Wicked Pleasures

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘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 l
ights 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.’

  ‘Mother, for a woman who’s entertained le tout New York for thirty years you’re behaving very strangely,’ said Virginia, laughing. ‘I’ll tell you what would be nice, why don’t we ask Madeleine Dalgleish? She’s still here, and I’m sure she’d be pleased to come. And of course put him in a single room. Just don’t worry about it. I can almost hear Daddy saying it: He’s only a friend of Virginia’s.’

  She was in an intensely emotional state, feverish with excitement, dizzy with love, fretful at Alexander’s lack of action. He talked and listened to her a great deal, he phoned her three times a day, he told her she was beautiful, that he loved being with her, he kissed her goodnight in an almost chaste way after seeing her home: but that was all. Virginia thought of all the boys and their fumbling fingers, their over-enthusiastic kisses, and looked back in wonder at her own icy responses; here she was, melting (literally, she sometimes felt), shaken with desire, aware of her body and its behaviour, its hungers, in a way she had never known, or dreamt of knowing, and no release, no answer to any of it. She was in despair; Alexander obviously saw her as a kind, sympathetic sister, or friend; probably he had some nobly born creature at home, waiting for him, and he was simply passing the time with her. She wondered if he realized how very much she wanted him, adored him: please God he didn’t. That would be utter, total humiliation. That would be dreadful.

  She withdrew from him slightly towards the end of that last week, eager to appear cool, disinterested; she could sense his puzzlement, his desire to engage her attention again, and it pleased and soothed her. But she had decided that if nothing happened over this weekend, if he didn’t do or say something that indicated he regarded her in some way other than as an agreeable, albeit close, friend she would have to put him and her passion for him aside; she would die rather than appear to be chasing after him.

  He arrived on Saturday morning; they had a long, boozy lunch in the garden, and then went walking on the South Shore. Alexander took her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it; Virginia had to restrain herself by an act of sheer physical will from hurling herself into his arms.

  ‘This is a lovely, lovely place,’ he said. ‘And your parents’ house is beautiful. I love it.’

  ‘It can hardly compare with Hartest, surely,’ said Virginia.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s different. It’s like comparing you with – well, with the Queen of England.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Virginia, laughing.

  ‘No, it’s not such a silly comparison. She’s regal and important and immensely steeped in tradition. Like Hartest. You’re young and lovely and unfettered and free. Like this place. I love you both.’

  ‘Me and Queen Elizabeth?’

  ‘No, you and this beach.’

  ‘Shore.’

  ‘Sorry. Shore.’

  ‘Did you ever meet the Queen?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said carelessly, ‘several times. I wouldn’t count her among my intimate friends. But yes, I have met her. At functions. The Derby once.’

  ‘You must,’ said Virginia, her eyes dancing, ‘tell my mother.’

  ‘Alexander has met the Queen,’ she annou
nced at dinner.

  Betsey had just taken a mouthful of chicken; she choked.

  ‘Queen Elizabeth?’ she said, a glass of water and a great deal of back-thumping later.

  ‘Both of them.’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘Both. The current one and her mum.’

  ‘And – and – what – well, how –’ Betsey was silenced, scarlet with awe.

  ‘What she means is,’ said Fred III mildly, ‘what is she like? Does she breathe in the normal way, walk by putting one foot in front of another, chew her food, go to the bathroom, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Fred,’ said Betsey. ‘You’re making me sound like an American.’

  ‘Funny, I thought you were one.’

  ‘Not only Americans ask those questions,’ said Alexander, smiling. ‘The English are equally fascinated by her. Whenever I tell anyone I’ve met her I get bombarded by questions. She’s very nice. Much prettier than she looks in her pictures. A bit shy. Maybe a bit bossy. But then I suppose she would be. It’s her mother I really like. She’s a wonderful old bird. A bit vulgar, but wonderful.’

  Virginia could see Betsey shaping up to ask how a queen could possibly be vulgar and looked across the table at Madeleine. ‘Mrs Dalgleish, how do you feel about a game after dinner? Shall we have a Scrabble match, England versus the United States? I warn you, I was Scrabble champion at Wellesley,’ she added to Alexander.

  ‘You never beat me and Baby, though,’ said Fred.

  ‘Baby cheats. He makes up words.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Fred. He scowled at her. Betsey turned quickly to Alexander.

  ‘Do they play Scrabble in your country?’ she said.

  ‘They do,’ said Alexander, ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Betsey, confused.

  ‘I’m quite quite hopeless at any kind of board game. Especially Scrabble. But I’d love to watch you. Really.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Virginia. ‘No of course not. Is there anything you’d rather do?’ He fixed his dark blue, intense eyes on hers. There was an odd expression in them that she couldn’t read; she looked away.