Old Sins (114 page)

‘Roz, don’t be absurd.’

‘Absurd! In what way am I being absurd? Perhaps you expect me to be delighted that you went sick-visiting? And saw fit not to tell me. I would say that tells its own story, Michael. Or am I to believe that you simply gave her some grapes and admired the baby? Now that really would be absurd. Deeply absurd. I mean, I don’t admire her style myself but I am told she is considered not exactly ill to look upon. And you are, by your own admission, frustrated at the moment. And I daresay she is – or rather was – too, by Christ, although God knows how many lovers she might have had before or after my father died. I still don’t believe that child is his.’

‘Roz, you are making several serious mistakes,’ said Michael quietly. He was still sitting quite easily in his chair, watching her, listening to her; the fact that the entire room was doing the same bothered him not in the least.

‘Really? What mistakes am I making? I hope you’re not going to try and tell me I’m mistaken in thinking you have been in her bed, and in her so elegant personage. She must be a hell of an easy lay, and so conveniently far from home and from anyone who might have known or disturbed either of you. How was it, Michael? Is she good in bed? Does she have any clever tricks you hadn’t met before?

‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘Shall we continue this discussion at home?’

‘Oh, I like it here,’ she said. ‘Where is my second drink? Waiter! I asked you for another whisky. Bring it over here, would you?’

‘Rosamund, he isn’t going to. Leave him out of this. It isn’t his fault, poor guy.’

‘No, but it’s yours,’ she cried, quite loudly, her face by now contorted with fury. ‘It’s absolutely yours. How dare you go
down there, to California, to her, seeing her, screwing her, while I was safely thousands of miles away in London? How dare you?’

‘I did not screw her,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t touch her.’

‘Oh, yes, and I’m the President of the United States. Don’t give me that, Michael. Don’t insult me any more than you have done already.’

‘I’m trying not to,’ he said, and there was an edge of searing anger suddenly in his voice that quietened even her.

‘I did go to see Phaedria, yes, and the baby. I went because I was over there already, on business, and it seemed like a nice idea. I like Phaedria, she’s charming and agreeable, which is more than I can say for you a great deal of the time. And she’s had a tough time, to which you have contributed greatly. I did not, however, go to bed with her. I might well have been tempted to, not having had a great deal of carnal pleasure lately, thanks to your good self and your insane obsession with that company of yours. But I did not, and it was much to my credit and to hers that the only physical contact I experienced over the whole weekend was with her very charming baby. Who incidentally greatly resembles your father. I only hope it grows up into something more agreeable than his other daughter. I’m going home now. Perhaps you’d like to settle the check.’

He walked out, leaving the room entirely silent and Roz frozen to her chair, her face ashen, her eyes huge and brilliant, and an icy fear taking grip on her heart.

Phaedria decided on that, one of her few last afternoons in California, to go and visit Father Kennedy again. She had no real intention of asking him any more questions, she simply thought she owed it to him to visit him once more, to explain why no more money had come into the refuge yet, and to show him Julia. She had only taken her out a few times; she had bought a folding pram for the car, and would drive her out to Griffith Park or to the Palisades, and push her up and down carefully and proudly, pretending – wishing, even – that she was just one more mother, with one more baby, and that she had no more serious worries in the world than when she should consider mixed feeding, or whether the sun might be just a little too hot, despite the pram parasol, for Julia to be out in.

She drove down to Santa Monica, parked outside the refuge, and lifted Julia out of the car. Father Kennedy was sitting talking to one or two of his flock; he smiled as she walked towards him and stood up.

‘Well now, this is a most welcome new visitor. I thought you had gone back to England.’

‘No, Father, I hadn’t. She took me by surprise. I’ve been here ever since that day.’

‘Well, and if I had only known I would have come to visit you. Now this is a beautiful baby. What is her name?’

‘She is called Julia. After her father.’

‘That is a lovely name. And how old would she be now, Miss Julia?’

‘Oh, two months. But I couldn’t take her out before, she was very premature, she nearly died.’

‘And you’ve been alone here all this time, have you? That is a very sad thing.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘not quite alone. I’ve had a lot of visitors. Flying out from England.’

‘Well, you must be a very popular young lady. That’s a long way to come sick-visiting.’

‘I’m very lucky,’ she said, almost surprised to find that she was. ‘I have a very nice family.’

‘There is nothing better, no greater gift a person can have, than a good family. Next to God,’ he added hastily, lest the Almighty might be listening and taking offence.

‘Oh, it is. And I never really had one before.’

‘Did you not?’

‘No. Did you come from a big family, Father Kennedy?’

‘I did indeed. I was number eleven and there were two more after me. My mother did her best for the Church,’ he added with a twinkle in his faded blue eyes. ‘And I did my best for her.’

‘Did any of her other sons go into the priesthood?’

‘Not one. And most of them have died now, but there are many many nieces and nephews and great-nieces and nephews – but what am I thinking of, come and sit down, and let me give you a cup of tea.’

Phaedria followed him inside and sat down, holding Julia tenderly against her shoulder as she sipped her iced tea. She
had grown very fond of it as a drink since she had been in California.

‘What I really came to see you about, Father, apart from showing you my baby, was to say that I’m sorry I haven’t made any arrangements yet about money for you, for the refuge, but I just haven’t been able to. Not being at home. But I haven’t forgotten, and I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten.’

‘I thought no such thing,’ he said. ‘But it was good of you to come just the same. May I hold your baby a moment?’

‘Of course,’ she said, and handed her over, looking at him and smiling as he held the baby gently, stroking her tiny dark head, patting her small back.

‘I love babies,’ he said. ‘It is my only regret about being a priest, that I was denied this pleasure, that of fatherhood. But then, of course, I have known far more children, been involved with them, watched them growing up than if I had had my own. So maybe it was all for the best.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well now, have you found that young man yet?’

‘No, Father, we haven’t. I hear he was traced as far as Miami, but now he has simply vanished. Nobody knows where he is. My – that is, one of the other members of the family is still trying to trace him with a private detective, but what with the baby and so on, I haven’t given it much thought lately.’

‘And Mrs Kelly, the grandmother, do you know anything of her? Is she well?’

‘I believe she is well, but apparently a little – well, confused,’ said Phaedria carefully, raking desperately through her mind for a positive aspect of the news C. J. had brought, via Henry Winterbourne, of a pair of crazy old women struggling to keep Miles from his rightful inheritance.

‘Well now, that would explain why she has never answered my letters,’ said Father Kennedy with a sigh. He looked sad suddenly and very old.

Phaedria put out her hand and touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, well now, that is the way of the world. We are none of us growing younger. Did you find nothing up at the house?’ he asked after a moment’s pause.

‘Not – not really,’ she said, ‘it was all locked up. I just found –
oh, you know, some of Miles’ toys – his bike and his skate board and so on.’

‘Oh, he loved that skate board,’ said Father Kennedy. ‘He used to park it outside the church when he came to mass. He would have brought it in with him if his mother had allowed it.’

‘What – what was his mother like?’ asked Phaedria carefully, reaching out, taking the baby back from him, not looking at him. ‘I mean was she a nice person, was she clever, what was she actually like?’

‘She was a very nice person and very brave,’ said Father Kennedy. ‘Very brave indeed. Not just when she was so ill, but after her husband died. That wasn’t easy for her.’

‘She must have felt so alone,’ said Phaedria, ‘I do know a little bit how she felt.’

‘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?