Old Sins (119 page)

‘Phaedria, do you feel nothing for me at all?’ said Michael, his dark brown eyes looking at her gloomily over the baby’s head.

‘You know what I feel for you,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘And I don’t know how I would ever have got through last night without you. But I just can’t let myself think about it, and neither should you. Besides I’m not at all convinced you don’t still love Roz. There are some pretty strong emotions running between you and her, if you ask me.’

‘Well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘you may be right. I don’t think so, but you may be. I tell you one thing, if she’s set a private detective on me, we don’t stand much of a chance. I mean, who is going to believe I spent an entire night in your bedroom simply holding your hand? It’s against nature. I can hardly believe it myself. Here, I think your daughter is looking for something that I can’t provide.’

Phaedria looked at the small head rooting hopefully against Michael’s chest and laughed, unbuttoning her shirt, taking the baby; they both looked at her tenderly as she started sucking greedily, her little fists clenching and unclenching with pleasure.

‘And there’s another thing,’ he said gloomily. ‘You will keep flashing those amazing tits at me, and then letting her have all the fun. It just isn’t fair.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘and thank you for everything. Maybe – well, let’s not talk about it.’

‘All right, we won’t. Not yet. Anyway, you do look much better.’

‘I feel better,’ she said, almost surprised. ‘Now the worst of the shock is over. Or maybe it’s just numbness. Somehow a lot of the guilt has gone.’

‘It has?’

‘Yes. Discovering that Julian was – well, more devious than I’d ever imagined.’

‘What did I tell you?’ he said, a look of mild triumph on his face. ‘He didn’t deserve you. He didn’t deserve any of you. Sorry,’ he added hastily at a warning flash in her eyes.

‘Maybe not. But maybe we all contributed. That’s what we don’t know. I can only think this life here – there, God knows where else it went on – was some kind of desperate escape.’

‘My darling, you’re too loyal by half. He was a lunatic. He had it made from birth. There was nothing to escape from.’

‘Michael, you don’t know that. You just don’t know. Please don’t make these judgements.’

‘OK, OK,’ he said and there was genuine anger now in his face. ‘I’ll shut up. I know when I’m beaten. But if and when we ever know the truth behind it all, and I’m right, you won’t be able to hear yourself think for me yelling out “I told you so”.’

She smiled at him, put out her hand. ‘All right. And then I’ll listen. Meanwhile, what I do feel, and what I suppose is making me feel better, is that this has been going on so long, it can’t possibly have been all my fault. Or even all Roz’s.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll tell you the other thing that really made me feel less awful,’ she said suddenly.

‘Me?’

‘You, yes, and in particular you asking me if something had happened to Julia. I suddenly realized nothing mattered terribly compared to her.’

‘Well, I’m glad I contributed something.’

‘You contributed a lot.’ She looked at him and sighed, suddenly very weary, very sad. ‘Well, I certainly shan’t forget yesterday. First the photo of Hugo, from Father Kennedy, then Miles turning up in London.’

‘I wonder how Roz is,’ Michael said suddenly. ‘This can’t have been exactly good for her either. Did you speak to her?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you didn’t.’

‘You’re right.’

‘She will be beside herself,’ he said, ‘she adored her father.’

‘I know she did. Maybe I should call her.’

‘Well, it would be a pretty big olive branch. Just about the whole tree. But it would be nice.’

‘I’ll call her in an hour or so. She’s probably asleep.’

Roz wasn’t asleep. She felt as if she would never sleep again. She was possessed of a feverish, almost hysterical restlessness;
every time she had felt her eyes closing she had seen Miles looking at her over her father’s photograph and her mind snapped into frenzied activity again.

She wasn’t quite sure what she felt: pain, confusion, disbelief, outrage. She felt as if everything that her life had been based on had been shot at, and was steadily and relentlessly crumbling away underneath her. She had made Miles go over his story about Hugo Dashwood and the part he had played in his life a dozen times; there were still no clues as to why her father should have done such a thing, and how he could have kept it from them over all these years. His mother, his child, his wives, his mistresses – all of them had known him so little, that he could perpetrate this deceit upon them; it was monstrous, obscene.

She shrank from having to tell Letitia: maybe she wouldn’t have to. Perhaps they could keep it from her. No, that was. impossible. She would have to be told that her son had been a devious, unscrupulous monster, and it was going to fall to her, Roz, to tell her. There was no one else in the family who could take that responsibility, was close enough to her, cared for her enough. Except – Roz suddenly thought of Susan. Susan and Letitia had always been very close. And Susan was so wise and calm. She might be able to handle it. But then the thought of having to tell even Susan about her father and his other life hurt her so much she shut that escape route off as well. Her mother would also have to be told. Eliza would be less deeply hurt, but it would still be damaging, humiliating. Thank God they had managed to keep the whole thing more or less out of the press. What a field day they would have with this. And how horribly that would add to the hurt of everyone who had loved and trusted Julian. God, thought Roz, sitting up in bed for what seemed like the thousandth time that night, why, how could he have done it? And how many other people had known him as Hugo Dashwood, surely it wasn’t just Miles and his family, there must have been others, people everywhere, who had known her father, and yet had no idea at all who he really was, who his real family were, his true home, his proper self. How extraordinary that Phaedria should have made the discovery on the same day, almost at the same time. Henry had phoned her to tell her about Miles’ arrival in England and said she had been
almost hysterical and slammed the phone down. It was only when he had phoned her the second time, to tell her about Hugo’s identity, that she told him she had known, that had been the reason for her earlier grief. For the briefest moment Roz felt a flicker of sympathy for Phaedria; she suppressed it fiercely. Of them all she deserved the least sympathy over this. She had only known Julian Morell for less than three years; she did not have a long, happy, private piece of history with him, that she was now being forced to surrender, to have to realize there had been another life, possibly, probably, even other loves, that she had no place in, no part of.

‘What was he like?’ she kept saying endlessly to Miles. ‘What sort of person was he, did you like him, what did he do, how did he talk, what did he say to you?’

And Miles, anxious not to make her pain worse, to reassure her, began to rewrite history too; Hugo Dashwood had been very kind, very generous to them all: to his dad, he had helped his dad with his business a lot, his mother always said, and he had been very good to his mother, he had visited her when she was dying, and of course to him and his grandmother. His grandmother had really really liked him, depended on him, looked to him for everything, and he had been wonderfully good to her; she had talked to him much more in the last few years than he, Miles, had. Roz should talk to her.

And had he never even hinted of a family in England? Well yes, he had, but it had not been this family, of course; he had told them (very little, very very little) about a wife called Alice, and two little boys, Miles thought, or maybe it was three. (And oh, God, thought Roz, was that family somewhere too, was that a real family or a second fantasy, were they living somewhere, wondering what had become of their father, waiting for him to come home? The nightmare grew and grew as she thought about it, lived through it.)

‘Honestly,’ Miles said to Roz, looking at her concernedly, his dark blue eyes full of sympathy, ‘I never did get to know him. He was my dad’s friend, really. My dad’s and my mom’s. More my dad’s. Well, that’s what my mom said. She never seemed specially to like him. He made her a little nervous. Jumpy, you know? As far as I can remember, anyway. You have to remember I was only thirteen when my mom died. It’s a long time ago.’

‘Of course,’ said Roz. Oh, God, it’s all so totally baffling. Why did he ever have to do such a thing? What did he gain? I just don’t understand it.’

Miles looked at her. ‘Me neither,’ he said and then, anxious, eager to help, ‘would you like me to call my grandmother? Only I warn you,’ he added, ‘she doesn’t make a lot of sense these days. I don’t know what good it would do.’

‘No,’ said Roz, ‘no, I don’t either. It would probably only upset her. I’ll wait till C. J.’s here. He may have some idea what to do.’

She didn’t really have a great deal of faith in C. J. But he was family and he was better than nothing. She longed passionately for Michael. He would know what to do, how to handle it. Where was the bastard, and why did it have to be now, of all times, she had lost him?

And then suddenly, in the middle of her raging, she was assaulted by a thought so hideous, so malevolent that she experienced it as physical pain, a sick, awful pain, violent and sudden, like the crick of a neck, a crack of an elbow on a hard surface. She crushed it, raced away from it, wrenched her mind towards other things, other people; but it lay, coiled up in her mind like some obscene monster, and occasionally, when she was least prepared for it, it would shift, stir, and threaten her again and again.

C. J. looked down at the grey depression beneath him that was Heathrow in November and wondered why on earth he had agreed to come back. Life had been just beginning to improve, to brighten, to simplify even; he was happy with Camilla, she made him feel appreciated, significant, calm, and those were balm to his almost mortally wounded soul. They had much in common; they were suited intellectually, emotionally and, much to C. J.’s surprise and pleasure, sexually. They had the same background, had been reared to the same upper-class American standards, attended identical schools, talked the same language in the same accent, understood the same jokes, shared the same values. They and their families, they discovered, had generations-back mutual friends; had they been the same age they would have attended the same parties, gone to the same places on vacation;
probably met, certainly have been attracted to one another, possibly even married.

They had also both been through similar personal crises: emotional involvement with equally unsatisfactory partners (hardly surprising really, as C. J. remarked one night as they ate supper after a concert, when you considered those people had been father and daughter). They found their situation amusing, charming even, a wry twist to each of their tales, and that of the Morell family; the pain they had both suffered swiftly eased and even cured by this new pleasure. Well, the pleasure was, for the time being, ended. C. J. sat waiting obediently for the captain to tell them they could leave the plane, and felt resentful.

Camilla had been extremely patient and understanding about the whole thing, she dispatched him (after some particularly earnest sex: she was practising a series of new positions, suggested by her sex therapist and based on some Lesbian erotica she had been given to read) and assured him that her analyst had managed to cure her almost completely of possessiveness, through showing her her own value, and by teaching her to trust her lovers and the value they put on her (C. J. was a little worried by the plural here). He also felt rather sobered by the reflection that he seemed to be, for the time being, the only male in the Morell family at the moment.

He only had hand luggage; he went straight through customs and out into the arrivals area: to his surprise Roz was waiting for him.

‘Roz! I didn’t think you’d be here.’

He hadn’t expected her to look quite so bad; she was ashen, hollow-eyed, she had no make-up on, she had scarcely brushed her hair. He had never seen her looking anything other than svelte, even in their most intimate moments; it was a shock.

‘Hallo, C. J.,’ she said, and her voice was listless, subdued. ‘Thank you for coming home. I’ve got the car outside. I came because I need to talk to you so badly, and I just couldn’t wait any longer.’

‘OK, let’s go.’

C. J. looked at her, saw her lips quiver slightly and felt remorseful; he put out his hand and touched her arm briefly.
‘I’m very very sorry about it all, Roz,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Yes, well, just for now listen,’ said Roz, and he could hear her fight back the tears, ‘I simply don’t know what to do. The first thing is that someone has to tell Letitia, and quickly. Who should it be? Me? You?’

‘I’ll talk to her if you like,’ said C. J., shrinking from the task. ‘I’d rather not but I will.’

‘Well, maybe if you could. It would be a great help.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and see her. But you’ll have to tell me some more first. Otherwise I shan’t be a very satisfactory news bearer.’

‘Yes, of course. Well, I don’t know that much, of course. It appears that this man, Hugo Dashwood, that is, my father, was a good friend to Miles’ parents. He did business with Miles’ father, visited his mother when she was dying and then when Miles was older, sent him to college.’

‘You mean paid for him to go?’

‘Yes.’

‘How extraordinary.’

‘The whole thing is extraordinary. I simply cannot imagine why my father should have done such a thing. I mean maintained this double life. I mean, what would have been the point? It wasn’t as if he desperately needed to do it, he always did exactly as he liked anyway. He didn’t have a clinging little suburban wife somewhere, or business problems that he needed to get away from. I just don’t understand it.’

‘What did Miles say he was like?’

‘Reading between the lines, he didn’t like him much. He said his mother didn’t either. But he does keep saying how kind and generous he was. He says his mother told him that my father and his father did business together. But Miles’ father was obviously quite poor. He was a salesman. What business could my father have had with him?’