It had begun while he had been with Araminta, so demanding, so selfish (and so young, Camilla thought to herself sagely); just occasionally, but of course it was a cumulative thing, once the fear was there, the knowledge that it might happen, it happened again and again. Araminta had not been good about it, not reassuring at all, and then there had been the crisis with the company, the anxiety over the shares and a possible takeover bid; it had got worse.
‘Didn’t you take any advice, have any therapy?’ asked Camilla. ‘It’s so important, Julian, to get help immediately in these matters, not to try to handle it yourself, you can do untold damage, reinforce the problem . . .’
And yes he said, interrupting her, yes he had, as a matter of fact, and only Camilla would know how serious that meant the situation had been, regarding these things as he did with such deep distaste and distrust, he had seen a marvellous woman, and she had been very helpful, and he had begun to see an improvement, and then in the latest series of debacles, the failure of the pharmaceutical launch, Susan’s rejection of his proposal (he spared himself nothing in this story, Camilla noticed, not sure whether she was more gratified that he was so totally debasing himself or her, or outraged that he should have asked Susan to marry him), Eliza’s new and patent happiness with the monumentally rich and powerful Jamil Al-Shehra, Araminta’s departure from his life and his bed, it had begun again, it was a nightmare of despair and fear; he had become afraid even to try now, and somehow, he felt, indeed he knew, he said, that Camilla, with her great understanding of him, and her unique position in his life, and also her very careful and serious approach to sexual matters, was probably the only person in the world who could help.
He sat looking at her in silence then, so unnaturally and strangely anxious and diffident, after what she felt was probably the most, indeed the only, honest conversation he had ever had with her, and Camilla’s heart had turned over, and she had felt herself filled with a great warmth of tenderness towards him, and what she supposed was love, and she had smiled and leant forward and kissed him on the cheek, and said, her brown eyes even more than usually earnest, ‘Julian, I don’t know when I’ve felt happier or more honoured.’
She felt something else, as well, something that she had very rarely felt in her life, with Julian or indeed anyone: a sudden, lightning bolt of sexual desire.
Camilla knew a lot about impotence. She had studied it very carefully as a subject over the years, because everybody knew that powerful women were a threat to men, they emasculated them, and while power in a man was an aphrodisiac, in a woman it was the reverse. And being a powerful woman, she had always recognized it as a syndrome and a potential factor in her relationships, and something she should be prepared to have to face. She had not, however, ever expected to have to face it in connection with Julian Morell.
She knew a great many possible approaches, both psychological and physical; she knew it was the most difficult problem of all to handle, and quite extraordinarily delicate; and that quite possibly Julian would have to go into therapy whether she could personally help him or not. However, there was obviously no physical reason for it, the root cause was manifestly stess, caused by professional failure and reinforced by an unsympathetic response from his partners; there seemed some hope therefore, she felt, that she might be able to help to at least a limited degree.
That night, therefore, after a light dinner, accompanied by only a little alcohol (both at Camilla’s instigation), she joined him in the master bedroom, and attempted to put some of the theories into practice.
‘The most important thing is,’ she told him earnestly, as she drew the sheets over their naked forms, and pulled his head gently towards her lovely breasts, ‘that you shouldn’t even begin to think about having an erection. We should just enjoy the feel of our bodies being together and the sensations of closeness on every level, nothing else.’
For three nights she achieved nothing; Julian was increasingly tense and fearful, almost in tears. Camilla, moved by his swift descent from powerful arrogance to helpless humility, tried to remain calm, positive, soothing. They spent their days swimming, sunbathing, sailing; Julian, touched by her devotion and patience, told her repeatedly how much he needed her, wanted her, had missed her. Camilla was perfectly
happy. Then on the fourth night he had become angry as she lay beside him, trying to soothe his fears, comfort him out of his misery.
‘Christ, Camilla,’ he said suddenly, ‘just leave me alone, will you. This is a nightmare, I should never have asked you to come, I’m sorry.’ And he had turned away and shaken her arms off him; and a great white anger had come over Camilla, a sense of outrage that he should reject her, even while she understood the reason so well, and a hunger for him, and for sex, so violent she cried out with it; and he had turned again and looked at her with astonishment in his eyes and said, ‘Camilla, what is it, whatever is it?’
And she had said, driven out of her usual reserve, her careful, watchful self-restraint, ‘Christ, Julian, I want you, that’s what it is, for the first time in my life I really want you.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ he said. ‘We’ve been having sex for years, marvellous sex,’ and she had said no, no, they hadn’t, it had been marvellous for him, but not for her, she couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized, she had never had an orgasm, with him, or with anyone, all her life the whole thing had seemed pointless, futile.
‘Do you mean?’ he said, ‘that you’ve been faking all these years?’
‘Yes,’ said Camilla, almost screaming in her sudden sense of outrage, ‘yes, yes, yes. I have been faking, faking orgasms, faking desire. Just to satisfy your monster male ego.’
And he sat bolt upright and smiled at her, looking suddenly quite different, younger, more alive. ‘You bitch,’ he said, ‘you clever, devious bitch. I can’t believe it of you. I don’t believe it. Come here, Camilla, come here, lie down, here, please now, just forget all your theories and your therapies, and bloody well let me help you find out what sex is really all about.’
And Camilla, feeling him sinking into her strongly, insistently, reaching her, drawing her into a new wild confusion of liquid pleasure, thought confusedly that this was all wrong, that she should be helping him, healing him, and instead he was helping her, leading her into a new country of hot, soaring peaks and bright exploding waterfalls, and she was lost suddenly, she did not know who she was or what she was doing, and she was moving, following him, climbing him, falling on to
him, tearing at him with her hands, her mouth, pulling away from him, feeling him plunging deep deep into her again, talking to him feverishly, moaning, crying out, she could have gone on, she felt, for ever, pursuing this brilliance, this huge mounting shuddering delight, she was totally abandoned to him, and he to her. And when it was over, and they lay quietly apart, still trembling, stroking one another, Camilla wept very gently with pleasure and at long last release, and she looked at Julian, lying there with his eyes closed, an expression of great peace on his face, and saw that his cheeks too were wet with tears.
Julian came up to Cambridge and took Roz out to lunch to tell her that Camilla would be moving into the house in Hanover Terrace, and that from now on she should regard Camilla as at least her unofficial stepmother.
Cambridge life was suiting Roz; she looked relaxed, and somehow younger; she was dressed in the current craze of layers in a dark, floral print: a long smock over a long full skirt, with a matching turban over her dark hair, and platform-soled blue suede boots.
‘You look very nice,’ Julian added, as a rider to his speech about Camilla. ‘University life obviously suits you.’
‘Yes,’ she said briefly, ignoring the compliment. She looked at him stony-faced and said, ‘Why not official? Why don’t you marry her and be done with it?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I would quite like to marry her, as a matter of fact, but Camilla doesn’t want to marry me. Which puts me in my place, I suppose.’
‘Why not? Why doesn’t she want to marry you?’
‘Camilla values her independence. She is a liberated woman. Like yourself.’
‘I don’t call it very independent, moving into someone else’s house. Letting them keep you.’
‘Roz, I’m not going to keep her. She has her own business. She is a rich woman in her own right.’
‘Oh. So isn’t she going to come back to working for you?’
‘Unfortunately not. I wish she would, because she is extremely talented. I miss her input into the company. Her agency will, however, be working on some advertising for us.’
‘Oh. How old is Camilla?’
‘I’m not sure. Let me see, I suppose she must be thirty-six or thirty-seven. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘Roz.’
‘Yes?’
‘Roz, I do hope you and Camilla will learn to be better friends this time round. I’m so extremely fond of you both, it would be nice for me to see you getting on better.’
‘Daddy,’ said Roz, ‘you may be able to fix most things, but you don’t seem to understand that you can’t order people to like each other. I don’t want to be Camilla’s friend and I’m sure she doesn’t want to be mine.’
‘Roz,’ said Julian, and there was genuine anxiety in his eyes, ‘why do you dislike Camilla so much?’
‘I suppose,’ she said, watching him carefully, enjoying his insecurity, ‘because you’ve always spent a great deal more time and effort fussing over Camilla than you ever have over me.’
‘Roz, that’s not true.’
‘It’s perfectly true.’
‘Well,’ he said, at an attempt at lightheartedness, ‘let’s not argue about that. I’m sorry you don’t like Camilla, and that you’re so unhappy about it, but you have your own life now, so maybe I don’t have to worry about you and your unhappiness with things quite so much.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Roz, swallowing hard to prevent a rather insistent lump rising in her throat, looking at him with hard, blank eyes, ‘you worrying about me and my unhappiness very much when I didn’t have my own life.’
‘Now Roz, that isn’t fair.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. I have always put you first.’
‘Goodness. I didn’t realize.’
Julian kept his temper with a visible effort.
‘How’s life at Cambridge?’
‘It’s great, thank you.’
‘Good. Well, I shall need that brain of yours in the company. I’m glad it’s being so well trained.’
‘Daddy,’ said Roz. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you for months now. I really don’t have the slightest desire to work for you. I want to make my own way. Do things on my own terms.’
She didn’t mean a word of it, she had never wanted the security more, of knowing that he valued her, that the company would one day be hers. But it was worth the risk of losing it, just to see the fear and the hurt in his dark eyes.
London, 1979
ONE COLD WET
morning in November 1979 Julian Morell walked into his office, slammed the door and then immediately buzzed on the intercom for coffee. Sarah Brownsmith looked at the phone and sighed. This was obviously one of the days (increasingly frequent, she noticed) for keeping a very low profile indeed.
Julian was running on a fuse so short it ignited almost spontaneously. Everybody had remarked on it, so Sarah did not feel she had to blame herself. Freddy Branksome seldom passed her these days on his way through to Julian’s office without raising his eyes to heaven; Richard Brookes, the company lawyer, whose languid academic exterior concealed a mind that went to work with the speed of a black mamba, had taken to working at home every morning in an attempt to lessen Julian’s opportunities for summoning him. And David Sassoon, newly returned from New York, was threatening to go back again, or to leave Julian’s employ altogether despite having had both his department and salary doubled in size and possessing the quite exceptional company perk of a helicopter for his exclusive use.
Only Susan Johns seemed perfectly happy, running her side of the company with as much efficiency, skill and innovative thought as ever, and conducting her relationship with its chairman with her usual calm, irreverence and humour. There were rumours in the company of a relationship between Susan and Richard Brookes, and certainly they spent a great deal of time together, and appeared very fond of one another, but Susan was, as Paul Baud had remarked so long ago, a dark
mare, and thirty years of working with Julian Morell had taught her the very high value of discretion.
Julian Morell, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten its value altogether. There was a lot of ugly gossip about him and Camilla North, both in and out of the press. Camilla was spending at least two thirds of her time in New York, leaving her agency in London in the very capable hands of its managing director, a terrifyingly chic and competent New Yorker called Nancy Craig who at only twenty-nine seemed set to take on the entire advertising world – and anything else that happened to take her fancy into the bargain. There had been some interesting rumours about Julian Morell and Nancy Craig.
The last year had seen a considerable change in Julian. He was, Sarah Brownsmith supposed, struggling to find the right word, depressed. Not so much bad-tempered, although he frequently was that, not worried, just depressed. Even the considerable feat of re-acquiring the remaining forty per cent of his company had not cheered him up for long. And that wasn’t like him. Indeed it wasn’t like him to be anything but extremely cheerful. Difficult, quixotic, but not depressed.
At the end of the summer he had taken off with Camilla to his house on Eleuthera, and everyone had breathed a sigh of relief. But he returned sooner than expected, with a new business project (paper production) and without Camilla who did not reappear in London for another week.
Sarah reflected that his personal life at the moment must be the opposite of restful and happy . . . he was nearly sixty; he was unmarried; his brother, James had died a year earlier of a heart attack, which had clearly shaken Julian considerably, although they had not been close for years; his relationship with Camilla was volatile to put it mildly; and he had no real heir unless you counted that spoilt monster of a daughter.