Wicked Pleasures (38 page)

It was a year later that she found out about the christening robe. Right through her second glorious year at Cambridge – deputy editor of
Granta
, frequent speaker at the Union, shining star of the Dramatic Society, she promised herself that come the summer, she would not go travelling or even spend the entire three months on Nantucket with Beau Fraser, as he begged her in every
letter to do, but devote herself to unravelling her history.

Home in late June, with the house more or less to herself (Georgina departing for Cirencester at eight and generally arriving home again well after midnight, Max still at school, and her father as always at this time of year fully occupied outdoors on the estate), she had long uninterrupted days to pursue her task.

She began with Virginia’s personal papers. Her father had never emptied her desk; it was still in the perfect order that Virginia had maintained in every department of her life.

It was a huge mahogany pedestal desk, in the window of Virginia’s study, overlooking the park and the woods; the first day she had sat at it, Charlotte had been filled with an overwhelming sense of Virginia’s presence as she opened neatly stacked drawers, studied bulging address books filled out with sloping American writing, went through files kept in perfect chronological order, and gazed out frequently and almost unseeingly at the view that must have filled her mother’s head.

The top few drawers, the top row of files, were entirely devoted to her work; letters to and from clients and suppliers, photocopies of drawings, estimates, invoices, tax returns, all in impeccable order.

Diaries yielded nothing. Business appointments, family occasions, parties, holidays. Not a hint of any impropriety, a name that was less than extremely familiar to her, a meeting that could possibly have been interpreted as anything but totally respectable.

Personal letters, from her parents, from Baby, from Angie Burbank – she thought she had stumbled on something when she found a scribbled note from Angie saying ‘I’m so thrilled for you, he sounds wonderful’, but she was forced, slightly regretfully, to match even that up with Max’s birth.

Then personal documents: the marriage certificate, all their birth certificates (including one for the tiny Alexander, filed heartbreakingly with his death certificate). Photographs, of all of them, just odd, fleetingly precious ones, Alexander before the marriage, smiling at her against a background of New York on the Circle Line ferry; herself, stark naked, splashing happily in her bath, and another one, lying smiling in her Viyella nightie on Virginia’s lap; Georgina, tall and sulkily lanky, even at four, holding Nanny’s hand on the steps of the North Front, in her very first school uniform; Max in his christening robe, held in Baby’s arms; Baby at graduation, in his robe and mortar, laughing, his arms held out to the camera and Virginia; Fred III and Virginia, dancing in the drawing room at Beaches, laughing, obviously rehearsing for some early performance, years before.

‘Oh dear,’ said Charlotte, her eyes blurring with tears for the umpteenth time in a week, ‘oh Mummy, I do miss you.’

Only one drawer left to go, and not a promising one. The drawer held files, and the files held invoices; personal ones for clothes, jewellery, furniture, children’s toys, Christmas presents. She sat there, sifting through them, visualizing what some of them recalled: the wonderful dolls’ house they had been given one Christmas, painstakingly made for them by a craftsman
carpenter in Yorkshire, ball gowns her mother had worn, the new grand piano she had bought when Charlotte had been ten and showing particular promise at her music, her and Georgina’s confirmation dresses, Max’s clothes for Eton, almost the last entry.

She had reached the last file now, the first in fact, for she was working backwards: the bills for all their baby stuff, dresses and coats from the White House, full layettes from Harrods, cribs, prams. Her own christening robe, now there was a pretty letter-heading, not a bill, just a compliments note – and here Charlotte stopped, just for a moment ice-still, wondering, more than wondering, alert suddenly. Why a christening robe? Why did she have to have a new one? There was the family one, made from Alexander’s greatgrandmother’s wedding dress, as they had all been told, so many, oh so many times. There was the picture of Max wearing it in Virginia’s drawer, and the picture of Georgina, resplendent in it, held by a smiling Virginia, stood on the grandest of fireplaces in the drawing room. It was an important part of the family folklore, that robe, they had all heard a lot about it; why, why then, hadn’t she worn it? Probably, she told herself, shaking her head at her own foolishness thinking it might be significant, probably, because she had been the first baby. Maybe Betsey had wanted to give her a robe; maybe the robe had been temporarily lost or was being mended, or being cleaned. Maybe. Maybe.

The heading on the slip of paper was ‘Maura Mahon’ in a rounded, pseudo-Gaelic-style script; the address was Trinity Street, Dublin, with a Dublin phone number. ‘As ordered,’ it said. ‘One white lawn christening robe. Self-embroidered.’

Impossible, thought Charlotte, quite quite impossible, that Maura Mahon was still operating; but it was worth trying, worth telephoning. It was too late now; after seven. It would have to wait until the morning.

Reluctantly, oddly disturbed, she stood up, looking down at the handwritten note. Why had her mother bought it, or maybe had it made; and was it, could it be, a clue?

She wandered down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and to ask Mrs Tallow about supper; Nanny was there, pottering about, filling the biscuit tin she kept in her room.

‘Cup of tea, Nanny?’

‘Well, I suppose so,’ said Nanny, ‘as it’s June.’

Charlotte debated unravelling this one herself and decided she couldn’t. ‘Nanny, can you remember my christening?’ she said, carefully casual. ‘I was just looking at my christening mug. Was I good, or did I cry?’

‘You cried a bit,’ said Nanny.

‘And did I look beautiful in my robe? In the family heirloom? That was Great-Great-Grandma’s wedding dress?’

‘Well, you would have done,’ said Nanny, ‘but you didn’t wear it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Your mother didn’t want you to.’

‘How odd.’

‘Yes, well. She said it didn’t suit you. Very silly really, when you were such a pretty baby. But she insisted. Your father gave in to her, as she was so depressed. But he was upset. Well, disappointed. You know how much family traditions mean to him. Of course old Lady Caterham would have minded, only she wasn’t there.’

‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘Of course not. So – what did I wear?’

‘Well, you must have seen photographs,’ said Nanny briskly, ‘it was quite nice really, I suppose. But too short. Not at all suitable.’ She spoke as if Charlotte had been baptized a leggy sixteen-year-old in a mini skirt.

‘Ah,’ said Charlotte. ‘So where did it come from?’

‘Oh, your mother got it. She had it before you were born. I don’t know where it came from. She knew I didn’t like it.’

Charlotte felt her mother’s courage and willpower in the face of such opposition required some kind of acknowledgement.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose she had a right to choose what I wore.’

‘That’s a point of view,’ said Nanny, making it clear that to her mind it was no such thing. ‘I suppose.’

‘Have you still got it? The robe? I’d love to see it.’

‘I think so,’ said Nanny. ‘It’ll be in the trunk. In the night nursery. I’ll have a look later.’

‘Don’t bother, I’ll have a rummage myself.’

Nanny looked at her suspiciously. ‘What’s brought this interest in your christening on?’

‘Oh – nothing really,’ said Charlotte. ‘I just want to see what I wore for my first public appearance.’

The christening robe was right at the bottom of the trunk, a simple little dress in white lawn, exquisitely smocked, with tiny covered buttons and self-embroidered collar and cuffs. It was carefully folded into tissue paper, tied loosely with a pink ribbon, and a piece of yellowing paper, in Virginia’s handwriting, tucked into the folds. ‘Charlotte,’ it said. ‘March 14th 1962.’

Just that. Not terribly significant.

But the family robe was not wrapped, nor did it have a piece of paper with the dates of Georgina’s and Max’s christenings. It seemed just a little interesting.

In the morning she phoned the number in Dublin. It was unobtainable. Discontinued, they said at Directory Enquiries; no, they couldn’t say when the discontinuation had taken place. No, they had no new number or address for any Maura Mahon. Either as a person or a company. Charlotte sighed. This wasn’t easy.

Finally she sat down and wrote a letter to Maura Mahon. She said that she had worn a christening robe, with her label in it, twenty years earlier, that her mother, who had ordered the robe, had died, that the work was so exquisite she would like possibly to commission something similar for a friend’s baby; and that even if Miss Mahon was no longer in business, it would be a great pleasure
to hear from her.

She addressed it to the house in Trinity Street, marked it ‘please forward’ and posted it, feeling fairly certain that she would never get a reply.

She was wrong. But before it came, other events rather overtook it in importance.

She was sitting on the swing seat just after breakfast three weeks later on the deck of the house on Nantucket, chatting idly to Melissa about the comparative merits of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Marley and wishing she didn’t find Beau Fraser quite so overwhelmingly sexy when she heard the phone ringing.

‘I’ll go,’ she called out to Mary Rose, who was lying in a hammock in the yard. ‘It’s probably Daddy anyway, he said he’d call today.’

It wasn’t Alexander. It was St Vincent’s Hospital, New York. Baby had had a coronary and was on the critical list.

Charlotte flew up to New York with Mary Rose and Freddy and Kendrick. The news that greeted them when they reached St Vincent’s was not good. Baby was critical: it had been a major attack. On the other hand, Dr Robertson assured them, his vital signs were good; he was no worse. The next twelve hours would be crucial. Mary Rose stayed at the hospital for the duration of the twelve hours and then for another six; at the end of them Baby opened his wide blue eyes, winked at the pretty nurse who was adjusting his ECG contacts, and closed them again.

Dr Robertson was summoned and said cautiously that it was an encouraging sign; twelve hours further on, he pronounced Baby as being out of danger. At which point Mary Rose, released suddenly from strain, had hysterics and then demanded to know what had been puzzling her ever since she first heard the news: why Baby had been taken to St Vincent’s Hospital, down in Greenwich Village, and not to the New York Hospital, near their home.

Geoff Robertson, unable to find a satisfactory explanation, was driven to telling her that Baby had been taken ill in the bed of a young lady who owned an apartment in the Village, and that it had been she who had called the ambulance.

‘Poor old Uncle Baby,’ said Max when he heard this piece of news. ‘What rotten luck.’

Charlotte, trying not to sound too prissy, said that having a major coronary was rather more than rotten luck, and Max retorted that it hadn’t been the coronary itself he was talking about, but the place Baby had chosen to have it.

‘I bet Aunt Mary Rose is giving him a hard time. It’s enough to give him a second heart attack.’

‘I wonder who the girl was,’ said Georgina.

‘Some hooker, I expect,’ said Max.

‘The really bad news for poor Uncle Baby,’ said Charlotte, ‘is that Grandpa has moved back into the bank.’

Baby, 1982

Baby had not been in bed with a hooker, as Max had so confidently supposed, he had been in bed with Angie. And if anyone had asked him if the heart attack had been worth it, he would have told them yes.

He looked back on the ten years without Angie in amazement: that he could ever have considered himself happy, content even. What he felt for her was not just lust, affection, excitement, not even just an intense pleasure in her company. What he felt for Angie, and he knew it with a certainty that in itself made him happy, was love.

She had changed greatly in the ten years; sophistication had replaced glamour, shrewdness guile, sensuality the raw sexiness of her youth. She was successful and rich; he found that oddly pleasing. He had always been haunted by the thought that perhaps she might have been using him, however slightly, for his money, been bewitched, to however small a degree, by his power. Now she was rich and powerful herself, she had no need to be with him for the things he could give her, do for her, she clearly wanted him for himself and it made him happier than he could ever remember. The rush of emotion that he had felt when he saw her rather ugly, tidy handwriting on the envelope had been literally shocking; he had had to sit down, have a cup of strong coffee, before he could even bring himself to open it. And then he had sat there reading it, noticing his hands shaking, touched that she should have taken the trouble to write, excited that she was coming to New York and pleased that she clearly wanted to forget the past and be friends.

And then the moment he had set eyes on her, sitting there, so beautiful, so warm, had talked to her, touched her, smelt her, he knew that whatever happened, whatever the cost, he had to have her back.

It hadn’t been very difficult. She had made it plain she wanted that too. They had had dinner two nights later, and gone straight back to her room at the Pierre. ‘Isn’t it funny,’ said Angie, handing him a glass of champagne from her fridge, ‘that I should be entertaining you in style now, Baby, rather than the other way round? It feels lovely.’

‘It feels pretty good to me too,’ said Baby. ‘What a waste of ten years.’

‘What a waste indeed.’

There was a silence; they were both slightly awkward, tense, as they had not been in the restaurant. She went over to the window.

‘We ought to have some fun. For old times’ sake. How about a ride in one of the horse cabs? They’re around.’

‘Only if you promise to sit in the carriage with me. I don’t want you up there with the driver.’