Wicked Pleasures (33 page)

‘You sound very hostile.’

‘I don’t feel hostile exactly. Well I do, but more than that I feel confused. Mummy, I do want to talk to you. About it. About everything. I just have to. Are you really coming home tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Yes of course I am. I’m very glad you do want to talk. I think I might find it easier to explain than Daddy. Some of it anyway. Why – how it all happened.’

‘I wish you were here now,’ said Charlotte. She sounded wistful suddenly. ‘Well, darling, I would have been. If I’d known you were there.’

‘Well now you do. And I do feel terribly lonely.’

‘I’m sure you do. Charlotte, what about Max?’

‘What about him?’

‘Well, he has to be told; I wondered if you’d spoken to Daddy about that.’

‘No. No, not really. But anyway, it’s different for him, isn’t it? I mean, yes of course he has to be told about us. But it’s not the same. Not really.’

‘Well of course it is.’ Virginia sounded puzzled. ‘Of course it is.’

‘Mummy, it isn’t. How can it be?’

‘Charlotte, what are you saying?’

‘Well – as Max is really Daddy’s. There just isn’t so much to cope with. For him. That’s what I’m saying.’

There was a long silence. Then Virginia said, ‘Charlotte, I think I’ll come down tonight after all. I’ve got my Golf here. I’ll drive myself down. I’ll be there by ten.’

‘Oh Mummy, thank you. That sounds wonderful.’

She wasn’t there by ten as she had promised. She wasn’t there by eleven. Just after twelve the police arrived. There had been a crash on the M4 just after the Marlowe turn-off. Virginia’s car had been in the wreckage. She had died very soon after getting to hospital.

Baby, 1980

Baby stood in the chapel at Hartest, looking at Virginia’s coffin, his eyes heavy with tears he dared not start to shed, and remembered her. She was a very particular person, the one he remembered; not the ravishing and successful Countess of Caterham, nor the beautiful young girl who had walked down the aisle towards him and Alexander in her white rose-strewn dress; not the tear-stained remorseful woman who had betrayed him and Angie to his father, nor the mother of the brilliant and dazzling child who was robbing his son of his birthright; she was not the fragile, vulnerable woman who had become an alcoholic, God only knew for what reason, nor the heartbroken one who had buried an infant son. And she was not even the graceful, laughing figure partnering her father in their ritual dance, nor the protesting Blessed, the virginal toast of Harvard. She was a little girl, a plump, slightly anxious little girl, with tangled dark curls and a resigned expression in her tawny eyes, who always got caught and was always in hot water, while he, Baby, having committed the same crimes, got away safe, unpunished, scot free.

And now she lay there, dead, still, lost to him, to her children, to her husband, to everyone who loved her and he remembered her in her vulnerable, often sad beauty; and once again, she had been the unlucky one and he, Baby, had got away, and was standing here, quite safe, still unpunished, and still scot free.

The remorse, the guilt, was almost worse than the pain.

It was a stricken little household that he found himself in. The two younger children were more visibly upset than Charlotte; Max was struggling and failing to be brave and Georgina wasn’t even struggling, and cried most of the time. Alexander was moving about like an automaton, frozen-faced, silent, making arrangements; Nanny appeared to be furiously angry and went about all day frowning and slamming doors, her lips folded in upon themselves even more tightly than usual. Baby did his best to provide comfort, support and even a little cheer; he cuddled the girls, encouraged Max to cry as well, thinking it would be good for him, and tried to talk to Alexander, who rebuffed him firmly and just politely.

Charlotte, he found, was suffering from guilt as much as grief; she kept saying it had been her fault Virginia had died.

‘Darling child, how can it be?’ said Baby. ‘She was driving probably too fast, she was a lousy driver, and she crashed her car. That’s not your fault.’

‘No, but I said I wanted to see her badly. I said I wished she was here. She was tired, I knew she was, she’d only just flown in. I should have waited.’

‘Charlotte, you can’t blame yourself for that. You only told her you wanted her. I expect she was pleased.’

‘No, but I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have. Not when she was so tired. And it was raining. Oh God, why, why didn’t I leave her alone?’

‘Well, you didn’t, I’m afraid.’ Baby sighed, hugged her closer. ‘We all have to live with what we have done. And nobody, nobody on earth would blame you for what you did. But I can understand your blaming yourself.’

‘Does that mean you blame me?’

‘Of course not. I just said I didn’t. Listen, poppet, you just have to hang onto the thought that she would have been glad you wanted to see her. OK?’

‘Yes but –’

She didn’t say any more. He got the feeling that she wasn’t telling him everything, but he didn’t press her.

Fred and Betsey and Mary Rose and the children arrived after four days for the funeral; it was a relief to see them, it took the pressure off him. His children were subdued, upset; they had been extremely fond of Virginia. Even Freddy managed to overcome his hostility to Charlotte, told her how sorry he was, how much he would miss his aunt. Charlotte was too numb with misery to notice.

Betsey was shattered, shrunken in her grief, but Fred was angry, as Nanny had been, angry with the other drivers, angry with Alexander for not being with her, angry with Virginia herself. ‘If she’d been where she should have been, with her family, instead of rushing around the United States worrying about that damnfool business, it would never have happened. Ridiculous, the whole thing, ridiculous bloody waste.’

Baby sat nodding. There was never any point arguing with Fred; and besides he did feel there was something in what he said. Virginia had neglected her family, there was no denying it; she clearly felt she had her reasons, and Baby did not think they were entirely personal ambition, rather the reverse, Virginia had always seemed to him one of the least ambitious people he had ever met, but they had to be slightly spurious set against the demands of her family. Anyway, it was too late now; but if it did Fred good to rail against her, then Baby thought they should let him be.

Alexander came down to breakfast the day before the funeral and said his mother was coming down and he was meeting her at Heathrow in two hours’ time. Having dropped what was clearly a very large bombshell he disappeared again.

‘I don’t want her here,’ said Georgina, staring at the doorway after him. ‘She never even saw Mummy when she was alive, why suddenly arrive on the doorstep when she’s dead? I’m going to find it very hard to be nice to her.’

‘Oh don’t be silly,’ said Charlotte wearily. ‘Of course you must be nice to her. She’s always been very nice to all of us. She’s obviously feeling remorseful. I think it’s quite brave of her to come.’

‘I don’t want her to come either,’ said Max.

‘Er – put me in the picture here,’ said Baby, putting down his coffee cup. ‘This is the grandmother who would never come and meet Virginia, yes?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Charlotte. ‘We never knew why. Mummy never knew. When we met Granny Caterham, she just never mentioned Mummy at all.’

‘I asked her why she never came,’ said Max suddenly. ‘She told me it was the journey. She said she hated trains and gets car sick.’

‘Well, but that doesn’t explain why she would never have Mummy up there,’ said Charlotte.

‘Daddy said she would,’ said Georgina, ‘Granny would have liked her to go, but Mummy got in such a strop because Granny wouldn’t come to the christenings or anything, she refused.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Charlotte wonderingly.

‘I’m finding this all very confusing,’ said Baby wearily.

Charlotte turned to him. ‘The thing is, Granny Caterham always refused to come and meet Mummy. Or to see us when we were born. And we weren’t allowed to ask why. I mean we weren’t even allowed to ask Daddy. It was out of bounds. Even after we’d been up there and met her. But there was obviously some big row behind it.’

‘And – what is she like?’ asked Baby.

‘Oh, she’s fun,’ said Charlotte. ‘Really she is. We liked her. It was difficult, because we couldn’t tell Mummy that. She gave us one or two lovely holidays up there. We see her about once a year.’

‘And your mother never ever met her?’

‘Never ever.’

The Dowager Countess arrived at lunchtime. Expecting some kind of madwoman, Baby was rather charmed by her. She was very like Alexander, tall, erect, with a remarkably deep voice; she was dressed in sturdy tweeds, her grey hair pulled back neatly into a bun, her brilliant blue eyes fixed on her son throughout the meal. There was an odd expression in those eyes, Baby thought, trying to analyse it, not quite concern, and certainly not tenderness or affection, rather a detached interest as if she was studying some unusual species of animal she was not quite familiar with.

She didn’t talk a great deal, but when she did it was to the children, whom she was clearly fond of; after lunch she suggested they all went for a walk with her. Alexander excused himself and followed them out of the room.

‘Well,’ said Betsey, struggling with a natural, grandmotherly jealousy. ‘I really didn’t like her at all.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ said Fred, ‘you practically curtseyed to her when you were introduced.’

‘I did not. I thought she was a very odd, cold woman.’

‘Just like her son if you ask me,’ said Fred.

‘We didn’t,’ said Betsey.

The day of the funeral was in an odd way easier than Baby had feared. The adrenalin required to get them all through it, the forced bonhomie of the luncheon afterwards, the plentiful supply of drink, all helped. Baby sat next to Catriona Dunbar at lunch; he had met her before and found her nice, although
extremely unattractive and so unlike Virginia in every way as to make the friendship totally inexplicable.

‘You must be feeling quite dreadful,’ she said in her slightly braying voice, passing him the hollandaise sauce. ‘I’m so frightfully sorry.’

‘Thank you,’ said Baby. ‘You’ll miss her too.’

‘Yes, I will. Very much. Of course I didn’t see her very often, but whenever I did it was such a pleasure.’

‘But I thought –’

‘Yes?’ She smiled at him, too widely; some salmon had become stuck in between her rather horsey front teeth, she looked oddly fearsome.

‘Oh, nothing. I thought you and she were great friends.’

‘Oh how nice. That she should think that, tell you that!’ said Catriona. ‘But no, not really. Martin is here quite a lot of course, being estate manager, and is a great friend of Alexander’s, and Virginia was kind enough to invite us here quite often for meals, largely so that Alexander and Martin could talk. But no, we weren’t especially close. I was always rather in awe of her, to be frank with you.’ She smiled at him again; the salmon had been joined on her teeth by a shred of watercress; Baby averted his eyes. She had dropped a splodge of hollandaise sauce onto her navy suit, and was scraping at it rather ineffectively with her knife, spreading it further. He wasn’t surprised she had been in awe of Virginia. ‘She was so glamorous, so sophisticated, and the clothes she had! And that wonderful job of hers, I never quite understood what she did, but it was obviously frightfully clever and interesting …’

‘I didn’t understand it either,’ said Baby. He was puzzled. Virginia had always made rather a meal of her friendship with Catriona, said she was the only person in Wiltshire she could really talk to, and how she loved having her over to Hartest. Maybe she hadn’t been able to admit to not having a friend at all and had more or less invented the relationship. Poor Virgy. What a sad life she had had, one way or another.

He looked across at Martin Dunbar; he was very pale, drinking a great deal and not eating much. He had been one of the pallbearers, together with Baby and Alexander and Freddy, and had looked very shaken indeed in the chapel. But then he always looked ill, he was so gaunt and drawn; Baby had met him several times, and the first occasion he had really expected him to keel over and die any moment. In fact Alexander told him Martin enjoyed the best of health. ‘It’s a certain type of English look that, the dead on the feet style. Awful lot of them at Winchester, for some reason.’

‘Did Martin go to Winchester then?’ said Baby.

‘What’s that? Oh no. No, he’s a Harrovian.’

Sometimes Baby felt the entire English race talked in non sequiturs like Nanny.

He found Nanny looking very fierce in the library after lunch, most unusually holding a glass of sherry. He put his arm round her.

‘Worst’s over,’ he said.

‘Worst’s only just begun,’ said Nanny briefly.

Betsey came in quietly. She had been crying again.

‘Hallo, Nanny,’ she said.

‘Good afternoon, madam.’

‘I was wondering if I should stay on for a few days, to help look after the children,’ said Betsey.

Nanny looked at her, her expression dark and disapproving. ‘I don’t think that would be at all a good idea,’ she said, ‘they’re very upset. Very upset indeed.’

The implication was that Betsey neither had grasped this fact, nor was remotely capable of doing anything about it; Betsey looked at her coldly.

‘I am aware of that, Nanny,’ she said, grief lending her courage. ‘I would ask you to remember I am the children’s grandmother. I think I can help them just a little.’

‘I don’t need reminding,’ said Nanny, unmoved, ‘and no one could have loved her ladyship more than I did.’

She clearly felt this closed the subject and moved away and out of the room; for the first time since the news of Virginia’s death had reached Betsey, as she sat leafing through the Neiman Marcus catalogue picking out Christmas presents (‘How could I ever have thought that mattered, how could I?’ she had said over and over again, as sublimely illogical in her grief as Nanny herself ), she smiled; a small, wan, but unmistakable smile.