Wicked Pleasures (29 page)

‘However,’ said Fred, ‘however…’

‘Dear God,’ said Baby. His knuckles were white.

‘There are new contributions that can be made, from a new source. The fastest rising, strongest source to hit mankind since man rose onto two feet. A powerful, clear-sighted, courageous source. I refer to – woman. Now this may surprise many of you. I have not been known for my championship of the women’s cause. Indeed I have, to my shame, obstructed it. But it is a mark of strength and of courage to admit a mistake, and I am admitting mine. I have come to respect, to admire, to value women.’

‘And about time too,’ said Betsey, providing yet again a hugely welcome break in the tension.

‘Indeed. And without you, my darling, I would not have made this leap. However, there are practical considerations to my change of heart. I want the bank to be equipped to receive this bounty. I want it receptive to every kind of change. I want it to contain women, therefore, in high places. Consequently, I have drawn up a new constitution for the bank.’

The silence in the room was tangible, thick; nobody stirred.

‘I have made provision, as I can, within the share structure, for a change in its constitution. I have arranged –’he waited, his gaze resting upon her, tender, benign –‘for my eldest granddaughter, Charlotte, to inherit the bank equally, together with her cousin, Freddy. I would ask you all to stand, and to drink to Charlotte. And the new future that she represents.’

Everyone rose once again, slightly awkwardly, a little uncomfortable, raising their glasses, saying ‘To Charlotte’ oddly half-heartedly.

Baby looked at Freddy, white-faced and still, staring blankly in front of him, and then at Charlotte, receiving congratulations, flushed, half smiling, plainly (but charmingly) overwhelmed by it all, and hated her so much that he could in that moment have quite easily killed her.

Charlotte, 1978–80

Charlotte always said afterwards that that had been the moment when she had grown up – swiftly, unequivocally, irreversibly. She changed, publicly, dramatically, from a pretty, charming child into a young woman, one already branded successful, immensely rich – and potentially powerful. It was the last that seemed at once most exciting and most scary. She sat there, the picture of modesty, looking down at her hands, and felt a surge of almost physical excitement, of triumph at the thought of what she had been given. And then that sensation passed, and she was suddenly and immensely aware of, concerned for, Freddy. She was quite proud of that afterwards; she felt she must be a nicer person than she had always thought. Time seemed to have frozen; nobody at the table moved or spoke. She looked at him sitting there, next to her, rather pale, staring fiercely ahead of him, clenching and unclenching his fists, and she felt sick and just didn’t know what to do; and then she saw Baby coming towards them, his blue eyes concerned, gentle, as he looked at Freddy, putting his hand on his shoulder, saying something in his ear; Charlotte jumped up and said, ‘Have my seat, Uncle Baby,’ and he smiled at her very nicely and said, ‘Thank you, Charlotte. Congratulations,’ and she thought how extraordinarily generous a person he was, not to hate her, not to be tempted to strangle her, or at least kick her hard under the table (and the unbidden thought also came into her head at that moment, surprising her, that he was perhaps too nice, too easy to manipulate for his own good and the position he was in), and she started to move off the platform, towards the room and the smiling, indulgent crowd of people, all wanting to congratulate her.

‘Charlotte,’ said a voice suddenly, ‘or should I say, Lady Charlotte. May I have the pleasure of this dance?’

Charlotte looked up and found herself confronted by an extremely handsome young man. He was tall, and very heavily built; he had curly dark hair and brown eyes and the alarmingly perfect teeth possessed by so many rich Americans, and he was undeniably and powerfully sexy.

‘We haven’t met since you were twelve,’ he said, holding out his hand to pull her up from her chair. ‘I’m Gabriel Hoffman. Known as Gabe. My father is a partner at Praegers. It looks like we shall be working together in due course.’

‘Really?’ said Charlotte coolly. For some reason she didn’t like him in spite of the good looks and the sexiness. ‘Have you already started working there yourself ?’

‘Not quite,’ said Gabe. ‘But that’s what I shall be. A partner like my dad. So like I say, we shall be working together.’

‘I hadn’t realized partnerships were hereditary,’ said Charlotte coolly. ‘So maybe we won’t. I’m sorry, but I have to go have a word with Freddy.’

She walked past him and over to Freddy who was standing in one of the doorways, looking as if the end of the world had come and staring at her intently over his glass of champagne. His eyes, she noticed, and wondered why she had never done so before, were exactly like his mother’s, very pale and very cold: and at that moment fearsomely filled with dislike.

‘Come on, Fred the Fifth,’ she said, taking the champagne out of his hand and setting it down on a nearby table. ‘Dance with me. And let’s be friends. We’re going to be in this thing together, after all.’

Freddy looked at her for a moment or two without speaking; then he said, ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte, I don’t like dancing. And I think it is a little naïve of you to imagine we could be friends. Business partners, yes, it seems, but friends, no.’ And he turned away from her and walked out of the marquee.

Charlotte stared after him. A knot of panic that was almost physical had formed in her chest; she felt cold and very alone suddenly. She realized very vividly in that moment the full extent of his hatred for her, and realized too how naïve, how crass she had been to think she could simply chat him up, charm him into accepting her, regard her as anything but a bitter, deadly threat, a claimant to his birthright, the thing he had been brought up to believe from babyhood was his and his alone. Charlotte was not easily frightened, but she was frightened now, looking down the years ahead at the feud that she would inherit along with the bank, a feud that nothing could save her from; and then following swiftly on the fear came a rush of sheer reckless courage with which she always greeted danger, and she smiled at the retreating back and turned back to find Gabe Hoffman. But he was gone, and she saw him dancing with a very pretty girl, laughing down at her; he glanced over and saw her watching them, and his expression was distant, unfriendly. Charlotte stared back at him, and realized with sickening clarity that she had made a serious tactical error. She needed Gabe; she needed all the allies she could get. She had already lost not one but two of her skirmishes in what was clearly going to be a very long war. And playing silly flirtatious sexual games was clearly no way to win any of them.

Charlotte had discovered the power of her own sexuality the previous summer; and having discovered it, she had enjoyed exercising it. She had spent a week with her friend Joanna Lavenham and her parents in their house near Salcombe in Devon. Joanna’s brother Toby had been there, and Toby had not only found Charlotte very exciting, he had seen that she found him very exciting too.

Toby was nineteen and at Oxford; he had successfully seduced half his year, and he quite fancied his chances with the sexy, brainy Lady Charlotte Welles. He engineered a sailing afternoon with her, alone in his dinghy, moored the boat in a cove, suggested they swim in and had then proceeded to kiss Charlotte with an unhurried confidence that left her confused, hungry and flattered.

After half an hour or so, one of his hands found its way into her bikini top; she pushed it away rather half-heartedly once or twice and then closed her eyes
and surrendered herself to the increased pleasure; shortly after that the hand was moving confidently and insistently down to her bikini bottoms and her pubic hair. That was even nicer; but just as she was drowning in the pleasure of it and the added pleasure that the gorgeous Toby Lavenham found her so plainly desirable, he pulled away from her and started pulling off his trunks.

‘Oh no,’ said Charlotte firmly, sitting up herself and readjusting her top. ‘No, Toby. Sorry.’

‘Darling, I’m not going to do anything,’ said Toby, ‘honestly. I just want to be really close to you. That’s all.’

Charlotte lay back on the sand and looked at him thoughtfully. He was very tall and well built; he had brown floppy hair and very sexy grey eyes. His body was slim, but not skinny, with a lot of dark hair on it; and the object hitherto concealed by his swimming trunks was dauntingly large and rather awesome. Charlotte tried to imagine herself accommodating it and couldn’t; well, that was all right, she thought, she wasn’t going to have to.

‘Frankly,’ she said, smiling at him very coolly, ‘I really don’t think I believe you. Please put your trunks back on, Toby, I really think this has all got a bit out of hand.’

Toby looked at her for a while; then he smiled, a mildly mocking smile. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I don’t fuck schoolgirls. Come on, let’s go home.’

He didn’t speak to her unless he had to ask her to pass something at the table for the rest of the week; then on the last night they were all invited to a party, Charlotte got very drunk and asked him to dance with her, and Toby took her outside after a few minutes and kissed her for so long and so expertly that she hardly knew what she was doing, she wanted him so much; her body seemed to be no longer hers, no longer under control, she could feel it reaching for him, a sense of odd emptiness, a quivering, almost painful heat somewhere in its depth.

‘You’re an amazingly sexy girl,’ he said to her finally, drawing back, breathing rather heavily, ‘and I would like to screw you right into the ground.’

‘Well,’ said Charlotte, speaking with some difficulty, ‘why don’t you?’

‘Would you like that?’ said Toby, grinning down at her.

‘I think so. Yes, yes I would.’

He took her hand, and started walking with her towards the summer house at the bottom of the lawn; Charlotte felt a mixture of fear and a great excitement, a disbelief that she could have come thus far. She was beginning to wonder, somewhat anxiously, what if anything she should do or say about contraception, when she heard Mrs Lavenham’s voice calling from the french windows.

‘Toby! Charlotte! Are you there? Time to go home.’

‘Fuck,’ said Toby. ‘Fuck. Or rather, no fuck. Sorry, Charlotte. Another time maybe.’

Ever since then, her body seemed to have taken on a completely new and disturbing life of its own; it was restless, curious, and extremely wilful. She thought of sex a great deal, after that, what it might be like, what its range of pleasures might be; she was fascinated by it, she wanted it; and more than
anything, she liked making boys want it. She was still a virgin; but she was impatient not to be.

And now, in one evening, one hour, one moment almost, she had discovered the necessity of growing up. And in consequence the matter of when and indeed whether she should go to bed with someone had become of very paltry importance.

It was difficult after that to go back to school, to obey rules, to wear a uniform, to be a child. She felt quite different about herself. Everything she did was directed towards this great and totally absorbing end. She could think of very little else. She pretended to; she pretended she was pleased, but no more than that, that she was also scared, of all the implications, the necessary manifestations of her birthright, leaving her family, going to live in America, having her entire life pattern prescribed for her, but she actually felt nothing of the kind, she was desperately excited, frantically impatient. And also, she discovered, oddly confident. Not even the thought of Freddy’s hostility worried her seriously. She had no doubts that she could handle that, as well as she would the work, the new world she was to find herself in; she sat from her viewpoint as Deputy Head Girl in an English public school with no real knowledge of what she was confronted with, and did not doubt for one moment that she would be successful at it.

She enjoyed her two A-level years. The work she found easy; exploring subjects in depth was an intense pleasure. She read far more and more widely than any of her contemporaries; nevertheless the actual examinations she found stressful, she became exhausted, tearful, unable to sleep. No one could understand it, they kept telling her she was bound to do well, she was so clever, and even if she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. This simply made Charlotte even more fretful. The eyes of the entire world, or at least that part of it she cared about, would be on her results; she needed, for her own self-esteem, to be seen to perform not well but brilliantly, to show that she had not been given her great prize for nothing, just because her grandfather favoured her, petted her, but because she deserved it, and could justify the gift in every day of her life.

She lay awake half the night before the results came, staring into the darkness, sweating and afraid; she was actually sick twice. Towards dawn she fell finally asleep, and surfaced what seemed like a moment later, to hear Max’s voice light with excitement.

‘Georgie, look, they’re here.’

‘Max, don’t call me Georgie. You know how cross it makes Mummy. What’s here?’

‘Everything makes Mummy cross. Charlotte’s results.’

‘Je-sus!’

‘Georgie, don’t swear. That’s the one thing that makes Daddy cross. Shall I take them up or will you?’

‘Bags I do!’

So much for getting up early and meeting the postman at the top of the drive; Charlotte flung out of bed, feeling angry and sick again, and opened her bedroom door. Her heart was thumping so hard she could feel it in her throat, a great lump. She swallowed, took a deep breath and ran down the stairs.

‘Give those to me!’ she said, snatching them from Max’s hand. ‘And go away, both of you, go away.’

Max and Georgina retreated, into the library; Charlotte ripped clumsily at the envelope, closed her eyes briefly, then opened them, forced them down. There was a silence, then a great, almost primitive cry of triumph echoed up into the dome of the Rotunda.

‘Grandpa? Grandpa, it’s Charlotte. How are you? Good. Listen, I got my results. Four As. Isn’t that great? Aren’t you proud of me? Yes, so I go up to Cambridge next term. Yes, she’s thrilled, and so is Daddy. Anyway, I’ll see you next week, won’t I, on Nantucket. I feel I can really look forward to it now. How are the others? Give my love to Grandma. Bye, Grandpa.’