Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Indeed. And she had no family to speak of, apart from her mother, although she had good friends. And Mr Dashwood, now he was very good to her then, and helped her a lot.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Phaedria sharply. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Oh, well now, he helped her with all the paperwork, you know, and that sort of thing, and I believe he made some money available to her as well. He was a good friend to her, it has to be said, very good. He came to see her, often, right up to the end.’ He stopped suddenly, fearing he might have said too much. ‘Well now, you’ll have to excuse me, I must be getting on with my work, it is nearly half past four, and then the rush starts, you know, we have to close our doors soon after that.’

  ‘Father,’ said Phaedria, in a sudden, desperate rush of courage, astonishing herself. ‘Father, you don’t have any photographs of Hugo Dashwood, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, ‘I can’t think that I would. Miles might have a few, of course, but then that isn’t of any help to you, is it? But if I should come across one, I will certainly let you know.’

  ‘And – and what did he look like?’

  ‘Well, he was quite tall. Dark-haired. Nicely dressed. Rather too formally, for this part of the world. But then the English are inclined to be that way, aren’t they? He had these very formal manners too, and the wonderful English accent, very much like your own.’

  ‘And what colour eyes did he have? Can you remember that?’

  There was a long silence; Phaedria stood motionless, fearing the answer. She turned her head and rested her cheek on the baby’s head.

  Finally Father Kennedy shook his head.

  ‘Well now, there you have me,’ he said. ‘Darkish certainly. But whether they were dark blue or grey or even brown, I couldn’t tell you. I think if you really forced me to say something I would say grey. But I’m more or less guessing, mind. Does it matter greatly?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Phaedria, feeling suddenly unaccountably lighthearted. ‘It doesn’t matter at all. I’m just trying to visualize him, that’s all. Just trying to work out what he was really like.’

  How Roz got home that night she never afterwards knew.

  She managed to get to the ladies’ room, where she threw up, and then she sat for a very long time on the seat, resting her head on the partition, too drained of emotion even to cry, occasionally listening to the various women coming in and discussing the scene they had just witnessed.

  ‘It certainly did beat anything on the cinema,’ said one cool amused voice. ‘I just don’t know how anyone can humiliate themselves like that.’

  ‘Well,’ said her companion, as if she was explaining the mystery of the universe, ‘she was English, remember.’

  ‘I know,’ said the first. ‘But I would just rather die. And he seemed so nice and patient with her.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said the second, ‘he was American.’

  ‘Yes of course,’ said the first, clearly finding this a perfectly satisfactory explanation.

  After this display of chauvinism they left the room; Roz waited a while and was wondering if she had the strength to make her escape when a second pair came in.

  ‘I thought it was just disgusting,’ said Voice A, ‘absolutely not the sort of thing you expect to have going on in a place like this.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Voice B. ‘I thought it was rather exciting. I thought she was wonderful.’

  ‘Did you?’ said A. ‘I thought she was dreadful. You can always tell,’ she added, ‘when people come from poor families. I mean she may have looked all right, and that coat was obviously very expensive, but you could see there was no breeding there, no breeding at all. She’s obviously screwed a lot of money out of some poor man or other, probably not that one, and now she’s just reverting to type.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re wrong,’ said B. ‘If he’s really been playing around, then he deserves to be bawled out.’

  ‘Not in public surely?’

  ‘Anywhere at all to my way of thinking.’

  Roz was just about to leave the cubicle and go out and shake B’s hand and possibly deliver A a short lecture on the English class system and where she stood in it when they also left the cloakroom; it was quiet for a while. She stood up, went out, washed her face quickly and then made her way to the elevator. Whatever happened now, for the rest of her life she would never be able to come to the Algonquin again. Well, that was no great loss.

  After that brief rush of adrenaline everything blurred again. She presumed afterwards that she must have found a cab, driven to Kennedy, checked in to a mercifully imminent flight, and then sunk into her seat and tried to go to sleep through the endless night ahead of her in the sky.

  But she couldn’t. Her mind roared and raced on. Could Michael possibly have been speaking the truth? Surely not. Otherwise he would have told her exactly where he had been. On the other hand, he was quite outstandingly truthful. She had never known him to lie. But of course Phaedria brought out the protector in men; she had seen it before. With her pathetic little-girl, fragile airs, and those ridiculous great eyes of hers. He was probably lying to protect her. He knew how frightened she would be. And with good cause. Jesus, thought Roz, once she gets back to England, will I give her hell. If she thinks life’s been tough up to now, she’s going to find out it’s been one long rest cure by comparison.

  But then – but then if it was true, if she and Michael were having an affair, Phaedria wouldn’t care. She would just sell out and move to New York and live with Michael. Well, that would at least mean that she, Roz, would get the company. Some good would come of it. On the other hand, for the first time since the day she had gone to work for her father, Roz wondered if there was a price too high to pay for that massive unwieldy monster. Did she really not care about what happened to her, as a person? Would she settle for success, power, money, would they be enough, would they replace warmth, tenderness, safety, sex?

  It looked as if they might have to, unless she did something very clever and very quickly. Michael, even if he had been speaking the truth, playing fair, was not going to come running back to her now. He would be deeply angry, outraged, she had publicly humiliated him, and he was a fiercely proud man.

  Unless she did something fairly drastic, crawled to him, begged him to forgive her (and she was not about to do that, to risk having them laughing at her, despising her), she had lost him.

  God, she thought, pressing viciously on her call button, God I hate that woman. She’s taken away everything I ever value: my father, the stores, the company, and now my lover.

  For a short horrific moment she allowed herself to think of Phaedria in bed with Michael; of her lying naked in his arms, knowing the pleasure of his immensely skilful body: she felt violently sick again.

  ‘Bring me a drink, would you?’ she said to the steward who had appeared in front of her. ‘A whisky. And a strong coffee as well.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Emerson.’

  Mrs Emerson! That reminded her of C. J. and Camilla. Taking alternate sips of whisky and coffee, she tried to imagine how she was going to handle that as well. The threat of losing Miranda. And the double humiliation of losing husband and lover. Everyone had always assumed she had ditched C. J. in order to marry Michael. Now it would look very different.

  ‘Dear God,’ she said aloud, speaking to the clouds, and the darkness they were beginning to fly out of, ‘what a day. How have I survived it?’

  And exhausted finally, her aching heart briefly anaesthetized, she fell asleep.

  When Phaedria got back to the hotel later that evening there was a message waiting for her.

  ‘Could you call Mr Browning at home in New York?’ said the clerk at the desk. ‘I have his number. Would you like it?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Phaedria. Her heart was being horribly fast. She went back to her bungalow, hurried in, slammed the door, dialled the number. Michael answered the phone himself.

  ‘Phaedria, hi. How a
re you?’

  ‘I’m fine. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Well, I thought I should phone you. Tell you to double lock your door. Batten down the hatches.’ He tried to sound amused, lighthearted, but he failed.

  She knew immediately what he meant.

  ‘She’s found out?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘But there was nothing to find out.’

  ‘Did you ever try to explain to a bluebottle there was glass in the window? Same thing. She found it kind of hard to grasp.’

  ‘Oh, God. Oh, Michael. What shall we do? Where is she?’

  ‘Christ knows. I imagine on her way back to London. She just left. She flew in this morning. I don’t think she’ll be coming over to you. But she just might. I’m very very sorry.’

  ‘How did she find out?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. She’d had lunch with that French dame, the one she always says is her only friend, what’s her goddamned name, Annie or Angela or something, and I called her, but she just said was Roz all right, she’d been worried about her because she was very upset about Camilla and C. J.’

  ‘Camilla and who?’

  ‘C. J. Apparently they’ve got it together. Isn’t that something?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Phaedria, with an irrational stab of jealousy. ‘Yes. But anyway, Annick didn’t seem to know about – about us?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Oh, it’s so ridiculous,’ said Phaedria, ‘nothing to know, nothing at all. But I can see she wouldn’t have believed it.’

  ‘No. I’d have a little trouble with it myself, though, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘Serves us right,’ he said. ‘I knew it was a mistake.’

  ‘What, coming to see me?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and his voice warmed her, stroked her over the telephone. ‘Not seeing more of you. The rest of you.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I shall just have to go back and face her. I’m not staying here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to come and hide with a lonely, frightened man for a day or two?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You’ve got me into enough trouble. I’m going home.’

  ‘Lady Morell,’ he said, and there was a wealth of admiration in his voice, ‘you are a dame with balls.’

  The weekend wound wearily on for Roz. The nanny had taken Miranda up to Scotland for a day or two to stay with her grandmother; the house was empty, silent. She roamed about it, restless, miserable. She felt she had been asked to bear too much; she didn’t see quite how she was going to stand it. She was alone, she was frightened, she was wretchedly unhappy, she was humiliated; she thought of going to see Letitia to talk to her, but rejected the idea, shrinking from the pain of explaining, of exposing herself to Letitia’s particular brand of rather pragmatic sympathy. And Susan, dear Susan, her refuge in times of trouble, was away with Richard in France, inspecting their new property.

  She hurt physically; her back throbbed, her head ached, her legs felt heavy and weak. She tried to eat, in the knowledge that on Monday she was going to have to make an appearance, to take some decisions, put on her endlessly impressive performance; Phaedria would be back at the end of the week, she couldn’t afford to let them see her weaken now. But the food tasted disgusting: she couldn’t swallow it.

  She decided to go out, to get some air; she walked for miles along the embankment, from Cheyne Walk all the way to Westminster, and then on to Blackfriars, and still further, to Tower Bridge. As she walked she thought about C. J. and the London he loved so much; about how she had refused over and over again to go with him as he explored it, about how little he had complained, merely gone off with his maps and his reference books, in search of happiness, interest, discovery and she had been grateful, relieved, to see him go. Well, he was gone now, permanently, she had lost him (odd how it suddenly seemed to be a loss), and it seemed she had lost Michael too. How horribly wrong her life was turning out, when only two years ago she had seemed to hold everything that she wanted in her hands. A nightmarish panic took hold of her; she felt as if everything was out of rhythm, distorted, slightly mad. She grew oddly frightened; she felt she must get back to her own territory, not be in strange places and alone; she hailed a cab and went home to Cheyne Walk, sobered, miserable.

  In the end she turned to work. It proved, as usual, to be the panacea. It never failed her. She always found serenity, calm, sheer pleasure in work.

  She settled at her desk in the study next to her bedroom, and with sheer force of will set her mind to the company and its demands. Initially she went through her pending files, catching up on detail, answering memos, checking minutes, cross-referencing appointments in her diaries. But on Sunday evening she got out some files and looked at the performance of the various companies over the past year. The stores were doing fine (including London now, which was a bittersweet pill to swallow), the cosmetic company was flourishing (only she yearned to do things with that, expand into the body business, open some more health farms); the hotels were a bit iffy. The pharmaceutical company was expanding faster than the rest; plastics and paper were both doing fine. Only the new communications company looked as if it might be in serious difficulty: she would sell that if she had her way. But Phaedria would never agree. Oh, God, if only, if only she had a bit more power. She could see the way ahead so clearly, and knew exactly how to steer the company through it.

  She was in the office at seven-thirty the following morning. She felt excited, exhilarated, her misery briefly forgotten.

  She settled at her desk, pulled out her dictating machine, began to construct a careful, discreet document. She was totally engrossed in it when she heard footsteps in the corridor. Now who could that be, and why hadn’t she had the sense to re-lock the front door? It was far too early for any of the regular staff to come in and the cleaners came at night. Maybe it was the doorman, come in early. She heard a knock on her own door; she frowned. ‘Yes? Come in!’ She heard the door open; still half engrossed in her work, she paused before she looked up. When she did, she thought she must be hallucinating.

  A ludicrously beautiful young man stood in front of her, leaning with an almost mannered grace against the door. He had sun-streaked, untidy, rather long blond hair, and very dark blue eyes; there was a night’s growth of stubble on his tanned face; he was tall and slender and he was dressed in jeans and a very crumpled white shirt, a denim jacket slung over one shoulder.

  His eyes travelled over Roz appreciatively: slowly, carefully, taking her in. Then he slowly smiled, a glorious, joyous, pleasure-giving smile that she could not resist, could not despite her weariness, her anxiety, help but return.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I’m Miles.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  London, New York, Los Angeles, 1985

  MILES WILBURN AND Billy de Launay were often to remark in later life that the most amazing thing about the whole story of Miles’ inheritance was not so much that Marcia Galbraith should have tried to do what she did, but that she should have succeeded for so long.

  ‘Months and months half the civilized world was looking for you,’ said Billy, ‘and you just had no idea. It sure beats fiction.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Miles. They had been sitting in Nassau Airport at the time, with Candy, who had been trying very hard not to cry, waiting for Miles’ flight to be called; they had had this conversation a great many times now, and still felt the topic had not been exhausted.

  ‘God knows what else she’d been keeping from you,’ said Billy. ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘No,’ said Miles. ‘No point. But I did ask her if she’d kept anything from Granny Kelly. I made her turn over any letters for her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well there was the couple from old Father Kennedy. She would have loved to get them. That did make me mad. And one of them, actually, did say old Hugo wanted to contact me. So it was kind of important.’

  ‘And you s
till don’t know how he fits into this?’

  ‘Nope. But maybe soon I shall find out.’

  He looked at Candy’s tear-streaked face, put his arm round her, kissed the top of her head. ‘Don’t cry, baby, I swear I won’t be long, I’ll be back for you, and maybe if I’m a really rich guy by then we can get married.’

  ‘Daddy won’t allow it,’ said Candy, blowing her nose. ‘He says I have to be twenty-one.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll change his mind if old Miles turns out to be in the money,’ said Billy.

  ‘I doubt it. You know, I have the strangest feeling he knew something about all this. He acted real strange when I told him. He pretended to be interested and surprised, but he wasn’t.’

  ‘Probably saw one of the advertisements,’ said Billy.

  ‘Wicked old buzzard,’ said Candy. ‘Fancy keeping that from Miles.’

  ‘Oh, well, you never know,’ said Miles easily, ‘he probably thought he was acting for the best. He doesn’t want to lose you. I wouldn’t either, if I was your dad.’

  ‘Oh, Miles,’ said Candy, ‘you are just too good to be true.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘I just can’t get worked up about things, that’s all.’

  ‘This whole thing might have been resolved a lot earlier,’ said Billy in a slightly pompous avuncular tone, ‘if you occasionally looked at a newspaper, Miles. I can’t believe you missed it.’

  ‘Oh, hell,’ said Miles, ‘I often do read the front page now. But I would never have seen the public notices, surely.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re an ambitious young man. I’m just a no-good bum.’ He smiled at them both. ‘Now look, you will keep an eye on my granny, won’t you? I worry about her and that old woman. I don’t think she’d do her any harm, I think she’s really fond of her, but I don’t like the idea of going off and leaving her all alone.’

  ‘I absolutely promise,’ said Candy seriously, ‘to go and visit her at least twice a week.’

  ‘Good girl. Anyway, I don’t intend to be gone more than two weeks at the most. I don’t want to stay in London.’