Wicked Pleasures (6 page)

‘It’s been a really nice evening,’ she said, ‘thank you.’

‘I enjoyed it too. I – well, yes, I did.’

She sat down opposite him.

Jack looked at her a little nervously.

‘I – that is – would you –’

‘Would I what?’ said Virginia, her golden eyes dancing slightly mischievously.

‘Would you come and – and sit here? Next to me.’

‘Well – yes, all right.’

She knew what he was actually saying. She moved and waited. His arms went round her, the dutiful, almost automatic kissing began again. Virginia tried to respond. She wondered if there was anything she could think of that would make her feel more aroused. All she wanted was for it to be over, so she could get on with her wine, and then as soon as decently possible get rid of him and go to bed.

One of Jack’s arms was moving now, making its tentative way downwards. He stroked her breast for a while, then suddenly put his hand beneath her shirt and pushed it up towards its goal again, his fingers inside her bra, feeling for the nipple. Virginia kept her eyes tightly shut, her mind on the matter in hand. It was all right. There weren’t any of the darts of pleasure she had heard about, but it was all right. Then suddenly there was a darting violent pain, as the bracelet of his Rolex watch caught on the fabric of her bra, and pinched her flesh hard. She yelped, pushed him away, pulling her shirt down again.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘sorry. It was –’

‘hurting’ she had been going to say, but he didn’t give her a chance. He stood up suddenly, smoothing his jacket, straightening his tie.

‘It’s quite all right,’ he said, slightly harshly. ‘I should have expected it.’

‘Expected what?’ said Virginia, too intrigued to be embarrassed any more. ‘Oh – nothing,’ said Jack hastily.

‘Don’t be silly. What should you have expected? Jack, I want to know. Come on, if you don’t tell me I shall scream and my father will be down to horsewhip you.’

Jack looked genuinely terrified. ‘Really, Virginia, I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘You didn’t offend me, Jack. But I still want to know what you meant just then.’

‘Oh – oh, hell, Virginia, it’s just that you have this rather strong reputation.’

‘For what?’

‘Oh – well, for being very – well, strict …’

‘Strict? Whatever do you mean?’

‘Well – oh, I don’t know. Old-fashioned. Er – moral, you know. There’s nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing. It’s a really good thing to be. A good reputation to have. Anyway, look, it’s late, I should go, I have a heavy day tomorrow. Goodnight, Virginia.’

‘Goodnight, Jack. Thank you for a really nice evening.’

She was too stunned to feel anything at all.

Later, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, she felt alternately embarrassedly amused and humiliated. Here she was at twenty-one, rich, attractive and, in theory at any rate, a highly desirable proposition, and she was apparently a joke, a spinsterish by-word in frigidity, famous for her moral impregnability. It was a nightmare. She would never be able to confront her own social circle again. There she is, they would all be saying, all knowing nods and smiles, poor old sexless Virginia, locked into her chastity belt – funny that, when her brother’s so sexy, so terribly attractive; extraordinary really, they would be saying, she should have been married by now, all her contemporaries are, poor Virginia, what a shame, no one wanting her, everyone afraid of her, how did it happen, well at least she has her career, that’s something … on and on it went all night in her head, a dreadful litany of sexual failure. She was ready in the morning to get most publicly into bed with the first man she set eyes on. Whether she loved him, whether indeed she liked him or not.

In the event such drastic action was unnecessary. At ten o’clock her phone rang. It was Madeleine Dalgleish; she had returned to New York, and would very much like Virginia to lunch with her. Virginia walked into the Plaza, her head aching, her heart sore, miserably aware that she was doing nothing whatsoever to redeem her reputation by sitting down with a middle-aged lady from England, followed the
maître d
’ to Mrs Dalgleish’s table – and found herself gazing into the eyes of the most beautiful young man she had ever seen.

Virginia never ceased to wonder what would have happened to her life if she had met Alexander Caterham a day or two earlier, a week or two later; when she had been feeling less vulnerable, more composed. She would still have undoubtedly noticed his looks, admired his clothes, enjoyed his charm;
whether she would have reacted so strongly, so emotionally, was a matter for possible conjecture. In the event, she looked at him and her heart literally turned over: she fell in love. She had always doubted the feasibility of love at first sight; she had heard it described, discussed, debated, but she had not believed in it, had never experienced anything approaching it herself. Love to her was what she saw manifested by her parents, tenderness, loyalty, a high degree (in the case of her mother) of the setting aside of self, and a clear delight in each at being in the company of the other. She could not believe that anything so central to the complexities of two people could be accomplished, even recognized, in the space of a second. But that day, in the Palm Court of the Plaza, she felt she was at least partly wrong. Certainly for the very first time in her life she experienced a strong sense of sexual desire. Standing there, slightly nervous, looking at this man who had risen to greet her, she felt it, felt desire, a huge, hot bolt of pleasure lurching within her, and it was a physical shock, she was surprised by it, shaken, and (given the events of the past twelve hours) immensely relieved, almost amused by the timeliness of it, and she closed her eyes momentarily and waited for the room to steady, and then as it did, she took his outstretched hand and felt the heat and the shock again.

‘Alexander Caterham,’ he said, and his voice was quiet, resonant, Englishly musical. And so confused was she, so totally startled by her reaction to him that she quite literally forgot her own name and simply stood there, staring at him, trying to think of something intelligible to say.

Madeleine Dalgleish, amusedly half aware of what was happening, stood up too and said it for her: ‘Miss Praeger! How very very nice to see you again. I have told so many people in England how kind you were to talk at length to a boring old woman in a roomful of charming young people that your fame has spread the length of the country. Isn’t that right, Alexander?’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Alexander; and ‘What nonsense,’ said Virginia. ‘It was a pleasure, you were much the most interesting person at that dreary party, and I was so disappointed when you had to cancel me next day.’

‘Well,’ said Madeleine Dalgleish, ‘it is never too late, and Alexander and I would be delighted to be shown Wall Street and its environs whenever you have the time. Oh, how rude of me, Miss Praeger, this is Alexander Caterham. He had to come to New York on business; his mother is an old friend of mine. I invited him to lunch, and then thought perhaps the two of you would not mind meeting.’

‘Of course not,’ said Virginia. ‘It’s very nice to meet you, Mr Caterham.’ He bowed slightly, his blue eyes exploring hers: ‘My pleasure entirely,’ he said. ‘Not Mr,’ said Madeleine quickly, slightly awkwardly, smiling. ‘Lord.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Virginia.

‘Alexander is the Earl of Caterham. Aren’t you, Alexander?’

‘I fear so,’ said Alexander. His eyes had still not left Virginia’s.

‘His mother and I came out together,’ said Madeleine Dalgleish with just a touch of complacency, ‘in 1920. We’ve been good friends ever since. Virginia dear, do sit down, and tell us what you’d like to drink.’

‘I think,’ said Alexander Caterham, ‘we should have champagne. To celebrate. I think this is a very special day.’

‘I don’t know New York,’ Alexander said to Virginia on the telephone next morning. ‘So you will have to forgive me if this is a crass suggestion. But I would really like to look at the city from the Empire State Building with you. And then perhaps I could buy you dinner. Would that be all right? Could you bear it?’

‘I think so,’ said Virginia, laughing. ‘The dinner sounds fine. The Empire State – well, we should maybe have a drink first. Let’s meet at the St Regis. In the King Cole Room.’

‘Very well. Thank you. Six thirty?’

‘Six thirty.’

He was waiting for her when she got there; she looked at him, in all his languid, English grace, and she wanted him even more, even harder, than she had the day before. Her anxieties, her insecurities about her sexuality had vanished as it they had never been; for the second time in twenty-four hours she felt a harsh stabbing deep within herself, a hot throb that was half pleasure, half pain. She closed her eyes, afraid he would see the hunger in them as he grazed his lips across her hot cheek, opened them to see his blue eyes tenderly exploring hers.

‘It’s extremely nice to see you again.’

‘Thank you. Did you – did you have a good day?’

‘It was all right. I spent most of it thinking about you.’

She was shaken, startled that he should say such a thing, a great liquid wave of delight filling her, making her light-hearted, silly with pleasure.

‘What a waste of a day,’ she said quickly, flushing, thinking how awkward, how gauche she must sound.

‘Not at all. On the contrary. I can’t think of a more worthy way to spend it.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’ve ordered a bottle of champagne. I thought we’d need it.’

‘How lovely.’ Dear God, why couldn’t she say something intelligent, memorable?

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how many times have you been up the Empire State Building?’

‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘I don’t know. Probably about two dozen. Maybe more.’

‘How tedious for you.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘the company makes a difference.’

‘I’ll try to be good company.’

They stood on the eighty-sixth floor looking out at the electrically spangled sky of New York, the exquisite flowery shape of the Chrysler Building, the lights drifting down the river.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Alexander. ‘I love it.’

‘I love it too,’ said Virginia. ‘And you should see it by day as well. It’s quite different. More startling.’

‘This is quite startling.’ He raised his hand, stroked her cheek.

Again, the stab of pleasure. She swallowed, then smiled.

‘I’m glad you like it. We’re surprisingly sensitive, we New Yorkers. We need to be admired.’

‘You must get a lot of admiration.’

‘Well. Some.’

‘Let’s go and have dinner. And I can admire you.’

She had suggested the Lutèce; in the absence of knowledge of anywhere else, he had agreed. It was a measure of her father’s standing in the city that she was able to get a table at twenty-four hours’ notice; Alexander was not to know that two weeks was more normal and could not be impressed, but he was charmed and pleased by the menu and the wine list.

‘This is as good as Paris,’ he said.

‘And why shouldn’t it be?’

‘Don’t be touchy.’

‘We
are
touchy, we Yankees. I told you. We like to be admired.’

‘I’m very admiring.’

He was easy to talk to; relaxed, interested, interesting. He talked a lot: he told her about his life in England (very feudal, he said with an almost-ashamed smile) in the great family house. He talked for a long time about the house with its parks and farmland, its lodges and its stables, its perfect eighteenth-century gardens: an exceptionally fine Palladian building, he said, designed by Robert Adam, gardens by Capability Brown, commissioned by the third Earl after he had burnt the original Elizabethan house down, smoking in bed in a drunken stupor; Hartest House, it was called: ‘And so lovely it still brings tears to my eyes, when I see it again after being away.’

She looked at him, surprised at such poetry; he smiled at her.

‘I’m very sentimental. Family failing.’

‘Do you have any pictures of it?’

‘No, nothing could do it justice. I like to carry its picture around in my head. But I could send you one, if you like.’

‘I would like. And is it yours, this beautiful house?’

‘Oh it is. Yes. All mine.’

‘What happened to your father?’

‘He died,’ he said shortly. ‘Two years ago. What about your father?’

She told him: how hard she tried to win her father’s praise; how he was always watching Baby, how occasionally, when she had been little, he had taken her on his knee and said, ‘You’re pretty good – for a girl’; how afraid she was of riding with him, how he ignored her school successes, despised her new career.

He listened, politely, smiling rather amusedly; after a while, when she was describing some particularly terrible defeat at Baby’s hands, he threw back his head and laughed.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘Because it’s so silly. Because you haven’t had a hard time at all. Not really.’

‘I know it wasn’t hard exactly. But it mattered to me. Terribly. All things are relative, after all.’

‘Of course. But you see, I had a really hard time. What you had to endure sounds like paradise to me.’

‘All right, Lord Caterham, tell me about your hard time.’

‘Oh,’ he said, looking distant, ‘it doesn’t make very pretty hearing. I was sent away to school at seven. Got beaten a lot. Got bullied. Hardly ever saw my mother. Never got cuddled, loved, tucked up in bed at night. Except by my nanny, of course. And that was the good part.’

A wave of tenderness and sorrow swept over Virginia. She put her hand over his. ‘It sounds very sad.’

‘It was. A bit.’ He smiled at her suddenly, a sweetly sad touching smile. Virginia felt her heart wrung.

‘And nobody ever made it up to you?’

‘Not really. Not yet. I’m hoping to find someone who will. One day.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Virginia.

He stayed in New York for three weeks and saw her nearly every day. She showed him the city, introduced him to her friends, invited him to dinner at the house on East 80th, when Fred III had slightly grudgingly and half-heartedly taken to Alexander and invited him to spend his last weekend at the house in East Hampton. Alexander had accepted graciously. Betsey was in a ferment of anxiety – what should they eat, whom should he meet, what should they do? Baby and Mary Rose were invited, but Mary Rose had a big dinner party on the Saturday; she said graciously that they would drive out for Sunday lunch. ‘So what do you think for Saturday night?’ Betsey said anxiously to Virginia. ‘A formal dinner? Fork supper? Or should we just have a quiet evening, the four of us? And should we put him in one of the big double guest rooms, or a single one? I don’t want him to think we’re just dumping him in any old room.’