Wicked Pleasures (124 page)

She had refused to marry Max on New Year’s Day. She had told him it was because it seemed wrong, with Alexander so recently killed, but that was not the reason. She knew it wasn’t, and she felt he knew too.

She had gone home to her house, after the miscarriage, and he had come home to her. He had been gentle, tender, sad. He told her he loved her; she told him she loved him.

The thought kept coming to her, unbidden, in those first days, how terrible it would have been if Alexander had indeed been his father; if he had perhaps
carried some of those dangerous, deadly genes.

Angie was a strong person, but for weeks after the crash she had nightmares, and waking nightmares too, when she heard Alexander’s voice again and again, telling her quietly and tenderly to drive carefully, that she looked tired: knowing that he was sending her wilfully to her death.

The terrible irony was that Max seemed to be developing the same almost obsessive love for Hartest; from treating it carelessly, casually, he seemed genuinely to have started to care about it, insisting they spent every weekend there, talking for long hours to Martin and to Georgina about it; it had been the cause of one of their first real rows. She had been complaining about having to go there one weekend, and Max had told her she was making a fuss about nothing, and she had said
not
nothing, it was cold and it needed decorating and he had said perhaps she would like to tell him what needed doing to it, and she had made some proposals, to carpet the rooms, to put in some en suite bathrooms, to double glaze at least some of the windows, and he had gone crazy. And she had completely lost her temper and told him he was an arrogant, offensive brat obsessed with his mausoleum, and he had told her the mausoleum, as she put it, was one of the most beautiful houses in England and he loved it very much. They made up that night in bed; but it had been a startling episode.

After a few weeks they began to quarrel more, she and Max; he was pressing her to marry him, she was still refusing. He accused her of not loving him; she told him she needed time. The only place they were truly happy was in bed.

Then one night, he was very late back. He came in after midnight, drunk; and more significant than drunk, evasive.

Angie knew what that meant. That he had been with someone else. And although it had hurt, horribly badly, she had been relieved. He was going to grow away from her, grow out of love with her; and that was the only thing that could possibly happen, to save the pair of them.

She took a huge decision that night; she told him she thought he should leave, return to Pond Place, or move into Eaton Place. She made more fuss than she felt like making, just to expedite the thing. She said she wasn’t prepared to have him in her house, if he was going to fool around with other people.

It was a brave thing to do; she knew if she had been overtly noble, told him she wanted him to feel free, he would have stayed with her longer from a sense of guilt.

It didn’t work straight away, of course; he was remorseful, said he was sorry, that he would never leave her. But a few weeks later, he was late home again, and she threw him out.

She was extremely unhappy, for a long time. Well, a long time for her. Several weeks.

Then Tommy, dear Tommy, asked her out to dinner one night, and one thing led to another, and she began to feel very much better very quickly.

GEORGINA

She missed him so much. So terribly much. Of all of them, she had loved Alexander the most and he had loved her the most in return; she knew that. And she missed him and she mourned him dreadfully. It seemed to her almost impossible that she would never see him again, watch his slightly stooping back as he wandered about the house and grounds he loved so much, see his face as he looked at her fondly across the dinner table every evening, hear his voice as he talked to her, always courteous, considerate, as if she was some visiting acquaintance, instead of his daughter.

He had been buried in the little graveyard by the chapel, beside Virginia and the baby Alexander; his headstone read simply: ‘Alexander. Earl of Caterham. Beloved husband of Virginia, father to Maximilian, Charlotte and Georgina.’ He would have liked that. It would have pleased him. It said everything.

She had stayed alone at Hartest for a while, with Nanny and George, trying to come to terms with it, trying to think what to do. George missed him too; Alexander had been so sweet to him always, played with him, taken him for walks round the park.

She had been relieved when Max and Angie postponed their marriage (although sad for them, of course, about the baby); having to celebrate, trying to pretend she was pleased about it, would have been very hard on top of coping with her grief.

Then as the weeks went by, and they were clearly less happy together, quarrelling a lot, she began to hope they might not marry at all. She didn’t feel guilty for hoping it; anyone could see it had been the craziest plan. She liked Angie better these days, but she still didn’t exactly get on with her, and she was certainly not the wife for Max.

Martin had been wonderful; very gentle, very understanding. He might, she thought, have minded how upset, how unhappy she was, felt some jealousy, or at least some awkwardness. But he didn’t, he let her talk endlessly, let her wonder how and why it had all happened.

‘I shouldn’t have let him go,’ she had said over and over again, ‘I knew how much he’d been drinking, I should have stopped him. But I didn’t. And anyway, why did he go? Why should he have gone?’

Martin told her she must not blame herself; that in any case she couldn’t have stopped him. He must have thought Angie had forgotten something, or wanted to tell her something. She had hardly been out of sight, Georgina said, when he had left. Obviously he thought he could catch her up easily.

And then when Angie had skidded, and he’d swerved to avoid her; Angie must have been driving too fast, to hit the stile like that. Georgina found it very hard not to feel some sense of blame towards Angie. But it had been foggy, foggy and icy; and Angie said Alexander had been flashing at her and hooting, it had distracted her. That was what had caused her to skid; she had lost
concentration. Over and over again Angie had said she didn’t really know why Alexander had come after her; but that they had been discussing Christmas, and she had suggested various things. Maybe he had remembered something, wanted to tell her something. Or give her a message for Max. It was very unlike Alexander, Georgina thought, and it seemed a terrible thing to die over, a social engagement. But she was obviously destined never to know. She had to accept it. There was absolutely no doubt that Angie had been very upset indeed; and that she and Alexander had parted on the warmest possible terms. The last thing she had heard Alexander say, as he stood watching Angie’s car going up the drive, was, ‘She’s very sweet really. Very sweet indeed.’

MAX

It had been very difficult. All of it.

He’d felt terrible about Alexander’s death. Guilty and genuinely grieved. And then Angie losing the baby, that had been awful. His baby. Their baby. It had been a very long time since Max had wept, but he had wept then, at the thought of his son not being born, not growing up, not learning to love him. A death as well, of a sort.

And then Angie had been impossible. OK, he’d been ready to make allowances at first. Of course she was wretched, physically frail, shocked from the night Alexander had died. It had been a ghastly experience for her. Although he still felt there was something odd about it all, something she wasn’t telling him. Why on earth had Alexander been chasing after her – so fast he had crashed? Why had Angie been driving so fast? First she’d said the brakes seemed to have failed, later she’d just said she skidded. It just didn’t make sense. Any of it. He supposed he would never know. He asked Angie if they’d had some row, and Alexander had maybe wanted to try and make it up, but she said no. He had to admit he had had his fleeting suspicions for a while, about what on earth Angie had been doing there that evening in the first place; but she had been so amused by that (once she had recovered), so adamant that she had no idea why Alexander had been chasing after her, that he had finally set the matter aside, as an unsolved, unsolvable mystery. For all of them. Alexander was gone; and Max had felt a strong, strange sense of loss and misery over his going; but he managed to persuade himself there was nothing to be gained by raking over and over the thing, trying to find a solution.

Alexander had obviously been very confused: look at the business with the phone calls, saying Angie had left when she hadn’t. But he really couldn’t believe (having thought about it endlessly) that there was any more to it than that. Angie had had a horrible time; but she had survived, thank God. She might have died as well.

Tommy had been great: good old Tommy. Seen to a lot of the admin, the next day, notified the authorities, got Angie’s car towed away and seen to, looked after her, God, he’d been right about Tommy and they’d all been wrong. Against some opposition from Charlotte he’d suggested Tommy moved into Eaton Place. Nobody used it, and if they did, there was still plenty of room.

Tommy had been very pleased although he said he would still have preferred Hartest. He was a country gentleman at heart, he said. Max told him to forget his heart and be grateful he could pretend to be a gentleman.

After Angie threw him out he’d gone back to Pond Place, while he thought what to do. He didn’t want to live in Eaton Place with Tommy; he’d never liked it and he wanted to be on his own. For a while.

He was very unhappy. Even though he could actually see that it was for the best, that maybe the marriage wouldn’t have worked, he still loved her. He loved her very much. The thought of life without her was empty and chill and pointless. OK, so he had been out with a couple of girls; actually got into bed with one of them. It hadn’t meant anything; certainly hadn’t meant he didn’t love Angie, was ready to leave her, to get over her. He was surprised she’d reacted so strongly. Maybe she hadn’t loved him as much as he’d loved her. The thought hurt him; it made his heart ache.

Work was good, though: a great comfort. Max loved Praegers. He loved it more and more. He got as much pleasure, still, from doing a good deal, as he had on the very first day. And it was more difficult these days; the easy ride was over. Of course everyone knew you couldn’t stay a dealer all your life; probably not after you were thirty. Younger than that. Maybe. But then there were all the other things, the things Charlotte was so besotted with, the mergers, the takeovers, the manipulation of people and money; it was irresistible. One huge casino. Who was it had said that? Oh, yes, that nice girlfriend of Charlotte’s, Chrissie Forsyte. Pretty girl. Great legs. He might look her up next time he went to New York. Now that he wasn’t going to be a married man.

And Fred had told him he could have a share in Praegers, maybe take over London, in the fullness of time. And he wanted that. He wanted it like he wanted sex. It was physical. It made his balls ache. And it also meant that he would have some money. Real money. To pour into Hartest.

He didn’t mind how much it cost; anything now to keep it for the family, to save it from the National Trust and the day trippers and the tickets at the gate. In that at least, he felt exactly like Alexander: proprietorial, fiercely protective. It was his memorial to Alexander, that, keeping it safe. He was happy to see it swallow up a great deal of money; although he was extremely grateful that Fred, by way of a very large conciliatory gesture that he did not entirely understand, had waived the mortgage repayment altogether. That had been before Alexander had died, even. Angie said he should just be grateful and not pursue things any further, and he’d agreed. Fred had in any case issued dire warnings that any future financial demands must be met from the estate’s own resources.

Poor old Fred. He’d looked very old, very frail when he and Charlotte had gone over to New York to see him. A lot of the bluster had gone out of him.

Anyway, Hartest was his now. Beyond any kind of doubt, it was his. He had read the words of Alexander’s will: ‘I bequeath Hartest House with contents
and all its lands, estates and titles, to my heir, Maximilian Frederick Alexander Welles, Viscount Hadleigh’ – clever, carefully chosen words – and had laughed aloud with pleasure.

But the fact remained, he was miserable. Very miserable. He’d rung Angie only the night before, suggested they had dinner: no strings, he’d said, he just missed her. And she’d made some feeble excuse about being very tired, going to bed early. He had a feeling she was seeing someone. Already. He didn’t know how she could.

Max woke up early these days; he supposed it was a sign of age. He got up, went for a run, came back, and was standing in the shower when the phone rang. Shit. Seven in the morning. Who would ring him at seven?

‘Max Caterham,’ he said into the phone. He hadn’t quite got used to that, to not being Max Hadleigh.

‘Max?’ said a voice. An American voice. ‘Max, this is Opal. I just hit London. I was so sorry to hear about your dad. Listen, are you free for lunch today? I know you’re a married man, or nearly, but it’d be good to see you.’

Max thought about Opal. He thought about her incredible legs, her full breasts, that amazing neck of hers, her small neat head with its tightly cropped hair; he thought about her wonderful raucous laugh, and her capacious appetites. He suddenly felt much better.

‘I’m not married, Opal,’ he said, ‘not even nearly. Let’s have lunch. I’ll book a table at the Caprice for one.’

‘Great,’ said Opal, ‘but I’m sorry about the marriage.’

‘Oh,’ said Max, ‘it’s OK.’

And he realized it was true.

CHARLOTTE

Everyone else was all right, thought Charlotte irritably. Max had been very upset for a bit, about Angie, but he was fine now, having a wild old time, as far as she could make out, in London.

Georgina had said that Angie had been very upset for a while about the whole thing; Charlotte slightly doubted that. Well, she might have been upset at the prospect of not becoming Lady Caterham, being mistress of Hartest, but anything more than that seemed unlikely. Angie’s feelings ran about as deep, in Charlotte’s view, as a puddle in a drought. She was an opportunist and a very skilful one, and the only person she was capable of being in love with was herself. And Max had not been able to recognize the fact. Nor had Baby, of course. Both of them falling for the old ploy, the pregnancy. God, how did the woman get away with it? Anyway, Georgina had also said that Angie was seeing Tommy Soames-Maxwell. Now that was a match made in heaven. Or rather hell. Max had had a very lucky escape. And was no doubt beginning to appreciate it.