Old Sins (16 page)

‘It isn’t straight away,’ said Eliza, stretching herself with pleasure, ‘it’s the – let me see – the fourth time we’ve been to bed. And you’ve been coaxing me, haven’t you, for weeks and weeks.’

‘You noticed.’

‘Of course. Most of the time,’ she added truthfully, ‘I couldn’t notice anything else.’

He laughed. ‘You’re wonderful. Really, really wonderful. I’m a very lucky man. I mean it. And I adore you.’

‘Do you really?’

‘I really really do.’

They were to be married at Holy Trinity Brompton at Eliza’s own insistence; it nearly broke her mother’s heart not to have the wedding in the country, deeply grieved her father, and even Lady Powers was hard pressed to defend her, but Eliza was adamant; she had fallen in love with London and its society and nothing on earth, she said, was going to persuade her to drag her smart new friends down to the wilds of Wiltshire for a hick country wedding.

What was more she wanted a dress from Hartnell for her wedding and that was that; she wasn’t going to be married in a dress made by anybody less. Lady Powers told her first gently, then sharply that her father could hardly be expected to pay for such a dress, and Eliza had answered that she had no intention of her father paying for it, and that Julian was perfectly happy to do so.

‘I imagine your father will be very hurt,’ said Lady Powers. ‘I think you should talk to him about it.’

‘Oh, you do all fuss,’ cried Eliza irritably. ‘All right, I’ll tell him next weekend. I must go and get dressed now. Julian’s taking me to
South Pacific
tonight, we were just so lucky to get tickets.’

Sir Nigel
was
very hurt about the dress; and the location for the wedding; Eliza stormed upstairs after dinner, leaving Julian to salvage the situation as best he could.

‘I know you don’t like the idea of this London wedding, and I quite understand,’ he said, smiling at them gently over his brandy. ‘To be quite honest I’d rather be married in the country myself. But I’m afraid all this London business has gone to Eliza’s head, and I suppose we should humour her a little. After all it is her wedding day, and I very much hope she won’t be having another, so maybe we should put our own wishes aside. As for the dress, well I really would like to help in some way. I know how devilishly expensive everything is now,
and the wedding itself is going to cost such a lot and you’ve been so good to me all this year; let me buy her her dress. It would be a way of saying thank you for everything; most of all for Eliza.’

The Grahame Blacks were more than a little mollified by this, and accepted reluctantly but gracefully; but Mary, lying awake that night thinking about Julian’s words, tried to analyse precisely what it was about them that had made her feel uneasy. It was nearly dawn before she succeeded, and then she did not feel she could share the knowledge: Julian had been talking about Eliza exactly as if he were her father and not in the least as if he was a man in love.

There was another person deeply affected by the prospective marriage, and that was Letitia.

Letitia was losing more than a son (and gaining a daughter was little compensation); she was losing her best friend, her life’s companion, her housemate, her escort. The only thing she was not losing was her business partner, and the thought of that, as she contemplated Eliza’s invasion of her life, was curiously comforting. She did not exactly feel sorry for herself, that was not her style, but she did have a sense of loss, and what she could only describe to herself as nostalgia. The playhouse would be hers now, to live her own life in, and that would have its advantages, to be sure; but the fun, the excitement, the closeness she and Julian had shared for five dizzy years was clearly about to be very much over.

She viewed the marriage with some foreboding; she found it hard to believe that Julian was in love with Eliza, she had never known him to be in love with anyone, and that he should suddenly discover the emotion within the arms of a seventeen-year child, however appealing, seemed highly unlikely. When she taxed him with it, he had looked at her with dark, blank eyes and said, ‘Mother, you said yourself it was time I got married. Don’t you remember? And you were absolutely right. I’m simply doing what you tell me, as usual.’

‘But not, I hope,’ said Letitia, refusing to rise to this irritating piece of bait, ‘to the first person who accepts you? She is very very young, Julian, and not greatly experienced.’

‘She is the first person who has accepted me,’ he said lightly,
‘but she is also the first person I have asked. I like her youth and I like her lack of experience. I find them refreshing and charming.’

‘Well, if that’s all you find them, all well and good,’ said Letitia.

‘What else would I find them?’

‘Oh, untroublesome. Malleable. Grateful perhaps.’

‘What an extraordinary remark,’ he said.

Letitia let the subject drop.

She did not exactly dislike Eliza, indeed she grew, in the end, quite fond of her; she admired her beauty, appreciated her style, and found the way she was quite clearly setting out to be A Good Wife oddly touching.

Eliza, rather unexpectedly, admired Letitia greatly, indeed had something approaching a schoolgirl crush on her. She thought she was wonderful in every possible way, and told Julian that when she was old (Julian was careful not to relay this particular bit of the conversation to Letitia) she hoped she would be exactly like her. Nevertheless, she was greatly in awe of her, and in her more realistic moments recognized that as mothers-in-law went, hers was more of a challenge than most.

Letitia was sympathetic to this; she could see precisely how daunting she would have been to any bride, but particularly someone as young and unworldly as Eliza, but the more she tried not to daunt, the more she was aware of seeming patronizing and irritating. She was also concerned that Eliza seemed not to have the slightest idea how important Julian’s company was to him, and what a vast and consuming element it was in his life; he had been neglecting it rather over the past three months, but she knew that would simply mean that when the honeymoon was over – literally – he would be more absorbed and occupied with it than ever. He was clearly not going to spell that out to a tender and ardent bride, but somebody had to, in the bride’s interest; Letitia decided to take the bull, or rather the heifer, by the horns, and confront Eliza with the various unpalatable truths, as she saw them.

She invited Eliza to lunch at First Street, a few weeks after the engagement was announced, ostensibly to discuss wedding plans; dresses, bridesmaids, music and flowers occupied them
through the first course, but halfway through the compote she put down her spoon, picked up her glass and said, ‘Eliza, I wonder if you realize quite what you are marrying?’

Eliza, startled, put down her own spoon, looked nervously at Letitia and blushed. ‘I think I do,’ she said firmly. ‘I hope I do.’

‘Well, you see,’ said Letitia, equally firmly, ‘I’m afraid you don’t. You think you are about to become the wife of a rich man who will be giving some of his time and attention to his company, but most of it to you. I’m afraid it will be rather the other way round.’

Eliza’s chin went up; she was not easily frightened.

‘I don’t know quite what you mean,’ she said, ‘but of course I realize that Julian is a very busy man. That he has to work very hard.’

‘No,’ said Letitia, ‘he is not just a very busy man. He is an obsessed man. That company is everything – well, almost everything – to him. How much do you know about it, Eliza? About Morell’s? Tell me.’

She sounded and felt cross; anyone who could approach marriage to Julian without a very full grasp of his business seemed to her to be without a very full grasp of him; realizing that Julian had talked to Eliza even less about it than she had thought, she felt cross with him as well.

‘Quite a lot,’ said Eliza. ‘I know he’s built it up from nothing all by himself and that the cosmetic range is very successful and that he’s hoping to start selling it in New York soon.’

‘I see,’ said Letitia, not sure whether she was more irritated at hearing that Julian had built up the company all by himself, or that he was planning to go to New York, a piece of information he had not shared with her.

‘And do you know about any of the people who work for us?’

‘Well, I know there’s a wonderful chemist called Adam – Sarsted – is it?’

‘Yes,’ said Letitia. ‘Some of us are less impressed by his wonderfulness than others. Go on.’

‘And I met a clever woman called Mrs Johns. She frightened me a bit,’ she added, forgetting for a moment she was supposed to be presenting a cool grown-up front.

‘She frightens us all,’ said Letitia cheerfully, ‘not least your fiancé. Now then, Eliza, there’s a bit more about the company
that you should understand. First that it is just about the most important thing in the world to Julian. It is mistress, wife and children, and you must never forget it.’

‘What about mother?’ said Eliza bravely.

‘No, not mother. Mother is part of it’ (Good shot, Eliza, she thought).

‘Which part?’

‘A very important part. The part that pays the bills.’

‘So what exactly do you
do
there?’

‘I’m the financial director, Eliza. I run the financial side of it. I decide how much we should invest, how much we should pay people, what we can afford to buy, what we can afford to spend. In the very beginning, there was only Julian and me. We’ve built it up together.’

‘So it’s not Julian’s company? It’s yours as well.’

‘Well, it is largely his. I have a share in it of course, and I know how important my role is. But the ideas, the input, the – what shall we say – inspiration, oh dear, that sounds very pretentious, doesn’t it? – are his. The company certainly wouldn’t have happened without him. But it wouldn’t have kept going without me either.’ She spoke with a certain pride, looked at Eliza a trifle challengingly. ‘We started it,’ she said, ‘on what capital we could rake together, and an overdraft. We worked very hard, terribly long hours. It was all great fun, but it was very very demanding and at times extremely worrying. Did Julian tell you none of this?’

Eliza shook her head.

‘I’m surprised. He usually can’t stop talking about it. There was just the three of us, then; Julian, who sold all the products, just the patent medicines, no cosmetics in those days, to the chemists, driving all over the country in his car; Jim Macdougall working on formulation; and me managing the money and keeping us from bankruptcy. Just. Susan joined us after the first year or so. She is a remarkable young woman, and Julian is deeply dependent on her.’

‘What – what do you mean?’ said Eliza in a small alien voice.

‘Oh, nothing that need trouble you,’ said Letitia briskly. ‘I don’t mean he’s in love with her.’ She was silent for a moment, remembering the point at which she had feared that very thing. ‘But she is part of the company, a crucial part, and therefore a crucial part of his life.’

‘What does she do?’ asked Eliza.

‘Oh, she runs the company. From an administrative point of view. Keeps us all in order. Everything under control. Julian made her a director last year. You didn’t know that either?’

Eliza shook her head miserably.

‘Well,’ said Letitia comfortingly, ‘he’s obviously been much too busy discussing your future to talk about his past. But anyway, Susan and I work together a great deal, as you can imagine. The financial side of the company and the administration are very intertwined. Obviously. So you see, the company is a huge part of my life, as well as Julian’s. I just wanted you to understand that, before you became part of the family.’ There, she thought, I wonder what she will make of all that.

‘Do you think,’ said Eliza, a trifle tremulously, ‘that I could get involved with the company too? Work there, I mean?’

‘Oh, my darling child,’ said Letitia, unsure whether she was more appalled at the notion, or at what Julian’s reaction would be, ‘I shouldn’t think so. Julian obviously doesn’t want you to have anything to do with it. Otherwise he’d have suggested it by now.’

‘I suppose then,’ said Eliza, in a rather flat sad voice, ‘that’s why he hasn’t told me anything about it all. To keep me well out of it. He probably thinks I’m too stupid.’

‘Eliza, I can assure you that Julian doesn’t consider you in the least stupid,’ said Letitia firmly. ‘Quite the reverse. I don’t quite know why he hasn’t told you more about the company, and I think you should ask him. But you can see how important it was that I should explain. Because when things are back on an even keel, and you are settled into a normal life together, you will find that Julian devotes a great deal of his time and attention to the company – a great deal – and I don’t want you to think it’s because he doesn’t love you, or doesn’t want to be with you.’

‘No,’ said Eliza, sounding very subdued. ‘No, but of course I might have done. So thank you for telling me. I’ll talk to Julian about it all anyway. I think I should. That was a delicious lunch, Mrs Morell, thank you very much.’

‘It was a pleasure. You can call me Letitia,’ said Letitia graciously. ‘Come again. I enjoy your company.’

‘I will. Thank you.’

She watched Eliza walking rather slowly up the street, wondering just what size of hornet’s nest she had stirred up.

It was quite a big one. Eliza had a row with Julian about what she saw as a conspiracy to keep her from a proper involvement with his company; Julian had a row with Letitia about what he saw as a piece of unwarranted interference; Lady Powers telephoned Letitia and gave her a piece of her mind for sending Eliza away seriously upset; Eliza had a fight with Lady Powers for interfering in her affairs. Out of it all, only Eliza emerged in a thoroughly creditable light. Julian appeared arrogant and dismissive; Letitia scheming and self-important; and Lady Powers overbearing and rude.

The worst thing about it all, as Eliza said in the middle of her heated exchange with her godmother, was that they all appeared to regard her as a child, somebody unable to think, act and worst of all, stand up for herself.