‘Certainly not!’ The old woman glared at her, clearly insulted. ‘I’m not in my grave yet, by a long way.’ However, the inflammation became so severe that Nanny Bunting was taken away to hospital two days later, and Cathy telephoned an agency for a temporary. A few hours later a very slim girl with hair the colour of her dark-brown uniform arrived, and took Jamie upstairs. Monty arrived at the same time, with a bag full of Tibetan amber beads from Thea Porter to show Cathy.
Half an hour later the sisters were sitting in the drawing room when the temporary nanny appeared in the doorway, with a naked Jamie whimpering and squirming in a cot sheet.
‘Mrs, I mean, My Lady, I think you ought to see this,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. She set the child down on the floor and he pulled himself up on the comer of the sofa. The sheet fell away. There were greyish marks on his legs, red weals on his buttocks and a raw rash on his inner thighs.
Cathy and Monty gasped with horrified surprise.
‘He’s absolutely miserable, My Lady.’ The girl timidly turned Jamie around so they could see the bruises on his chest. ‘And look at his little hand.’ She tenderly turned the fat palm of Jamie’s right hand upwards for Cathy to see the suppurating bum at the base of the fingers. ‘And just look at his feet …’ She picked Jamie up and showed them red marks on the soles of his feet.
‘Whatever are they?’ Monty asked.
‘Burns, I think. He’s terrified to have me touch him upstairs. He starts screaming the minute I go into his room.’
In the nursery, they were horrified to find that Jamie’s cot was cold, wet and stinking.
‘It can’t have been changed for days.’ Monty picked up a sodden blanket with an expression of disgust. ‘Nanny Bunting must have just left the bed when he wet it because she couldn’t manage to change it.’
‘And there’s nothing to sterilize the bottles with, and the nappies aren’t really clean. No wonder he’s a mass of rashes. And look here.’ Now emboldened, the temporary nanny pulled open a cupboard, and showed Cathy a dozen brown medicine bottles with old-fashioned handwritten labels.
‘That’s the gripe water she gets from a special chemist in St James’s.’ Cathy picked up the nearest bottle with foreboding and uncorked it.
‘Beg pardon, My Lady, but it certainly isn’t gripe water. I believe it’s some old remedy they used for colic, but she’s opened all the bottles and not finished any of them.’
‘Oh heavens, my poor baby.’ Cathy hugged the abused little body as hard as she dared. ‘If only I hadn’t trusted that old witch. How could I have been so stupid?’
Monty squeezed her sister’s shoulders. ‘You weren’t to know. How could you have known? She was covering up deliberately, afraid you’d fire her if you knew she couldn’t cope.’
Suddenly almost weak with guilt, Cathy called the housekeeper and manservant and asked them to move the new nanny and Jamie into one of the spare bedrooms. Next she asked the doctor to call. He was not only her doctor, but Charlie’s as well, and the personal physician of the whole Coseley family. He examined Jamie with a frowning face.
‘Chronic neglect and ill-treatment,’ he announced at last. ‘We’ll need to get him X-rayed; it looks as if those ribs have been broken. She can’t have had the strength to pick the baby up properly.’
‘What was the stuff in the medicine bottles?’ Monty stood beside her sister and looked at the prosperous physician with mistrust. He seemed to be reacting very calmly.
‘It’s a sedative mixture, basically. They used it years ago for colic and general fretfulness.’
‘What’s in it?’ Monty pressed him, picking up a sticky bottle and screwing up her eyes to read the label.
‘Laudanum, I believe, but not in any harmful concentration, it can’t have done, him much harm, just stopped him crying.’
Cathy’s eyes, normally so serene, were blazing with rage. ‘I can’t believe anyone could do such terrible things. That wicked, old woman is never going to set foot in my house again. Thank heaven we found out what she was up to before she hurt Jamie any more.’
‘Don’t be too hard on her.’ There was a bland look on the doctor’s round face and he made an ineffectual gesture towards covering the naked baby with his large, gold-ringed hand. ‘I’ve seen this kind of thing before, of course. Family brings in the old nanny, not realizing she’s past it. Everything’s fine for the first six months, but when the baby gets to be a bit of a handful things start to slide.’
‘I’m sure they don’t realize she’s past it,’ Cathy said grimly. ‘I shall have to speak to my mother-in-law.’
‘Yes, the Marchioness. Well, if you need any help, just give me a call.’
‘Fat old toad,’ sneered Monty as soon as the doctor had left the room. ‘He won’t offend the Marchioness because he’s making a pile out of her. His whole practice depends on him being the Coseley family doctor.’
‘Come with me at the weekend,’ Cathy asked, her slender fingers deftly fastening the pearl buttons at the back of Jamie’s blue, smocked romper-suit. ‘I’ve got to get rid of the old witch and I know the whole-family just won’t believe me.’
She was correct. The Marchioness was disbelieving, then insulted, then stubbornly insistent that nothing could be wrong with Nanny Bunting’s methods. ‘Why, she brought up the entire family virtually single-handed,’ she protested.
‘And haven’t they turned out well?’ said Monty, alight with gleeful sarcasm. The Marchioness glared at them but prepared to accept defeat. Apart from Charlie’s well-publicized escapades, his elder sister had just abandoned her husband and children and was living in Tangier with a nightclub owner; and the haughty cousin Venetia had been arrested in Spain and charged with smuggling marijuana.
Nanny Bunting went back to Coseley as soon as she was fit, and was dispatched to retirement in one of the estate cottages. The slim new girl replaced her in Cathy’s household, and stayed for three months; then Cathy woke up in the middle of the night and found Charlie and the nanny in a frenzied clinch on the staircase. The girl squeaked like a frightened rabbit and bolted half-naked downstairs and out of the front door in her nightdress, leaving Charlie with her much-laundered grey-white panties in his hand. Cathy then hired Nanny Barbara, who was a little older, with an air of pious respectability and black hair in a bun which she was always re-pinning at the nape of her neck. She was Irish, and amusing, full of silly songs and highly-coloured fairy tales which Cathy enjoyed almost as much as Jamie.
Charlie took no interest at all in these domestic dramas. He considered servants to be a lesser race, unworthy of his attention.
Cathy could tell when he was again pursuing another serious affair, because he abruptly stopped making love to her. This time, however, she felt calm and determined. She had discovered quite a lot about her weak, foolish husband’s susceptibilities, and curiously, the more she adored her baby son, the easier it was to be detached about managing his father. If Charlie is anybody’s, he might as well be mine, she told herself, and set off with Monty for a large lingerie shop in Knightsbridge which had the reputation for supplying all the most expensive call girls in town. They bought a black French bra which was a triumph of engineering, a garter belt and stockings.
‘Just think,’ Cathy said, as she admired her reflection over her shoulder in the fitting-room mirror. ‘A few years ago at school we couldn’t wait to give up wearing stockings.’
‘Well, they’re a lot more practical for sex than for playing lacrosse in,’ Monty sniffed.
The outfit worked on Charlie like a dream. No sooner had Cathy thoughtfully asked him if her stocking seams were straight than he pulled her down on the drawing room floor and started pulling off her clothes with complete disregard for the servants’sensitivities.
Her next problem was April Henessy, who came round one afternoon and announced, ‘Charlie’s leaving you, Cathy. He just hasn’t got the courage to tell you himself. He loves me, he’s always loved me, and it’s no good pretendi
ng any more.’
‘Pretending what, exactly?’ Cathy felt a rush of cold rage. She had no pity for anyone who threatened her home and happiness. ‘Pretending that Charlie’s capable of loving anyone, maybe? He may say he loves you, April, he says that to all the girls. I’m his wife, and I’m going to stay his wife.’
‘Yeah, but you and Charlie are all finished in bed,’ the older woman snapped. ‘You don’t turn him on, you never did. He says fucking you’s like flinging a wet Wellington boot down Oxford Street, since you had the baby.’
‘Our sex life is fabulous as always, April. And if I were you, I wouldn’t start calling my body down. Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? Good thing the mini-skirt’s gone out – your thighs look like waffles from behind.’ She marched briskly to the bell push and pressed it. ‘Miss Henessy is leaving now,’ she told the manservant, whose veneer of non-involvement momentarily cracked with a hearty, ‘Yes, My Lady!’ as he pulled wide the door.
Now that she had the enemy on the run, Cathy’s confidence blossomed. A few days later she cunningly stage-managed a royal fuck in the shower with her errant husband, after which they slumped happily to the floor and let the warm water continue coursing over their tingling bodies.
‘How was that for you, darling?’ she murmured.
‘Wonderful.’
‘Really wonderful?’
‘Oh God, now what?’
‘Was it like flinging a wet Welly down Oxford Street, by any chance?’
He laughed. ‘Thank you, darling. I wish I’d been there.’
‘Thank you for what?’
‘Getting April off my back. That woman’s been such a drag, I just couldn’t get rid of her.’
‘I believe you – thousands wouldn’t.’ Cathy skipped out of the shower and flipped the control to cold as she went, deluging Charlie with icy water. As a result, he leapt after her, decided to smack her bottom and they ended up making love again and being an hour late for dinner.
By the time Jamie was an angelic toddler, Cathy had grown quite accustomed to the fluctuation of Charlie’s libido, and considered herself well in control of the situation. Lady Davina concurred.
‘He’s bewitched, the dear boy, simply bewitched,’ she exulted, watching Charlie cavort around the dance floor at one of her increasingly ambitious charity balls. He was rudely ignoring his partner and blowing kisses to Cathy over her head. ‘You see how easy it was – all you had to do was keep your head and do exactly as I told you. Men are like puppies, my dear, you simply have to train them. Then they’re absolutely grateful to you for being firm and keeping them in order. That man’s yours for life now, Catherine. Bewitched!’
Cathy smiled in dutiful acknowledgement of her grandmother’s praise. In the depths of her heart she now knew the truth about her husband. He was a foolish bag of appetites, the helpless product of overindulgence. She was charmed by him still, but found nothing to respect in him. Cathy would not adroit it to herself, but she was struggling to stay the way she thought she ought to be, in love with Charlie.
Rupert Lampeter, Charlie’s greatest polo crony and the best man at their wedding, had an airy, grey-stone house on a headland in Antigua, and they went there in February. The party was made up of a dozen or so riotous young hedonists, into whose company a middle-aged American lawyer had plainly been dragged by his girlfriend. Lisa was sixteen, but looked about twelve, even when sunbathing in a tiny leather cache-sexe on a thong, which was all she wore during the daylight hours. Her breasts were tiny, little, brown buds, and her long brown hair fell straight and smooth to her buttocks. She was sweet, clever and adorable, full of games for whiling away the heavy hours of leisure. Her family were apparently wealthy, even by Texas standards.
They were scuba-diving in the next cove when the lawyer, a protruding belly under his mask and air tank, swam up to Cathy in the confusing, blue world below the waves and gestured that he wanted to show her something. They finned away from the others, and he led her to an immense fan coral which was certainly worth the trip. Cathy mimed her appreciation, but sensed other business. When they swam back and surfaced, he had led her to a different cove, and the beach was empty.
‘Let’s go ashore and get our bcarings – we could swim around out there all day,’ he suggested, and they waded in and stripped off their gear. Then he suddenly pushed her down clumsily on the sand and started kissing her.
‘Hey, stop it!’ Cathy protested, scrambling away. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? That’s my husband I’m with, you know.’
‘And that’s my date he’s banging hell out of every time I let her out of my sight, so why don’t we even up the score a little?’ He looked at her with hard, bright grey eyes, a lock of dark hair plastered across his high forehead.
‘What, Lisa?’
‘Who else? You mean you didn’t know?’
‘No, of course, I didn’t know.’ She felt angry and humiliated.
‘Hey – don’t be offended. Lisa told me that he told her that you have kind of an open marriage, so I thought …’
‘Well, we don’t. Open on Charlie’s side, maybe. I just don’t think it’s very important, that’s all. Lots of husbands play around.’
‘Yeah, lots of them play around with Lisa, too. She’s the nearest thing to a nymphomaniac I’ve ever met. Got started when she was twelve, she told me. Can you beat that?’
Cathy was unused to the values of sexual sensation-seekers, and gave him a chilling glance. ‘No – and I wouldn’t want to. Now I’m going back – are you coming or not?’
Ignoring Charlie’s new attraction in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the holiday was very hard. Lisa sat topless at lunch, munching vast slices of watermelon and letting the juice drip on to her bare buds until Charlie could not resist leaning over to lick it off. If he went swimming, she went swimming, and what they were doing in the water was obvious to everyone on the beach. Her vivacious conversation turned into a series of private sexy jokes which she shared with Charlie.
On the last evening, Charlie told his wife, ‘I’m not coming back with you, Cathy, I’m going to Dallas to stay with Lisa for a while.’
‘Be good,’ she told him sarcastically.
In London, the days dragged on and on. ‘Why do I feel so tired all the time?’ she asked Monty, examining her face in the brightly lit mirror in her dressing room and noticing the telltale shadows under her eyes and the barely visible crease of a wrinkle in the tanned skin of her cheek.
‘You’re worrying about Charlie, that’s all …’ Monty led her sister firmly away from the looking glass. ‘You’ll get him back, Cathy, you always did before. You’re stronger than he is, he needs you.’
Cathy sat down heavily on the end of the bed. ‘Another fight, another campaign to rescue our marriage – that’s what I’m tired of, Monty. I’m not strong enough any more, I just haven’t got the stamina to go through it all again.’ Two large tears crawled down her coppery cheeks.
‘Of course you’re strong enough – you love him, don’t you?’
Slowly, Cathy shook her head and looked up at her sister with despair in the bronze depths of her eyes. ‘No. If I’m honest I don’t think I ever loved him, Monty. Not like you loved Simon, anyway. Charlie was just there, that’s all. I was supposed to love him so I just talked myself into it. I conned myself, that’s all.’
Monty sat beside her sister and were both silent. ‘Love’s just one big con all round, if you ask me,’ Monty looked reflectively at the toes of her pink suede Biba boots. ‘It’s just a game. I don’t think I was ever really in love with Simon, either.’
Cathy jumped up, determined to shake off the gloom that had descended on them like a smothering cloud. ‘Well, if love’s only a game I’m going to win,’ she vowed, running back to the dressing-room mirror and pulling back her long, dark hair. ‘Do you think I should cut my hair, Monty?’
Next day a letter from Charlie arrived. ‘I’ll be back at the end of the month,’ she read,
‘but not to stay, Cathy. I’m sorry, darling, it just hasn’t worked out between us. It’s better we split now than later on, don’t you think?’
She made herself look as beautiful as she could when he arrived, hung on to her poise like grim death and got him into bed with no trouble at all.
‘Home Sweet Home,’ he murmured, patting her mound affectionately before he fell asleep.
But two days later, Lisa arrived to rent a house two streets away and Charlie vanished. He vacillated between the two houses for a month, went to Lisa for three months, then returned to Cathy again and bought her a huge collar of diamonds for the heart he had given her when they were courting. He wept like a baby, cursed Lisa, cursed her, went out and got drunk, stayed in and got drunk, started screwing April Henessy again and behaved so erratically at work that his father sent him on an enforced week’s vacation.
Anxiously, Cathy asked her grandmother’s advice. ‘He’s just a big baby, remember?’ counselled the dowager. ‘You smile, you’re thrilled to see him, you never mention the other woman, you never make a scene – he’ll soon get bored with this stupid little girl and come back to you.’
Cathy lost weight rapidly, and the elegant sweep of her eyebrows flattened out as tension gave her face a permanent frown. The rich bloom of her complexion faded and her skin became dry and prone to ugly rashes. Charlie shuttled from Lisa to Cathy for another six weeks, and every day Cathy sank deeper into depression, becoming more and more desperate and less and less confident.
The matter was decided by his mother, the Marchioness, who had never ceased to resent Cathy as the first woman to come between herself and her beloved son. ‘Lisa is a sweet girl, Charlie,’ she told him, ‘and she obviously adores you. You owe it to her to do the decent thing, dear. You’ve made every allowance for Catherine but she simply isn’t up to being the sort of wife you need. She can’t manage servants – that ridiculous nonsense with Nanny – and she’s simply lost in your social circle. We should have expected it, of course, looking at the family.’
Pearls Page 33