Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  He took his health rather seriously; Jocasta tried to tell herself that anyone who’d nearly died of a major heart attack would do. She still found it irritating.

  “It might have been,” she said, “I didn’t notice.” She sighed. “Gideon, what did you want to talk about?”

  “I know,” he said, a note of triumph in his voice, “you’re premenstrual.”

  “Oh Gideon, for God’s sake! What is this, the ladies’ changing room? I don’t get premenstrual, I don’t have my period, I don’t have a headache, and I just want to get on with this conversation. OK?”

  “All right. Sorry. Right. It goes like this. I want to give a couple of big dinner parties within the next month. In London. Mostly business, but a few friends. Could you liaise with Marissa, and then get planning with Mrs. Hutching on menus and so on. I’ll do the guest lists, obviously—”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said I’ll do the guest lists. These are mostly business affairs. I have to do them.”

  “You said a few friends.”

  “Yes, I know, but I meant—” He stopped.

  “You meant your friends?”

  “Well, yes. But I very much hope they will become our friends.”

  “What’s wrong with mine?”

  “Jocasta, please. There’s nothing wrong with them, but most of your friends wouldn’t fit in with a large, rather serious dinner party with a lot of middle-aged people.”

  “And would I?”

  He looked at her awkwardly. “Well, you’re different, aren’t you? I mean you’re my wife.”

  “So you’re stuck with me at this rather serious dinner party, which I won’t fit in with? Thanks!”

  “You’re being difficult.”

  “I am not being difficult. And I would venture to suggest that if you want to have a dinner party which I won’t enjoy, you should have it at a restaurant. Or in your boardroom. Or I’ll go out.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, irritable himself now. “I think we’d better stop this. If you’re not prepared even to organise a dinner party for me—”

  “Even? What do you mean even?”

  “Well, let’s say that so far, you haven’t exactly troubled yourself with domesticity, have you? Mrs. Hutching says when she tries to discuss menus, or the flowers, or even general arrangements, where we might be when and so on, you just tell her to go ahead and do what she thinks best.”

  “That’s not true. I said I liked to do the flowers.”

  “Yes, she did say that. But that you appeared to have forgotten lately.”

  “For God’s sake! What’s wrong with her doing it all? She’s much better at it than I am.”

  “That’s hardly the point. I would like you to be good at it, to run our lives. In the way you want. Obviously.”

  “Gideon, there’s no question of running our lives in the way I want. We live your lives. In your houses, with your staff, in your way. I don’t come into it at all, except trying to fit in.”

  “Well, as far as I can see, very little trying is going on. Oh, forget it. I’ll speak to Mrs. Hutching myself.”

  “Yes, and give me the dates and I’ll make sure to be out.” He looked at her with intense dislike and slammed the bedroom door without saying another word.

  She lay in her long bath, wondering what non-plans she could make for the day, feeling miserable. What was she supposed to be, some kind of secondary housekeeper? She didn’t know anything about that sort of thing, menus, guest lists, table linen, not even flowers. It wasn’t what she was about.

  So what was she about? She really didn’t know anymore. She got out of the bath, wrapped herself in her bathrobe, and, greatly to her surprise, she started to cry. What was the matter with her? Maybe she was premenstrual. She probably was. Yes, that was it. She didn’t often get premenstrual, but when she did, it was awful. Only she’d been feeling like this for weeks. So it wasn’t that. It wasn’t at all. It was because she felt so useless. So lost.

  She got dressed, went down to the kitchen, made herself some coffee, and drank it quickly before Mrs. Hutching could appear and offer her breakfast, ask her if she’d be in for lunch—God, it was awful, not living in your own house—and almost ran out of the front door.

  As she stood waiting for a cab, Nick called her. She was so pleased to hear from him, she burst into tears again.

  “What on earth’s the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just me. Sorry. Rewind, yes, Nick, nice to hear from you, how are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, “thanks. I rang you because I had a clear-out at the weekend and I found a few of your things. Wasn’t sure what to do about them.”

  “What sort of things?” She felt rather bleak suddenly, seeing his bright white flat, with its tall ceilings, looking over Hampstead Heath, where she had spent so much time during the past few years.

  “You know. Jewellery mostly. One of your innumerable watches, a baby G. A gold bracelet, the one your dad gave you—”

  “Oh yes.” She remembered that episode: her birthday, her father had cancelled a dinner with her and sent it instead, clearly horribly expensive; she had sat looking at it and crying and Nick had tried to comfort her, and they had ended up in bed.

  “And a few bits of rather expensive-looking lingerie.”

  She thought he might have wanted to keep that, as a memento. The tears started again.

  “Just throw it in the bin, why don’t you?” she said and switched off her phone abruptly. It rang again.

  “Jocasta, is something wrong? Want to talk? I’m free for lunch.”

  “Well…” It was so tempting. So terribly tempting. And if Gideon saw her as little better than a glorified housekeeper, then why not? Why the fuck not?

  “Yes, all right,” she said finally, “that’d be lovely.”

  Bob Frean called Jack Kirkland.

  “Sorry, Jack, you’ll have to manage without your female lead for a while.”

  “Oh really? Is she not well?”

  “I’m afraid she’s very unwell indeed,” said Bob. “She’s had a complete breakdown. She’s in the Priory.”

  “What? I don’t believe it. She’s so strong, tougher than any of us. What a dreadful thing, Bob, I’m sorry. What on earth brought that on?”

  “Life, I think,” said Bob and put the phone down.

  Helen got more worried about Kate every day. She simply wasn’t herself. She was quiet, withdrawn, touchy—well, that, at least, was like herself. She didn’t want to go out, she said, she didn’t want to do anything.

  “I just feel horrible,” she said to her mother. “I can’t explain why. I suppose it’s like I said, I had her for a few days and now I’ve lost her forever. And I don’t know any more about her than I did. Or why she did it, or anything. It’s worse than before. At least then I had a chance of finding her.”

  Helen said it wasn’t really worse than before, surely, and that at least Kate knew who her mother had been, and a bit about her. Kate clearly found this immensely irritating.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, “nobody could.”

  She had told Fergus she still couldn’t decide about Smith and that she might not want to model at all, but do a photography course instead. Jim was investigating this; he felt at least it was something he could do for her. He felt even more helpless than Helen; Kate wouldn’t talk to him at all; she was polite and little more.

  Nat had also been banished. “There doesn’t seem to be much point seeing him,” she said to Sarah. “I don’t seem to actually love him, and he loves me, so it’s just not fair on him.”

  Sarah said if that was really the case, could she tell Bernie; Kate said what for and Sarah said Bernie still fancied Nat.

  “Well, he doesn’t fancy her,” said Kate, “and no, you can’t.”

  “You’re just a bitch in the manger,” said Sarah. “You don’t want him, but you don’t want anyone else having him. Classic!”

  “Oh, piss off!” sai
d Kate.

  “I just feel…lost,” said Jocasta, stirring her fork round and round her rocket salad. They were in Rumours, in Covent Garden, not usually a stamping ground for retailing billionaires. “Anyway, I don’t care,” she had said, when Nick proposed the venue, “I don’t care if he sees me with you or not.”

  Nick was unable to decide whether this meant that she saw him as someone of very little importance, or Gideon as someone worthy of very little consideration; he hoped the latter.

  “In what way lost?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I feel sort of incompetent. As if I’ve got some terrific part in a film and the cameras are turning and I don’t know my lines. Or what to do, even.”

  “You could try to learn them,” he said carefully.

  “Nick, I can’t. Anyway, I don’t want to.”

  “Well, those are rather different things.”

  “But I don’t know how to be a good wife. I don’t know about running houses and giving grand dinner parties and telling staff what to do. It’s not me.”

  “Well, sweetie”—the endearment slipped out—“it’s got to be you, don’t you think? You’ve married someone who wants you to do those things. He’s a high-maintenance husband, he needs a highly maintaining wife.”

  “Then he’s got the wrong one.”

  “Jocasta, you’ve married him, for God’s sake!” He sounded angry. She looked at him: he was angry.

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t think this is a very healthy conversation. Do you?”

  “Why not?”

  “Jocasta, if you don’t know why not, you are truly stupid. It isn’t healthy and it isn’t very kind.”

  “Who isn’t it kind to?”

  “To me, for crying out loud,” he said and there was a note in his voice she had hardly ever heard before. “Can’t you see how hideous it is for me to sit here, listening to you wailing about your marriage and what a mistake it seems to be, when I still”—he stopped—“care about you? Just grow up, Jocasta. For God’s sake. Try thinking about someone other than yourself for a few minutes, why don’t you?”

  He left the table, settled the bill at the front desk, and left without another word.

  When Gideon got home that evening, an immense bunch of flowers in his arms, Jocasta was sitting in the kitchen with Mrs. Hutching, a sheaf of menus fanned out between them. She got up and went into his arms, kissed him fondly.

  “I’m so sorry about this morning,” she said.

  “Me too. So very, very sorry.”

  Mrs. Hutching gathered her menus and hurried upstairs.

  Kate kept thinking about the Hartleys. Her grandparents. Of course they didn’t know they were her grandparents, but they were. And they had seemed incredibly nice. She felt so sorry for them. It must be awful, knowing your own child had died. She wondered if there was anything she could do to make them feel better. Certainly not telling them who she was. But she could write a note to them, say she hoped they were feeling a little better, saying how lovely the service had been, and—goodness knows what else.

  She consulted her mother; Helen said she thought that was a lovely idea. “The shortest note would do. I’m sure they’ll be very touched.”

  “I’ll do it then. Would you read it, make sure it’s all right?”

  When she’d done that, she thought, she must ring Fergus.

  Fergus managed to sound a great deal more cheerful than he felt—he’d had a very bad morning. A client he’d thought pretty much in the bag, a footballer accused of rape, had gone to Max Clifford instead. True, he had that cute little singer who was in dispute with his dad over his earnings, but that wasn’t going to pay many bills. Wouldn’t even pay the rent for this place, never mind a mortgage for the riverside apartment in Putney. And he was badly out of pocket with Kate; her earnings so far were nonexistent and although Gideon had offered to pay the preliminary expenses, Fergus’s professional pride wouldn’t allow him to take him up on it until he had managed to show something for her.

  “Fergus, I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want that contract.”

  “Right.” Fergus tried to suppress the slug of disappointment. “Right, I see. Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely sure. I know it’s a lot of money and everything, but—I just can’t cope with the rest of it.”

  “Like what, Kate?”

  “Oh, you know, the publicity. It’ll all start again, just as it’s beginning to die down. Asking me about my mother and everything. And now I know, well, I can face it even less. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right, I understand.”

  “Anyway, I don’t really like it. In fact I hate it. The cosmetic stuff anyway. It’s so, like, totally boring. And I hate the people, they’re just crap. Fashion’s better, I could still do that.”

  “Yes?” Well, that was something, he supposed. A few hundreds commission, instead of a few hundred thousands, but—

  “Yes, I think so. Although not yet.”

  “Kate, I’m sorry, you’ve got your first cover session with Style in a couple of weeks. You’ll have to do that.”

  “I don’t think I can. I’m sorry, Fergus, I just feel so down.”

  Fergus counted to ten silently. This was a nightmare. Silly, arrogant little thing, imagining she could play games with these people, tossing a three-million-dollar contract down the drain as if it was a used Kleenex, saying she didn’t think she could do a cover session for one of the country’s leading magazines because she was feeling down. Who did she think she was? Naomi Campbell?

  “Kate, my love, you really will have to do that. Everything’s booked, they confirmed it this morning, makeup artist, hair, photographer, you can’t—”

  “Fergus, I told you. I can’t. They’ll have to find someone else. Sorry,” she added rather reluctantly.

  He was staring out of the window, trying to pluck up the courage to ring Style and tell them, when Clio rang. He felt better at once.

  “Just calling about tonight. Is dinner still on?”

  “I hope so. God, I hope so. I’ve got nothing left to look forward to.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Oh, Kate’s being impossible. Totally impossible. She’s refusing to sign the contract with the cosmetic people and now she won’t even do the cover session with Style. It’s all booked. It’s too bad of her, it really is. Totally unprofessional.”

  “Fergus, she’s only sixteen. She can’t be expected to—”

  “At sixteen I’d been hard at work for over a year, learning not to let people down.”

  Clio thought about this, as she often did. About Fergus’s difficult childhood and the success he had made of his life against considerable odds. It had been a remarkable achievement, however much she might dislike the way in which he had done it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said carefully, “really sorry. Maybe Jocasta could talk to her about it; Kate seems to think the sun shines out of her every orifice. At least make her think really hard about what she’s doing.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said, his voice brightening. “Oh, Clio, you’re a star. I wish it were dinnertime now. I’m missing you dreadfully.”

  “Fergus, it’s only two days since we were together.”

  “You have a heart of stone. That’s forty-eight hours. How early could you meet me?”

  “If you came down here, at about six o’clock.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She was really totally happy with him, apart from what he did. He was sweet, kind, thoughtful. He was sitting outside the surgery when she came out that evening, with a ready-to-cook meal that he had bought on the way down; she sat watching him as he bustled about her kitchen, thinking how lucky she was to have found him.

  She was a bit low herself. Mark had been very upset that she was leaving, and although he had been extremely nice about it, she could see he was annoyed. She could understand it; he had taken her back once after she had given in her notice, and now she was doing it again. She’d h
ave been pretty annoyed herself—but it had taken the edge off the intense pleasure of getting the job. And then she had visited Mr. Morris at the Laurels that morning and become very upset in the face of his helpless grief.

  Fergus listened to her patiently while she ranted against the matron of the Laurels and her authoritarian approach to her patients, as she insisted on calling them—“They’re not patients, Fergus, they’re just old people who need a little help”—and against the daughter, who had been too busy and too callous to find someone who could help them to remain at home. He told her the Morrises had been lucky to have her as a doctor—“I don’t think so, Fergus, I don’t think so at all, and anyway, what could I do? Against that bloody system. It’s a cumbersome load of crap, and—”

  “Hey now,” he said, “this is no language for a lady.” She smiled at him through her tears.

  “Sorry. But it makes me so angry. And what can I do?”

  “I’m not sure. Launch an appeal. Try to get a campaign going. Interest some politicians. See if one of those people in the Centre Forward Party could help. It’s the sort of thing politicians like, a cause that will make them appear noble and altruistic, rather than the self-seeking creatures they really are. I’ll help you, if you like, draft something, maybe put out a press release.”

  “Oh Fergus…” She looked at him very seriously. “You are a complete mystery to me. I mean, you spend your days helping greedy, badly behaved people manipulate the media—”

  “Hey,” he said, “that’s not entirely fair. Would you call Kate greedy and badly behaved?”

  “No. Of course not. But she’s a little bit unusual, as your clients go, you must admit. Anyway, in spite of all that, you have this heart of pure gold, beating away.”

  “Maybe it needs polishing up, my heart of gold,” he said. “Would it seem too terribly insensitive of me to ask for another glass of that very delicious wine? And to let me put my arms round you for a moment or two?”

  “Terribly,” said Clio, “but it wasn’t very sensitive of you to call me a silly bitch, was it? And look where that got us.”