Dear Baby [she wrote],
I was so sorry to hear of Virginia’s death. She was so extremely good to me, and I was always sad that we never renewed our friendship. You must be extremely unhappy, and I wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. Please pass on my sympathies to other members of the family if that would seem appropriate.
I shall be in New York next month [this was quite untrue] and I wondered if you would like a drink for old times’ sake. It would be good to see you again.
Yours,
Angie.
‘I’m going to New York,’ said Angie to Mrs Wicks over their TV supper.
‘When?’ said Mrs Wicks, spooning up the sauce of her spaghetti bolognese with great relish. ‘What for?’
‘On business,’ said Angie, meeting her piercing gaze steadily.
‘I didn’t know you had business in New York.’
‘Well I do.’
‘What kind?’
‘The same kind. Houses.’
‘Oh yes? You’re not going to see that man are you?’
‘What man?’ said Angie innocently. ‘Look out, Gran, you’ve got bolognese on your sleeve. I don’t buy you real cashmere jumpers to trail in tomato sauce, you know. Cost a lot of money, that jumper.’
‘Don’t try and change the subject,’ said Mrs Wicks.
‘Well,’ said Baby, ‘you haven’t changed a bit.’
‘Liar!’ said Angie. ‘I’m a middle-aged woman. I’m thirty-two.’
‘Dear God. I wish I was thirty-two again.’
‘How old are you, Baby?’
‘Forty-five.’
‘Well, you look pretty good yourself. And you have changed.’
‘I should think so,’ said Baby, laughing, ‘I’m not middle-aged, I’m almost old.’
‘Oh nonsense,’ said Angie, ‘you look terrific. And when I said you’d changed, I meant for the better.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes. You look – well, more in command. Sleeker. Smoother. It’s nice,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Suits you.’
‘Thank you. Well, I am in command. I have the bank now. I’m chairman.’
‘I know. I read about it. I’m pleased, Baby. Congratulations. Is that good?’
‘It’s wonderful,’ he said simply. ‘I’m loving it. But it was a long wait. And there are still – let’s say – problems.’
‘Really? What?’
‘Oh – Dad pulled a bit of a rug from under my feet. Our feet. He’s cut Charlotte into the bank. She’ll get half of it, one day. Freddy has to share it with her.’
‘Good God,’ said Angie.
‘Yes. Neat work.’
‘What’s she like now?’
‘What? Oh, sweet. A nice child. I don’t see her giving me any problems of any kind. She’s very eager to fit in, do what I say…’
‘Good. Pretty?’
‘Yes, very pretty. In a babyish sort of way.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Well, Georgina has turned into a bit of a beauty. Very unusual-looking, immensely tall. And Max is a great charmer of course. Precocious. Now I don’t trust him. I caught him in the summer house with Melissa this summer and –’
‘Baby! He’s only what?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘And Melissa’s your new daughter?’
‘Yes. Well, quite new.’
‘Born after – well, since we were together.’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. Angie looked at him. It had been true what she had said, he did look more self-confident, more in control. But he had also aged, there was silver in the blond hair, his tanned face was lined, and his extremely well-cut suit did not entirely conceal his considerably increased girth. He was not fat exactly, but he was very heavy. Angie remembered with a sudden sharp pang the beauty of Baby’s body – muscly, firm, brown – and felt sad.
‘Well now,’ he said, ‘what about you? Have you prospered? I hope so.’
That was nice of him, she thought: considering that any prospering had been done on the back of the pay-off his father had given her and that she had accepted so readily.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I have.’
‘In what field?’
‘Property.’
‘Indeed. A tycoon, Miss Burbank.’
‘Well – not quite a tycoon. But doing OK.’
‘Good. I’m pleased to hear it.’ There was a silence. Then he said, quite suddenly, ‘I’ve missed you, Angie. I’ve missed you so much.’
She looked at him, and his blue eyes at least were just the same, dancing at her, full of sweet sadness, and the time changed suddenly, turned back, and she was eighteen again, hungry, impatient, looking for nothing but fun; and she said, ‘Oh, Baby, I’ve missed you too.’
There was a long silence and she knew exactly what he was doing: thinking, weighing up; the dangers, the delights, the pleasures, the pains, and she knew if she was anything at all of a nice person she would make it easy for him, jump up, say she had to leave, that it had been nice seeing him, that next time she was in New York they must do it again. She would be concerned for him, for his marriage, for his children, for his struggles to do the right thing, for his new position in life – and it couldn’t be easy running that bank, it was a huge, a pressing responsibility. If she really loved him, she thought, she would go, now, at once, and leave him in peace.
But it was too late, he had got there before her, he was speaking now, saying the words, the deadly, dangerous words: ‘I wonder if you have time for dinner one evening –’ and she was quite quite powerless to do anything about it, to resist, and moreover was totally unwilling even to try, and she smiled at him and said, with something oddly like a break in her voice, and cursed it, that break, for betraying her, for revealing the emotion, ‘Yes, Baby,’ she said, ‘yes I think so. That would be lovely.’
Chapter 15
Georgina, 1981
Georgina was just beginning her orgasm when her Housemother came in; just rising on the great tumbling rapids of pleasure, opening herself to them, folding herself around Jamie Hunt, her long long legs wrapped round him, her body arched, her head thrown back, biting her lip to try to contain the cries of pleasure that would surface, would emerge, however much she told herself they must not.
And then the light snapped on, she opened her eyes; and instead of seeing Jamie’s face, contorted itself with pleasure, she looked over his naked, plunging back and buttocks, and saw her Housemother standing there, an expression of total disdain on her face, and as her body retreated, slipped away from delight, she felt no fear or shame, only a sense of outrage that she had been cheated, and at the same time, one of intense amusement, and the sound that finally escaped her was not an orgasmic cry, but a throaty, joyous giggle.
She was expelled immediately; Alexander was sent for, and she was dispatched with him the same day. The school was very nice, very fair; but as they said to him, she had been warned twice about her behaviour, it was not the first time a boy had been found in her bedroom, although this was the first time she had been caught in flagrante, and her attitude did not encourage them to give her any more chances. She did not appear remorseful, or even apologetic; she had simply said that the Housemother should have knocked, that any reasonable person would have knocked, before entering someone’s bedroom.
She was silent in the car as they drove rather too fast towards Wiltshire; she sat looking out of the window apparently perfectly relaxed, although tearing occasionally at her badly bitten nails. As they came into view of the house, at the top of the Great Drive, Alexander stopped the car, looked at her and said, ‘This is very upsetting for me, Georgina, very upsetting indeed. I can’t quite understand your attitude. Your behaviour – just. Your attitude not at all.’
‘I can’t see a lot of difference,’ said Georgina. ‘I can’t see what we were doing was wrong. So I don’t see why I should be dreadfully sorry about it. But I am sorry if I’ve upset you.’ She felt very o
dd; she was not normally aggressive, in fact she was rather the reverse, gentle, conciliatory, almost excessively compliant at times; but ever since Charlotte had told her about her mother and still more so since Virginia had died, she had felt disoriented, lost, detached from her real self. And she looked at her father now, so hurt, so baffled, so angry, and she simply did not know how he could not understand.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Alexander, ‘how can you possibly say you don’t know you were doing something wrong? It is explicitly forbidden in the school rules, you’d been warned before, and besides, Georgina, I expect you to have more self-respect than to go hurling yourself into bed with the first boy who asks you. I really do.’
‘He wasn’t the first,’ said Georgina.
‘Georgina! Oh God.’ He put his head on his arms on the steering wheel. ‘Well I’m sorry, Daddy,’ she said, knowing she still sounded cold and wishing she could do something about it. ‘I guess it’s my bad blood coming out.’ Alexander lifted his head and stared at her. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t you? Don’t you really?’
‘No. I really don’t.’
‘Oh Daddy. I mean obviously I take after my mother. Sleeping with everyone. Don’t forget I have no idea who my –’
Alexander raised his hand and struck her hard across the face. ‘Don’t ever, ever let me hear you saying that about your mother again.’
‘Why not? It’s true isn’t it?’
‘It is not true. And I will not have you saying it.’
‘Oh.’ She was silent for a while, holding her face, staring at him, wondering at the same time how he could be so loyal and how she could be behaving like this, hurting him, the person she loved best in the world. ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I’m very impressed you can be so loyal to her. Very. I won’t say it again. But I’m afraid I can’t help thinking it.’
There was a long silence; Alexander sat looking down at the house, his face very old suddenly, an expression of utter despair on it. Then he turned to her and took her in his arms.
‘Georgina, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I hit you, I cannot imagine – oh God, what can I say – do you want to talk about it all –’
‘Daddy, please please don’t …’ She hugged him back and stayed there very still for a while, then sat back and looked at him, and her bravado was suddenly gone, she looked smaller and vulnerable and very near to tears. ‘ I deserved to be slapped, I’m sure. And no, I don’t want to talk about it, I hate it all so much. Please. I’m trying to handle it and it’s very difficult. But I don’t want to talk about it. With you of all people. I feel so sorry for you, and I’m terribly sorry to have been expelled, sorry I’ve disgraced you. But please don’t make me talk about Mummy and please even more don’t try and make me think well of her. OK? Now can we go home, please? I’m awfully tired.’
‘Yes of course.’ He started the car again. As he drove down the Great Drive she looked at him cautiously. The overriding expression on his face was interesting. It was one of relief.
They ate supper alone in the kitchen. It was surprisingly relaxed.
‘I can’t imagine where you can go to school next,’ Alexander said quite cheerfully. ‘It’s not easy, after an expulsion.’
‘I don’t want to go to any school.’
‘Well of course you must go to school. You’re only halfway through your A-level course.’
‘I know. But I told you I didn’t want to do them. Not these, anyway. I want to go to a sixth-form college and do architecture. I can go to the one in Swindon, can’t I? They’d be pleased to have me, I’d have thought.’
‘I have no idea. They might not welcome you either. I don’t imagine they will fall gratefully upon you, simply because of who you are.’
‘Oh, Daddy. Don’t be silly. That wasn’t what I meant. And anyway –’
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, nothing. I meant because my O levels were quite good and right for the course, and because I know so exactly what I want to do.’
‘Well perhaps. We shall have to write to them. In any case I would imagine you’d have to go back and start again, do two full years there. It’s May now, you’ll never catch up.’
‘Well I wouldn’t mind that. Anything to get away from Ancient Civilization and Latin.’
‘Yes, well I can’t imagine why you took those particular options in the first place.’
‘Just to be awkward, I expect,’ said Georgina, with a slightly weak grin.
The sixth-form college at Swindon couldn’t take her, but Cirencester said they would give her a place: on the condition that she agreed to repeat her first year. Georgina was suddenly much happier. She still felt lost, but life seemed to be making a little more sense. She went round Hartest singing, helped Mrs Tallow with the cooking, helped on the farm with the haymaking, and generally was a great deal more agreeable than she had been for some time. Charlotte arrived home early in June, flushed with triumph at getting a First in her First Part Tripos, and left almost immediately again with a party of friends travelling round Europe; she agreed to meet everyone on Nantucket in August.
Then towards the end of June Georgina began to feel unwell. It started with a general lassitude, and then she became nauseated; within a week she was being sick at least three or four times every day. Nothing seemed to help. She couldn’t keep anything down, and she grew alarmingly thin very fast.
Old Dr Summerfield had a look at her, diagnosed delayed shock, and told her to rest, take plenty of glucose and eat small, regular meals. The small regular meals went the same way as the large irregular ones. Another week went by.
It was Nanny who realized what the matter was. Nanny who sat her down in her room and looked at her steadily and asked her when she had had her last period. Georgina tried to remember, realized exactly what Nanny was actually saying, and felt shaky and breathless suddenly and as if she was falling very fast into a long dark hole.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘oh my God.’
‘We’d better go and see someone,’ was all Nanny said.
They went together to Swindon (telling Alexander they were seeing a specialist Dr Summerfield had suggested, relying on his busyness and general distractedness to prevent him from ringing Dr Summerfield himself to discuss who the specialist was and what he specialized in), visiting Virginia’s own gynaecologist, Lydia Paget, who had listened to Nanny’s slightly coded telephone message and agreed to see Georgina immediately.
The journey was a nightmare; they had to stop the car three times for Georgina to be sick, and when they got to the hospital she had to bolt into the loo twice while she waited to go in. It was a shaky, white, hollow-eyed creature who finally sank into the chair in Mrs Paget’s consulting room. ‘I may have to run,’ she said, with a ghost of a smile, ‘I warn you.’
Lydia Paget smiled at her encouragingly. ‘Of course. There’s a loo through there.’ She gestured at a door behind her desk. Georgina sat and tried to think what to say.
‘Well now,’ said Lydia, ‘you don’t look very well. Are you always so thin?’
‘Yes,’ said Georgina. ‘Always.’
‘Well there’s nothing wrong with being thin. It’s healthier than being fat. So what do you think the trouble is?’
She smiled encouragingly at Georgina. Georgina relaxed suddenly and smiled back. She looked remarkably cheerful.
‘Well I suppose I’m pregnant,’ she said, ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I was really stupid.’
‘Well – maybe. When was your last period?’
‘April twenty-fifth.’
‘Right. And it’s now June twenty-ninth. That is quite a long time. How is your cycle normally?’
‘Oh,’ said Georgina matter-of-factly, ‘four weeks dead regular. Always.’
‘Well – it certainly sounds like circumstantial evidence. And when did the sickness start?’
‘About three weeks ago. Only a week before that I just felt terribly tir
ed.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you before that you might be pregnant?’
‘No. I know it sounds dumb. But I’d had lots of upsets, you know.’
‘Of course,’ said Lydia quietly. ‘You must miss your mother so much. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, well thank you,’ said Georgina, briskly brief. She saw Lydia look at her sharply and she rushed the conversation on, anxious to get away from the quagmire of her feelings about her mother. ‘But actually I didn’t mean that. I’d been expelled from school –’
‘For?’
‘For getting caught in bed with a boy.’
‘Ah. Well that does sound a bit dumb. Not to have thought that you might be pregnant, I mean.’
‘I know. It was Nanny who made the suggestion. Well, asked me when I last had a period.’
‘Well good for Nanny. It’s the same one, I suppose. Wonderful old lady.’
‘Yes,’ said Georgina, ‘yes, she’s here with me now.’ The thought of Nanny sitting outside waiting for her, fiercely anxious, made her eyes fill with tears as the thought of her mother had not done. She looked down at her lap.
‘Well now,’ said Lydia Paget carefully, standing up, smiling at her gently, ‘let’s have a look at you. We may all be wrong.’
They weren’t all wrong. She pronounced Georgina about seven or eight weeks pregnant. ‘Of course we’ll do a test to make absolutely sure. But your breasts are swollen as well, and there are various other changes in your body. I don’t really think there’s any doubt. Now then, do you want to discuss practicalities with me?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Georgina, ‘I mean what kind of practicalities?’
‘Well,’ said Lydia, ‘I’m very happy to help. With any arrangements and so on. I imagine you’ll want to think about everything a bit. But if you want a termination, we don’t have very long. And of course you’ll have to tell your father. Or does he know?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Georgina.
‘Well – what about the father? Of your baby I mean. Do you want to tell him?’
‘I can’t, said Georgina.
‘Fine. Any particular reason why not?’
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