Those Wicked Pleasures (36 page)

As for Lara, she had not planned it. She simply made her decision and felt she could confront the consequences. Only at the deepest, most subconscious levels would she have known that what she had done in that boardroom that morning would one day make her the matriarch of the family, the mistress of Cannonberry Chase.

But that was far ahead. For the present, she remained content with her life, her children, family and friends, still living in much the manner she always had. Periods of much savoured solitude interspersed a highly charged social life. She no longer felt the deep loss she had experienced over her two failed marriages, her two loves that had gone awry. But the experiences had had their effect on her. And there was, too, something gained from such catastrophic losses. The richness of having known love – that she would never lose. Loss and gain complemented each other, were essential to each other. They became what sustained her, and what expelled all bitterness from her heart, while she waited for love to come to her again.

What sense did it make – in the darkness of her room, alone, yet fulfilled by a rich and exciting life – to fantasise about a great love, something unique that probably didn’t exist? And yet one thing was certain: no matter what, Lara knew that dream would go to the grave with her.

Only one thing frightened her. Romantic love might never come her way again. It wasn’t just that romantic love offered the excitement of the moment, she relished the dramatic changes it brought with it. Romantic love, arch-agent of change, had visited her often enough for her to know she still needed it. Though she was content to live with the changes that it had brought in the past, she looked forward to making new ones. She still suffered that same
deep loneliness that had pursued her all of her life. She missed excessive sexual love, passionate love, being the first for someone else.

But here was a wiser Lara, who understood her longings and had learned to live with them. A calmer Lara, who could accept that love comes when it chooses.

His name was Evan Harper Valentine. But she didn’t know that when she met him in the Egyptian Gallery at the Metropolitan.

Theirs was to be one of those relationships that evolves out of a series of chance meetings, where a love develops that was neither looked for nor expected. The kind of
grand amour
that only real fate has a hand in.

Teasingly, fate chose a snowy January afternoon. No one but the staff was in residence in the Manhattan town house. Henry was in Paris, Emily and most of the family were in the Palm Beach house. Bonnie was with Sam, and Karim was with Jamal. Julia had flown to Gstaad two days before, where Lara was to join her in a week’s time for some off-piste skiing. Lara had been looking forward to this prior patch of solitude away from everyone and all the things that kept her so involved.

The snow had been coming down more than heavily. The winds and the cold approximated to blizzard conditions. Crackling fires blazed in the library and the livingroom. Lara had a tray brought to her. She lunched in front of the fire and watched the garden turn a silent white beyond the vast Oriel window. After she had put her tray aside she went to the piano and tinkered with the keys. Finally sitting down, she played for two hours with barely a halt, and better than she had done for years.

When she did stop, she went to stand in front of the window and was dazzled by the whiteness. It was somehow comforting, the purity of the garden under the thick
blanket of white. She looked beyond that to the gates and the buildings, all white, white, and still the snow was falling just as heavily as it had been all day. Her mind drifted back in time and lodged on the years when she was young. Little had changed in this room. Maybe it was a bit more worn, with more family photographs in silver frames, but Emily still kept it filled with spring flowers and it still smelled of pot-pouri. She felt warm and comfortable and so young, as if her life was just about to begin. She smiled at her own silliness, and rang for Coral.

Her maid arrived carrying sturdy leather boots lined in fur, a coat over her arm, a hat in her hand. ‘Why ever would you want to go out in this, Miss Lara? It’s cold out there.’

‘It will wake me up.’

‘There’s hardly a car moving. No one on the streets.’

‘All the better. I love New York when it’s like this. I won’t go far.’ She pulled the boots on, and around her throat wrapped a terracotta silk damask scarf banded with a border of black. Over her blonde hair she wore a sable hat that any Cossack would have been proud of. She pushed all her hair up into it and set it at a jaunty angle. Coral held the Russian sable coat that Henry had bought her for Christmas on behalf of the family, her reward for saving the bank. It covered the tops of her boots by several inches, had wide revers and was belted with a broad band of black suede and a buckle of bronze inlaid with silver and gold. She pulled on black leather fur-lined gloves, then checked the effect in the mirror. ‘Very Anna Karenina. Very Garbo,’ she laughed at herself and left the house, forgetful of Zhivago’s Lara.

There wasn’t a tyre-mark on the street directly in front of the house. Not a person, not a sound. It was a winter wonderland. Making her way against the wind to the corner, she turned up Fifth Avenue. With the wind no
longer against her, she was able to walk comfortably on the deserted pavements cushioned by inches of untrodden snow. She felt like one of those dolls in a sphere of glass amid a shaken snow storm that blurs the figure trapped at its centre.

Lara crossed the Avenue and headed for Central Park. The cold felt good, the air fresh. And it was rather mysterious, walking in a mist of snowflakes that you could only just see through. Like traversing a Pointillist painting, a Seurat or a Pisarro. Her face began to sting with cold. Otherwise she was warm and comfortable wrapped in her furs. She felt somehow young and invigorated. She pushed on. A taxi appeared as if from nowhere, feeling its way. It zig-zagged crazily past her and disappeared down the Avenue in muffled eerie silence, the merest ghost of a New York yellow cab. The wind changed direction, and the snow seemed to be intensifying. So much so that she missed the entrance to the park. She would aim for the next one.

The Metropolitan loomed out of the shadows of the grey-white afternoon. Walking was now becoming difficult. Cold was getting through to her hands and feet. She contemplated turning back, but instead found herself plodding on. Amazingly, she saw several people carefully mounting the narrow path through the snow up the stairs to the entrance of the museum. A man and a little girl were coming down. Abandoning the idea of the park, Lara turned around to go home. She took only a few steps and stopped. Memories came flooding back of that warm September evening. She took several more steps. It was so long ago, but still so vivid a memory: that night when they had all trooped into the museum as honoured guests.

Recalling the erotic, raunchy sights and sounds of that afternoon and evening made her smile. She stopped again and shook the snow from her coat, clapped her hands
together and stamped her feet, then resumed her walking. Her emotions were stirred once again as they had been then. Something compelled her to turn around, mount the museum stairs and push through the entrance. She brought with her a gush of wind and cold air. And then she was in a haven of warmth.

Inside, there was hardly a soul. It was quiet, tomb-like, but bright with electric light and warmth. She heard the echo of footsteps on marble, a voice. The sound sharpened her memory of that evening. A guard suggested she check her coat. She declined. Another passing guard recognised her. He removed his hat and greeted her. ‘It’s Miss Stanton, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, hello, Joe. I won’t check my coat, if you don’t mind. I would like just a few minutes in the Egyptian Gallery.’ She removed her gloves and shook the man’s hand.

On entering the gallery, she found it eerily empty and under almost exactly the same light as it had been on her last visit. She walked through the gallery in the direction of the statue where, under a beam of light, she had seen Max fucking one of the Chinese sisters. Try as she might, she could not remember which one. She wanted to. For whatever reason she had a compulsion to remember every detail of that evening. She yearned, if only in memory, to re-live that night. To look at it objectively as a woman. To imagine herself with her innocence restored. To expunge for a few minutes the years between.

It was warm. She removed her hat and shook out her hair. Walking past a huge glass showcase, she caught sight of herself reflected in it. She stood for some time, as if surprised to see a beautiful woman dressed in furs that flared lusciously out from a cinched waist. Who was this woman? She had expected to see the girl of that other evening. She looked hard, willing the image to change. She
placed her hand over her eyes and smiled, partly awed by the tricks the mind can play. She had to admire the tenacity of the subconscious. The drawn-out power of experience to shape one’s life.

It was over for her. She had no need to see the statue. She turned away to leave the gallery, then thought and said aloud, ‘What the hell. Why not?’ She went in search of the god and was surprised to see a man standing there admiring the colossal statue. He stood for some time, arms folded across his chest, as if transfixed by the power and beauty of the piece. He was lost in contemplation, altogether unaware of being watched. He stepped closer to the piece and touched the foot. Lara walked to his side. Her heels echoed on the floor. The spell of the moment was broken for the man. He turned round abruptly. Their eyes met. Instant attraction, but each was too surprised to recognise the fact. There was nothing to fill the intervening silence. Finally, embarrassed, Lara said, ‘I startled you.’

‘Perhaps, a little.’

‘Your stepping close to the statue, touching the foot … my mind was playing tricks on me, a moment of
déjà vu
. All very silly.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Again the force of their mutual attraction silenced them. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. She seemed unable to find the right words to get away from him gracefully. Only: ‘You’re English.’ And the moment she said it, she thought, What a stupid thing to say.

‘Yes.’

‘I must go.’

‘Did you want something?’

She smiled at the man. ‘Only to see this statue again. I was having a waltz down memory lane.’

‘And I didn’t figure in your waltz?’

‘Well, no.’ She could not help but laugh.

Enchanted by her, he couldn’t let her go. He asked, ‘Is it something an Englishman might find amusing?’

‘Well, maybe not so much amusing as …’ She faltered, and smiling at him again, said, ‘I really must go.’

She hurried from the gallery, but heard his footsteps not far behind her.

Lara stood for several minutes at the museum entrance contemplating the snow storm. It appeared to be less violent. The flurries larger. She could actually see through them to the other side of the street. How sad that the man had been there to interrupt her memories. She would have liked to conjure up that raunchy sexiness that had excited her then, and which she could still be thrilled by now. Too bad. A little of that, and a little fantasy, did make life more fun somehow. If complicated. Just briefly she thought of the man. Why now did she suddenly think she knew that face, had seen it before? The large, bony head. Sexy, fiercely intelligent eyes. The craggy but still handsome face. The dimples when he had smiled at her. With that receding hair-line he had seemed worn but strangely sexy. Yes, she did think she had seen, if not him then certainly his photograph somewhere. She went to put her hat on, only to realise she didn’t have it. She must have dropped it in the gallery. She turned round and bumped right into the stranger.

It was her turn to be startled. ‘I believe you might be looking for this?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

That smile again. It was very attractive. How old was he? In his fifties, perhaps. He might be in his sixties. She took the hat from him. He watched her put it on, tuck her hair under the fur, put on her gloves. She was giving herself time to sum up his exterior. He was wearing a sturdy camel-hair coat over a salt and pepper tweed suit,
crimson wool challis tie, Turnbull & Asser blue shirt. He tied the belt of his coat, buttoned one of the revers over the other and turned up his collar. From the pocket he took out a tweed cap and a pair of leather gloves.

‘Shall we brave those stairs together?’

He slipped his arm through hers and they left the museum. He took a firm grip on her arm. She felt his strength. His years had not enfeebled him. Yes, he held her firmly, but strength of character too was imprinted on his face, in his very presence. The stairs were more treacherous to descend than to climb. They navigated them cautiously. Once on the snow-covered pavement she said, ‘Thank you,’ and extended a hand for him to shake.

The snow was lightly dusting his shoulders. She felt an impulse to brush it off, but resisted. There was a warmth about him, a kind of humanity that she found intoxicating. He was special, and she didn’t want to walk away from him. He touched the peak of his cap as if tipping it to her and, smiling, said, ‘Goodbye, pretty woman.’

But neither of them moved. Finally it was she who spoke. ‘I’m walking downtown. If that’s your direction, shall we walk together?’

‘That’s my direction.’

They passed only two people. One of them, an elderly man, slipped. They came to his aid and brushed the snow from him, and then watched him walk cautiously away, clinging to the building alongside. Otherwise they never spoke. At the kerbs he would take her arm until they had crossed the road. She stopped on the corner of her street.

‘Do you have far to go?’ she asked.

‘The Carlisle.’

‘This is my street.’

He took her arm and they turned into the street off the Avenue. Not many steps later, she stopped again. ‘And this is your house?’

‘Yes,’ she answered.

The gates to the drive were open. It was dark by now. The wind had risen again, whipping up the snow. There were drifts against the fencing and the gate. Silence was all around them, so white, so cold: it was eerily sensual. They could have been in Russia, Sweden, Norway. Anywhere but New York. The lights streaming from the windows, the huge lantern under the portico swinging in wind-swept snow, made the house look inviting.