Wicked Pleasures (47 page)

‘Darling, what is it? You look terrible.’

‘I feel terrible,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘What? But you can’t be.’

‘Oh but I am,’ she said, and despite her weariness, her pallor, there was triumph and happiness in her eyes.

‘By – whom?’

‘By Alexander, of course.’

He did a swift calculation, an instant recall of everything she had said on the subject.

‘Now look. I thought you were on the pill.’

‘Well – I was. But my doctor said it was disagreeing with me. So I came off it. And – well, I’m pregnant.’

‘And just exactly how do you know it isn’t mine? My baby?’

He felt a rush of pleasure and pride as he said those words; almost as if she had told him it was his, congratulated him on it herself.

‘Oh Charles, of course it isn’t yours.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The timing, for a start. I’m – well, just over a month pregnant. We haven’t – well, seen each other much since Easter. That was two months ago. And I was still on the pill then.’

‘How very tidy.’

‘What?’

‘That you should have become pregnant by your extremely potent husband the moment you came off the pill.’

‘Yes, well, it does that.’

‘Does what?’

‘Increases your fertility.’

‘I see. Well, congratulations, Lady Caterham. How very excited you must feel.’

‘I do, quite.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Charles, please don’t.’

‘I’m sorry if I’m upsetting you. So what does this mean for us?’

‘Well – I suppose, and it’s terribly sad, but it’s over.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. It has to be.’

‘I suppose so. You can’t come here, great with child, and beg for a fuck, can you?’

‘Charles, please.’

‘I’m sorry, Virginia, but I can’t be genteel and self-effacing over this. I’m too upset. I told you before I felt used. I feel it more now. My time is past. I have no more use in your life.’

‘Well, you can see it like that if you want to.’

‘I could tell a few tales, you know, about you and your pregnancy. About what I thought of it. About it. Its history.’

‘I know. But I hoped you wouldn’t.’

‘You knew I wouldn’t, didn’t you?’

‘I – suppose so, yes.’

‘Virginia, can you look me in the eye and tell me that you know for an absolute certainty that baby is not mine?’

She turned to him, her golden eyes clear and determined.

‘Yes, Charles, I can.’

He never really believed her. But because he loved her, he pretended he did.

The christening robe had been his idea. Because he was so sure the baby was his, he wanted to lay a claim to it. Not destructively, not aggressively. But a claim nonetheless.

He talked to his sister, Felicia. He told her everything. She was a nun, at once the pride and sorrow of her family, torn as they were between a wish to see her married with a love and a family of her own, still belonging to them, and an intense delight that she had fulfilled the great Catholic dream of a Vocation. She had done her novitiate at the convent at Ballydegogue, and was now working at a hospice in the East End of London; a tall, gentle, beautiful girl with a wisdom and a delicious humour the whole family relied upon.

She sat in the flat at Fulham, the flat that had rung with Virginia’s hungry, frantic cries, the flat he could hardly bear to stay in now, and listened carefully to everything Charles had to say.

‘So you think the child is yours?’

‘Yes, I do. I really do.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I just feel it. There is something strange, wrong, with that marriage. She would never talk about it, but there is. And there is the timing. We had those two days in Ireland, together –’

‘Really, Charles. That was naughty. Whatever would Mother have done, had she found you?’

‘I don’t know, Felicia. But she didn’t. Anyway, those two endless, wonderful days, so much lovemaking, she seemed so intent somehow – oh, I’m sorry, Felicia, I shouldn’t be talking to you like this.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well – it doesn’t seem right.’

‘Because I’m a nun? Charles, I’m always telling you, we are not removed from the world, and from worldly knowledge, simply because we are distant from it. We can look on it more calmly, more carefully even, and not judge, but we know it is there. So please don’t be troubled. What you are saying, as I understand it, is that she seemed to you to be intent on having as much intercourse with you as she possibly could. At that particular time. So that she might have been thought to be trying to conceive?’

‘Well – yes, I suppose so.’ He felt faintly shocked, embarrassed even, that she should grasp so swiftly what he was trying to say.

‘But Charles, why should she do such a thing? She is married, and very suitably so. She may not like her husband very much, however charming and agreeable he may be, and that would certainly be a reason for her to be having an affair with you, but it would hardly be grounds for her to be conceiving a child, your child, deliberately. Would it now?’

‘No. I know that. And I have been over and over it in my mind, and I can’t make any sense of it. But I do know – or I think I know – that that baby is at least possibly, probably even, mine. I mean, her story about coming off the pill and getting promptly pregnant by her husband seems altogether too neat.’

‘But – have you been seeing her since Easter?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Well then.’

‘But Felicia, it’s only June. I don’t know a great deal about pregnancy and the female body, but she was in New York until nearly the end of April. If she was pregnant, by her husband, it would only be a month or so. A bit soon to be feeling sick, or to be sure, even.’

‘Women have a great affinity with their bodies, Charles. She would know, before any tests or doctors could confirm it. But in any case, there is clearly nothing to be gained and a great deal to be lost by your continuing with your claim on this baby.’

‘Oh I know.’ He looked at her suddenly and she saw a great sadness in his eyes. ‘I wasn’t dreaming that I should. It just seems such a sorry, unsatisfactory state of affairs, that’s all. And I miss her. I miss her so much.’

‘You really loved her, didn’t you?’

‘I really really loved her. She is beautiful and tender and sad, and I know,’ he added with a certain defiance in his voice, ‘I know I have been committing a mortal sin, but I am not sorry. I should be, but I am not.’

‘Well, that is debatable,’ said Felicia briskly. ‘God has different ways of making us repent. It could be said that yours is in your own unhappiness, and uncertainty. It is certainly not for me to reproach you in any way. I am simply unhappy that you are unhappy. And I have no doubt that Lady Caterham is unhappy too. She does not sound to me a person to enter into adulterous liaisons lightly. There is clearly more to her story than perhaps we shall ever know. Your only way now, Charles, is acceptance, I am afraid.’

‘I know. And the hope that one day I shall know what it all meant, what it was about.’

‘Yes, but even that may be denied to you. It would be unfortunate to place too much faith in that, Charles. She is lost to you now, your Virginia, and you have to accept that. Otherwise you will be far more unhappy for far longer.’

‘I suppose. But anyway, I do want to give her a present. Desperately I do. A farewell present, a relevant present. Not jewellery, nothing silly and obvious. Something to do with the baby. My baby. A shawl perhaps, I don’t know, what do babies like, what could she possibly take and keep from me?’

‘The baby,’ said Felicia. ‘I can see that. Well now, let me think about it for a day or so. I’ll come back to you. In the meantime, would you consider taking your poor poverty-stricken sister out to lunch? I have a great longing for a glass of Guinness, and if you would take me where I can obtain one, I shall be able to turn my mind to your problem with greater attention.’

‘Of course I will,’ said Charles, kissing her. ‘It will be a great pleasure. Are nuns allowed to go to the pub?’

‘Nuns are allowed to go anywhere,’ said Felicia. ‘As long as their consciences
are at peace. I do not find mine greatly disturbed at the prospect of spending an hour in the Dog and Duck in your company.’

‘A christening robe,’ said Charles. ‘What do you think about that? Isn’t that what all babies have to have? I could send one to Virginia. One I had had made, perhaps. That wouldn’t be an aggressive gesture, would it?’

‘A little, perhaps,’ said Felicia, smiling at him. ‘It’s a very personal thing, a christening robe, there is probably a family heirloom that the baby would wear, like all his or her ancestors. We all wore the same one, after all. But it might be a very acceptable and charming gift for your countess, nonetheless. After all, it could be worn not as a christening robe, simply as a dress. Now I do happen to know someone who might well be able to make one for you. If she could, you could rest assured it would be exquisite. If you would like me to, I will speak to her, and perhaps order one for you. Then you can send it to the baby yourself.’

‘Thank you,’ said Charles. ‘I would like that very much.’

Dear Charles,

What a lovely, lovely extravagant present. How kind of you, and how kind of you to remember me.

I shall indeed dress the baby in your robe for his christening (I am quite determined, you see, that he shall be a boy).

If I may, I shall send you a photograph of the occasion, so that you may see your gift in use.

Thank you.

With my love,

Virginia Caterham.

And that was the last he ever heard from her.

Baby, 1983

Confidence is a powerful ally. It trails success in its wake. It lends authority, assists in decision-making, bestows mental and physical stamina and clarity of thought. The confident are charismatic, effective, persuasive; they can hardly help but win.

It was fairly apparent to everyone at Praegers in that summer of 1983 that Baby Praeger had lost all confidence.

He knew himself he was floundering; he watched himself, appalled, as he blundered from meeting to meeting, desperately trying to impress, to be positive, creative, thoughtful, and succeeding only in looking foolish, constantly outmanoeuvred, taking up an endlessly defensive position against his father. Fred III had not lost any confidence, he had acquired a large new issue of it; and, returned to his natural habitat, the tall brownstone in Pine Street, after a period away from it which he cheerfully described to everyone as a living hell, was having the time of his life.

He had, in fact, after six months, and initially under cover of Baby’s illness, managed to retrench himself in his old position, as chairman; the senior partners, in a mixture of emotions, watched helplessly as he moved from department to department, making them his own once more, midwifing on the biggest mergers, countermanding advice on investments, insisting on various underwritings whether the traders agreed or not, backing his own stock hunches, speculating on the rise and fall of interest rates, and assisting personally on the progress of at least two very large-scale leveraged buyouts.

The junior partners in particular were outraged; promoted by Baby, accustomed to a degree of autonomy, they found themselves reduced to glorified clerks, and held anguished meetings with the senior partners, to complain and to question. The senior partners, who had seen it all before (and had watched, more-over, with a mixture of despair and admiration the sharpening up, the injection of vision, the hugely increased feeling of urgency in the bank since Fred III had returned to it), told them they were wasting their time, but they should see him themselves, should they so wish.

Baby had come back to the bank just before Christmas; relieved to be back, impatient to be working again – and not unnaturally fearful. He was right to be so; he had spent almost twenty years trying to carve out his own role at Praegers, and twenty seconds of cardiac arrest seemed to have robbed him of it almost entirely. Within days Baby was totally demoralized. His father was, as the board remarked privately, out to cut off his balls.

Even his relationship with Angie was less stable than it had been. All through the long period they had been kept apart by his illness, he had clung to her, the thought of her, like a lifeline. They were totally estranged, he couldn’t speak to her, couldn’t even write to her. While he and Mary Rose were staying at Beaches during his recuperation, she mailed all his letters every day, and he could hardly ask Beaumont to post something for him when Mary Rose wasn’t looking. And she was looking very carefully.

And then when he finally got back to New York, and Mary Rose had returned to her work as a commissioning editor at Doubleday, he was able to call Angie, and she was gratifyingly pleased to hear from him; she told him she’d be over on the next Concorde. But: ‘It’s no good,’ said Baby gloomily, ‘I’m still under lock and key. She calls me several times a day and if I’m not here, she wants to know from the maid exactly where I went and when.’

‘Tell the maid a lie.’

‘Darling, I can’t. Well I can, but you have no idea the amount of cross-questioning I’m subjected to. Mary Rose comes home for lunch every day, and early in the evening; I really think we’ll have to wait until I’m back at work.’

Angie sounded sharp. ‘Baby, I’ve been waiting for you all this time. I’m beginning to think you don’t want to see me.’

‘Oh Angie, if only you knew. I want to see you more than anything, anything in the world. Be patient, please. And then we can have the reunion of a lifetime.’

‘It had better be,’ said Angie.

In fact, the reunion was less than satisfactory. They met in the apartment in the Village; Angie was looking thinner, almost gaunt (‘I’ve been missing you,’ she said), and was more than slightly irritable, which was unlike her. She did have a temper, but it normally was reserved for major matters, and day by day she was very level. It made Baby nervous. His anxiety and his not unnatural fear of becoming physically overexerted resulted in a poor performance in bed; Angie was very sweet and patient with him, but neither of them could pretend the earth had moved, or even that a breeze had passed across it; Baby was saddened, further discomfited.