, half puzzled, half afraid; and he said, his face infinitely wretched, ‘I have to tell you now, at last. I’m impotent.’

The room shook, shuddered around Virginia; she stared at him, and then shrank back onto the pillows, her body withdrawing from him as swiftly, as fearfully as her mind.

‘I – I don’t understand.’

‘I’m impotent,’ he said again.

She sat up, reached for her glass of champagne. She drained it, feeling the alcohol hit her bloodstream, reassuring, comforting. The room steadied, the nightmare receded briefly. She held out her glass. ‘May I have some more?’

‘Of course.’ He filled it for her, then his own. He pulled on his robe; she never saw him naked again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘So very very sorry.’

Virginia shivered. Her body, which had been so warm, so hungry a few moments earlier, felt chill and oddly withered.

‘You’re cold,’ he said, ‘here, put your robe on.’

‘Thank you.’ She put it round her shoulders, pulled the covers of the bed up. Her teeth were chattering slightly.

‘Oh darling. Darling –’ He moved towards her; she pulled away.

‘Don’t. Don’t touch me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

There was a long silence. Then she said, ‘Would you open the shutters please?’

‘Of course.’

The warm, golden air filled the room; Virginia looked towards the window at the blue sky, the wheeling gulls. She closed her eyes, opened them again, as if willing the nightmare to recede. It didn’t. Alexander was sitting looking at her, his face concerned, gentle. She felt a panic threatening to overtake her, and fought it back. She met his eyes with great difficulty and said, ‘I think you had better explain.’

‘I’ll try.’ He shifted on the bed, reached for a strawberry, held out the dish to her. She shook her head, feeling sick that he could even think she might be able to swallow, to eat.

‘I don’t quite know how to begin,’ he said. ‘It’s so difficult.’

‘I would say,’ she said, ‘that it isn’t very easy for me.’

‘No. No of course not.’

‘Perhaps I should ask some questions.’

‘Very well.’

‘How long have you – have you known you were –’

‘Impotent? Oh, for a few years. Always, I suppose, in a way. At least, ever since I could have been expected to function normally.’

‘So – you’ve tried to have relationships?’

‘Oh yes. God, I’ve tried. Many times. But – well, I always failed. Always. Or at least where there was any affection, any regard.’

‘But Alexander, you –’

‘Yes?’

‘You have seemed to – want me. You’ve kissed me, held me, just now, you were – oh God.’ She threw her head back, fighting down the tears.

‘Of course I want you. I think you are the most beautiful, desirable woman I have ever known. I want you terribly. And I love you. It’s so very important that you understand that, Virginia. I love you very much.’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she said, and for the first time there was anger in her voice. ‘How can you talk of loving me? How could you do this to anyone you loved?’

‘I’ll try to explain. Somehow. But first you must try and believe that I do, I do love you. You are exactly the woman I want to spend my life with. You’re warm and tender, and clever and vulnerable. I fell in love with you immediately, that first day, over lunch. I wanted, from that day on, to marry you, to make you my wife.’

‘But –’

‘Virginia, you mustn’t fall into the trap of confusing impotence with a lack of desire. I feel great desire. My body feels it, even displays it – at times. But –’ He looked at her, and there were tears in his eyes; then he bent his head. ‘I looked at you, lying there, and I wanted you almost beyond endurance. I loved holding you, loving you. But I knew – well, I’m sorry. I can only keep saying that.’

‘Have you tried to get help?’

‘Oh, Virginia. Of course I have. I’ve seen doctors, psychiatrists, analysts, sex therapists. I’ve had electrotherapy, drug therapy, psychotherapy. Ever since I realized, the first time I tried to make love to a girl, I have tried to be cured.’