Wicked Pleasures (113 page)

‘What does Nanny think?’

‘She says he’s teething.’

‘He’s probably teething then,’ said Charlotte. ‘Don’t worry. Did you tell Daddy about Kendrick yet?’

‘No, not yet. I can’t face the fuss, Charlotte. I just can’t.’

‘I should leave it then.’

‘I think I will.’

She phoned two days later. George was better.

‘There you are,’ said Charlotte. ‘Nanny was right.’

Betsey was slowly recovering. She was very frail, Fred said, but every day she ate a little more, slept a little less.

‘I hope you’re looking after her well,’ said Charlotte severely. ‘Of course I am. I haven’t left her since it happened.’

‘Shall I come and see her?’

‘I think she’d like that.’

‘I’m going to visit Grandma,’ she said to Max. ‘Just for a day or two. I’m hardly crucial here in the office.’

‘Fine. Are you going to talk to Grandpa?’

‘I don’t think so. He sounds as if he couldn’t take it. But I just might.’

‘Are you going to see Gabe?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte, ‘that’s entirely up to Gabe.’

‘Is it?’ said Max.

She booked a flight to New York for the following Monday. When she told Freddy where she was going and why, he looked at her with his coldest, most fishlike stare and said, ‘I hope you don’t have any plans to talk to my grandfather about the bank and your situation in it.’

‘He’s my grandfather too,’ said Charlotte, ‘and I shall talk to him about whatever I like.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said Freddy. ‘I have a letter here, that I’ve drafted to Nigel Dempster and Ross Benson. Would you like to read it?’

He handed it to her. It read: ‘Dear Sir, There could be a story for you in the background of my cousin, Maximilian, Viscount Hadleigh. There is a suggestion that his true father is Mr Tommy Soames-Maxwell of Pond Place, Chelsea. I shall be delighted to help you as far as I am able, with further information if you care to contact me.’

‘You shit,’ said Charlotte. ‘You little shit.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Freddy. ‘I have no intention of sending it. Unless I hear you’ve been talking to Grandpa about anything that you don’t like at the bank. OK?’

Charlotte smiled at him very sweetly. ‘Freddy!’ she said. ‘Are you trying to tell me that there’s something irregular going on that Grandpa wouldn’t be happy with?’

She had the satisfaction of seeing Freddy’s pale skin turn a very unattractive shade of purplish pink.

She phoned Georgina just before she left. ‘I hadn’t thought, I’m sorry. You could come with me. Do you want to?’

‘Oh – no,’ said Georgina. ‘I don’t think so. I might see Kendrick. And anyway, George isn’t well again. I’m taking him to a specialist on Thursday.’

‘Oh Georgie, I’m so sorry. Try not to worry.’

‘I’m trying,’ said Georgina.

When she got to Kennedy, she scanned the line at the barrier looking for Hudson. He wasn’t there. Charlotte sighed; she was tired. She had turned away and started fighting her way through the crowd out towards the cab rank, when she heard her name.

‘Hallo, Charlotte.’

It was Gabe.

He drove her quite fast into the city in his Mercedes two-seater. Charlotte didn’t speak; nor did he, except to tell her he had heard she was coming from his father and had told Hudson not to come. Fred and Betsey were not expecting her until the morning, he said. He didn’t touch her. He looked very fierce.

When they got to Gramercy Park, he put the Mercedes in a parking lot and said, ‘I’d like you to come up to my apartment.’

‘What for?’ said Charlotte. She knew it was a very silly thing to say, but she was fighting not to sound bossy.

‘So that I can go to bed with you, you silly bitch,’ said Gabe.

‘Oh,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, all right.’ That time it was easier.

Having sex with Gabe was quite unlike having sex with anyone else she had ever known. She told him so, as they lay some time later, slightly apart, holding hands, occasionally kissing.

‘Not that I have an enormous amount of experience,’ she said hastily.

‘How is it unlike?’ he said. He sounded rather pleased with himself.

‘Oh – I don’t know. It’s so – so single-minded.’

She had often thought this; his expression as he turned to her (after removing his watch) was exactly as it was when he swooped into his Quotron: ferociously, almost angrily intent, his eyes dark and burning, seeking, searching, knowing what he wanted, what he was doing.

‘Well, you wouldn’t want me to be thinking of something else, would you? Like work?’ He laughed suddenly. He didn’t often laugh; it was one of the things she perversely liked about him, it added to his intensity. She smiled at him.

‘No of course not. Gabe…’

‘Yes, Charlotte.’

‘Gabe, I’m sorry if I – well, if I –’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said, and he sounded very amused. ‘Now what are you trying to say?’

‘If I’m a bit – well, bossy sometimes. I’ll try and be more – amenable in future.’

‘Charlotte,’ said Gabe, ‘if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s amenable females. Why do you think I fell in love with you? Because you’re so bloody stroppy, that’s why.’

‘Oh,’ said Charlotte meekly.

Fred III looked very old and very frail suddenly. She supposed it was the fear of losing Betsey. Betsey actually looked better than he did, she had some colour in her cheeks, and the combative gleam in her eye whenever the nurse came in to check her pulse, her blood pressure, her ankles and the bruises and swellings on her head, where she had hit it when she had fallen, indicated to
Charlotte a greater sense of well-being than her appearance initially indicated.

She spent her days in the sun room, reading, talking to Fred, doing her tapestry. She was delighted to see Charlotte; she told her she was looking very well, but a little thin.

‘We’ll feed you up while you’re here, darling.’

‘How’s the bank?’ asked Fred, over lunch. ‘Everything going all right? Getting on with Drew OK, are you? I’ll have you back in New York this autumn.’

‘You’ve been saying that ever since the spring,’ said Charlotte.

Fred glared at her and poured himself a bourbon.

After lunch Betsey sent Fred off for a nap. ‘My accident has taken it out of him, dear,’ she said, ‘and I must confess I’m finding him a little trying. He will fuss. I think really it would be better if he went to the bank, at least a couple of days a week. But he won’t hear of it.’

While the nurse was putting Betsey to bed, after supper, Fred poured himself and Charlotte a glass of Armagnac and lit a cigar.

‘She’s very frail,’ he said. ‘I worry about her. I miss the bank, of course, and I’d like to be there, maybe just a couple of days a week. But I wouldn’t leave her. Not at the moment. She likes to have me here.’

By the end of her stay with them, Charlotte was able to engineer a compromise whereby at the beginning of October, Fred would go back to the bank two days a week.

‘I have to get this thing settled,’ he said moodily. ‘I really do. I’m not going to live for ever. And the bank’s vulnerable. I must establish a good modus operandi, for taking care of it until such time as you and Freddy are able to take it over.’

‘Is – Chris Hill firmly settled again?’ asked Charlotte. ‘No more flirtations with anyone else?’

‘Nope,’ said Fred, looking very pleased with himself. ‘Good man. But it’s a lopsided arrangement, him having those shares, and I know that. You didn’t think I hadn’t thought it through, did you?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Charlotte.

‘Freddy and you getting on all right?’ he said after a pause, his face obscured by cigar smoke, as it always was when the answer to a question was important to him.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, fine.’

‘Good. I’m glad he’s having that experience over there. Good for him. Anyway, I shall be back in Pine Street in a week or so, and then once I’ve got it straight, your grandmother and I are going on a world cruise. She’s dreamed of one all her life, and I don’t want her to miss out on it. I’ve got the tickets as a matter of fact. Kind of a second honeymoon, I thought. We sail on October fifteenth.’

‘It sounds gorgeous,’ said Charlotte politely.

‘Yes, I think it will be. I can’t stand holidays of course, but as I say, I think I owe it to your grandmother. She’s done a bit for me in her time.’

‘She certainly has,’ said Charlotte.

Gabe came out on the Sunday, for lunch. Charlotte had confided in Betsey that she was in love and Betsey, always excited by romance, insisted she asked him over. Charlotte had been nervous about the effect on her grandfather of knowing she was having a relationship with someone at Praegers, but he was rather touchingly pleased that it was Gabe.

‘Your grandfather was one of the first partners in the bank,’ he said to Gabe, ‘I’d like to see that tradition continue. I’ve relied on your father’s support a great deal over the years. He’s a very clever banker. I shall miss him.’

Neither Charlotte nor Gabe betrayed by so much as a flickering eyelid that they considered it hard to imagine that Pete Hoffman would not outlast Fred III at the bank.

After lunch, Charlotte and Gabe walked along the shore.

‘Quite the little blue-eyed girl, aren’t you?’ he said. He sounded sombre. ‘Oh for God’s sake, Gabe,’ said Charlotte. ‘For the thousandth time, I can’t help it.’

‘No, but I can,’ said Gabe.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can help being there.’

‘Gabe, what are you talking about?’ said Charlotte.

Gabe turned to look at her. ‘I don’t know that I could stand working at Praegers,’ he said, ‘when you’re running it. You and Freddy. It would be – hard.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Charlotte.

‘Then you’re very stupid,’ said Gabe, and he sounded genuinely angry. ‘How can I work for a bank, even as a partner, when my – when you are its chairman? It would be intolerable. I couldn’t stand it.’

He stopped, threw some stones into the rolling ocean. Charlotte looked at him. His face was dark, intent on its task. She smiled suddenly, thinking of the other times she had seen that look. She took his hand, started dragging him up towards the dunes.

‘Come on. Up here.’

He followed, still half angry; Charlotte turned as she reached the dunes, put her arms up, around him, pulled his face down to hers.

‘I love you,’ she said. ‘It won’t matter.’

‘It will matter,’ said Gabe, ‘but I love you too.’

He started to kiss her, his mouth hungry, greedy; very slowly, but determinedly, he pushed her down onto the sand.

‘There are people coming,’ said Charlotte, pointing down the endless shoreline. ‘Look.’ Three, or was it four, tiny figures were moving slowly but relentlessly towards them.

‘We must beat them to it then,’ said Gabe. He was lying in the sand now,
cradling her beside him in the crook of his arm; his other hand was working at the zip of her jeans. He had it down; Charlotte raised her hips, eased herself out of them. The sand felt soft and very cool beneath her bare buttocks.

Gabe had undone his fly; his penis was large, erect. Charlotte wriggled down, took it in her mouth, started working at it, licking, teasing, tugging. She felt her own excitement mounting, rising; her breathing quickened. Gabe’s hands were in her hair, holding her head; she heard him moaning.

‘Oh, I love you,’ said Gabe suddenly, and pulled her up, turned her over, pushed, thrust into her. She rose up to him, felt with incredible speed and urgency her climax growing, growing, leaping; she flung her arms out, her head back, clutching the grass on the dunes. Above her a gull soared, high, swift, swooping, like her own pleasure; she followed it with her eyes, with her body, pulling, reaching, circling Gabe; and then it came, a great burst of light, bright wrenching pleasure, and the gull and she cried out together, in a strange lonely triumph, and Gabe held her to him, close, tight, and she felt him following her; and as they lay, their pleasure eased and softened, she heard voices and laughter, and she looked into his eyes, his dark, probing eyes, and said, ‘We only just made it.’ And laughed aloud with happiness and triumph.

‘That was a first for me,’ he said, kissing her gently.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I had to keep my watch on,’ he said.

Later they swam, diving endlessly beneath the great gentle rollers; and then lay, their skin salty and cool in the autumn sun.

‘What a day,’ said Gabe. ‘What a good day,’ and he smiled at her, and took her hand and kissed her fingers and said, ‘Charlotte …’ and she said, ‘Yes Gabe?’ and he said, ‘I really have to go now, I have work to do,’ and instead of being angry or even upset, she laughed, laughed aloud, because she knew him so well, and what she knew was what she loved.

‘What a very nice young man,’ Betsey said, over supper. ‘Are you going to marry him, Charlotte?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte, carefully vague, and then she added, ‘he’s married already really.’

‘Oh darling, no!’ said Betsey, looking shocked.

‘To Praegers,’ said Charlotte, and laughed, and Betsey laughed too and said she had learnt long ago to see Praegers not as a wife, but a mistress.

‘And the wife, if she is clever, always has the last laugh.’

‘Then I must try to be clever,’ said Charlotte, smiling at her.

It was bad in the office, Gabe had said. Chris Hill, secure, arrogant in his position, was throwing his weight about, waiting impatiently for Fred to finally go, for Freddy to come back, for power. The surging soaring stock market, the apparently ceaseless boom, the rise day on day of the Dow Jones, all added to his image of a man who could not lose. His following, the degree of confidence felt in him at Praegers, was immense. Pete Hoffman, on the other hand,
angered, hurt by the tip of balance in the boardroom, demoralized by the lack of recognition from Fred, was waiting simply these days for retirement, too tired, too damaged to fight.

‘But he would, wouldn’t he?’ said Charlotte. ‘He would fight, if he had the power and the shares and the clout, he would fight with us, with me.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gabe, ‘I really don’t.’

She tried very gently talking to Fred, suggesting Pete was offered shares as well, to restore the balance of power. Fred, a little less gently, told her she did not entirely know what she was talking about, that he had it under control, that he was working things out. And every day he hesitated, every day he grew older and frailer, every day the danger increased.