Old Sins (84 page)

‘Women will buy them, of course, but men will come in and buy them too; it will be the most beautiful, caring, exclusive flower shop in London. Made for people in love.’

Favourite and well-known customers would receive a spray of white lilies on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries from Circe; little girls would get posies of sweetheart roses and forget-me-nots.

It was a charming concept; it brought the front of the shop alive.

She began to think about sales staff: ‘I want them to be young – don’t look at me like that, Julian.’

She looked at advertising agencies, PR companies, talked to the press as well herself, began to plan a launch party that rivalled her own wedding in splendour and complexity. Things were proceeding fast; she was determined to achieve the impossible and open by the spring. And the more people told her she couldn’t, the more she knew she could.

She found the adjustment to being married to Julian surprisingly difficult. She had imagined, having lived with him for six months, that things would continue in much the same way; they didn’t. He changed, quite swiftly; he was still as tender, as loving, as ardent in their private lives; but now that their professional one was lived so closely together, under a spotlight, he became harsher, more demanding, less appreciative than she would ever have imagined. This spilled over; she found it hard to separate the man who had publicly criticized her, diminished her during the day from the one who told her he loved her, was proud of her, just a few hours later. She told him so; he laughed.

‘You mustn’t take my criticism personally, my darling. I always insist on excellence. That’s all. That’s why I love you.’

Letitia, who had observed the conflict of the two lives on a few occasions, took it upon herself to talk to Phaedria about it and asked her to supper at First Street one evening when Julian was away.

‘None of my business, Phaedria, but old women are notoriously nosy. It’s because they have no lives of their own. Is married life agreeing with you?’

Phaedria was unused to confiding in people; she had grown up her own confidante. ‘Oh, yes. It’s marvellous. Don’t I look as if it is?’

‘Not always. You haven’t married the easiest of men, of course.’

‘No, but I knew that.’

‘You did, indeed. I just thought – forgive me, darling – that the other day when he was so extremely ill mannered and
unappreciative of your work on the advertising campaign, you looked a little – what shall we say? – bleak.’

‘I felt bleak,’ said Phaedria, forcing a bright smile.

‘And then, no doubt, you get home and he expects you to act as if he was Don Juan and Casanova rolled into one.’

Phaedria sighed and looked at Letitia slightly warily. ‘Well, yes, he does a bit.’

‘I think you should point out to him very clearly that if he wants you to love him, he should behave lovably. At all times. So unnecessary, that sort of thing. Posturing. He’s always done it, of course.’ She sighed. ‘He’s very spoilt, Phaedria. Don’t forget that. And it isn’t really his fault.’

‘No, I can see that. But it doesn’t make life any easier.’

‘Of course not. I’m not suggesting you should join in, only that you should try and understand it. It makes him seem less harsh, in a way.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘The other thing, of course, is that the situation is a new one to him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he’s never had to share his working life with an equal partner before. Certainly not anyone so young and clever.’

‘Not even Camilla? She was creative. Very, as far as I can make out.’

She spoke more fiercely than she meant; Letitia looked at her thoughtfully. Camilla was obviously the raw nerve in the relationship. She had obviously heard gossip. Hopefully not fresh gossip, although it was not beyond the bounds of possibility. Extraordinary the hold that icy piece of American hype had over Julian; the way time and again he had gone back to her.

‘Oh, Camilla’s role was always overrated, in my opinion,’ she said carefully. ‘And yes, she was Julian’s mistress, but not on a formal basis. Or not for very long. And she was certainly never a threat, professionally.’

‘What about Roz?’

‘Different. Bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. His creation. Another achievement. But you have just come along and are there, stealing the limelight, invading his territory. He probably feels threatened.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Anyway, it’s at his invitation.’

‘I know, darling. But it doesn’t alter the fact. He has to work just a little extra hard at being Julian Morell.’

She looked at Phaedria and thought how much she liked her, how much she was coming to admire her. She smiled her dancing smile, so like her son’s. ‘I do promise you he loves you very much indeed. And is terribly proud of you.’

‘Yes, I think he does,’ said Phaedria, ‘but it only makes it a tiny bit easier. Anyway, I love him too and I’m sure we’ll work through it. Thank you, Letitia, next time he tells me in front of a dozen people that I am a crass, rank amateur, which was yesterday’s little label, I’ll try and tell myself he’s just feeling threatened and turn the other cheek. Now then, tell me what you think of Margaret Howell’s suits. Too severe for us, or not?’

On the way home that night Phaedria thought about what Letitia had said. It seemed a little unlikely to her that Julian really felt threatened by her presence; her own feeling was that he was irritated by it, and was regretting his original enthusiasm for her involvement. Well, it was too late. She was enjoying herself: enjoying the work, enjoying the drama, enjoying – and this was a little difficult to face, but she managed it – enjoying the power. Phaedria was a little disturbed by how much she was enjoying the power. She had no interest in her power as the wife of Julian Morell; she got no pleasure from being able to buy, order, act, spend, on his behalf. But to be able to do those things on her own, that was heady stuff. She loved the knowledge that with a word, a decision of her own, she could initiate things, mobilize people, set machinery in motion. She enjoyed persuading people to do things, making them see things her way, help her to turn her ideas into reality. She liked choosing her staff, picking through applications, looking for, recognizing the qualities she wanted. She especially liked putting them together, seeing them working with each other, on her projects, her ideas, for her. She even enjoyed financial power; she was initially nervous, but later deeply satisfied that she was able to control large sums of money, to put it to her own uses, to make it work for her.

What was more, she eyed the far greater, wider-reaching
power that Roz had and wanted more of her own. She envied Roz the silken authority that bought, sold, designed, that meant that people did what she said, and without question, or without a great deal of question, in most of the countries in the Western world, and quite a few in the Eastern. That seemed to Phaedria a more desirable commodity than anything else she could think of: it made her pulses race, she wanted it far more than nice clothes, fine houses, jewels, all the other gifts her marriage had brought her. And every time she exercised some new piece of power, pushed the parameters of her authority a little further, she felt increasingly elated; not, as she might have expected, strong, masculine, seriously important, but strangely and confidently female.

There was another facet of her life with Julian that was troubling her, and which Letitia had touched upon: it was that part of it that was lived in the bedroom.

Not only had Phaedria never really experienced sex before she met Julian, she had positively avoided it, not only had no lovers, but discouraged them. Initially she had found sex interesting, and pleasurable; having never experienced it before, and being deeply in love with a man of considerable sexual talents, she was a perfect bride: eager to learn and to please, appreciative, ardent. Now, almost a year into their relationship, she was finding it much harder to be responsive. She told herself that it was because, as Letitia had suggested, he was so often less than kind and loving to her during the day; that she was frequently very tired; that he was extremely demanding. But she was beginning to think it was none of those things: and that she simply wasn’t very sexually motivated.

Looking back over her early life, at the fact that she had been twenty-four years old before she had gone to bed with anyone, and more significantly, had hardly ever wanted to, rarely felt any strong sexual urges, it seemed to her that she must have a considerable shortfall in that direction. Because she had still no close women friends, no confidantes, there was no one she could talk to, even on a lighthearted level, about it; she missed out on the easy, jokey, dirty talk, the female equivalent of barrack-room humour that tends to take place when several women gather together, particularly over a bottle or two of
wine. She had never heard any other woman complain (however lightheartedly) about her husband’s or her lover’s demands, never been able to laugh about sex, to confess to not wanting it at times, to faking orgasm or even desire, in order to please, or to reassure, and she was beginning to form the miserable impression that everybody else was perpetually in the grips of immense sexual hunger and that there must be something extremely wrong with her that much of the time she felt rather well satisfied, if not over fed, by the whole thing.

She didn’t want to talk to Julian about it, indeed felt it was out of the question that she should; and so she went on, increasingly anxious, decreasingly ardent, struggling to feel, and if not to feel, to pretend, to fake. Fortunately, as far as she could see, he had absolutely no idea.

Phaedria Morell and David Sassoon (a great many people were saying) were an interesting team.

And as with so much of what a great many people said, it was quite true.

David Sassoon was now in his mid forties; his rough edges smoothed, his charm honeyed, his sexuality softened. The slightly truculent self-confidence that had intrigued and overcome Eliza Thetford had been replaced by something much more relaxed and conventionally pleasing; but his warm dark eyes could still flick into the most startlingly private places and sensations, and the tang of East End London in his light amused voice took the edge off his smoothest, most urbane remarks and made them original and oddly intimate. He was still slender, elegant, stylishly dressed; his dark curly hair just tipped with grey, the lines on his face light and good-humoured.

Phaedria loved working with him, he inspired her, made her think, forced her into self-criticism. They worked quite differently, although both with much flair and sense of fashion: she with her head, he with his heart, she with logic, he with instinct, but time and again they reached the same conclusion, the same place, the same solution. As the year went by, and their joint vision of Circe began to become reality, they grew closer, drawn as are all people who work together by the same pressures, anxieties, pleasures and triumphs; they shared a
shorthand of language, often scarcely needing to finish a sentence to one another, developed their own private jokes, and could read one another with absolute ease. They each could tell at a glance when the other was happy, cross, tired, tense, knew when to talk and when to be silent, and were supportive, generous and completely interdependent.

These were just some of things about them that people were saying; and in the fullness of time Julian Morell came to hear them.

‘Phaedria, I had no idea you were going to work with David on everything to do with the store. I had imagined he would only be providing the initial concepts.’

‘Well, Julian, I don’t surely have to tell you everything I do. You’re the first to give me the bum’s rush if you think I’m taking up too much of your time. I think it’s essential for David to see the whole thing through, I don’t have the confidence to do it on my own.’

‘Confidence is the last thing you appear to be lacking, if I may say so. And I don’t see why one of the more junior designers couldn’t take over at this stage.’

‘I’m sorry, Julian, but I don’t agree. This is so important.’

‘I see. I understand you want to bring the opening date forward to March. I’m sure it’s not possible.’

‘It is, if we push everyone. Pay workmen overtime. I know it is.’

‘I’m very surprised. I’ll have a closer look at the schedules.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘Phaedria, of course I trust you. But as I keep having to remind you, you are a novice at this sort of thing, you have no idea of the complexities of what you’re doing. And anyway, I would have liked to have known. Keep me just a little more informed in future, would you?’

‘It isn’t easy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You never want to talk about my part of the business at home. I can never get near you in the office. How am I supposed to do it?’

He looked at her. ‘Perhaps we had better instigate a formal meeting, once a week. We would have to involve Roz as well.’

‘Why?’

He sighed. ‘I would have thought you could see that, Phaedria. Because she is, after all, the president of the stores division. Does she know about the changed dates? Are you keeping her informed about what you’re doing?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘That’s a highly unprofessional answer.’

‘Well, she’s not exactly over-available to me either.’

‘Phaedria, don’t be such a child.’

‘I was under the impression that was precisely how you regarded me. Anyway, yes all right. Let’s start the meetings.’

She tried to tell herself he was merely feeling threatened.

Julian called C. J. up to his office. ‘C. J., I think several of the hotels need a new look.’

‘You do?’ C. J. was astonished.

‘Yes, I do. Particularly in Nice, and possibly Washington. And I’d like Sassoon to work on them with you. Nobody else could handle it. Go and take a good look at them, and take him with you. Let me have your ideas in a couple of weeks.’

‘OK. He’s pretty busy at the moment though, on the new store.’

‘Tell him I said this was more important.’

C. J. went back to his office thoughtfully. Julian was normally the last person to favour change. Now what was going on? Oh, well, it would be good to get away from Roz for ten days. He asked his secretary to get David Sassoon on the line.