‘Well, we can’t have her,’ said Johnny, ‘we haven’t the room, and anyway, things aren’t too settled, are they, Dee?’
‘Not really,’ said Dee, looking at him with the resigned adoration she always did, adding (emboldened by the many glasses of Dubonnet and bitter lemon she had drunk) that she could remember it being worse, ‘but we haven’t got the room, it’s true.’
They had both looked at Angie, who pointed out very firmly that she couldn’t possibly have her gran in New York, it was out of the question – ‘Why not?’ said Baby innocently when she told him about it later. ‘She sounds like a fun old lady.’
Angie simply told him firmly that Mrs Wicks would not have considered moving to New York, that she’d loathe it, that all her friends, or those that were still alive, would be left behind.
‘I think you should maybe try to do something for her,’ said Baby, ‘she’s been very good to you, hasn’t she? More of a mother than your mother, you said.’
‘Oh Baby,’ said Angie, ‘I say a lot of things. I don’t know how you remember half of them.’
‘I love you,’ said Baby, ‘I find it quite easy to remember what you say.’
Angie leant forward and kissed him. ‘Love you too. And – yes, you’re right, she was, she was very good to me. And of course I would like to do something. But how can I? I can’t spare any money.’
Baby looked at her. Her eyes were soft, her expression wistful. For what must have been the thousandth time, he wondered quite what he had done to have deserved her, and how he was going to keep her. There was a silence. ‘I could spare some money,’ he said, ‘I’d really like to think your grandma was comfortable and you didn’t have any worries about her. If it would help, you find some nice place to settle her into, Angie, and I’ll pick up the bill. I feel a kind of debt to anyone who’s looked after you.’
‘No, Baby,’ said Angie, very firmly. ‘I really really couldn’t let you. We’re an independent lot, we Wickses, and besides, it really is not your problem.’
‘Your problems are mine,’ said Baby, ‘and I kind of like trying to crack them.’
There was a silence. Angie looked at him very solemnly. Then she smiled, her sweetest, softest little-girl smile. ‘Oh Baby,’ she said, ‘how can I ever ever repay what you do for me?’
‘I can think of a few ways,’ said Baby, his hand reaching down into the soft moistness between her legs, ‘one very simple down payment you could make right this minute.’
What ensued was one of Angie’s more imaginative pieces of lovemaking; Baby never opened a bill from the very nice private rest home in Bournemouth where Mrs Wicks became a permanent resident, without remembering it with a stab of almost violent pleasure.
The event in question had actually taken place on the stairs of the Caterham house in Eaton Place; Baby had rung Virginia at Hartest the day Angie had flown to London and begged her to let him borrow it for the weekend.
‘I have to be in London anyway. Business. Just for a few days before we come and stay with you.’
With some reservations he had agreed to Mary Rose’s slightly pressing suggestion the family spend a few weeks of the summer at Hartest.
‘How convenient for you. Baby, no. You can’t have the house. Especially if it’s for you to disport yourself in with Angie.’
‘Oh, Virgy, please. It’s so much safer than a hotel –’
‘Why?’
‘Well because there’s no stupid staff there who might give Mary Rose misleading messages –’
‘Misleading! Really, Baby.’
‘Well you know what I mean. She always has to have the hotel number and the room number, and –’
‘I wonder why. No, it’s out of the question. I couldn’t do it to her. I do have some sense of family loyalty. And I wouldn’t be able to look her in the face when you all got here. Besides there are no staff there, stupid or otherwise. It’s August. You’d have to do everything yourselves. And clear up after yourselves.’
‘What about family loyalty to me? And clearing up, playing house’d be fun.’
‘Oh sure. I somehow don’t see you cleaning the bath out, Baby, or changing the sheets. Or Angie for that matter.’
‘I’ll hire someone to come in and do it. Please, Virginia, it would be so great.’
‘No, Baby, really. I can’t let you. Besides, whatever would Alexander say if he knew? He’d go crazy.’
‘Well he wouldn’t know. Would he? I just have this wonderful wonderful idea of me and Angie, alone and completely safe, in our own little private universe. For just forty-eight hours. It isn’t such a lot to ask.’
‘Baby, I do think you should be a little more wary of Angie. I’ve told you before, she’s such a tough, clever little thing. You seem to have built her up into something between Helen of Troy and Ella Wheeler Wilcox.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he said, and he was horribly aware of a tremor in his voice, ‘I just love her, that’s all.’
‘But Baby, you know nothing can come of it. Ever. And you must know how frightened I am for you both. It’s so horribly dangerous and – and stupid, what you’re doing.’
‘Oh, I know,’ he said, his voice low and remorseful, ‘but we really are trying to work something out. Really. This would be – well possibly our last proper time together. Please, Virginia. I wish you could see me, I’m on my knees here.’
‘Well –’ she said, and he could hear her trying not to laugh, trying not to give in, knowing that he had, as always, managed to make her do what he wanted. ‘Well, I still don’t see why it should make such a difference. But if you really really want it –’
‘I do.’
‘Oh, all right. I’ll leave the key with the agency who keep an eye on it during August. I’ll tell them you’re going to pick it up – when?’
‘On Thursday. Virginia, I adore you.’
‘Baby,’ said Virginia briskly, ‘you know you really should think about growing up.’
‘I’d really rather not,’ he said.
It was a very happy forty-eight hours. Angie, over-excited at finding herself suddenly, albeit briefly, the mistress of her previous employer’s house, took it upon herself to bestow pleasure upon Baby in as many rooms and corners of it as possible. The especially memorable episode on the stairs took place on the Sunday afternoon; they had just consumed most of a bottle of champagne and a pound and a half of strawberries in the huge bed in the master bedroom; the glasses and the large, spider-like stalks of the strawberries lay on the pillows, the bottle which Baby had knocked over in a sudden excessive need to kiss Angie’s stomach and thighs was dripping steadily onto the extremely valuable Indian carpet.
‘We have to start clearing this place up soon,’ Baby had said, looking rather apprehensively around him. ‘I promised Virgy we would.’
‘I’ll clear it up later,’ said Angie, kissing him, ‘I’m terribly good at housework. And you know you like watching me while I do it. Now, Baby darling, we’ve done the drawing room and the dining room and the kitchen and two of the bathrooms, and lots of bedrooms: time for the stairs.’
Baby looked at her; she was flushed, and her blonde curls were in a tangle on her shoulders; her green eyes were very bright. They were both naked; he put out his hand to caress her hair, and she leant down and kissed him gently, and then sat back, smiling, her eyes on his penis, already obediently, tremulously erect.
‘I’m surprised,’ she said, bending to kiss that too. ‘I’m surprised you can still manage that, Baby. After such a very active weekend. You really are a remarkable man. Come with me, I have a nice idea for the rest of the afternoon.’
She took his hand and slithered off the bed; he followed her obediently, watching, with what was almost an ache in his heart, her neat, muscly little buttocks, her slender, graceful legs. They reached the top of the stairs, and she turned, smiling at him.
‘Halfway, I think,’ she said, ‘like the Duke of York. You know about the Duke of York, don’t you, Baby?�
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Baby said he didn’t.
‘Well when he was up, he was up. Like you,’ she added, sinking to her knees, taking his penis in her mouth, caressing it gently, rhythmically, with her tongue; he could feel the pulling, the working of it, and closed his eyes, groaning aloud. One of the things Angie had taught him was not to mind making a noise when they were having sex; Mary Rose conducted the whole thing in a kind of almost church-like silence.
She rose suddenly, stood right up, pulled his head down to her and kissed him very hard; he could taste himself, salty, earthy, in her mouth.
‘And when he was down he was down,’ she added, after a while, ‘and when he was only halfway up, he was neither up nor down. Let’s rewrite the script, Baby.’
She led him downstairs, to where the stairs curved in the half landing, pushed him down, kissing him again, her hands on his stomach, his thighs, his balls. He groaned again, reached out desperately for her; she pushed his hands away, behind him, made him lean back. He felt his penis aching, yearning for her; to be in her, in her warmth, her tightness, her wetness, her soft, tumescent hunger. Slowly, with infinite gentleness, she turned her back to him, presenting him with her arse, moving over him, onto him; then more slowly still, urged him, soothed him, welcomed him in. He felt the familiar, melting softness, the flow of her own pleasure; felt her moving, tenderly, quietly at first, then as always in a gathering greed. He cried out, sat up sharply, put his arms around her waist, clutching her to him, feeling his penis reaching further and further into her, exploring her, seeking her out, loving her, having her, part of her, making her part of himself, and then soon, so often it was too soon, in a great surge, a rush, a waterfall of release, he felt his orgasm, and her own, as it always seemed to do, falling onto his, in sweet, soft, thrusting spasms; and afterwards, they lay there for a long time, she above him, her head turned backwards towards him, her hair splayed across his chest, holding his hand, and he listened to her saying over and over again, ‘Baby, that was so good, just so good,’ and thought that never, even in a life that had known a great deal of pleasure, had he known any so intense and so joyous as that.
Twelve hours later, she left; to return to New York. She had not, after all, done anything about tidying up the house. She had offered, but she had been sad, and seemed tired; Baby told her to forget it, that he would get an army of cleaners in in the morning. He fed her raspberry ice cream in the kitchen, washed down with the rest of the champagne, and they sat in the drawing room with the shutters closed, and watched a very bad play on television. Halfway through it Mary Rose phoned; Baby took the call in Alexander’s study, where he felt he might at the same time manage to sound comparatively level and normal, and spare Angie the pain of hearing him tell Mary Rose he was looking forward to seeing her at the airport three days later. He found the prospect so dreadful that the slight headache the champagne had given him deepened into thick, almost sickening pain.
They slept together, in a different, clean bedroom, that night, and did not make love; Baby awoke holding Angie so tightly she was struggling, half frightened, to be free. He found with some embarrassment that he had tears flowing down his cheeks; when she left, they flowed again. He realized then that he had not, whatever he might have thought, experienced love before.
He spent most of the two weeks at Hartest trying to talk to Virginia about Angie; he became increasingly aware that she was not over-receptive to his soul baring. Mary Rose had been working on a book on eighteenth-century paintings and had taken herself off a great deal to galleries and houses all over the country; he had expressed his earnest intention to keep all the children happy and amused, but in fact he neglected them hopelessly, so that the burden fell on Virginia and Nanny. The children were all difficult in their different ways; Kendrick and Georgina both possessed an awe-inspiring capacity to throw temper tantrums over something as minuscule as the relative brownness or otherwise of their boiled eggs at breakfast; Charlotte spent most of the time showing off on her new pony, deliberately making Freddy look a wimp, and making everyone fear for her limbs, and Freddy suffered an endless series of what his mother called sick headaches, and what the other children called making a fuss. Only Max was no trouble, sitting placidly in his playpen hour after hour, but even he developed a tummy bug towards the end of August; Nanny, as Charlotte remarked, was getting what she called very bristy.
Alexander kept well clear of everybody, and was out on the farm most of the time; they were short of hands, he said, and it was harvest time. He came home exhausted every evening, very short-tempered, and fell asleep over the dinner table.
‘I’m very fond of your brother,’ Baby heard him say to Virginia, in the library late one night, when he came back down the stairs in search of a last brandy and soda, ‘but please don’t ask them all to stay here together again. I don’t think I could stand it.’
‘They’re my family, Alexander,’ said Virginia. ‘And I love them. And this is my home as well as yours and right now they need me. Quite apart from that, I need them.’
‘Well I need you too,’ he said, ‘and I think my claim is a little stronger.’
Baby slipped back up the stairs, not wishing to be embarrassed any further and not quite sure why he found this exchange so oddly sinister.
Chapter 7
Baby, 1969–70
Just after that Christmas, Mary Rose had announced that she would like to have a summer house of their own. After a month of intensive searching, during the course of which she had examined with typical and laudatory thoroughness no fewer than thirty-seven houses, she announced she had found exactly the right one, on Nantucket. It had all the advantages of Long Island, she said, without being Long Island, the same white beaches, peace and quiet, a leisurely pace of life and charming mainly nineteenth-century houses, reminiscent of those in the Hamptons. The house she wished to purchase was at Siasconset, and was, she said, an overgrown cottage.
‘Sconset, as they call it, is delightful, Baby, originally an artists’ colony. The beach is beautiful, I know you’ll like it. I said we would take a trip there next weekend, stay over on the Saturday. We can show it to the children. It will be so good for them to be there, so away from the pressure of city life. Most of the people travel around by bike, it’s extremely peaceful and safe, and there’s even a children’s drama festival in August. I feel absolutely confident that it’s the house for us, and we’re very lucky to have the opportunity to buy it. I have actually negotiated a very good price. Houses on Nantucket very seldom come up, especially at Sconset. I have told the agent your visiting it is largely a formality.’
‘Well in that case,’ said Baby, unusually irritable after a particularly bad day with Fred, ‘is there any point my visiting it at all? Why don’t you just go ahead and buy the damn thing? You’ve obviously made up your mind about it.’
‘Oh, Baby, don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mary Rose, ‘this is a family house, and it must be a family decision.’
‘Of course,’ said Baby.
In fact he did very much like not only Nantucket, but the house. It was called Shells, and seemed just a little more than an overgrown cottage, having six bedrooms, a huge kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a den, but it was charming, low and white, built in stone and cedar tiles, like so many of the houses on Long Island, and it had a big garden with a play house and a swing hanging from a tall cedar tree, and a large porch, big enough for a family dining table, with a rose-covered trellis, overlooking the shore.
They spent the whole of August there, together with the children’s nurse and a steady stream of visitors. There were rather more of their New York friends there than Baby had anticipated, which he actually liked; it made for more action and more fun. Fred and Betsey came and were particularly delighted with it; there was a golf course just along the Milestone Road, and a children’s course at J. J. Clamps’s just along from there which, Fred pointed out with some malice to Mary Rose, would suit Charlotte and him just fine. Towards the e
nd of August, Virginia and Alexander and the children came; Baby was surprised to see Alexander, having heard his views the previous summer on holidays with Virginia’s family, but Virginia explained rather vaguely that Alexander wanted them to be all together. There was something faintly unsatisfactory about her explanation; Baby wondered if and when he might hear a more likely one.
While the Caterhams were there, Fred and Betsey came back for a long weekend; the resultant family tensions were considerable. Charlotte ran to her grandfather’s side the moment he arrived and never left it. They were like sweethearts, Betsey said slightly plaintively, and it was true; they sailed, walked and played golf and tennis together, sat next to each other at meals, shared little jokes and generally shut the rest of the world out.
On the Monday evening, before Fred and Betsey left for New York, the four older children were allowed to stay up for dinner; afterwards, inevitably, Fred told Baby to play while he and Charlotte did ‘You’re the Tops’.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Baby. He was quite drunk; he was quite drunk every night. Fred looked at him sharply.
‘I’ll play,’ said Virginia quickly. ‘Baby’s tired.’
The performance was charming; but Betsey and Virginia were the only enthusiastic applauders. Baby was half asleep, Alexander was looking embarrassed, Freddy was slumped in a chair playing solitaire, Kendrick and Georgina had sloped off to the kitchen in search of extra ice cream, and Mary Rose was trying to conceal her distaste for the proceedings, clapping limply while smiling icily at the performers.
Wicked Pleasures Page 17