Wicked Pleasures (22 page)

Twelve hours later, she left; to return to New York. She had not, after all, done anything about tidying up the house. She had offered, but she had been sad, and seemed tired; Baby told her to forget it, that he would get an army of cleaners in in the morning. He fed her raspberry ice cream in the kitchen, washed down with the rest of the champagne, and they sat in the drawing room with the shutters closed, and watched a very bad play on television. Halfway through it Mary Rose phoned; Baby took the call in Alexander’s study, where he felt he might at the same time manage to sound comparatively level and normal, and spare Angie the pain of hearing him tell Mary Rose he was looking forward to seeing her at the airport three days later. He found the prospect so dreadful that the slight headache the champagne had given him deepened into thick, almost sickening pain.

They slept together, in a different, clean bedroom, that night, and did not make love; Baby awoke holding Angie so tightly she was struggling, half frightened, to be free. He found with some embarrassment that he had tears flowing down his cheeks; when she left, they flowed again. He realized then that he had not, whatever he might have thought, experienced love before.

He spent most of the two weeks at Hartest trying to talk to Virginia about Angie; he became increasingly aware that she was not over-receptive to his soul baring. Mary Rose had been working on a book on eighteenth-century paintings and had taken herself off a great deal to galleries and houses all over the country; he had expressed his earnest intention to keep all the children happy and amused, but in fact he neglected them hopelessly, so that the burden fell on Virginia and Nanny. The children were all difficult in their different ways; Kendrick and Georgina both possessed an awe-inspiring capacity to throw temper tantrums over something as minuscule as the relative brownness or otherwise of their boiled eggs at breakfast; Charlotte spent most of the time showing off on her new pony, deliberately making Freddy look a wimp, and making everyone fear for her limbs, and Freddy suffered an endless series of what his mother called sick headaches, and what the other children called making a fuss. Only Max was no trouble, sitting placidly in his playpen hour after hour, but even he developed a tummy bug towards the end of August; Nanny, as Charlotte remarked, was getting what she called very bristy.

Alexander kept well clear of everybody, and was out on the farm most of the time; they were short of hands, he said, and it was harvest time. He came home
exhausted every evening, very short-tempered, and fell asleep over the dinner table.

‘I’m very fond of your brother,’ Baby heard him say to Virginia, in the library late one night, when he came back down the stairs in search of a last brandy and soda, ‘but please don’t ask them all to stay here together again. I don’t think I could stand it.’

‘They’re my family, Alexander,’ said Virginia. ‘And I love them. And this is my home as well as yours and right now they need me. Quite apart from that, I need them.’

‘Well I need you too,’ he said, ‘and I think my claim is a little stronger.’

Baby slipped back up the stairs, not wishing to be embarrassed any further and not quite sure why he found this exchange so oddly sinister.

Baby, 1969–70

Just after that Christmas, Mary Rose had announced that she would like to have a summer house of their own. After a month of intensive searching, during the course of which she had examined with typical and laudatory thoroughness no fewer than thirty-seven houses, she announced she had found exactly the right one, on Nantucket. It had all the advantages of Long Island, she said, without being Long Island, the same white beaches, peace and quiet, a leisurely pace of life and charming mainly nineteenth-century houses, reminiscent of those in the Hamptons. The house she wished to purchase was at Siasconset, and was, she said, an overgrown cottage.

‘Sconset, as they call it, is delightful, Baby, originally an artists’ colony. The beach is beautiful, I know you’ll like it. I said we would take a trip there next weekend, stay over on the Saturday. We can show it to the children. It will be so good for them to be there, so away from the pressure of city life. Most of the people travel around by bike, it’s extremely peaceful and safe, and there’s even a children’s drama festival in August. I feel absolutely confident that it’s the house for us, and we’re very lucky to have the opportunity to buy it. I have actually negotiated a very good price. Houses on Nantucket very seldom come up, especially at Sconset. I have told the agent your visiting it is largely a formality.’

‘Well in that case,’ said Baby, unusually irritable after a particularly bad day with Fred, ‘is there any point my visiting it at all? Why don’t you just go ahead and buy the damn thing? You’ve obviously made up your mind about it.’

‘Oh, Baby, don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mary Rose, ‘this is a family house, and it must be a family decision.’

‘Of course,’ said Baby.

In fact he did very much like not only Nantucket, but the house. It was called Shells, and seemed just a little more than an overgrown cottage, having six bedrooms, a huge kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a den, but it was charming, low and white, built in stone and cedar tiles, like so many of the houses on Long Island, and it had a big garden with a play house and a swing hanging from a tall cedar tree, and a large porch, big enough for a family dining table, with a rose-covered trellis, overlooking the shore.

They spent the whole of August there, together with the children’s nurse and a steady stream of visitors. There were rather more of their New York friends there than Baby had anticipated, which he actually liked; it made for more action and more fun. Fred and Betsey came and were particularly delighted with it; there was a golf course just along the Milestone Road, and a children’s course at J. J. Clamps’s just along from there which, Fred pointed out with some
malice to Mary Rose, would suit Charlotte and him just fine. Towards the end of August, Virginia and Alexander and the children came; Baby was surprised to see Alexander, having heard his views the previous summer on holidays with Virginia’s family, but Virginia explained rather vaguely that Alexander wanted them to be all together. There was something faintly unsatisfactory about her explanation; Baby wondered if and when he might hear a more likely one.

While the Caterhams were there, Fred and Betsey came back for a long weekend; the resultant family tensions were considerable. Charlotte ran to her grandfather’s side the moment he arrived and never left it. They were like sweethearts, Betsey said slightly plaintively, and it was true; they sailed, walked and played golf and tennis together, sat next to each other at meals, shared little jokes and generally shut the rest of the world out.

On the Monday evening, before Fred and Betsey left for New York, the four older children were allowed to stay up for dinner; afterwards, inevitably, Fred told Baby to play while he and Charlotte did ‘You’re the Tops’.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Baby. He was quite drunk; he was quite drunk every night. Fred looked at him sharply.

‘I’ll play,’ said Virginia quickly. ‘Baby’s tired.’

The performance was charming; but Betsey and Virginia were the only enthusiastic applauders. Baby was half asleep, Alexander was looking embarrassed, Freddy was slumped in a chair playing solitaire, Kendrick and Georgina had sloped off to the kitchen in search of extra ice cream, and Mary Rose was trying to conceal her distaste for the proceedings, clapping limply while smiling icily at the performers.

‘Very good,’ she said when they had finished. ‘But I’m surprised you haven’t learnt a new number by now, Charlotte. Don’t you go to your dancing classes any more?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Charlotte, ‘but I don’t have a partner to practise any new numbers with. Well, not a decent one.’

Fred III smiled at her, and pulled her onto his knee.

‘That’s my girl,’ he said. ‘A good partner’s everything. That’s what Ginger used to say.’

There was a silence; it was broken by the sound of Baby snoring. Fred looked at him with distaste.

‘Baby,’ said Mary Rose, in a voice that was quiet, yet piercing enough to splinter glass, ‘Baby, could we all have some more to drink, please.’

Baby woke up and shambled out to the kitchen; Betsey looked distressed. ‘I think he’s probably had enough to drink already,’ she said.

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Fred, ever contrary. ‘He drinks a lot, but he knows when to stop.’

He looked briefly at Virginia; there was an uneasy silence.

‘I think,’ she said, feeling the tears stinging behind her eyes, ‘I think if you’ll excuse me, I might go up to bed. I’m terribly tired. Max had me up at half past five this morning, singing nursery songs.’

‘Of course, dear,’ said Betsey, ‘you do look tired. Freddy, will you come over here and show me what you’re doing?’

‘I can’t make it come out,’ said Freddy, showing her the solitaire. There were five solitary marbles impossibly far apart.

‘Hey, that’s not very clever,’ said Fred. ‘Charlotte can do that in a trice, can’t you, honey? Show Freddy how you do it.’

Charlotte took the solitaire board from Freddy, smiling at him rather complacently as she put the marbles back in position.

‘It isn’t very difficult,’ she said, ‘look.’

Sixty seconds later she had reduced the board to one solitary marble, positioned dead centre. Fred III was smiling triumphantly.
‘Isn’t that just something? She showed me that this morning. Charlotte honey, would you share your secret with me?’

‘Only if you promise to play golf with me in the morning.’

‘I will. I promise.’

Mary Rose looked as if she might be sick.

Sometimes, Virginia thought as she went out of the room, sometimes she could actually sympathize with her.

Alexander did not behave well either. He was plainly and painfully bored. He didn’t like sailing, he didn’t like Baby and Mary Rose’s friends – rich, clannish, painstakingly Old Money, the wives as earnestly cultured, as painfully devoted to their roles as Mary Rose, the men an uncomfortable blend of ferocious ambition and locker-room camaraderie; they all moved through the days together, in a close-knit, rather self-conscious group, arranging the next day’s sailing and tennis and drinking before they parted each night as if in terror of a day’s solitude. He spent much of the time mooching around or swimming on his own or with Georgina, patently very much his favourite, and refusing to take any of the other children with him, saying it was too much of a responsibility, and that in his opinion there should be one adult to each child in the sea.

Virginia announced that she had to go to New York. ‘And then on to Long Island,’ she said to Alexander over supper. ‘There’s a problem on that cottage at Sag Harbor. I’ll be gone the rest of the week. Is that all right?’

‘Not really,’ he said, looking at her oddly, ‘but I suppose it will have to be.’

‘Yes, Alexander, it will.’

Left without Virginia, Baby felt oddly lonely. He suddenly realized how much he was missing Angie. And he was worried about her on her own in New York. She had been to England to visit Mrs Wicks, and she and Suze had been on holiday in France, which he had paid for, glad to be able to rid himself of some of the guilt he felt at enjoying the time with his family; now she was back in the city.

‘I’ll have to get back to work by then, Baby. It’ll only be a week before you get back, and then we can have the most wonderful, noisy, exhausting reunion. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.’

‘I can’t help worrying about you, Angie. You seem very vulnerable to me. I don’t quite know why.’

‘I don’t know why either,’ said Angie.

Friday was a perfect morning, mistily golden, the sun forcing its way determinedly through onto the just-blue sea. It was clearly going to be very hot. Baby woke up early, found himself feeling more optimistic and calm than he had done for almost the whole of the past month, and decided to go for a swim. The children were all up and in the kitchen, being fed by the harassed nurse; Freddy and Charlotte demanded to be allowed to go with him.

‘Sure,’ said Baby good-naturedly. ‘I’d be glad of the company.’

Freddy was good at swimming; it was the one thing he could beat Charlotte at. The surf was quite big, and there was a strong undertow to the waves.

‘Be careful,’ Baby warned them, ‘don’t go out of your depth.’

Charlotte rather uncharacteristically did what she was told, but Freddy swam out, bobbing over the breakers, diving under them, riding in on them, laughing with pleasure. Baby’s heart contracted with love as he looked at him; whatever he had to endure at Fred’s hands, at Mary Rose’s, it was worth it, to see the children happy, to know Freddy’s future was safe.

Later, they sat on the deck, wrapped in huge towels, drinking hot chocolate. Alexander had appeared, smiling. He seemed better humoured than he had done for weeks.

‘Virginia just phoned. She’ll be out here first thing tomorrow.’

‘She all right?’

‘Yes of course she’s all right. Why shouldn’t she be?’

‘Oh – I – just wondered,’ said Baby. ‘She was looking a little pale.’