Old Sins (110 page)

‘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 fact 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.

He must have something to hide. He must be with someone. He wouldn’t have gone on a business trip on a Friday. But who? And a flight? That must mean quite a distance. Where would he go? Florida? Possibly. He liked the Keys. California? Surely not. Too far for a weekend, without a very good reason. Although he did have at least two companies there.

Where could he be, where could he be? Who could he be with? Roz looked out of the window at the golden October sunlight dancing on the Thames and shivered. It seemed to grow darker. The fear that followed her everywhere had suddenly grown very big.

After they had looked at the baby, admired the baby, and Phaedria had fed the baby (Michael having asked most charmingly if he could stay while she did so, and she, surprised at her own unselfconsciousness, had said of course he might, if he wished) cuddled the baby, remarked on her great beauty, and Michael had talked to the nurses and extracted news of an imminent engagement from one, and a suspected pregnancy of her own from another, and Phaedria had talked to the paediatrician and extracted a promise that Julia could fly home in another week, and the baby had been finally lain in her crib and after a brief protest, gone back to sleep, Michael suggested a picnic. ‘Or do we just stay here with her? I don’t mind at all, if that’s what you would like.’

‘I do usually,’ she said doubtfully, ‘but the nurses are always
telling me to go out more, they have masses of my milk in the fridge, so I suppose we could.’

‘Right,’ he said, ‘it will do you good. Let’s go to the seaside.’

So they drove out of Los Angeles and along the coast road, past Malibu, on to Paradise Cove. Michael produced from the boot of the Mercedes a picnic basket, an armful of towels, two beach beds, and a beach umbrella. Phaedria watched entranced.