Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Well, that’s all right,’ said Eliza. ‘I don’t work for the company.’

  ‘I know. But you used to be his wife. It just worries me a bit.’

  ‘You’re really jumpy about him, aren’t you?’ she said, looking at him interestedly.

  ‘Yes, I am. He’s put me where I am today, as they say in the movies. I told you, I’ve had quite a few chances mucked up by my sexual indiscretions. I can’t help it.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know if I like coming such a very bad second to your career.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. Let’s put it this way. There’s quite a strong body of opinion in the company that your husband still cares very much about you and what you do. If I was your ex-husband I would too.’ He bent and kissed her breasts again. ‘I just think we should be careful, that’s all. He’s a powerful and quixotic fellow. He could hurt both of us.’

  ‘I honestly think the body of opinion is quite wrong,’ said Eliza, ‘but anyway, all right, if you think we should, we’ll be discreet for a bit. Just for a day or two. Now put that glass down, and concentrate on me for a bit. It’s dark outside now, and the shutters are closed. Or would you like me to check there’s not a private detective hanging about underneath the lamp post?’

  They were very discreet for a while. David kept his flat, and only stayed with her one or two nights a week (‘It’s more exciting and romantic that way anyway,’ he said) and Eliza, deeply in love by now for the first time since Peter Thetford, managed to restrain her strong inclination to ring every single one of her girlfriends and tell them, and even invented a completely fictitious new boyfriend for them who she said they couldn’t meet because his wife was madly jealous and had threatened all kinds of dreadful revenge. She rather enjoyed this and elaborated on it so much that in the end she had both herself and the lover threatened by the wife at gunpoint before finally the real story and the gossip broke and William Hickey informed the waiting world, or at least such part of it as read his gossip column in the Daily Express, that the beautiful Eliza Thetford had become very friendly with one of her ex husband’s senior executives and was engaging his help in setting herself up as an interior designer.

  But Julian showed no signs of jealousy when he phoned her to discuss who should pick Roz up for the Christmas holidays.

  ‘I hear you have enlisted Mr Sassoon’s services as an agent,’ he said. ‘Charming fellow. I’m sure he’ll be very helpful.’

  Roz looked at her mother as she climbed out of the red E-Type Julian had given her as a Christmas present (he said it was bad for his image to have his wife going round London like a pauper) and thought she had never seen her looking so happy or so beautiful.

  ‘Hallo, Mummy.’

  ‘Hallo, darling. You look – well.’

  Only Roz, in her acute paranoia about her looks, would have noticed the pause; but she did and she knew what it meant. It meant that her mother couldn’t find anything else to say about her appearance (taller: only slightly thinner: shaggy-haired). She looked at her blankly.

  ‘I don’t feel very well, actually. I feel sick.’

  ‘Oh darling, I’m sorry. Will you be all right in the car?’

  ‘I expect so, yes, if we can have the windows open.’

  She knew her mother hated that; it blew her hair about.

  Eliza sighed. ‘All right, darling. Where are your things?’

  They drove back to London in comparative silence, having exhausted the topic of Roz’s term, report, exam results; Eliza was wondering how to broach the news of David, and that she was hoping Julian would have Roz for Christmas.

  ‘Looking forward to Christmas, darling? I’ve got you a nice present.’

  ‘Depends what’s happening. Is it Wiltshire, or have you persuaded Daddy to take me to the Bahamas?’

  ‘Darling, I haven’t persuaded Daddy to do anything. I want you with me, of course. It’s what would be more fun for you.’

  ‘God, I don’t care,’ said Roz. ‘Wiltshire, I suppose. I can ride there.’

  ‘We must get your hair cut tomorrow,’ said Eliza absently. ‘I’ll book you into Leonard. And then get you some clothes. Would you like that?’

  ‘Not really. You know I hate shopping.’

  ‘Yes, but darling, you do need some new things. You’ve grown a lot.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’

  ‘Well anyway, I’m sure you need a couple of things. Now, Roz, I have something to tell you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have a new – friend.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. He’s called David Sassoon. He works for your father. He’s very nice, and I think you’ll like him.’

  ‘Is he living with you or just sleeping with you?’

  ‘Roz, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. It isn’t very attractive.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, he isn’t living with me. But we are very – fond of each other. And he wants to meet you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So he’s coming round this evening. Just for a meal with us both. I hope you like him.’

  ‘I don’t really feel well enough to have a meal with anyone, Mummy. I seem to have some kind of a tummy bug. I might just go straight to bed when we get home.’

  ‘Now Roz, that’s a pity. David is coming specially to meet you. Don’t you think you could make an effort?’

  ‘Well, I’ll try. But I certainly don’t feel up to getting all dressed up if that’s what you’re hoping.’

  ‘No,’ said Eliza, ‘I wouldn’t ever hope for very much from you, Roz. Now I’m sorry but we really will have to have that window shut.’

  ‘All right. I just might be sick, that’s all.’

  She was sitting by the fire in the drawing room, still in her school uniform, when David arrived; she heard her mother open the front door, and settled herself deeper into her chair, picking up the latest Vogue which was lying on the coffee table; she didn’t even look up as they came into the room.

  ‘Roz,’ said her mother, and she could hear the familiar over-conciliatory note in her voice, ‘Roz, darling, this is David. David Sassoon. David, this is my daughter Roz.’

  And she had looked up and met his eyes, his dark, amused, oddly intimate eyes, and her heart had felt as if it was rocketing up and down inside her, and she felt slightly dizzy at the same time, and she would have given anything, anything at all, to have been wearing her new long grey crushed velvet skirt from Biba, and the pink suede boots, and to have brushed her hair properly and to have put some Top-ex on the spot on her chin; and he said, ‘Hallo, Roz, it’s so nice to have a face to the name. I see you’re reading Vogue, what do you think of those pictures, do you like them, they were taken by a great friend of mine?’ and overwhelmed by his smile and his jokey voice that sounded as if he was going to laugh any minute, its touch of carefully cultivated cockney, and the fact that anyone at all should ask her opinion about anything other than whether this term had been better than the last, she fell hopelessly and irremediably in love.

  Later they all went out to supper to Nick’s Diner; she felt better, she told her mother, she had probably just been hungry, and she put on her velvet skirt and the boots, and did the best she could with her hair, and asked her mother if she had arranged her appointment for the next day at Leonard’s, and sat between them listening politely, offering her opinion if it was asked, which it was quite frequently by David, and even from time to time making them both laugh, and had the best time she could ever remember. She studied David intently all evening: drinking him in, feeling she could never have enough just of looking at him; the riotously curling hair, just short of his collar, his dark almost swarthy skin, the freckles everywhere on his nose, his eyelids, his forehead; his perfect teeth, and his great grin of a smile, that was always accompanied by that look of his, his eyes sweeping over your face and settling on your lips, as if he might be thinking about kissing you; and his clothes, oh, she love
d his clothes, the printed cream and black silk shirt, and the black flaring trousers that fitted so extremely well over his hips (Roz tried not to look at his hips, or to contemplate what else those trousers were concealing) and his black velvet jacket, with the lining that matched his shirt. Roz could hardly swallow that evening, for emotion and excitement, but that was all right, she said she was still feeling a bit funny, but she did at David’s instigation have a glass of wine, and that on top of her empty stomach and her excitement conspired to make her a bit giggly and more talkative than usual, and then when they were going home in David’s car, to fall into a half sleep. But not so that she could not hear what was said.

  ‘She’s had a lovely evening,’ said Eliza, looking over her shoulder, ‘she’s absolutely out cold. I’ve never known her so talkative. You’ve obviously made a big hit. Thank you for letting her come.’

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ he said. ‘Don’t thank me. I like her, she’s an amusing kid, and I don’t know why you keep saying she’s plain, she has a great face, I’d like to get her photographed, Terry would love her look.’

  ‘Well, he’s not going to get a chance to love it,’ said Eliza briskly. ‘I know all about your friend Mr Donovan. And I must say you’re getting a bit carried away, David, she might look a bit better than she did, but I wouldn’t say she was model material.’

  ‘Not model, darling, but very interesting-looking, very striking. Anyway, what are we going to do now?’

  ‘I think maybe,’ said Eliza with another look at the inert form of her daughter, ‘you should go home tonight. I want her to get used to the idea slowly. Would you mind terribly?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m an easy-going guy. You should know that by now.’

  ‘You’re wonderful,’ said Eliza. ‘Come on, give me a kiss before our chaperone wakes up.’

  Roz floated through the next day in a dream. David Sassoon, the most attractive, the most sophisticated man she had ever met, had said she was not plain, that she had a great face and that she was amusing into the bargain. She thought she had never been so happy. She smiled at her mother over breakfast, asked her if they could go shopping after the hairdresser, and then phoned her father and asked him if he would take her out to supper that night. She had never done such a thing before; she had never, convinced of her own nuisance value, and her own unattractiveness as a companion, had the confidence. She could hear him smiling down the phone.

  ‘Yes, Roz, it would be a pleasure. Now would you like just me, or shall I ask Camilla? She’s here.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said quickly. ‘Let’s make it just the two of us. Please.’

  ‘Fine. Dress up then. We’ll go to the Ritz. As it’s the holidays.’

  She walked into the Ritz feeling like a real model. Leonard had cut her hair in the new wispy layered look, with little petals of it overlapping one another all over her head and down on to the nape of her neck. Then they had gone, she and her mother, to the Purple Shop and bought her a pair of black velvet breeches, and a glorious red silk shirt, and some high boots, and a wonderfully flouncy red and purple skirt, like a gypsy’s and then they had gone on to Biba and bought a long, long black velvet dress, with buttons down the front, which her mother said was much too sophisticated but which she knew showed off her new flatter stomach very well, and a long black coat right to the ground, from next door in Bus Stop, and a huge black hat with a floppy brim, and then she had bought a set of eye pencils and spent the whole afternoon practising drawing round her eyes with them, and then the most marvellous thing had happened, David Sassoon had arrived and found her rubbing at them furiously in the kitchen because the light was better there, and he had said, ‘Here, let me do that, if there’s one thing I can do it’s draw,’ and he had held the back of her head very gently with one hand, while carefully outlining her eyes with a dark blue pencil, looking at her very intently all the time, until Roz thought she would faint with emotion, and then telling her she looked gorgeous, and when she walked out to her father sitting in his new black Bentley, with its tinted windows, wearing the skirt and the red shirt and the boots, with her eyes looking all smudgy and big, and her new haircut and she saw him looking at her in genuine astonishment and admiration, she knew that for the very first time since she had heard him saying he didn’t want her to go and live with him, she didn’t have to feel apologetic about herself.

  Later over dinner, he asked her how she liked David: he seemed quite nice, she said carefully, much nicer than the last one, and he said, good, and that he liked David very much and he was delighted that her mother seemed happy; but Roz noticed that he pushed his hair back quite a lot during this conversation, and that he didn’t really seem very delighted, and didn’t want to talk about it for long. Testing him she said casually, ‘I wonder if they might get married,’ and he looked very odd indeed, and almost angry, and said, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. I don’t think that would be a good idea at all,’ and changed the subject very quickly and asked her if she would like to come for Christmas with him to the house at Turtle Cove on Eleuthera in the Bahamas that he had just bought, to spend Christmas.

  ‘And Camilla?’ Roz asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, looking almost angry again, ‘no, Camilla is spending Christmas with her family.’

  ‘So would it be just the two of us?’

  ‘Yes. I’d really like you to come, darling. We’d have fun.’

  And Roz, realizing that also for the first time in her life her father really needed her and was depending on her company, looked at him over her forkful of chicken and said, ‘I’m really sorry, Daddy, but I promised Granny and Grandpa just today that I’d go and stay in Wiltshire with them.’

  ‘Couldn’t you change your mind? Tell them you have to keep your old father company?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I’m afraid I couldn’t, I don’t want to let them down.’

  The expression of hurt on her father’s face added greatly to the pleasure of her evening.

  For the first time in her life Roz went back to school feeling quite happy. It wasn’t that she wanted to go back to school, but she had had a nice holiday, she had had fun, just like the other girls. She actually found herself joining in the conversation, saying, ‘Well, we did this’ and ‘I got that,’ instead of remaining aloof and apart from them. She supposed it was love that made her feel so good. Everyone knew it changed people for the better.

  What was more, she was beginning to think that David did return her feelings a bit. He had that way of looking very deep into her eyes when he was talking to her, and smiling very intently at her; and he always noticed what she was wearing and how she looked and remarking on it, and telling her she looked gorgeous; and he seemed to like talking to her, and hearing her opinion on things; and at the New Year party Granny and Grandpa had given in Wiltshire, he had danced with her several times, and once it had been a real slow dance, and he had held her quite tightly and actually rested his head on her hair and squeezed her hand at one point. Roz had felt so extraordinarily emotional when this had happened, and sort of tingly and tense inside, that she had gone away and sat in her bedroom afterwards, just to think about it and enjoy the memory; and although when she came down again he had been dancing with her mother and holding her, and looking into her eyes, it hadn’t mattered because she knew what he felt for her was different and special. When she went back to school he had kissed her goodbye, just lightly on the lips, but she had been quite quite sure he had pressed against them just for a moment, and then he had said he would miss her and he would look forward to seeing her at half term.

  ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I’ll come and pick you up, if I can, with your mum. So I see you as soon as possible. Would you like that?’

  She lived for half term, counting the weeks, the days, the hours; and then the most perfect thing happened, when the day finally arrived and she was looking out of the window for the car, it was his car that pulled into the front of the school, and he got out of it all by himself, loo
king absolutely marvellous in blue denims and a navy donkey jacket, with his hair even longer, and she rushed down and out to him, and he held out his arms and gave her a huge bear hug and said, ‘Your mum is terribly terribly busy pleating up somebody’s curtains and I offered to come and get you. I hope that’s all right.’ And Roz looked at him radiantly and said yes of course it was all right, it was marvellous and he said she looked even slimmer and she would soon be too tall for him altogether, and she went and got her bag and got in the car beside him, and hoped just everyone in the school was looking.

  All the way back in the car the radio was playing, the most marvellously appropriate songs like ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Everything is Beautiful’ and ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ and Roz sat silent and every so often risked a look at him, and he would grin at her and say ‘All right?’ and she would say ‘Yes, perfectly,’ and much too soon they reached London and Holland Park and her mother came rushing out of the house and said ‘Hello, darling, I do hope you didn’t mind terribly David coming instead of me,’ and Roz said ‘No, of course not,’ and thought with great satisfaction how deeply miserable her mother would be when she realized that her lover had grown tired of her and was in love with her daughter instead.

  She didn’t see all that much of him over half term, he was very busy, but she didn’t mind, she had the journey to remember; on the second night her father invited her to supper and to stay the night at Hanover Terrace, with a rather quiet Camilla, and was very polite and charming to her and told her she was looking terrific, and said he would take her to Marriotts at the weekend for some hunting if she would like that, and Roz had said no, she was sorry, but she and her mother and David had all sorts of plans.

  Later, when they thought she had gone to bed, she overheard him and Camilla arguing. She crept out on to the corridor to listen.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ Camilla was saying, ‘I think you’re still in love with her.’