Wicked Pleasures (17 page)

‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking at him flatly, her face icily, stonily white, ‘how you can be so cruel to me.’

‘I know you won’t believe it,’ he said, taking her hand, looking at her tenderly, ‘but it’s because I love you. And I want to help you.’

She began to cry suddenly, raging, dreadful tears, grabbing at her glass from time to time and drinking from it; when it was empty, she tried to get up and take it to fill again. Alexander snatched it back from her.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No. We will start now, today. We will beat it together.’

‘I can’t, I can’t,’ she said, ‘it’s the only thing I have that doesn’t let me down.’

She missed the raw pain in Alexander’s eyes, but she saw the blaze of anger that followed, and she felt the stinging blow he delivered to her face. ‘How dare you!’ he said. ‘How dare you, sitting there, reeking of drink, wallowing in self-pity, say everything lets you down? Does your mother let you down? Phoning every day, begging to be allowed to come and see you? Do your children let you down? Little Charlotte, sending you pictures she’s painted, to make you feel better? Longing to come home to you? I daresay she feels let down, Virginia; that would be understandable. What about Nanny, caring for them all this time, never uttering a breath of criticism of you to anyone? Angie, covering up for you, working to retain the few clients you have left, has she let
you down? Have I let you down? Acting out this ghastly charade, pretending to our friends, the servants, that you were ill when you were so drunk you could hardly stand up sometimes, cleaning up your vomit, trying to comfort you? How dare you say everyone lets you down? It is you who are letting us down, Virginia, and you have no excuse, no excuse at all.’

She looked at him, calm suddenly, and there was a long, endless silence. Then she said, ‘Well, I think I have one or two. But not many. And I’m sorry, Alexander. I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve said that a great deal,’ he said, ‘over the past few months. I should feel better if you were to try to prove it to me.’

‘All right,’ she said, her small, pointed chin lifting suddenly, her eyes almost amused, ‘all right, I’ll try.’

She did try. She told Angie what she was doing, that Alexander was staying up in London with her, to help her, that she couldn’t face being at Hartest with the servants; she begged Angie to be patient with her, that it was going to be tough.

It was very tough. She stopped drinking altogether for two days, but the withdrawal was so frightening, revealing as it did how much she must have been drinking, as she sweated, developed cramps, threw up; Alexander finally, alarmed and weakened by her pleas, gave her a drink to soothe her, and agreed they should find professional help. She promised at the height of her agony to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but later she refused, and she could see he was almost relieved, so great would the humiliation have been; and so instead he became an expert himself, reading extensively on the subject and drawing up a programme of steadily decreasing alcoholic intake for her.

It seemed to work; after three weeks she was feeling better, was sleeping better; Alexander was talking of sending for the children. Then one day he was out at a business meeting all morning; alone in the house for the first time for a long while, alone with her guilt and grief and remorse, she lost control; by lunchtime she had drunk half a bottle of gin.

‘Virginia, for the love of God, what are you doing?’ said Alexander wearily, looking at her as she sat slumped at the table in the small dining room. ‘We’ve been through so much, we’re getting you out of it, why drag yourself back into it again?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Virginia, you do know what I mean. You’re drunk. Where did you get it from?’

‘I’m not drunk.’

‘You are.’

‘Oh all right,’ she said, suddenly angry, tears pouring down her face, ‘yes I’m drunk. And it’s lovely. It’s lovely. I don’t feel frightened any more. Or sick. I just feel good.’

‘So where did you get it from?’

‘I got it from the cellar.’

‘But the cellar’s locked.’

‘Oh, I know. Very crafty of you, Alexander. I didn’t like that. That was really what got me going. I went looking for the key. And when I couldn’t find it, I got a screwdriver and took the lock off.’

‘Well all right, Virginia. Let’s just give up, shall we? You drink as much as you like and kill yourself, and any children you might have in the future, and I’ll stop trying to help you.’

‘Don’t you start talking about children.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not. And it’s irrelevant anyway.’

‘Well it is if you’re going to continue to murder them.’

She stood up suddenly, came at him with the bottle she had hidden hastily under the chair. ‘You bastard,’ she said, her eyes narrow slits. ‘You bastard.’

He snatched the bottle from her easily, pushed her back down into a chair. ‘Just stop it, Virginia,’ he said, ‘just stop being so melodramatic. Drink yourself to death if you want to, but leave me out of it.’ He turned away and walked towards the door; she snatched her glass, splintered its rim against the table and ran after him, mad with grief and rage. She clawed at the back of his neck with the shattered glass; blood spurted everywhere, horribly.

He put his hands up to the wound, and they turned almost instantly red; he looked at them and then at her, and then said very calmly, ‘I think you should call the doctor.’

It was all carefully covered up, of course; Virginia, shaking with terror, called the doctor, told him what had happened. And then he sent her away after stitching Alexander’s neck and talked to Alexander for a long time and then came out to find her and said it had been a very nasty accident, Alexander falling like that, but he would be fine and all they had to do was look after him very carefully and her too, as she would need all her strength to take care of him. He said she was to go in and see Alexander, who was sitting in his chair looking rather pale but quite cheerful; he said he was fine, and she was not to feel too badly about it all. He said the doctor had said she was to go and see him in his surgery and get some advice, and Virginia, weak with remorse and misery, said of course she would, and made an appointment that very afternoon.

But she didn’t go. The time for the appointment came and went, and she didn’t arrive; and in the end the doctor went to Eaton Place, ostensibly to dress Alexander’s wound, but actually to see Virginia and impress upon her how badly she needed help.

Virginia was not there; she had gone out early, Angie said, to see some prospective clients. She had actually given Angie a list and some telephone numbers. But she was not seeing any clients, she was driving extremely fast down the M4 and when the police stopped her she was so drunk she could hardly stand up to get out of the car.

She finally saw a psychiatrist. He sent her to hospital for detoxification. He told her it wasn’t a permanent solution, that was in her hands, but it was the first step; he told her that alcoholism was a form of self-destruction, and that she must try to analyse why she was following such a course. He told Alexander
afterwards that he was baffled by her case, but that the one thing that had emerged was that Virginia found the thought of being at Hartest almost unendurable. ‘Presumably because of the child, and the fact that it’s buried there. She wants to stay in London for a while. I would advise that very strongly.’

It was the third day, the third day without a drink. It was awful, but not as bad as she had expected. The worst thing was the fear; the fear. The nameless fear, the sense of impending doom that hung over her. And then there was another fear, even worse, not nameless at all, that of having to live without alcohol. That was terrible.

Virginia sat in her small room at the clinic and tried not to think about life without alcohol. But she couldn’t. She was supposed to be reading, but she couldn’t concentrate. She had a box of chocolates to eat, but she didn’t want them. All she could think about was what her life was going to be like in the future, if she achieved what now at last seemed just possible. No lovely, heady buzz as the champagne hit her bloodstream; no slipping into unselfconscious confidence at parties and at the dinner table; no swift numbing of the headaches and backaches that plagued her; no instant easing of her pain as she thought, more fiercely, more agonizingly every day, of her tiny dead baby. And good food without wine; and sunbathing without wine; and chatting easily with friends over an endless lunch without wine; and not having a glass of whisky; and coping with a rude, difficult client and not rewarding herself with a martini. The whole thing looked intolerable.

And then she had hurt. She had hurt all over. Her head hurt, her eyes hurt, even her teeth ached. A drink would ease all of that. The doctor said it was temporary, that sort of pain; but it didn’t feel temporary. She remembered something Scott Fitzgerald had said: that he had never managed to be sober long enough to enjoy it. She knew what he meant. It was hard to imagine enjoying this condition. And harder to visualize it becoming normal.

But whatever she was going through, she seemed to be at least managing. It wasn’t so bad, she kept saying to herself fiercely, desperately trying to force her concentration on her book. It wasn’t so bad.

That night it got really bad. She felt terrible. She couldn’t stand it. Terror gripped her. She looked at the clock. Three. Three a.m. They had said insomnia would probably trouble her. Trouble her! This wasn’t trouble, it was a screaming agony. Terror. Physical pain. She had to do something, anything. Otherwise she would run away, find an off-licence, smash a window, anything to get a drink.

What had he said, her therapist? Think of ten minutes. You can survive anything for ten minutes. Ten minutes will do it. OK, she’d do it. She fixed her eyes on her clock. Five minutes. No better. Eight. Ten. Ten minutes more of it she had survived. And it was worse. Far worse. They’d lied. Christ, what could she do?

The phone! That was it, they had said always phone. Phone her therapist. He would be on call. Night and day. He would help her through it. She lifted the phone, pressed his extension.

‘Yes,’ said an instantly alert voice.

‘It’s Virginia here. Please come. I can’t stand it.’

‘Virginia,’ said the voice, soothing, tolerant, almost amused. ‘You can stand it. You’ve done so well. Of course you can.’

‘I can’t. I need you.’

‘I’ll come in the morning.’

‘I can’t wait until then,’ she said, her voice cracking with pain.

‘Yes you can. Think hourself through it. Remember hitting rock bottom. Remember what it was like. You don’t want to go back there. Do you, Virginia? Remember the ten minutes. You can hang on for ten minutes. Ten minutes at a time.’

‘I just did.’

‘Good. Well there you are. You can do another ten. And another. Make yourself some herb tea. Do you have plenty?’

‘I don’t want herb tea,’ she cried in agony, ‘I want a drink. Please, please come.’

His voice changed. ‘All right. I’ll come.’

He sat and talked to her for an hour, sharing a pot of herb tea. The pain eased, the panic passed. At six she was asleep. He looked at her thoughtfully. She had not been such a heavy drinker, and yet her withdrawal was so bad. Why? She was an interesting case.

Remember your rock bottom, they had said. It was important to recognize that. Hers had come when she had come to herself, vomiting and half clutching a bottle of whisky and scrabbling at the baby’s grave. That was when she had known she had to give in and go to the clinic. Listen to Alexander, do what the doctors said. In a way it was a good thing it had been so bad, such a terrible rock bottom, so utterly, dreadfully ugly and humiliating. Stabbing Alexander in the neck, getting charged with drink-driving, they hadn’t been real rock-bottom things. But lying on the grave, that was. She had to come back from there. She had to.

She was a difficult patient. She didn’t really participate in the group discussions, and in her one-to-one sessions with the psychiatrist, she was reserved too. You must talk, they said, you must try to realize what first triggered off your dependence. Oh, she would say vaguely one day, it was the postnatal depression. Another it would be her low self-esteem because of her childhood, always feeling Baby was doing better than her. Then it would be her dead baby. Never consistent, never letting go.

She showed the anger, the ‘reservoir of rage’ that therapists all know in alcoholics, but she never revealed the real reason for that either. Once she almost did; she said, ‘All right I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, are you ready for it, because I’m going to tell you,’ and then she didn’t, she said no, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, she hardly knew herself any more, and retreated once again into her shell of solitary pain.

But she didn’t drink. She had stopped drinking.

She was totally resistant to going back to Hartest. She said she could manage in the clinic, she could probably cope with London, even with New York if necessary, but not Hartest. It was asking too much. Nobody understood why. They asked her, but she couldn’t tell them. Or wouldn’t.

After three weeks in the clinic she went home to the house in Eaton Place. She was terribly frightened, she clung to Alexander’s hand, and as the car pulled up in front of the house she looked at him, stricken, and said, ‘What will they all think, how am I going to face them?’