Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  She viewed the marriage with some foreboding; she found it hard to believe that Julian was in love with Eliza, she had never known him to be in love with anyone, and that he should suddenly discover the emotion within the arms of a seventeen-year child, however appealing, seemed highly unlikely. When she taxed him with it, he had looked at her with dark, blank eyes and said, ‘Mother, you said yourself it was time I got married. Don’t you remember? And you were absolutely right. I’m simply doing what you tell me, as usual.’

  ‘But not, I hope,’ said Letitia, refusing to rise to this irritating piece of bait, ‘to the first person who accepts you? She is very very young, Julian, and not greatly experienced.’

  ‘She is the first person who has accepted me,’ he said lightly, ‘but she is also the first person I have asked. I like her youth and I like her lack of experience. I find them refreshing and charming.’

  ‘Well, if that’s all you find them, all well and good,’ said Letitia.

  ‘What else would I find them?’

  ‘Oh, untroublesome. Malleable. Grateful perhaps.’

  ‘What an extraordinary remark,’ he said.

  Letitia let the subject drop.

  She did not exactly dislike Eliza, indeed she grew, in the end, quite fond of her; she admired her beauty, appreciated her style, and found the way she was quite clearly setting out to be A Good Wife oddly touching.

  Eliza, rather unexpectedly, admired Letitia greatly, indeed had something approaching a schoolgirl crush on her. She thought she was wonderful in every possible way, and told Julian that when she was old (Julian was careful not to relay this particular bit of the conversation to Letitia) she hoped she would be exactly like her. Nevertheless, she was greatly in awe of her, and in her more realistic moments recognized that as mothers-in-law went, hers was more of a challenge than most.

  Letitia was sympathetic to this; she could see precisely how daunting she would have been to any bride, but particularly someone as young and unworldly as Eliza, but the more she tried not to daunt, the more she was aware of seeming patronizing and irritating. She was also concerned that Eliza seemed not to have the slightest idea how important Julian’s company was to him, and what a vast and consuming element it was in his life; he had been neglecting it rather over the past three months, but she knew that would simply mean that when the honeymoon was over – literally – he would be more absorbed and occupied with it than ever. He was clearly not going to spell that out to a tender and ardent bride, but somebody had to, in the bride’s interest; Letitia decided to take the bull, or rather the heifer, by the horns, and confront Eliza with the various unpalatable truths, as she saw them.

  She invited Eliza to lunch at First Street, a few weeks after the engagement was announced, ostensibly to discuss wedding plans; dresses, bridesmaids, music and flowers occupied them through the first course, but halfway through the compote she put down her spoon, picked up her glass and said, ‘Eliza, I wonder if you realize quite what you are marrying?’

  Eliza, startled, put down her own spoon, looked nervously at Letitia and blushed. ‘I think I do,’ she said firmly. ‘I hope I do.’

  ‘Well, you see,’ said Letitia, equally firmly, ‘I’m afraid you don’t. You think you are about to become the wife of a rich man who will be giving some of his time and attention to his company, but most of it to you. I’m afraid it will be rather the other way round.’

  Eliza’s chin went up; she was not easily frightened.

  ‘I don’t know quite what you mean,’ she said, ‘but of course I realize that Julian is a very busy man. That he has to work very hard.’

  ‘No,’ said Letitia, ‘he is not just a very busy man. He is an obsessed man. That company is everything – well, almost everything – to him. How much do you know about it, Eliza? About Morell’s? Tell me.’

  She sounded and felt cross; anyone who could approach marriage to Julian without a very full grasp of his business seemed to her to be without a very full grasp of him; realizing that Julian had talked to Eliza even less about it than she had thought, she felt cross with him as well.

  ‘Quite a lot,’ said Eliza. ‘I know he’s built it up from nothing all by himself and that the cosmetic range is very successful and that he’s hoping to start selling it in New York soon.’

  ‘I see,’ said Letitia, not sure whether she was more irritated at hearing that Julian had built up the company all by himself, or that he was planning to go to New York, a piece of information he had not shared with her.

  ‘And do you know about any of the people who work for us?’

  ‘Well, I know there’s a wonderful chemist called Adam – Sarsted – is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Letitia. ‘Some of us are less impressed by his wonderfulness than others. Go on.’

  ‘And I met a clever woman called Mrs Johns. She frightened me a bit,’ she added, forgetting for a moment she was supposed to be presenting a cool grown-up front.

  ‘She frightens us all,’ said Letitia cheerfully, ‘not least your fiancé. Now then, Eliza, there’s a bit more about the company that you should understand. First that it is just about the most important thing in the world to Julian. It is mistress, wife and children, and you must never forget it.’

  ‘What about mother?’ said Eliza bravely.

  ‘No, not mother. Mother is part of it’ (Good shot, Eliza, she thought).

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘A very important part. The part that pays the bills.’

  ‘So what exactly do you do there?’

  ‘I’m the financial director, Eliza. I run the financial side of it. I decide how much we should invest, how much we should pay people, what we can afford to buy, what we can afford to spend. In the very beginning, there was only Julian and me. We’ve built it up together.’

  ‘So it’s not Julian’s company? It’s yours as well.’

  ‘Well, it is largely his. I have a share in it of course, and I know how important my role is. But the ideas, the input, the – what shall we say – inspiration, oh dear, that sounds very pretentious, doesn’t it? – are his. The company certainly wouldn’t have happened without him. But it wouldn’t have kept going without me either.’ She spoke with a certain pride, looked at Eliza a trifle challengingly. ‘We started it,’ she said, ‘on what capital we could rake together, and an overdraft. We worked very hard, terribly long hours. It was all great fun, but it was very very demanding and at times extremely worrying. Did Julian tell you none of this?’

  Eliza shook her head.

  ‘I’m surprised. He usually can’t stop talking about it. There was just the three of us, then; Julian, who sold all the products, just the patent medicines, no cosmetics in those days, to the chemists, driving all over the country in his car; Jim Macdougall working on formulation; and me managing the money and keeping us from bankruptcy. Just. Susan joined us after the first year or so. She is a remarkable young woman, and Julian is deeply dependent on her.’

  ‘What – what do you mean?’ said Eliza in a small alien voice.

  ‘Oh, nothing that need trouble you,’ said Letitia briskly. ‘I don’t mean he’s in love with her.’ She was silent for a moment, remembering the point at which she had feared that very thing. ‘But she is part of the company, a crucial part, and therefore a crucial part of his life.’

  ‘What does she do?’ asked Eliza.

  ‘Oh, she runs the company. From an administrative point of view. Keeps us all in order. Everything under control. Julian made her a director last year. You didn’t know that either?’

  Eliza shook her head miserably.

  ‘Well,’ said Letitia comfortingly, ‘he’s obviously been much too busy discussing your future to talk about his past. But anyway, Susan and I work together a great deal, as you can imagine. The financial side of the company and the administration are very intertwined. Obviously. So you see, the company is a huge part of my life, as well as Julian’s. I just wanted you to understand that, before you became part of the
family.’ There, she thought, I wonder what she will make of all that.

  ‘Do you think,’ said Eliza, a trifle tremulously, ‘that I could get involved with the company too? Work there, I mean?’

  ‘Oh, my darling child,’ said Letitia, unsure whether she was more appalled at the notion, or at what Julian’s reaction would be, ‘I shouldn’t think so. Julian obviously doesn’t want you to have anything to do with it. Otherwise he’d have suggested it by now.’

  ‘I suppose then,’ said Eliza, in a rather flat sad voice, ‘that’s why he hasn’t told me anything about it all. To keep me well out of it. He probably thinks I’m too stupid.’

  ‘Eliza, I can assure you that Julian doesn’t consider you in the least stupid,’ said Letitia firmly. ‘Quite the reverse. I don’t quite know why he hasn’t told you more about the company, and I think you should ask him. But you can see how important it was that I should explain. Because when things are back on an even keel, and you are settled into a normal life together, you will find that Julian devotes a great deal of his time and attention to the company – a great deal – and I don’t want you to think it’s because he doesn’t love you, or doesn’t want to be with you.’

  ‘No,’ said Eliza, sounding very subdued. ‘No, but of course I might have done. So thank you for telling me. I’ll talk to Julian about it all anyway. I think I should. That was a delicious lunch, Mrs Morell, thank you very much.’

  ‘It was a pleasure. You can call me Letitia,’ said Letitia graciously. ‘Come again. I enjoy your company.’

  ‘I will. Thank you.’

  She watched Eliza walking rather slowly up the street, wondering just what size of hornet’s nest she had stirred up.

  It was quite a big one. Eliza had a row with Julian about what she saw as a conspiracy to keep her from a proper involvement with his company; Julian had a row with Letitia about what he saw as a piece of unwarranted interference; Lady Powers telephoned Letitia and gave her a piece of her mind for sending Eliza away seriously upset; Eliza had a fight with Lady Powers for interfering in her affairs. Out of it all, only Eliza emerged in a thoroughly creditable light. Julian appeared arrogant and dismissive; Letitia scheming and self-important; and Lady Powers overbearing and rude.

  The worst thing about it all, as Eliza said in the middle of her heated exchange with her godmother, was that they all appeared to regard her as a child, somebody unable to think, act and worst of all, stand up for herself.

  ‘I am not a child, I am a woman, about to be married,’ she said. ‘I would be grateful if you would treat me as such.’

  But it was one thing to say it, and another to confront, in the privacy of herself, the fact that she so patently appeared to everyone, most importantly the man who was about to be her husband, in such an insignificant light. It hurt her almost beyond endurance; in time she forgave them all, even Julian, but it changed her perception of him, however slightly, and she never quite trusted him again.

  Susan Johns was not quite sure what she felt about Julian’s marriage; a range of emotions infiltrated her consciousness, none of them entirely pleasing. What she would most have liked to feel, what she knew would be most appropriate, would have been nothing at all, save a mild rather distant interest; the savage jealousy, the desire to impinge herself on Eliza’s consciousness, the scorn and disappointment at Julian’s choice of a wife, these were all undignified, unseemly and uncomfortable. He had told her over lunch one day; he had taken her to Simpson’s in the Strand, where he assured her she could eat a whole cow if she liked; over her second helping of trifle, finally unable to postpone the moment any longer, he had told her.

  Susan pushed her bowl to one side, fixed him with her large, clear blue eyes and said, ‘What on earth do you want to do that for?’

  Thrown, as always, by a direct question, he struggled visibly to find a route around it. ‘My dear Susan,’ he said, ‘what an inappropriate response to such romantic news. Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’ He smiled at her carefully; she met his gaze coldly.

  ‘Don’t switch on your famous charm, please. It makes me uncomfortable. And I’m not hostile. Just – well, surprised I suppose.’

  ‘What by? I need a wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and there was a cold wall of scorn in her eyes. ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I just don’t happen to think that’s a very good reason for marrying someone.’

  ‘Susan, I’m not just marrying someone. I’m marrying someone who is very important to me. Someone I want to share my life with. Someone –’

  ‘Someone who’ll be good at the job?’

  He looked at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to lose his temper. He suddenly smiled instead. It was the kind of unpredictability that made her go on, against all the evidence, setting a value on him.

  ‘Yes. If you like.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll be very happy,’ she said, scooping up what was left of her trifle.

  ‘You don’t sound very convinced.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ she said, looking at him very directly, searching out what little she could read in his dark eyes, ‘you haven’t said anything at all about love.’

  The house Julian bought for them was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful in London, one of the Nash terraces on the west side of the Regent’s Park, huge and spacious, with a great vaulted hall and staircase and a glorious drawing room filled with light that ran the entire width of the first floor and overlooked the park. Eliza discovered in herself a certain flair for interior design, albeit a trifle fussy for Julian’s taste, and instead of calling David Hicks into her house to style it, like most of their smart friends, she set to work herself, poring over magazines and books, roaming Harvey Nichols and Liberty and antique salerooms herself, choosing wallpapers and curtain fabrics, innovatory colour schemes and clever little quirks of decor (setting a tiny conservatory into the end of the dining room, placing a spiral staircase from the top landing up to the roof) that made the house original and charming without in any way damaging its style. The main bedroom above the drawing room was her special love; she shared with Julian a passion for the deco period and there was nothing in their room that wasn’t a very fine example of that style – a marvellous suite of bed, dressing table and wardrobe by Ruhlmann, in light rosewood, a pair of Tiffany lamps by the bed, a priceless collection of Chiparus figures on the fireplace; a set of original Erte drawings given to her by Letitia who had once met and charmed the great man; and a mass of enchanting details, cigarette boxes, ashtrays, jugs, vases, mirrors. The room was entirely white: walls, carpet, curtains, bedspread (‘Very virginal, my darling,’ said Julian, ‘how inappropriate’). It was a stage set, a background for an extraordinarily confident display of style and taste.

  On the spacious half landings she created small areas furnished with sofas, small tables, books, pictures, sometimes a desk, all in different periods: thirties for the nursery floor, twenties for the bedroom floor, pure Regency for the one above the drawing room. And on the ground floor, to the left of the huge hall, she created her very own private sitting room that was a shrine to Victoriana; she made it dark, and almost claustrophobic, with William Morris wallpaper, a brass grate, small button-back chairs, embroidered footstools, sentimental paintings; she put jardinieres in it, filled with ferns and palms, a scrap screen, a brass-inlaid piano; she covered the fireplace with bric-a-brac, collected samplers, draped small tables with lace cloths, and in the window she hung a small bird cage in which two lovebirds sang. It was a flash of humour, of eccentricity, and a total contrast to the light and space and clarity of the rest of the house. Julian loathed it and refused to set foot inside it.

  ‘That’s all right, my darling,’ said Eliza lightly, ‘that room is for me anyway, it’s my parlour. Leave me be in it.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To entertain my lovers, of course; what else
?’

  Then she was very busy buying clothes for herself; she did not only go to the English designers and shops, but took herself to Paris twice a year to buy from the great names, from Dior, Patou, Fath, Balmain, Balenciaga. She was clever with clothes; she had a very definite almost stark taste, and a passion for white and beige. She could look just as wonderful in things from the ready to wear boutiques in Paris as well; her beauty was becoming less childlike, but she was slender, delicate, a joy to dress, a favourite customer.

  Then there was the social life; she and Julian began to give parties that became legendary, and she discovered she had a talent as a hostess, mixing and matching likely and unlikely people brilliantly. Her dinner parties were famous, a heady blend of names, fine wine and food and scandalous talk; Eliza Morell, like her mother-in-law, had an ear and an eye for gossip and a wit to match it.

  She developed an admittedly rather gossip-column-style interest in politics and a liking for politicians, and the gossip of Westminster as well as of London society. She preferred socialists to Tories, she found them more interesting and charismatic; and she was amused by their intellectual approach to socialism which seemed to her to have so extremely little to do with reality. She met Michael Foot and his wife Jill Craigie at a party and liked them very much; they were in turn rather charmed by her, and accepted her invitation to dinner. Through them she met some of the other leading socialists of the day: Crossman and Gaitskell and the dashing Anthony Wedgwood Benn. Julian found her interest in such men and matters intriguing, amusing even, but he couldn’t share it. He told her that all politicians were self-seeking and manipulative (‘I would have thought you would have much in common with them, my darling,’ Eliza had replied lightly); the company he sought and valued, apart from amusing and pretty women, were businessmen whose time and energies were directed fiercely, determinedly and tirelessly to the process of making money, building companies, creating empires. They seemed to him to be the real people concerned with reality; they did not theorize, they had no time to, they acted, they fought, and they won.