Wicked Pleasures (26 page)

‘Kinloch Castle.’

‘Good morning. May I speak to Lady Charlotte Welles, please?’

‘May I ask who is calling?’

‘It’s Lady Caterham. Her mother.’

‘One moment, Lady Caterham.’

She waited, tapping her fingers on the table, looking round the room, newly aware of it, studying the ornate carvings on the cornices, the perfect lines of the fireplace; occasionally, just very occasionally, she could see why Alexander loved the house so much. She must try to help him more with it, with everything. She hadn’t been much use to him lately.

‘Lady Caterham?’

‘Yes?’ She hadn’t expected this, not to speak to Charlotte.

‘Lady Caterham, I am so sorry, but the children have gone.’

‘Gone.’ The word seemed oddly threatening. She realized she was panicking, quite illogically. ‘What do you mean gone?’

‘Well, Lady Caterham, they have gone away for two or three days. Lord Caterham and the Dowager Lady Caterham have taken them on a trip to some of the islands. They should be back by Saturday.’

‘Oh,’ said Virginia. ‘Oh, I see. Well – well I expect my daughter just wanted to tell me that.’

‘Yes, my lady, I expect so.’ The voice was soothing, oddly patronizing. She felt irritated.

‘Well, when they return, please tell them I called.’

‘Yes, Lady Caterham. Of course.’

She put the phone down, chilled. They all seemed rather lost to her suddenly. Then she shook herself. That was ridiculous. They would all be home in another five days or so. She would just make herself a very strong coffee. She lit one of the French cigarettes and went down the hall to the kitchen door.

There was only one thing for it, really. She had hung on for the rest of the day, she had smoked, drunk coffee, eaten a whole box of chocolates, but in the end it seemed just the only, blindingly obvious thing to do. Have a drink. Just one. Only one. To ease the pain and the loneliness and the hurt.

What a nightmare week. Everything, everything gone wrong. The children away, apparently under the spell of their grandmother; a client upset, the job with Anne Lygon cancelled, even her friendship with Catriona on the rocks. It was horrible. Horrible. And always there, underneath it all, the nagging awful fear about Hartest and the money, and Alexander’s dreadful, alienating misery. And there was no one, nothing to turn to. Except – except a drink. The one friend she had always had. It had suddenly become the only thing she could think about. Comforting, consoling, soothing; anaesthetizing pain, stilling anxiety. So accessible, so undemanding.

Red wine, that’s what she wanted. Un-iced champagne wouldn’t be cold enough, and she wouldn’t be able to have just one glass of champagne, it would be a waste. She could cork the red wine up, keep it maybe until dinner tomorrow. She picked out a bottle of claret, tucked it under her arm, and went quietly upstairs again. There were plenty of corkscrews in Alexander’s study, she could get one from there.

His study was cold, creepily tidy and impersonal. It was as if no one had ever used it. She took a corkscrew off the tray, went along the corridor to her room, and locked the door behind her.

She no longer cared about the children going off without her, or whether she was losing all her clients. She felt excited, exalted even. She felt as if she was going to meet some long-lost lover. Well, perhaps not lover. Friend. Her heart was beating very hard. She sat down on the bed, drew the cork, poured a very small amount of the wine into the tumbler from her bathroom. She sat and looked at it for a moment, thinking, waiting. Then she raised the glass and took a small, contemplative sip.

When they came home, the children and Alexander, swooping down the Great Drive in the Daimler, she was out on the steps waiting for them, her eyes full of tears of pleasure. She was almost drunk.

When she saw Charlotte and Georgina off to school – Georgina off bravely to board for the first term – giving in to Alexander’s suggestion that he should drive them there and leave her to do some work, she said goodbye to them and went upstairs and got drunk.

And when Max had gone back to school too, to his little pre-prep school in Marlborough and had hugged her goodbye at the gate and said, ‘Soon I shall be away at boarding school too, I can’t wait,’ she drove up to London, to the house
in Eaton Place, and stayed there for twenty-four hours, twelve hours drinking and twelve hours trying to sober up. And then another twelve, and then another.

In the end Alexander came to find her; he looked at her, sadly loving, and said, ‘Come along, darling. Let me take you home.’

And then there was treatment, therapy, a short spell in the clinic, and home – safe, she thought – but then Alexander had to go away for a few days, to talk to people about the house, and it was so quiet, so lonely, so frighteningly lonely she got drunk again.

And while she was drunk, hopelessly drunk, Baby phoned; Alexander had suggested he did, just to cleer her up, had said he knew she missed him and that she was alone; and she was weeping with happiness, babbling down the phone, and she didn’t realize how quiet he was at the other end, and how he said goodbye rather suddenly.

Alexander was still worried, still distracted about Hartest, about money; he said that after all, maybe, he would have to open it to the public. He said nothing would ever persuade him it was the right thing to do, but it was beginning to seem the only thing to do. Virginia offered to sell all her shares but he said it simply wasn’t worth it. ‘It wouldn’t even sort out the walls.’

Virginia got very drunk indeed that night. She carried on drinking all the next day, and the next. In a very short time, she was in the clinic again.

She was sitting in her room reading a week later, the worst over (again), when Alexander walked in, looking remarkably cheerful.

‘You look better, darling.’

‘I feel better. I’m so sorry, Alexander. So terribly terribly sorry.’

‘I know.’

‘This time I won’t, I really really won’t go back.’

‘I believe you. We’ll lick it. Together.’

‘You’re very good to me, Alexander.’

‘Well, I love you. It’s easy.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘It is.’

‘You look better too.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve had some very good news.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Your father phoned me this morning. He’s reconsidered. He’s made a loan available to me.’

‘Alexander, that is just fantastic. I’m so pleased.’

‘Well, it should be a boost for you too. Help you through. No more worry about being on the streets.’

‘No. Oh, it’s marvellous. Simply marvellous.’ She looked at him thoughtfully, almost awestruck. ‘It’s really an extraordinary volte-face. I wonder whatever made him change his mind.’

Alexander turned and walked over to the window. ‘God knows,’ he said.

Charlotte, 1974

Asking her mother That Question, as she always thought of it, was the hardest thing Charlotte ever did. It was much more difficult than the other difficult questions like when she might get a bosom, and what was a tampon for and what exactly was a lesbian, and the awful irony of it was that unlike the other questions, she had to keep asking it, or variations on it, over the years, without ever getting an entirely satisfactory answer.

That Question had first been put into her head (as indeed had the one about lesbians) by another girl at her school. Charlotte had been eleven when it was put there, and in her last year at Southland Place, the boarding prep school where both she and Georgina had been sent at eight.

Charlotte and Georgina had been sitting side by side on the bench on the rounders field when the subject was first raised; Georgina’s skinny arms hugging her endlessly long legs, her small pointed chin resting on her knees, Charlotte’s considerably less slender form, glowingly damp from having just scored seven rounders, her dark curls plastered to her plumply pretty little face.

‘Shove over, fatty,’ said Rowena Parker not unkindly to Charlotte; ‘I’m zonked.’ Georgina turned to glare at Rowena. ‘Don’t call my sister fatty.’

‘Why not? She is a fatty. She’s as fat as you’re thin. Are you two adopted or something?’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Charlotte, looking at her more in interest than outrage. ‘Of course we’re not adopted.’

‘Well, I never saw two sisters look more different,’ said Rowena. ‘I mean honestly, you’re short and – well certainly not thin, and dark, and she’s tall and skinny and sort of mouse-coloured.’

‘Don’t be so rude,’ said Charlotte. ‘Anyway, you don’t look much like your sister either.’

‘No, but at least she’s not a foot taller than me and two years younger. I think it’s quite peculiar.’

‘Well I think
you’re
quite peculiar,’ said Charlotte. ‘Come on, Georgina, let’s go and find some tea.’

‘Don’t eat all the cake,’ said Rowena. ‘I know you, Charlotte Welles.’

‘Stupid cow,’ said Charlotte when they were out of Rowena’s hearing. ‘Well she is a stupid cow,’ said Georgina, ‘but it’s true, Charlotte, isn’t it? We do look very different. I’ve often thought about it myself.’

‘You’re joking!’ said Charlotte, turning to stare at her.

‘No I’m not. In fact Max said something about it last holidays. He said he was so glad he didn’t look like either of us, because we were both so ugly, and
I hit him, and then he said it was true and what was more, we were both so ugly in different ways. And we are.’

‘Ugly?’

‘Well, I’m ugly. You’re not. But we do look very different.’

‘Georgie, you’re not ugly.’

‘Well, I’m plain.’

‘I don’t think you’re plain,’ said Charlotte staunchly. She was very fond of Georgina; her voice nevertheless lacked any great conviction. Georgina at nine was at best what the French call
jolie laide
, with a long narrow little face, sharply painful cheekbones, a large mouth and a high forehead; she was extremely tall and angular with legs that looked too fragile to support her, and a set of ribs so prominent they even showed through a T-shirt. Her nickname at school was B (short for Biafra); whenever she got the wishbone or it was her birthday she wished to put on some weight. Charlotte wished precisely the reverse; she was prettily, peachily round, with a tumble of dark curls and dimples, and although she was beginning to grow taller and to slim down a little, she did look, beside the faun-like Georgina, like an engagingly cuddly little puppy. Which was not what she wanted and grossly unfair, as she wailed at least twice a day, since she was painstakingly careful about what she ate, while Georgina could and did consume four Shredded Wheats for breakfast and then some toast and honey, always had seconds of everything including treacle pudding and brought back twice as much tuck after the holidays as Charlotte, none of which ever seemed to touch her skeletal frame.

‘Well anyway, we don’t look like sisters. Have you really never thought about it?’

‘No,’ said Charlotte, ‘I haven’t. And I’m sure we’d know if we weren’t, you know what Mummy’s like for being open with us, as she puts it.’

Nevertheless, the thought began from that moment to haunt her.

She summoned the courage to ask Virginia about it next holidays; she had to wait until they were alone, which wasn’t very often, but one afternoon they were sitting in the old wooden dinghy on the lake, pretending to catch fish, just the two of them. Georgina had gone to play with a friend, and Max was riding with Alexander. It had been a good summer, the endless restoration, reroofing and underpinning of Hartest finally complete.

It took a lot of courage, the asking; three times she opened her mouth, felt a rush of fear and then shut it again, but finally she got out the word ‘Mummy?’ in a questioning voice, so that Virginia was bound to say ‘Yes, what?’ as she always did, and then she knew she had to go on.

‘Well, could I ask you something? Something awkward?’

‘Charlotte! Not more about lesbians,’ said Virginia, laughing. ‘Darling, of course you can, and it can’t be awkward, not between you and me. I’m your mother.’

‘Are you?’ She felt quite sick when she got that out, sick and breathless; but she met Virginia’s eyes very steadily.

Virginia stared back without flinching, but she flushed; then she smiled slightly awkwardly.

‘Darling, of course I am. What an extraordinary thing to say. Is that the question?’

‘Yes. Well, sort of. Sorry. I – well I just had to ask. Some of the girls at school think we’re – adopted.’

There, she had got it out. Said the word. She sat forward in the boat, staring at her mother’s face.

‘Charlotte! What an astonishing question. What on earth, what on earth could make anyone think that?’ She began to look cross now, her golden eyes snapping. ‘Who’s been putting that sort of nonsense into your head?’

‘Oh, some stupid girl called Rowena. But –’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, you can see why she should think that, can’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Virginia icily. ‘I can’t.’

‘Mummy, don’t get upset. It doesn’t matter that much.’

‘I am not upset and it does matter. Perhaps you could tell me why she thinks it.’

‘Well, it’s just that we do look awfully different,’ said Charlotte. ‘All of us, but specially me and Georgie.’

‘Don’t call her that,’ said Virginia automatically. She hated Georgina’s name being shortened.

‘Sorry. But she’s about six feet tall and a beanpole and I’m six feet wide and sort of shortish, and I’m dark and she’s mousey. And then Max is blond and good-looking and sort of normal-shaped.’

‘Like Daddy.’

‘Well, yes. Like Daddy.’

‘And you’re dark and pretty. With maybe just a tiny bit of a weight problem. Like I used to have.’

‘Well – yes.’

‘And Georgina is exceptionally tall and thin, at the moment, but I understand Granny Caterham is very tall.’

‘Yes – she is.’

‘And you and Georgina both have my eyes. Which are a very unusual colour. Haven’t you thought of that?’

‘No, I s’pose not,’ said Charlotte. She wished she hadn’t said anything, her mother was clearly very upset.

‘Darling,’ said Virginia, making a great effort to smile, to appear relaxed, ‘I do promise you you’re not adopted. I gave birth to all of you, personally, and if you don’t believe me, I can introduce you to my nice obstetrician who was there at the time. Well, for Georgina and Max, she was. For you I had a dreadful old trout called Mr Dunwoody, who I’m sure would vouch for me as well. All right? Do you believe me now?’