Wicked Pleasures (53 page)

‘I know you two have met a few times,’ he said, when he took Charlotte down to Hoffman’s office.

‘Yes, we have,’ said Gabe, holding out his hand to Charlotte. ‘Most memorably on Fred’s birthday. Welcome.’ He smiled at her, revealing his perfect teeth; but his eyes did not smile and they did not say welcome either.

‘Thank you,’ said Charlotte, returning the handshake briefly. ‘I’m certainly looking forward to working with you.’

‘Lesson number one,’ said Gabe, smiling the same cold smile. ‘Not with. For.’

From that moment it was war.

Gabe was outstandingly unpleasant to her. If he had been a woman, she would have described him as a bitch. He was critical, demanding, discourteous. While she would not have expected him to stand up when she came into the room, or hold the door open for her, she was not prepared for the way he interrupted her when she was talking to shout at someone else across the room, ordered her to put the phone down mid-conversation because he wanted something done, hauled her in early or at weekends, and then kept her waiting sometimes for over an hour before he appeared himself. He would exclude her from any conversation, any discussion even, unless it was necessary for him to explain something to her; ignored any comments, crushed any suggestions she made with an abruptness that in the very early days at least brought tears to her eyes.

To make it worse, he was doing very well at Praegers. His star was indisputably rising. Fred III thought he was wonderful. His father was due to retire in five years’ time and it was generally assumed that when that happened, Gabe would be made a junior partner.

What made it almost worse than anything was that every other female in the bank was dying of love for Gabe. Much as she loathed him, Charlotte had to admit that he was extremely sexy. He was thirty-two years old now, and patently carnal. She remembered him as being tall, but he was very big now, heavily built, with huge shoulders, and yet lean and surprisingly graceful when he moved. The combination of that with his size was extremely sensual. It was said that he could dance extremely well, and his game of tennis was exceptional. He had a year-round tan, and sailed almost all year from the family house in Sag Harbor. His brown hair, which was cropped very short, somehow still managed to look unruly, and his eyes, which were exceptionally dark and ringed by lashes which would have looked girly on anyone else, could, when turned on most members of the female race, inspire an almost slavish desire to please. They did not inspire that in Charlotte.

Charlotte would have given anything to displease Gabe Hoffman: only she didn’t dare.

And then there was Freddy. Freddy was not rude to her as Gabe was, he was icily polite in public, and in private he ignored her totally. Charlotte found this initially almost amusing; as her morale crumbled, she began to find it horribly hurtful. He and Gabe often lunched together, and had endless early morning meetings; Charlotte had a shrewd suspicion that Gabe did not actually like him very much, but he went along with him, in a typically pragmatic Gabe way. Freddy would after all one day be his boss. And they were united over one important matter: a determination to put her down, to disabuse her of any notion she might have of her own importance, to impress upon her that her life at Praegers was never going to be anything else but tough.

She was very lonely. She hadn’t yet made any friends in New York; she had not yet found any kindred spirits at Praegers, and as she was working virtually round the clock she was hardly able to form any relationships outside it. The young men at Praegers were wary of her, daunted by her relationship with the family,
her ultimate destiny in the bank and her attitude, which they all agreed was typically British and high-handed. And there weren’t any other women, so far as she could see, except secretaries, and she had nothing in common with them.

She was staying, very reluctantly, with Fred and Betsey; she felt in her bones it was politically unwise, but she really did not feel brave enough to move into an apartment of her own yet, and she had no time to look anyway.

After six weeks she returned home for a few days, taking advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday period, excusing herself from Betsey’s invitation to join them at Beaches with the explanation that Alexander was lonely and depressed. She put up a brave front to him, and to Max, saying it was fascinating and fun, that the work was a breeze, that she was learning loads, that she had never felt more sure that she was doing the right thing, but on the day before she went back she had lunch with Charles St Mullin at Simpsons in the Strand and surprised and shocked herself by bursting into angry tears.

‘I hate it. I hate everything to do with it. It’s boring, my boss is a pig, I don’t have any friends, and everyone treats me as if I was some kind of a puffed-up princess.’

‘Well,’ said Charles, surprisingly calm, passing her his handkerchief and then her glass of wine, ‘you can hardly blame them. You may not be puffed up but you are a princess. It’s not your fault, but you are. And even this boss of yours, this Gabe, he must find it a little hard to take. That however hard he works and well he does, he can never hope to be more than a partner with a very minority shareholding in a business you’re going to own and run.’

‘Co-run,’ said Charlotte, correcting him automatically.

‘Well all right, co-run. In any event, you can hardly blame him for lording it over you now, while he has the opportunity.’

‘I suppose not.’ Charlotte gave him a watery smile. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. So what do I do? Don’t tell me to start telling him I think he’s wonderful. I’d be sick all over his Quotron.’

‘What’s a Quotron?’ said Charles. ‘No, of course not. But I think you should altogether give a little. I still don’t know you very well yet, Charlotte, unfortunately, but I can see that you are a formidable package. I think you should act a little helpless, if you could bring yourself to do that. Not just with this Gabe person, but everyone. Ask for a little help. Don’t mind looking silly now and again.’

‘Oh God, I can’t stand looking silly,’ said Charlotte fretfully. ‘Do I really have to?’

‘Well, it’s only my opinion,’ said Charles, ‘and I’m only a humble barrister. But I think you should try it.’

They had become very close, very quickly. As she had said to Max, whom she had sought out, breathless and excited after the first meeting (knowing it was unwise, but wanting, needing to talk to someone), ‘I know he’s my father, Max, I just know it. I looked at him sitting there in the restaurant and there he was.’

‘But how did he actually tell you?’ said Max. ‘I can’t believe he sat down and said, “Hey, young lady, yes, I am most definitely your dad, let me tell you all
about this affair I had with your mother.”’ He looked sulky and wary; Charlotte sighed.

‘No, of course he didn’t. We danced around one another for a long time first. It came out in bits, as we talked, in between sort of – well, checking up on one another. About halfway through lunch, he suddenly said, “It can’t have been easy, tracking me down. Via that robe.” And I said no, it hadn’t been, but it had been very exciting and I’d been determined to do it. And I said it had been wonderful to see Ireland, that bit of Ireland, and I had never in all my life thought anywhere so beautiful. Then he said suddenly, “Tell me more about your family. How is your Uncle Baby?” Then he said, and looked terribly terribly sad, that he had been so upset when Mummy died, he had read about it in the papers, and he thought of writing to us all then, but wondered what he could possibly say. And then I said, I don’t know why but I suddenly felt brave enough, probably because I’d had quite a few glasses of wine by then, and it just all came out in a rush, I said, “Look, this is an awful question, and terrible cheek, but did you and Mummy have an affair?” And he said, looking really quite angry, “Yes it is, terrible cheek,” and he really didn’t think he could possibly discuss such a thing with me, and why should I have thought that anyway? Which I took to mean a sort of go-ahead. In an obtuse way. And I said, well, because I had discovered we had this very irregular family background. But that perhaps he was right and I shouldn’t discuss it with him. And then he said, looking very solemn and also rather embarrassed, yes, he had had an affair with Mummy. He said it very quietly and rather sadly. And then he asked me if I could possibly tell him what sort of irregular family background I’d meant. And I said, well, you know, that we’d found we all had different fathers. All three of us. And that Daddy knew.’

‘Charlotte. You can’t go blabbing that all over London.’

‘I wasn’t blabbing it all over London. Max, I told you, I know this man is my father. And he’s honest and honourable and I just knew it was all right. To talk to him.’

‘How very fortunate for you,’ said Max.

‘So then he said, yes, they had been lovers, for quite a long time, and he’d loved her very much. And that he’d always suspected I was his child, even though she denied it, and ended the affair as soon as she’d found out she was pregnant. He said he’d seen pictures of me from time to time, in the papers and so on, and felt even more sure.’

‘Do you look like him?’

‘Yes and no. He has dark curly hair, and blue eyes and a lot of freckles. He’s not exactly skinny, that’s the thing that’s most like me. But it’s more than that, there’s something about him, that makes me feel – well I don’t know, at home. Can you understand that, what I mean?’

‘Not really,’ said Max. ‘Did he have any idea why she might have had this affair? And conceived you deliberately? When she was only recently married?’

‘No. He didn’t. He said he had never been able to understand it. He said she was obviously a very nice person, that she was utterly loyal to Daddy –’

‘Oh, extremely loyal!’ said Max. ‘Funny kind of loyalty, sleeping around all over the place.’

‘Not all over the place. Just with him.’

‘Oh yes, sure, and with Georgina’s father and my father.’

‘Well, I think the one thing we really do know is that we don’t know anything much yet. We have a long way to go. A lot of discoveries to make.’

‘Yes, well you’re all right, aren’t you? You’ve found your father, and surprise surprise he’s charming and clever and civilized and nice. Everything works out for you, doesn’t it, Charlotte? Everything.’

‘Max,’ said Charlotte quietly, ‘Max, I’m terribly sorry you’re so upset. That you mind so much.’

‘I could never understand,’ he said, ‘why you didn’t mind more. You obviously have a lot of our mother in you.’

Charlotte turned and walked out of the room.

She saw Charles St Mullin several times after that and before she left for the States; they lunched twice a week. They never talked about Virginia again, they talked about each other, what they did, what they enjoyed, each of them feeling they could not have enough.

Charles was charming, civilized and amusing; he was only modestly successful as a barrister, and he lived with his wife Grace in a house in Fulham with their three children, two girls and a boy, and had some difficulty paying their school fees. Grace was a music teacher, she gave piano and flute lessons, and the youngest child was very talented and had won a music scholarship to St Paul’s Girls’ School. ‘Thank God.’

He had a great love for his old home and for Ireland: ‘I should like to go there with you,’ he said slightly regretfully,
‘but I think it cannot be.’

‘I don’t suppose Grace knows about –’ said Charlotte and no, he said hastily, no of course not, she must never know. They never returned to the subject again.

Charlotte was utterly delighted by him; he was warm and affectionate and very appreciative of her. She spent hours telling him about her hopes and fears, her ambitions, the tortuous convolutions of the family relationships, about her worries about Georgina and her greater ones for Max. ‘God knows what will happen to him when I’m not here to keep an eye on things.’

‘How I would like to meet them all,’ said Charles. ‘But I am afraid it is not to be.’

‘I’m afraid not too,’ said Charlotte. ‘Not for a long time anyway.’

‘Talking of time,’ he said, jumping up, ‘I must go. I’m late back already.’

‘It’s been lovely – again,’ said Charlotte. ‘Probably I won’t see you again before I go. Promise you’ll write?’

‘I promise.’ He gave her a kiss.

She watched him go out of the restaurant. He was a little overweight, and his slightly shabby suit didn’t flatter him. He looked tired although he was so determinedly smiling and cheerful; his life obviously contained a lot of worry. It would be nice to be able to spoil him a bit, she thought. That was what fathers were for.

She took his advice about Praegers very seriously. She got back and tried very
very hard to crack the hostility; she knew it was no use trying to get friendly with Gabe, but she went out for drinks with the others after work, more or less forcing herself on them. It was very hard; she knew they didn’t want her to go, but couldn’t refuse. She laughed at all their jokes, asked their advice, told endless stories against herself. It didn’t seem to work. Two weeks before Christmas, she went out to get a sandwich at lunchtime, and rushed back to a report she had to finish, hardly noticing that the large outer office was empty. An hour later she did notice; it was still empty. They all came back at four; they had gone for a Christmas lunch and had either forgotten her, or chosen not to tell her. Charlotte wasn’t sure which explanation she found more hurtful.