‘There you are, Lady Caterham,’ said Lydia, smiling too. ‘Now you have it from the highest authority. Try to relax about it.’
‘I can’t,’ said Virginia. She felt terribly angry suddenly, betrayed. ‘Come on, Alexander, it’s time we went home.’
It was a very long pregnancy. She didn’t work very much; she insisted on going to London, sitting in the office, but she was too tired most of the time, and she worked a very short day. Angie kept things ticking over, and did her best, but the business suffered. Virginia didn’t care. She was increasingly uninterested in everything except herself. She was bored, irritable, difficult. She neglected the girls. She could hardly bear to speak to Alexander. She was highly critical of Angie and all her efforts. Alexander kept urging her to give up work, to stay at Hartest. It made her furious; the conversation always ended in an ugly scene. Only when she had had two or three glasses of wine was she tolerable company.
She even quarrelled with Nanny. It was unheard of, and it was over Charlotte’s bedtime. Virginia had insisted on keeping her up and was lying on her own bed with her, reading her stories. Nanny had said she must go to bed, it was after seven, and Virginia had said no, that she wanted Charlotte to stay with her. There was a scene; Charlotte was finally taken away screaming.
Half an hour later Nanny came back.
‘I know you’re not yourself, madam,’ she said, ‘but that’s all the more reason to leave me in full charge of the girls. I’m not as young as I was,’ she added with her usual glorious lack of logic.
Virginia picked up her book. She ostentatiously opened it and turned the page, ignoring Nanny totally.
Later she phoned her on the house telephone.
‘Nanny darling, please come down here. I want to say I’m sorry.’
‘I’m busy just at the moment,’ said Nanny firmly. ‘With the children’s ironing.’
‘Please, Nanny.’
‘I’ll come down later, madam.’
‘Nanny, I’ll be asleep later. I’ve just had some hot milk. It won’t take long.’ She could hear the tears in her own voice; could hear Nanny relenting.
‘I’ll be down in a minute, madam.’
She said she was very sorry to Nanny; she said nobody understood how frightened she was, how worried. Nanny patted her hand and said she did. Then she picked up the empty cup and moved towards the door. She looked at it and stopped suddenly, turned back to Virginia.
‘Excuse me for mentioning this, madam, but I don’t think whisky is very good for you at the moment. Not even in hot milk.’
‘Oh Nanny, really. Don’t be such an old misery. Just a little drop, to get me off to sleep.’
Virginia went into labour over a month early. She was rushed to hospital. Lydia Paget only arrived for the final half hour. It was a harder birth than Georgina’s, but it was still over in six hours; the baby was placed in an incubator.
She lay in bed in a state of almost awestruck happiness. She had done it. She had had a boy. She had accomplished what she had had to do. She was the mother of a son. Her own personal miracle had been worked. She didn’t have to worry any more.
Lydia Paget came to see her. ‘The baby is a little distressed. But he should be all right. Thirty-four weeks isn’t too desperate these days.’
The next day they wheeled her down to see him. Her son, the small Viscount Hadleigh, heir to Hartest.
She looked at him as he lay in the incubator, and felt frightened. He looked very vulnerable. He was moving restlessly about, and his arms and legs were particularly thin, his joints oddly large. ‘It’s because he’s premature,’ said the nurse in charge of him, seeing her shocked face, ‘that he’s so thin. It’s in the last month they gain some fat.’
He had a shock of black hair, and his eyes, oddly small even in his tiny face, looked unseeingly out at the world.
In spite of her fear, she smiled tenderly at him. ‘Hallo, Baby Alexander,’ she said. ‘Be strong, won’t you? Be strong for me.’
She felt she could do anything now. Anything. She was going to be a good wife. Be nicer and more companionable to Alexander. She was going to be a much better mother. Play with the girls. Spend more time with them. Make sure they were happy with their little brother. Make sure they didn’t realize that he was a hundred, a thousand times more important than they were.
And she would give up drinking, most definitely she would give up drinking. And give up her work too. And she would take an interest in the estate and the farm. Just start being a better person, being good. She had to show her gratitude to God somehow.
Alexander, Viscount Hadleigh, died two days later. The paediatrician kept telling her there had been nothing he could do, could have done. It was not just that he was premature, that would have been nothing, he had other problems. He had a heart defect, and a slightly cleft palate; he wasn’t able to suck properly, and some of his joints were malformed. Privately he told Lydia Paget that it was a clear case of foetal alcohol syndrome. The mother must have been drinking a great deal. Lydia, who had observed all the signs for herself and known there was nothing to be done, but who had hoped that somehow the little boy might survive anyway, nodded and went to see Virginia again, to see if there was anything, anything at all she could do for her.
Virginia was sitting in her bed, just staring out of the window. She turned to look at Lydia as she came in.
‘It was my fault, wasn’t it?’ she said, in a dreadful dead voice. ‘My fault. The baby died because I’ve been drinking too much. I should have stopped, I should.’
‘Well –’said Lydia helplessly, ‘well maybe it didn’t help.’
‘Lydia, it wasn’t that it didn’t help. I killed him. I drank him to his death, my baby, my poor poor little tiny baby.’ She started crying, sobbing, clinging onto Lydia’s hands; after a while she said, ‘I hate myself, Lydia. I hate myself so much. Oh Lydia, if only you knew, if only –’
‘I know,’ said Lydia, stroking her hair, ‘I do know.’
‘No, Lydia, you don’t, you can’t. You haven’t ever done anything so awful, so wicked. Have you?’
‘Well – I don’t think that’s very important. What I’ve done or not done. Did you – did you see the – the baby today?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’ve seen him. I was holding him when he died. I felt – I owed it to him. He was so tiny. He hadn’t any love in his life at all. Any physical closeness. They said I could hold him. That it wouldn’t do any harm, to take him out of the incubator, not any more. So I did.’ She was crying again now, tears falling freely down her face; talking feverishly, urgently. ‘And I was holding him, talking to him. I really thought it might help. In spite of what they said. He felt rather cold and I held him very close to me. He felt so tiny too, almost like a little bird. I asked them to bring some more blankets for him. They were a while finding one. Do you think it might have saved him? If they’d brought one sooner? He was so cold. His feet were so cold.’
‘No, I don’t think it would have made any difference,’ said Lydia very quietly, speaking with difficulty, ‘not by then.’
‘Well, I just wondered. He was so peaceful, once they took him out of the incubator. He was very restless before. I don’t think he was suffering, though. Do you? You don’t think I did the wrong thing, do you? Taking him out of the incubator. You don’t think he might have lived if he had stayed there?’
‘Oh no,’ said Lydia, ‘no, I’m sure he wouldn’t. But I’m sure he wasn’t suffering. And it must have helped him so much, to be held by you.’ She had tears in her own eyes now. ‘It would have soothed him. Comforted him. I’m sure you did absolutely the right thing.’
‘I thought he’d just gone to sleep. Well, he did at first. His eyes just closed. Then he was very still. But he was still breathing. I kept hoping, you know, right until the end. Even after he stopped breathing. Somehow I went on hoping. I asked them. I made them make absolutely sure he was dead. The – the stethoscope looked so big on his chest. It was
such a tiny chest. So tiny and thin. Too tiny, I suppose.’
‘Yes,’ said Lydia. ‘Yes of course, he was. Too tiny altogether.’
Alexander, Viscount Hadleigh, was buried at Hartest, his grave, with its oddly pristine little headstone, looking shockingly raw and hurtful among the old, weathered ones.
‘It will weather too,’ Alexander had said to Virginia, ‘it will fade, in time. Like our grief.’
‘I don’t want it to,’ said Virginia.
The tiny coffin set with a crown of white roses was carried into the chapel by Alexander alone. The only other person there was Nanny; Virginia had forbidden even Betsey to come.
‘This is for us to bear alone,’ she said simply to her mother on the phone. ‘No one can help.’
After the service Alexander carried the coffin out again, out of the chapel, towards the space under the yew tree that had been prepared for it; she saw him set it down as tenderly as if it had been a live baby. She picked a white rose from the bunch of flowers she was carrying and laid it tenderly on the coffin and kissed her fingers and laid them on the coffin too; and then she learnt what it truly meant to feel your heart break.
‘Virginia, you need help,’ said Alexander. They were breakfasting in the house in Eaton Place; it was a cold January day; the children had been sent on an extended visit to their grandparents in New York. Virginia couldn’t cope with them, and it was felt that they were better removed from the entire situation. Nanny had gone with them, but returned after three weeks, her lips very tightly folded, saying that Mrs Praeger seemed to imagine she could look after the children herself with the help of some foolish girl, and there was certainly no place for her in such a household. She made it sound as if Beaches was a brothel. Alexander told her not to fret, that he was sure the children would be fine, and that they would soon be home now, anyway. Virginia was much better. He didn’t sound at all convinced when he said it.
Virginia had gone out to the kitchen and returned with a glass of orange juice; he had asked if he could share it with her and she had said quickly no, no, she would fetch him one of his own, and gone back out of the room. Alexander tasted the orange juice; it was thick and sweet with gin.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh, no, I’ll get over it. Don’t rush me, Alexander, it’s only just two months since the baby died. I’ll be all right.’
‘I didn’t mean help getting over the baby,’ he said, ‘I meant help to stop drinking.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh for God’s sake don’t start on that. Why does everyone keep talking as if I’m a drunk?’
‘Because,’ he said simply, ‘because you are a drunk.’
Virginia stared at him. She knew how terrible she must look. She had turned away from her own reflection in the mirror that morning. Her face was white and puffy; her dark hair, although freshly done, was dull and lifeless. She was very thin, her golden eyes dull and dark-rimmed. But that did not mean she was a drunk. It did not.
‘Don’t dare to say such a thing to me,’ she said. ‘I am not a drunk. I may get a little drunk at night. God in heaven, I need something to dull the way I feel. But I am not a drunk. Now if you will excuse me, Alexander, I’m going upstairs.’
‘Virginia,’ he said, ‘you are a drunk. And if you had not been a drunk all during your pregnancy, that baby would still be alive.’
‘Oh,’ she cried, and it was a wail of pain, ‘don’t, don’t say such a thing. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. It’s a cruel, wicked lie. I won’t let you even think such a thing.’
‘Virginia, it’s true. If you don’t believe me, ask Mrs Paget. Ask the paediatrician at the hospital. You killed that baby, and if you’re not very careful, you’ll kill yourself.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking at him flatly, her face icily, stonily white, ‘how you can be so cruel to me.’
‘I know you won’t believe it,’ he said, taking her hand, looking at her tenderly, ‘but it’s because I love you. And I want to help you.’
She began to cry suddenly, raging, dreadful tears, grabbing at her glass from time to time and drinking from it; when it was empty, she tried to get up and take it to fill again. Alexander snatched it back from her.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No. We will start now, today. We will beat it together.’
‘I can’t, I can’t,’ she said, ‘it’s the only thing I have that doesn’t let me down.’
She missed the raw pain in Alexander’s eyes, but she saw the blaze of anger that followed, and she felt the stinging blow he delivered to her face. ‘How dare you!’ he said. ‘How dare you, sitting there, reeking of drink, wallowing in self-pity, say everything lets you down? Does your mother let you down? Phoning every day, begging to be allowed to come and see you? Do your children let you down? Little Charlotte, sending you pictures she’s painted, to make you feel better? Longing to come home to you? I daresay she feels let down, Virginia; that would be understandable. What about Nanny, caring for them all this time, never uttering a breath of criticism of you to anyone? Angie, covering up for you, working to retain the few clients you have left, has she let you down? Have I let you down? Acting out this ghastly charade, pretending to our friends, the servants, that you were ill when you were so drunk you could hardly stand up sometimes, cleaning up your vomit, trying to comfort you? How dare you say everyone lets you down? It is you who are letting us down, Virginia, and you have no excuse, no excuse at all.’
She looked at him, calm suddenly, and there was a long, endless silence. Then she said, ‘Well, I think I have one or two. But not many. And I’m sorry, Alexander. I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve said that a great deal,’ he said, ‘over the past few months. I should feel better if you were to try to prove it to me.’
‘All right,’ she said, her small, pointed chin lifting suddenly, her eyes almost amused, ‘all right, I’ll try.’
She did try. She told Angie what she was doing, that Alexander was staying up in London with her, to help her, that she couldn’t face being at Hartest with the servants; she begged Angie to be patient with her, that it was going to be tough.
It was very tough. She stopped drinking altogether for two days, but the withdrawal was so frightening, revealing as it did how much she must have been drinking, as she sweated, developed cramps, threw up; Alexander finally, alarmed and weakened by her pleas, gave her a drink to soothe her, and agreed they should find professional help. She promised at the height of her agony to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but later she refused, and she could see he was almost relieved, so great would the humiliation have been; and so instead he became an expert himself, reading extensively on the subject and drawing up a programme of steadily decreasing alcoholic intake for her.
It seemed to work; after three weeks she was feeling better, was sleeping better; Alexander was talking of sending for the children. Then one day he was out at a business meeting all morning; alone in the house for the first time for a long while, alone with her guilt and grief and remorse, she lost control; by lunchtime she had drunk half a bottle of gin.
‘Virginia, for the love of God, what are you doing?’ said Alexander wearily, looking at her as she sat slumped at the table in the small dining room. ‘We’ve been through so much, we’re getting you out of it, why drag yourself back into it again?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Virginia, you do know what I mean. You’re drunk. Where did you get it from?’
‘I’m not drunk.’
‘You are.’
‘Oh all right,’ she said, suddenly angry, tears pouring down her face, ‘yes I’m drunk. And it’s lovely. It’s lovely. I don’t feel frightened any more. Or sick. I just feel good.’
‘So where did you get it from?’
‘I got it from the cellar.’
‘But the cellar’s locked.’
‘Oh, I know. Very crafty of you, Alexander. I didn’t like that. That was really what got me going. I went looking for the key. And when I couldn’t find it, I g
ot a screwdriver and took the lock off.’
‘Well all right, Virginia. Let’s just give up, shall we? You drink as much as you like and kill yourself, and any children you might have in the future, and I’ll stop trying to help you.’
‘Don’t you start talking about children.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why not. And it’s irrelevant anyway.’
‘Well it is if you’re going to continue to murder them.’
She stood up suddenly, came at him with the bottle she had hidden hastily under the chair. ‘You bastard,’ she said, her eyes narrow slits. ‘You bastard.’
He snatched the bottle from her easily, pushed her back down into a chair. ‘Just stop it, Virginia,’ he said, ‘just stop being so melodramatic. Drink yourself to death if you want to, but leave me out of it.’ He turned away and walked towards the door; she snatched her glass, splintered its rim against the table and ran after him, mad with grief and rage. She clawed at the back of his neck with the shattered glass; blood spurted everywhere, horribly.
He put his hands up to the wound, and they turned almost instantly red; he looked at them and then at her, and then said very calmly, ‘I think you should call the doctor.’
It was all carefully covered up, of course; Virginia, shaking with terror, called the doctor, told him what had happened. And then he sent her away after stitching Alexander’s neck and talked to Alexander for a long time and then came out to find her and said it had been a very nasty accident, Alexander falling like that, but he would be fine and all they had to do was look after him very carefully and her too, as she would need all her strength to take care of him. He said she was to go in and see Alexander, who was sitting in his chair looking rather pale but quite cheerful; he said he was fine, and she was not to feel too badly about it all. He said the doctor had said she was to go and see him in his surgery and get some advice, and Virginia, weak with remorse and misery, said of course she would, and made an appointment that very afternoon.
But she didn’t go. The time for the appointment came and went, and she didn’t arrive; and in the end the doctor went to Eaton Place, ostensibly to dress Alexander’s wound, but actually to see Virginia and impress upon her how badly she needed help.
Wicked Pleasures Page 13