Old Sins

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘It’s over there by the telephone. I was just going to try it again, anyway.’

  Roz went over and looked at the piece of paper. But she didn’t really need to. It was a number she felt was engraved on her heart.

  The plane landed on Nassau at ten o’clock local time. Phaedria didn’t even bother to check whether there was a flight out to Eleuthera. All she wanted was to go to bed and to find a respite, however brief, from her pain. She had no baggage, only her overnight bag; she walked straight out of the airport and into a cab without ever seeing the message for her pinned to the board in the arrival hall, and she was also not to know that at that very moment, Nelson was desperately trying to find someone to pilot Julian’s plane out of Eleuthera and into Nassau.

  While Nanny Hudson sat helpless, terrified, by the oxygen hood, watching Julia wage her battle, Miles sat by Roz’s huge fourposter bed as she wept endlessly, hopelessly, into her pillow.

  ‘Roz, you just have to know two things. One is that I only found out by the oddest chance. Two is that Phaedria didn’t want you to know. I know she didn’t, she wanted to spare you.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Roz’s face, ugly, swollen with crying and rage, lifted from her pillow. ‘Why does everyone have to regard that bitch as some kind of a saint? If she’d wanted to spare me she could have left him alone in the first place. Just why don’t you fuck off, Miles, and leave me alone?’

  ‘Because it wouldn’t do any good. Because you need company. Because I care about you.’

  ‘If you’d cared about me, you wouldn’t have lied to me.’

  ‘Roz, I didn’t lie to you. I simply didn’t tell you Phaedria was going to New York.’

  ‘And how did you find out that she was going to New York? Some kind of psychic transmission, is that what you’re trying to imply?’

  ‘No, I’m not trying to imply anything. I’m telling you. I was talking to Phaedria, and she let it slip that she was going to New York. I promised her I wouldn’t tell you. I feel bad now that I did.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. Whoever else gets hurt or let down, it mustn’t be Phaedria. Oh, God, I hate her so much.’

  Roz’s voice rose in a wail of rage and pain; she was drumming her feet on the bed. Miles looked at her concernedly.

  ‘Roz, please don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ She sat up suddenly and looked at him. ‘This is what you’re always telling me I should do. Let it all out. Let go. What’s wrong with it, all of a sudden?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess when her baby is so ill, it seems wrong to hate her so much.’

  ‘I was very very sorry about her baby,’ said Roz. ‘When we first came in tonight, before I knew where she was, I was desperately sorry, I wanted to help, to find her.’

  ‘I know,’ said Miles. ‘I saw you were. I know.’

  ‘But then I found out she was with Michael and I just couldn’t feel anything but hate. I’m sorry. I’m obviously a bad person.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘just an unhappy one.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Roz, ‘everything is so awful. Everything. I just can’t cope with it all any more.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ he said, ‘you’re a fighter. You’ll always cope.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I know so. I’ve told you before. I think you’re terrific.’

  She looked at him, and smiled a watery smile. ‘You don’t know me,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes, I do. I think I know you better than most people, as a matter of fact. That’s better, you’re cooling off. Turn around and I’ll massage your neck.’

  ‘Oh, Miles, no. Not now.’

  ‘Yeah, now. You need it now.’

  She looked at him, a long, considering look.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You’ll have to take that vest thing off.’

  ‘This vest thing is a silk T-shirt from Joseph.’

  ‘Who is this Joseph guy and what’s he doing giving you T-shirts?’

  Roz giggled.

  ‘OK, I’ll take it off. Just hang on a minute, I don’t have anything on underneath. Let me get my robe.’

  ‘OK.’

  She went into the bathroom, came back wearing a silk kimono, and sat down on her bed with her back to Miles. He started working on her neck, stroking it, kneading it, pushing the tension out; Roz felt herself relax.

  ‘That’s so nice.’

  ‘Good. Now your shoulders.’

  He slipped his hands under the gown, began working along the line of her shoulders, down her spine; Roz felt the almost familiar, dangerous lick of warmth through her body. She closed her eyes, put her head back, tried not to think. Miles moved over her shoulders, smoothing the skin down above her breasts, then returned to her spine and gently, insidiously round the sides of her body.

  ‘Miles,’ she said, half happy, half protesting. ‘You never did that before.’

  ‘You never were so upset before,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Maybe not.’

  There was a silence while he worked on, his warm strong hands stroking her into an odd sensation: half excitement, half peace.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Much.’

  He stopped suddenly, turned her round, looked at her very directly, his dark blue eyes smiling into her green ones.

  ‘What would really help you,’ he said, almost conversationally, ‘is a good fuck.’

  Roz looked at him, shocked, amused and most of all intensely aroused, emotionally and physically.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said with an effort.

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous. It would.’

  ‘And I suppose,’ she said, in a hopeless attempt to defuse the situation and her emotions, ‘you think you should be the person to administer it.’

  ‘I certainly do,’ he said and he smiled at her suddenly, his most dangerous, self-mocking, beguiling smile. ‘I certainly do. What’s more I should really like it. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, not at all.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ he said calmly, smiling again.

  ‘Even if I am, you shouldn’t even consider it. This is not the time or the place, and anyway, there’s Candy.’

  ‘It is absolutely the time and the place, this is a bedroom, you have a fine bed, and Candy is thousands of miles away.’

  Roz looked at him thoughtfully, too amused to be anything but direct. ‘You really think it doesn’t matter, don’t you? To her, I mean.’

  ‘I really do. It doesn’t.’

  ‘That is an extremely singular opinion.’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s mine. That’s what counts.’

  ‘Well anyway, it would matter to me.’

  ‘Oh, Roz, but it’s not going to have to matter to you. Anyway, I’m certainly not going to force myself on you. Although I think maybe I’d better go to bed. I want you pretty badly right now, and it’s fairly frustrating just sitting here, looking at you in that thing, with your tits half out. Good night, Roz.’

  He bent down and kissed her; just lightly, gently, as he had in the woods; but all the emotion of the evening, the anxiety, the rage, the grief, the tension, swept through Roz and polarized into a frantic hunger. She lay back on the bed, her thin arms round his neck, her lips, her tongue working frantically on his. He kissed her back, hard, briefly, then disentangled himself from her and sat back on the bed looking at her.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Did you change your mind?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roz, very low.

  Miles stood up. He pulled off his black tie, his dress shirt. His long body was still very brown, hard, lean. Roz lay there, looking at it, in silence; then she sat up on the bed and slipped off the robe, her eyes fixed on his.

  Miles put out his hand, cupped one of her breasts, massaging the nipple gently with his thumb; then he bent and began to lick it, suck it. Roz moaned, took his head in her hands, pressing it to her; then she lay back again, and sighed, a huge long shuddering sigh, smiling up at him.

 
‘Take those trousers off, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about this ever since I first set eyes on you, you beautiful bastard.’

  The paediatrician looked down at Julia in the oxygen hood; she was still fighting for breath, her small chest heaving with the effort. The sun was streaming in at the windows; it was nearly seven o’clock.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we have to move her to intensive care.’

  Nanny Hudson looked up at him exhausted, so frightened now she could hardly think.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, of course. Is she – is she worse?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, and sighed, ‘she is certainly no better. Do you want to come down with her?’

  ‘Yes, please. If I may. Oh, why did this have to happen when her mother was away?’

  ‘It often does,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure why. They need their mothers, babies do. I’ve just spoken to her grandmother again. She’s still trying to contact the mother. She seems to have totally disappeared.’

  Phaedria, who had spent a wretched night at the Colonial Hotel in Nassau, finally got back to the airport at ten in the morning and checked into a flight to Eleuthera.

  It was leaving in minutes; she shot through the villagey, comparative informality of Nassau’s passport control and ran out on to the tarmac towards the small yellow plane.

  The pilot, a dazzling-looking black girl, was waiting by the steps; she smiled at Phaedria. ‘Look like you just made it, honey. Hurry up now.’

  As the plane taxied down the runway the clerk in passport control was receiving a serious dressing down from his superior, who had been alerted (a little late) that a Lady Morell had just checked on to the Eleuthera flight.

  ‘It was real urgent that we contact that lady, and what do you do? Let her by without a murmur. Now she’s in the sky. Man, will we be in trouble.’

  ‘It’s these new computer machines,’ said the clerk easily, ‘they just cause a heap of trouble.’

  By the time the airport manager had worked out how acutely illogical this remark was, he had no energy left to be annoyed.

  Miles woke up in Roz’s bed, wondering briefly where he was. He lay quietly, looking up at the curtains above his head, at the outline of the hills outside the window and then at Roz, her face peaceful, gentle in sleep, oddly unfamiliar.

  He smiled to himself, thinking about her; she was a most complex creature. So angry, so tough, but with such a capacity to feel. And extraordinarily sensuous. Miles had spent a great many nights (and days) with a great many women, and he had never quite encountered such passion, such capacity for sexual pleasure as he had found in Roz.

  He had expected her to be hungry, ardent, had expected her to greet him, meet him as an equal; what he had not been prepared for was the way she entirely took the initiative, made love to him, used him, as if he were some object, fashioned entirely for her delight.

  She came, they both did, almost at once the first time, Roz lying beneath him, gasping, moaning, her long legs wrapped round him, her arms flung out, thrusting her body against him, round him, and he felt her as she climaxed, in seemingly endless violent spasms. He drew back from her then, smiling into her eyes, kissing her tenderly, saying nothing, feeling the sweetness, the triumph of shared release, but Roz did not relax, she was violent, almost angry in her continuing need of him. She turned, and lay on top of him, and began to kiss him, slowly, intensely, and then moved down, licking, sucking, kissing his body, until she reached his penis. She took it in her mouth, working on it, determinedly, hungrily insistent, and then when he was ready for her, and tried to turn her, to enter her again, she said no, no, and it was almost a shout, a cry of triumph and she sat up, astride him, pulling him into her, drawing out her own climax, not allowing him his, retreating from him again and again, until finally he gave himself up to it, and came, and she with him, but not once, several times, and he could feel each time, the waves stronger, more violent, greedier. And still she wasn’t satisfied, still she wanted more.

  ‘You really are,’ he said, turning from her finally, desperate for rest, for sleep, ‘something else.’

  And now, he thought, now what? He was uneasily aware that what he felt for Roz, what he had shared with her through that wild night, was something unique in his experience. It went deeper, felt stronger, sweeter than anything he had ever known. He shifted in the bed, trying to remember how he had felt when he had first slept with the other women he had really cared about, with Candy, with Joanna, and he knew perfectly well it had not been anything like this. Not sexually, nor (more alarmingly) emotionally. He felt, with Roz, a great closeness, a desire to care for her; a tenderness, he supposed it was, trying to analyse it. He felt tenderness towards Candy, too, but it was different, it was lighthearted, it felt less important. He also, in some strange way, felt very responsible for and to Roz. She had few people who liked her and far fewer to love her. Trying rather alarmedly to decide which of the two emotions he felt, he decided it was neither one nor the other, but a strange heady amalgam of the two.

  He decided it was just as well Candy was coming back to England soon. This situation could very easily get out of hand.

  Phaedria reached Turtle Cove at two o’clock local time. She was exhausted. She had phoned the house repeatedly and got no reply and had had to get one of the appalling local taxis from the airport for the twenty-mile drive to the house. The one she took had its radiator needle jammed permanently on boiling, and a door hanging half off its hinges. The driver talked incessantly about his acute surprise that another year had come and gone. Phaedria tried to be courteous, but her head ached and she felt sick.

  When she finally reached the house and walked into the cool hall with its whirring fans, it was deserted. She went down to the kitchen; there was a meal on the table, left abandoned, Marie Celeste-like, on the table, a window hanging open. It seemed strange. Maybe they had got the days mixed up and were expecting her tomorrow. It didn’t matter. She went through to the bedroom and pulled off her hot winter clothes. She climbed into one of the swimsuits she had there, looking at the bed where she and Julian had celebrated their wedding, where she had lain sick with the sun, and he had read to her. It had been a marvellous marriage, especially in the beginning. Whatever he had inflicted on her since, she had loved him very much.

  Maybe that had been half the problem with Michael. That she had still been grieving, had not been ready. Part of her, part of her heart was still with Julian. Well, it didn’t matter now.

  She sighed and walked out on to the veranda where they had eaten breakfast that first marvellous morning, after the snorkelling. She went down on to the beach and slithered into the warm, silky sea. There was a conch shell by her foot; she ducked under the water and picked it up. It was small, its pink interior pale and marbled. She waded back to the beach and laid it on the silver-white sand.

  What a lovely lovely place this was. It made her feel peaceful, in spite of her unhappiness, whole again. She would not sell this of all the houses, if she had to buy Miles out. She would rather sell Hanover Terrace. She needed Turtle Cove.

  Thinking about houses made her thoughts turn to the house in Connecticut that Michael had bought her. In her wildest dreams about him, she had not imagined such generosity, such concern for her happiness. She heard his rich rough voice saying, ‘I bought it because I love you,’ and she felt as if some giant hand was squeezing her heart. How, in the name of God, or anything else, was she to survive this new, wrenching misery?

  She swam strongly out to sea for a few minutes, then turned and trod water, looking at the shore. Suddenly she saw Jacintha waving at her frantically; puzzled, worried, she swam back in.

  ‘Whatever is it, Jacintha? What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s your baby, Lady Morell.’ She gave the stress on the first syllable, like Laurel. ‘She’s very very ill.’ She sounded excited, important to be bringing such news. Phaedria nearly shook her.

  ‘What is it? Where is she? Why didn’t
someone tell me?’

  ‘We tried to tell you, Lady Morell, we couldn’t find you. Nelson, he’s in Nassau looking for you. You better phone old Mrs Morell, she tell you all about it. They been phoning you in New York and here all night.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Phaedria, ‘it must be really serious if they’ve been looking for me that hard. Jacintha, what is the matter with her, what is it, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know, ma’am,’ said Jacintha, half enjoying the drama and her momentarily important role in it. ‘All I know your baby real sick. Like I said, you better phone old Mrs Morell.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Jacintha. Where is Mrs Morell?’

  ‘She’s in Scotland, Lady Morell. She’s been phoning and phoning you. I have the number right here,’ she added, ‘and the telephone is by your bed.’

  ‘Yes, Jacintha, thank you, I know where the phone is.’

  Phaedria raced over the sand, across the lawn, into the house, frantically dialled the number in Scotland. Letitia answered the phone.

  ‘Letitia, it’s Phaedria, what’s happening, please tell me, what’s the matter with Julia? Who’s with her, where is she, what can I do?’

  ‘Oh, Phaedria, thank God we found you. Julia’s in hospital. In Eastbourne. Nanny Hudson is with her. Eliza has flown down to be with them both, we thought someone should go.’

  ‘But what – what is it? Is it very serious?’

  ‘Well, darling, it’s silly to tell you it’s not. It’s quite serious. She’s got pneumonia. But she’s – holding her own. And of course pneumonia isn’t what it was. It still sounds very frightening, but with antibiotics it just isn’t so bad. Phaedria? Phaedria, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phaedria, in a small, quiet voice. ‘I’m still here. Letitia, I don’t know what to do, I won’t be able to get home today. There aren’t many flights out. I suppose I could get the company jet, Geoff is in New York.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Letitia briskly. ‘He can be with you in a very few hours. You can get him to come and collect you.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ Phaedria sounded listless.

  ‘Darling, don’t despair. I’m sure, quite sure, Julia will be all right. Listen, why don’t you talk to the doctor at the hospital, he’ll be able to reassure you.’