Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ she said, tears of fright rolling down her face. ‘My baby’s dead.’

  But no, they said, no she is not dead, she’s better, look, she’s peaceful, sleeping, she’s going to be all right.

  And even then she would not leave, she stayed, exhausted, just watching and looking and loving the baby until another day had passed, and then finally, seeing her pink, kicking, healthy, however tiny, she trusted them and agreed to leave her for a while and go to bed.

  The trauma and her vigil had weakened Phaedria; she did not recover as quickly as she should. She stayed in the hospital for another week, and then, because they said Julia could not leave for two weeks more, maybe three, she moved back into her bungalow at the Bel Air, driving in every morning to sit with the baby, feed her, hold her when she was allowed, and coming home in the evening to rest and recover herself once more.

  It was a strangely happy, almost surreal time; she loved best (guiltily, because she was alone, not with her baby) the evenings, when she would sit on her patio, utterly peaceful, drinking in the scents of the flowers, watching the swans, hearing the conversation, the laughter, the music drifting quietly from the main body of the hotel; concerned briefly only for herself, and rediscovering the sensation of happiness.

  There had been endless excitement, of course, when they had heard in England what had happened, phone calls and letters and great banks and baskets and bowls of flowers, arrived, and boxes extravagantly gift wrapped in Beverly Hills, containing presents for Julia, tiny dresses, shawls, bonnets, coats, and enormous, ridiculous soft toys, golden teddies and great pink bunnies, three, four, five times as large as their small owner; Eliza flew over to see her, and her small stepdaughter, wearing a minute white silk dress and matching coat from the White House, and a cobweb-fine hand-crocheted shawl from Letitia, and a tiny gold locket set with sapphires that Letitia’s grandmother, the Dowager Lady Farnsworth, had worn in her own cradle, and bequeathed her in her will. David Sassoon came with a Hockney print of Los Angeles for her: ‘Clever girl, what better place could you possibly have chosen to have a baby?’

  Susan came, greatly to Phaedria’s surprise and pleasure, a little reserved but friendly just the same, bringing boxes of cookies and chocolates and strawberries. ‘I do remember how marvellous it is to be hungry again, and you must need little doggy bags to take to the hospital.’

  Augustus Blenheim came, jerked into reality by concern and love.

  C. J. came, with an exquisite engraving by Frith of a baby, looking anxious and concerned, but with a ring of ‘I told you’ in his eyes and his voice. ‘And I’m sure it could all have waited, there was no point tearing down here, Roz has made no progress at all, as far as I know.’

  Phaedria, still nursing her quiet fear, unable to confront it, to recognize it as real, had allowed the night of pain and the days of terror that had followed in its wake to blank it out, did not even tell C. J. she had seen Father Kennedy, merely sat and nodded and said how right he had been.

  And then one day, towards the end of the time, when Julia was nearly strong enough to leave and she was sitting peaceful and happy in the evening sun, reading The Water Babies, which someone had sent to Julia and which she had rediscovered with immense pleasure, she heard footsteps and looked up and there in front of her was Michael Browning.

  ‘Now you are not to faint and you are not to be sick,’ he said, placing a bottle of Cristalle champagne on the table and producing two glasses from his pockets, ‘and you are certainly not to run away. And before you ask, Roz has no idea I’m here.’

  He looked at her as she sat, frozen with shock, silent, her eyes huge brilliant smudges in her pale still face. ‘Aren’t you going to greet me? I’ve travelled three thousand miles to bring you this. I hope you like it.’

  And he produced from yet another pocket a book, a tiny leather-bound volume, a first edition of Christina Rossetti’s poems. ‘I bought this because of the “Birthday” poem. I thought it was appropriate. I guess your heart must feel pretty much like a singing bird just now.’

  ‘Michael!’ said Phaedria, reaching up and kissing him gently on the cheek. ‘I didn’t know you were a literary person. What a lovely present. Thank you.’

  ‘This is a man,’ he said, taking off his jacket and sinking into the chair beside her, ‘who got the Eng Lit runner’s-up prize at Sethlow Junior High two years running. Champagne?’

  ‘Do you know I haven’t had any yet? Eliza offered me some but I refused. I wasn’t ready for it. But today, yes, I really would like some.’

  ‘Well, it’s time you did, and it’s just as well,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would have drunk it all.’

  She looked at him, smiling with the absolute pleasure of his company, untroubled for the moment by thoughts of what might lie before or behind them. He looked, as always, slightly rumpled; it was not just his clothes, it was his hair which looked perpetually in need of a comb, his rather shaggy eyebrows, his disturbed (and disturbing) brown eyes. She thought (not for the first time) how extraordinary it was that a man so devoid of most of the obligatory qualities of conventional male desirability (height, looks, stylishness) could have such an ability to project sexuality with so acute a force. She wrenched her mind away from her deliberations with an effort, and smiled at him. ‘It’s so nice to see you. But why are you here?’

  ‘I’m here,’ he said simply, ‘because I wanted to see you. I was in Los Angeles anyway, I have two companies here, I knew where you were, and I suddenly decided to come rather than go racing back to New York for a lonely weekend. I am family – or nearly. I felt I should greet the new member.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘Well now,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘tell me all about this baby. I hear she is beautiful. Are you all right? Are they taking good care of you?’

  ‘The baby is beautiful. She has dark hair and the most wonderful dark eyes. She’s tiny, but growing very very fast. She eats and eats and eats.’

  ‘From you, I see,’ he said, his eyes lingering, briefly, pleasurably, on her changed, swelling breasts.

  Phaedria saw the look and felt a strange stabbing somewhere in her heart; she looked down, away from him, flushed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said in an attempt at lightness. ‘I have proved to be a fine dairy cow.’

  ‘Good. And how much does she weigh now, this little calf?’

  ‘Oh, nearly five pounds. She was only three and a half when she was born. So thin, so tiny; now she’s getting quite fat.’

  ‘I’d like to see her,’ he said. ‘Could I, do you think? Would it be possible?’

  ‘You could,’ she said, touched, moved by his genuine interest, ‘but not tonight. Tomorrow. I will take you to the hospital and introduce you to her. Where are you staying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Would they keep me here, do you think?’

  ‘We could ask.’

  ‘Good. I’ll try now.’ He went through the french doors, into her sitting room, and picked up the phone. ‘You pour me some more champagne. This is a very nice little pad you have here. I’m surprised you don’t stay.’

  She laughed. ‘I would if I could. I feel it’s half home. I’ve been terribly happy here. But we have to get back, Julia and I. We have to wake up, get on with reality.’

  ‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘Dreaming suits you. Ah, Reception? Do you have a room for tonight and maybe tomorrow as well? You do? No, I don’t mind. That’s fine. Browning. I’ll come and check in right now.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, putting down his glass. ‘They want to inspect me. They only have a small room. I guess that means only big enough for three. I’ll be back. Have you had dinner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need feeding up. Why don’t you ask me to join you for a nice big juicy T-bone?’

  ‘I don’t like nice big juicy T-bones.’

  ‘I’m easy. I’ll eat anything.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, laughing, ‘please stay and have
dinner with me.’

  They ate on the patio, salmon poached in champagne, and then some roquefort cheese so delicately salty, so mildly perfect it was, as Michael remarked, like eating happiness, and she laughed, and he made her drink a glass of claret, ‘great for milk production’, sitting outside until it was dark and suddenly chill; relaxed, happy, just talking, talking.

  She told him about her childhood, about Oxford, about Charles even, her life in Bristol, before she had met Julian. On the subject of her marriage she kept silent; it was not something she wished, or was able, to share. Michael sat listening, interested, enthralled even, questioning her on the most minute details, things it amazed her he should want to know: had she worn school uniform, and what had it been like, had she been in love with any of her teachers (he had heard all English public school children were homosexual) what had her room been like at Oxford, had she been taken up the river in a punt, what was the first event she had ever reported, what colour was her horse, who were the people she had shared a house with in Bristol?

  And then he wanted to hear every detail she could offer of Julia’s birth, of her life and death struggle, of exactly how Phaedria had passed the days since she had left the hospital, of any interesting guests she had met in the hotel and patients in the hospital, of what she had been eating, what exercise she had been taking, of how well she felt.

  ‘You look very tired,’ he said severely. ‘You can’t have been sleeping.’

  ‘I haven’t. I have bad dreams still.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Julia dying. Every night, I see her as she was when I woke up that morning, all white and still. Not just once, but over and over again.’

  ‘Poor baby,’ he said, and his voice was very gentle. ‘What a lot you have to deal with. All on your own.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ But she smiled as she said it.

  ‘And why were you here anyway? So great with child? The most famously pregnant traveller since Mary of Nazareth. I imagine it wasn’t really a sudden concern with the competition on Rodeo Drive. This wild-goose chase I suppose, for your missing partner.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re both crazy, you and Roz. Neither of you need subject yourselves to any of it.’

  ‘I know. And yet, we do. When did she tell you?’

  ‘Oh, right at the beginning. Don’t worry, I haven’t talked. I can be as silent as an entire mortuary if necessary. I don’t think he exists at all,’ he added, cutting himself a last sliver of cheese. ‘I think he’s a figment of Julian’s crazed imagination.’

  ‘Do you now?’ She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I fear you’re wrong. But it’s a nice idea. Anyway –’ she visibly brushed the topic aside – ‘let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to break my spell.’

  ‘What spell?’

  ‘I feel like the Sleeping Beauty in her castle here, safe, preserved, lost in time. That nobody can get near me, to hurt me.’

  ‘Then,’ he said, ‘I must take care not to kiss you.’ And he smiled at her, amused, gentle; she smiled back, but inside her somewhere something leapt, unbidden, forbidden. The light-heartedness left her; she felt tense, and oddly fearful.

  ‘I’m very tired now. Will you excuse me if I go to bed?’ he said suddenly. ‘We have this very heavy programme tomorrow after all.’

  ‘Of course. Yes, you go, you must be exhausted. And come back for breakfast if you like. I leave for the hospital at about nine.’

  ‘Do you have a car?’

  ‘The hotel provides them. Along with almost every other human need.’

  ‘Do you think that might extend to a pair of pyjamas? Most unaccountably my secretary didn’t slip them in with my budget forecasts as she usually does.’

  ‘I’m sure they would. A trunkful if you wanted them.’

  ‘I generally only wear one pair at a time,’ he said. ‘I shall see you in the morning then. Good night Phaedria. Sweet dreams.’

  For the first time since Julia’s birth, she slept well.

  Roz was frightened and she didn’t know quite why. On the face of it she was doing well. She had gathered a good many reins into her exquisitely manicured hands during the few weeks Phaedria had been away, with immense ease. People no longer felt inhibited, by loyalty to or sympathy for Phaedria, and allowed her to take visible control; the management staff, heading the various companies, impatient for decisions on this and that, for go-aheads, for direction on expansion moves, hamstrung earlier by the ridiculous charade Julian had orchestrated, found her quick, shrewd, brilliantly decisive. Predictably hostile to the notion of being ultimately answerable to two young women, experienced businessmen found themselves grudgingly more receptive to acceding to one. The wholesale exodus of management talent which had threatened the company on Julian’s death was slowing; people were waiting, seeing what might happen, what Roz (increasingly Roz) might do.

  Roz, exhilarated, excited by what she was accomplishing, but exhausted nonetheless, had fears that haunted her frequently sleepless bed. She knew she was still fighting a crisis of confidence, that she needed a personal team behind her that could lend respectability and status to her accession. She knew that however brilliant her own mind and training, the one crucial quality she could not possibly lay claim to was experience.

  She looked into the distance, and could see no end, no turning even, that might indicate a by-way, a respite, just a long, relentless straight highway.

  She travelled it all day – she was in the office by seven thirty most mornings – and she travelled it much of the night as well, leaving the building often at ten, and then still taking work home with her. She hardly ever saw Miranda, she briefed her domestic staff by notes, and in the months since her father had died she had not once eaten a meal with anyone other than a business contact or Michael Browning. And that was the other reason for her fear. She knew she was pushing their relationship, straining his tolerance to the furthest possible parameters; she occasionally spent the weekend with him, in England, still more occasionally flew to New York, she paid lip service to listening to his problems, his demands, but in fact her contact with him on any genuine level was restricted to sex and a demand that he listen to her. And she did not know quite how much longer he was going to put up with it.

  He had told her he would give her six months; that he would wait because he loved her and understood what she was trying to do; that he would not complain, not press her. ‘But after that, by God, Rosamund, I will not be a memo on your office wall any longer. If you want me, you will have to pay for me.’

  And she had promised, grateful for the reprieve, feverish in her anxiety that she would lose him again so swiftly, so decisively; but she knew that six months was not a quarter, not a tenth of the time she needed before she could relax and cease her vigil on the company.

  C. J.’s departure from the household, and indeed the company, was a great relief; she was able, immediately he had moved into his new flat near Sloane Street, to feel quite fondly towards him again. He was the perfect ex husband; undemanding, good-natured, polite, he took over Miranda almost every weekend, he had agreed to go ahead with the divorce as fast as possible, and he had remained loyal, he did not go badmouthing her all over London, as she was uncomfortably aware he would have been justified in doing.

  She had a feeling he was helping Phaedria with the hunt for Miles, but she really did not care; such was her contempt for C. J.’s intellectual capacities, his lack of shrewdness that she could not imagine they were going to be very successful, certainly not as successful as she was, with the loyally dogged Andrew Blackworth working on her behalf (although she had been very impatient with his precipitant return from Nassau, and the excuse of a troublesome ulcer). The latest news had been that Miles was working for a bank somewhere; the crazy old woman who had finally revealed herself in Nassau hadn’t had a clear idea where. It probably wasn’t him in fact, she thought wearily; in the very few moments when she had time to think at all, she wondered at the fac
t that Miles had so completely failed to materialize; the lawyers had advertised so painstakingly, and if the flood of fakes (from half the major countries in the world) who had presented themselves to the offices of Henry Winterbourne either in person, or by letter or phone call, had seen the advertisements, why had not Miles himself? And who was this Hugo Dashwood, for God’s sake, that Henry Winterbourne had discovered through Bill Wilburn? None of of it made sense. Sometimes she wondered if Michael Browning was not right, and that her father had invented Miles.

  She woke up late that Saturday morning and decided she had to speak to Michael. What was the time? Ten o’clock. Damn, only five in New York. Oh, well, he should be pleased to hear from her just the same. He had always told her to ring him any time. Michael could wake up and go back to sleep with the ease most people took a drink of water. Maybe she would give him another hour.

  She got up, lay in the bath for a long time, thinking about Michael and how much she would like to be with him, wondering even if she might fly over for twenty-four hours, then dressed slowly, fetched herself a coffee from the kitchen and dialled his number.

  It was answered by his butler, Franco, a good-natured, efficient and loyal man, who shared with his master a distaste for untruth and an irritating ability to answer the most intensive questioning without giving anything away at all.

  No, Mr Browning was not here. No, he had gone away, he believed, on a short business trip. Yes, he had gone by air, Franco had ordered the car to take him to Kennedy himself early yesterday. An internal flight. No, he had no number. He had not said exactly when he would be back. Would Mrs Emerson like him to give Mr Browning a message if he phoned?

  The message Mrs Emerson had for Mr Browning was not quite of a nature to be passed on second hand; Roz put down the phone, trembling slightly. Where was he? Where was the bastard? He had never, ever – well, not since their last reconciliation, never when they were together – done anything like this before. He had always told her where he was going, left a number, told her to call.