Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  Father Kennedy could see all too clearly why the poor souls at his refuge should behave badly, refuse to help themselves, let alone others, but he could not see why a man who clearly had more than his fair share of the world’s bounty in the palm of his hand should not pass a little of it on to his own flesh and blood. It wasn’t as if Miles was an unattractive young man; quite the reverse, he would be a credit to anyone.

  Well, as Father Kennedy had learnt as a very young priest, there was no accounting for human nature, and it was not for him to try; his duty as God’s extremely humble servant was merely to accept it, and do for it what he could, within his own earthly limitations.

  And now, here he was, confronted by Hugo Dashwood, just flown in from New York, clearly agitated, and demanding to know where Miles and Mrs Kelly had gone. And he really did not know what to do. This was always the difficult one: when knowledge came into your possession not through the confessional – when it was sacred, and not, on pain of death, to be released – but from conversation, confidences, when it could be argued it was yours to make a judgement on, to do with what you thought best.

  And what would be best now? Did he respect the confidence of an old friend and do what she had asked, or did he use his knowledge of her whereabouts to rescue her grandson from a life of shocking idleness at best, and at worst, from the very serious danger of mortal sin?

  ‘I need to find them,’ Hugo Dashwood had said, sitting down earnestly in front of him, and looking the very picture of remorse and anxiety. ‘I have decided I have been terribly wrong, and I want to make amends, I want to offer Miles a job after all, before it’s too late.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure that is very heartening news,’ said Father Kennedy, playing for time while his old mind roamed around his dilemma, ‘and Mrs Kelly would be wonderfully pleased to hear it. I am not altogether certain how Miles himself would take to the idea now, though. It’s a while now since he graduated, and I fear he has got rather seriously used to a life of idleness. If you will forgive me saying so, Mr Dashwood, I fear your change of heart may be a trifle late.’

  ‘Well, you may be right, Father, but we shall never know unless I can find Miles and put it to him. If I don’t then there is certainly no chance at all that my change of heart, as you put it, will benefit him.’

  ‘And would it be too terribly inquisitive of me to ask whereabouts you would be offering him this job? Would you be taking him back to England with you, or to New York? Or would it be somewhere here in California?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t take him to England. I think that would be too much of a culture shock for him. No, I have a small wholesale business in New York, supplying toiletries to the drugstores, soaps, toothpaste, that sort of thing, and I could fit him in there quite easily. I need some more younger salesmen, I think he would do well.’

  ‘And do you think he would settle there? Do you think he would be happy?’

  Hugo sounded impatient.

  ‘It would be a marvellous opportunity. I think he would settle down quite quickly. It’s what he wanted, after all.’

  ‘It’s what he wanted once. He was hurt not to get it at the time.’

  ‘Father Kennedy, he is not a child. He has to learn the ways of the world. Things do not necessarily drop into our laps at precisely the moment we want them. They did not for me, and I am sure they have not always done so for you.’

  Father Kennedy reflected, not for the first time, that the English had an unfortunate way of sounding pompous and distant when they probably meant to be neither.

  ‘Indeed they have not. Nor for most of the people I have worked with all my life. And it does people very little good when things do drop into their laps. Struggle is spiritually enhancing, would you not agree, Mr Dashwood?’

  ‘Oh, I would, Father.’

  ‘You are not a Catholic, I think?’

  ‘I am not.’

  The old man was silent for a while, looking at him shrewdly, thinking. ‘And what would become of Mrs Kelly if Miles were to go to New York?’

  ‘I don’t quite know. I would certainly try to look after her. She has been very good to Miles.’

  ‘She has indeed. And she is anxious to protect him.’

  ‘Father, I hope you are not implying Miles needs protection from me?’

  ‘Not from you, Mr Dashwood. From unhappiness. From idleness, from falling into unfortunate ways.’

  ‘Which I fear he has despite her efforts.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Hugo leant forward earnestly. ‘Father, I cannot tell you how very very much I want to re-establish contact with Miles. I want to make amends. I want to help him, to give him a chance, to make something of his life. I think it is time I managed to be more to him.’

  Father Kennedy looked at him. ‘I hope, Mr Dashwood, and forgive me if this sounds impertinent, I hope you would not be of a mind to change his perspective of life.’

  Dashwood met his eyes steadily.

  ‘I don’t know exactly what you mean. But I give you my word I would do nothing, nothing at all, that would make Miles unhappy, that would make him think differently about his background, or change his mind about anyone who had cared for him.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, Mr Dashwood. It puts my mind at rest. Miles is a loyal and a very well-adjusted young man. It would be a terrible shame if that was to change.’

  ‘I agree with you.’

  Father Kennedy stood up, his gentle old face calm and suddenly decisive. ‘I don’t think I can tell you where they are, Mr Dashwood. I think it would be a grievous betrayal of confidence. But I will write to Mrs Kelly, and tell her what you have told me. And then it will be for her to decide.’

  ‘Do you not think, Father, that Miles should have a say in the decision?’

  ‘I think we need have no fear that he will not. Mrs Kelly is fairly desperate to see him settled and doing well. I am quite certain she will consult him in the matter. I will write to her tonight.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Father Kennedy wondered if he had made himself sufficiently plain to Hugo Dashwood. It was dangerous ground he had been treading. He hoped he was not falling into temptation and attempting to play God. He had an uneasy feeling that he had. He would spend some time in the church tonight, examining his conscience. He might even make his confession to that tiresome new young priest, who would no doubt give him some very tedious penances to do.

  He reproached himself for his uncharitable thought. Father Howell was very young. It was wrong to judge him harshly.

  He sighed. He sometimes felt he was getting further and further from a state of grace in his old age. It was a sorry state of affairs.

  Chapter Thirteen

  London and New York, 1982–3

  ‘SHIT,’ SCREAMED ROZ. ‘Shit. C. J., C. J. I can’t stand it. Stop it, stop it, oh, Christ, it hurts. It hurts.’

  She was in labour, and had been for twelve hours; ever since, as Letitia was to remark later, she had heard about the arrival of Phaedria in her father’s life.

  It was Eliza who had brought her the news, as she sat sulkily and vastly pregnant in the house she and C. J. had bought in Cheyne Walk. The drawing room was on the first floor; she had a chaise longue in the window, overlooking the river, and for days she had laid there, trying as her yoga teacher and her natural childbirth instructor had told her, to relax and think positive thoughts, to visualize her body opening gently and letting out the huge child it was nurturing. All she could visualize was her office, ever more disorganized, she felt sure, the many strands of her business life tangled, her staff taking matters into their own hands, making the wrong decisions, wrecking the painstakingly constructed edifice of her own particular empire.

  Until the baby had actually been overdue, she had continued to go into the office every single day, but her gynaecologist had expressly forbidden it, telling her that her membranes were going to rupture any moment; Roz did not care whether they ruptured or not, as long as she went into labour, bu
t she could see that it would not be very impressive or professional to sit or stand in a large pool of water in the boardroom, so she had reluctantly given in; making everybody’s life a misery, insisting that papers, letters, marketing plans, budgets be shipped to her daily, countermanding other people’s decisions, altering her own, dictating endless memos to her hapless secretary and circulating them to the entire company, putting forward proposals for new hotels, stores, cosmetics, even hospitals – ‘Well, why not, Daddy?’ she had said when Julian phoned her laughing to point out the folly of that particular plan, ‘You have an excellent reputation in the pharmaceutical industry now, why not capitalize on it, hospitals are big business in the States’ – and demanding to see every note, every minute of every meeting, every letter, almost a transcript of every phone call, that C. J. wrote, attended or made.

  C. J. was wretched; while Roz had been active and in control of her life, she had paid lip service to making the marriage work, she had been polite to him, pretended to listen to his views, both professional and personal, had hired Robin and Tricia Guild to decorate their house, in the way he wanted (she having absolutely no interest in the matter) and even gone with him with a fairly good grace to stay with his mother in Oyster Bay for a week in lieu of a honeymoon – ‘Well, after all, C. J., we certainly don’t need one, too ridiculous’ – and had continued to see that their sex life was as satisfying and as frequently conducted as it had been before their marriage. But now she had stopped trying; she was too angry, too miserable, she felt too ugly and sick and bored and uncomfortable to do anything but let her true feelings for him show. And her true feelings were a mixture of contemptuous fondness and an almost permanent irritation.

  She managed to keep this hidden, with considerable effort, from her father, whose approval seemed (somewhat ironically, she felt) more and more crucial to her, and from her mother and grandmother, who had both told her in very clear terms that she was making a serious and a very destructive mistake in marrying C. J. in the first place. She had had no answer for Letitia, but she had looked at her mother in rage and despair and said, ‘Mummy, I’m doing what you told me to, how dare you not support me now,’ and Eliza, horrified by all the threads of all the lives she seemed to have so disastrously tangled together, had begged her to reconsider, and said over and over again that she had been wrong, that she should never have counselled any such action, that she would be no party to it. But Roz had gone ahead; whether Eliza agreed with her or not, marrying C. J., so far as she could see, was going to ensure her most of what she wanted from life: her father’s approval, her future assured, and a husband and home of her own.

  Unfortunately, she had not been able to see very far.

  C. J., who had been able to see quite far enough from the very beginning, was in a state of rising panic. He was in an untenable situation, with no prospect of escaping from it. Julian had sent for him, the morning after Roz had broken the news of her accidental pregnancy; C. J., braced for a bawling out and in the slightly forlorn hope of dismissal from the company, had been confronted by a magnum of champagne, an outstretched hand and promotion.

  ‘I couldn’t be more delighted. Roz tells me you want to get married straight away. I think it’s an excellent idea. I’m going to put you in as president of the Hotels division, reporting direct to me. You’ll need more money, as a family man. God, I wish your father was still alive to see this.’

  C. J., reflecting that none of this would have happened if that had been the case, agreed fervently, and then asked, slightly nervously, whether Roz was to be given a new job as well. ‘I don’t see her wanting to report to me.’

  Julian laughed. ‘Neither do I. Yes, I’m giving her a go at the stores. She’s always wanted them. Starting her off as vice-president in Europe, and then when she’s had the baby and is ready, she can move on. She won’t want to do too much just yet.’

  He was wrong, of course; Roz had wanted to do much too much. She was wild with joy and triumph at getting her hands on the stores at last. She worked fourteen, fifteen hours a day and demanded the presidency as her baby’s birthday present. She got it.

  Rather to her surprise, to everybody’s surprise, pregnancy at least suited her well. She was never sick; she did not feel tired; she enjoyed the new sensations within her body, her comparative serenity, the feel of the baby kicking, her new statuesque shape; being so tall, she carried the baby well. Even more to everybody’s surprise, she decided on a natural childbirth and went to classes, earnestly practising relaxation and breathing in different levels every day, attending yoga classes, seeking out a doctor who would allow her to deliver the baby in the way she had chosen, who would not insist on giving her drugs, or any unnecessary medical procedure.

  ‘This is a natural process,’ she told everybody firmly. ‘I plan to experience it naturally. And handle it myself.’

  Eliza, who still had rather uncomfortably vivid memories of Roz’s own birth, was sceptical. ‘Of course it might all work wonderfully, darling, but I do think you’ll be glad of some kind of pain relief at least in the later stages.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t see why,’ said Roz. ‘Cordelia has seen countless babies delivered by her method and none of the women needed any drugs at all. You can be your own pain relief, Mummy. You didn’t understand in your day.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Eliza. ‘Who is Cordelia? A doctor?’

  ‘No, she’s my natural childbirth teacher.’

  ‘Is she qualified to teach such things?’

  ‘Of course. She works with midwives and doctors. It was her who recommended me to Mr Partridge. He is a very very advanced obstetrician, totally opposed to medical interference.’

  ‘I would have thought that was a contradiction in terms,’ said Eliza. ‘And anyway, what is Cordelia’s method? Does it all take place in darkness with waterbeds all over the place? I was reading about something like that last week.’

  ‘Well, you read the wrong magazines. Not waterbeds, that’s just silly, but some people do have their babies in warm water. But Cordelia’s method is a bit more straightforward. Basically, you learn to listen to your own body, and follow what it wants. I mean, you might want to deliver your baby on all fours, or standing up. It’s all much more natural than lying down, anyway.’

  ‘It sounds rather tiring to me,’ said Eliza. ‘And this is what Mr Partridge thinks as well, is it?’

  ‘Of course. And he has booked me into a private hospital, with a modern birthing room, C. J. can be there, and Cordelia as well, to encourage me. I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Eliza. ‘I’m delighted.’

  ‘Honestly,’ she said to Letitia later, ‘I think pregnancy has affected her brain. Roz, of all people. I’d have thought she’d have favoured a Caesarian. I didn’t argue with her, you can try, but I think we’re actually lucky she isn’t insisting on having this baby in the middle of a field. Or Hyde Park,’ she added. ‘Oh dear, C. J.’s so unhappy about it too.’

  Letitia, who felt that C. J. must be unhappy about a great deal more than the method by which his baby was going to enter the world, tried very hard to change Roz’s mind as well, without success. Roz was convinced that her mother and grandmother had suffered in childbirth simply because of archaic conditioning, and was deaf to any advice they had to give her.

  She would have her baby as she did everything else these days: the way she wanted.

  ‘How are you, darling?’ said Eliza, entering the drawing room at Cheyne Walk, her arms full of white roses.

  ‘Lousy,’ said Roz. ‘Can’t sleep. So uncomfortable. The baby’s so big now it can’t move at all. I feel as if I’m going to burst.’

  ‘Well, never mind, darling, it’s only twenty-four hours now at the most, and then Mr Partridge will take you in.’

  ‘I know, but Cordelia is most unhappy about it. She says induction ruins the natural pattern of labour. I really think I might not let him.’

  ‘Roz,’ said Eliza firmly, ‘with great
respect to Cordelia, who I do hope I never have to meet, incidentally, she is not a doctor, and nothing will ruin the natural pattern of labour more swiftly for you than a dead baby. Do stop being so ridiculous.’

  Roz looked at her mother, startled; she was not usually so firm. ‘All right,’ she said crossly, ‘there’s no need to start lecturing me.’

  ‘Sorry, darling. Now listen, I have the most divine bit of gossip for you. You just aren’t going to believe this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your father has a new girlfriend.’

  ‘Since when?’ said Roz sharply.

  ‘Since the day before yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, Mummy, he’s always in bed with someone or other. That’s not gossip.’

  ‘Well, I think it might be. She’s living at Regent’s Park already.’

  ‘Good God. What on earth will Camilla have to say?’

  ‘A great deal, I hear. Apparently she’s flying back to New York this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, who is this woman?’

  ‘Hardly a woman, darling. Younger than you.’

  ‘What?’

  Eliza was so busy arranging the roses, she did not see Roz’s face go white, her eyes blaze.

  ‘Yes, really, that’s what’s so intriguing. She’s twenty-four years old. Extremely beautiful, apparently. Sarah Brownsmith has met her, she came to the office. She’s a journalist. She interviewed your father and never went home again.’

  ‘Who told you all this?’ Roz sounded strained.

  ‘Well, lots of people. Letitia met her, he took her there for a drink. Well, that’s pretty significant, wouldn’t you say? She said she was charming, and very beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, yes, so you keep saying. And?’

  ‘Well, I rang Sarah, and managed to get a bit out of her, but you know how irritatingly discreet she is. So then I rang the housekeeper at Regent’s Park, and asked if your father had any guests at the moment, and she said yes, a young lady. She has the most unusual name, she’s called Phaedria, Phaedria Blenheim. And – and this is the most ridiculous thing of all, I’m sure it can’t be true – but Angie Masterson was having a drink in the Ritz early yesterday evening, and Camilla was there, with a friend, and Angie said she looked absolutely dreadful, white as a sheet, not that Camilla would ever look really awful, and Angie heard her say, well she says she heard her say, “And he’s talking about marrying her.” Well, it’s obviously nonsense, but I don’t see why Camilla should make things sound worse for her than they really are. Can you imagine anything more absurd, he’s sixty-two, marrying a child of twenty-four. Oh, it can’t be true. Now, darling, what can I get you?’