Old Sins (97 page)

She had thought at first that Phaedria had meant she hadn’t told Julian she loved him, but later when she had tried to give her a brandy, a sleeping pill, anything to calm her, she had said no, no, the least, the very least she could do was take care of her baby, of Julian’s baby, and Letitia had looked at her shocked and still with pity and wept with her for a long time.

And then there was Roz. Roz had reacted strangely: angrily, fiercely, when she was first told the news that Julian was in intensive care and not expected to live. C. J. had broken it to her, and then phoned Letitia in despair, saying Roz was raging, screaming, blaming Phaedria, saying it would never have happened had she not married Julian, saying she should be there with him, not Phaedria, and then, when Phaedria had said of course she should come, should see him, should say goodbye to him, had said, icy cold, ‘I do not intend to share him with her now.’

She had stood throughout the funeral stony-faced; she had not wept at all, until the moment when she tossed a small bunch of white roses on to the coffin as it went into the ground. Then she turned swiftly and ran, sobbing as she went, into the trees at the back of the graveyard, and would not come out, would not speak to anyone until the last car had left, insisting that everyone, her mother, her husband, her grandmother should go and leave her alone, and then she walked, slowly, heavily, an almost ghostly figure towards her own car and drove very fast away.

The funeral had been in Sussex, in the small church where Julian and Phaedria had been married; there had been hundreds of people there: from the village, from London, from
all over the world they had come, his staff, his colleagues, his rivals, his friends. And of course his family.

Phaedria had kept the service very simple; the only dramatic gesture she made was when she placed some keys in the grave, on top of the coffin, nestling in her own flowers, white lilies, with a card that said simply ‘From Phaedria, with my special love.’

‘The keys of the Bugatti,’ she explained to Letitia with a half smile at the house later. ‘It was a very special present to me and I wanted to give it back to him. No one will ever drive it now.’

She had asked Letitia not to say anything about the baby: ‘I can’t bear to talk about it yet. I can’t bear to be happy about anything. Can you understand that?’

‘I can,’ said Letitia, ‘of course I can. I won’t tell anybody at all. You must do it when you are ready. It is your baby and your secret.’ She looked at Phaedria and smiled gently. ‘I am a very good keeper of secrets, Phaedria. As one day you will learn.’

She herself had wept at the funeral; not at the graveside, but in the church. She had stood very erect, her face composed behind her black veil, but when the congregation was asked to sing the Twenty-Third Psalm, on the words ‘He makes me down to lie’ she had suddenly sunk to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Phaedria, who was on one side of her, and C. J. on the other, had knelt beside her, their arms round her, but she had gently pushed them away, and stayed there, very still, until the psalm was over, and then stood up again, quite calm but with the tears still wet on her face, remembering with a dreadful vividness the small boy who had pinned his party invitations on his wall and ridden his pony with style and grace and the young man who had taken her to live with him in the little house in First Street and taken her about London with him as if she was a pretty young girl.

Afterwards at the house she talked to Susan, who was looking dreadful, white and drawn. ‘I feel so bad, Letitita, I loved him so much, and he never knew.’

‘Oh, much better he didn’t,’ said Letitia briskly, with a touch of a smile. ‘He would only have tried to seduce you again if he had. You were much more value to him as a friend, and to Phaedria too.’

‘I’m afraid I was no value to her at all,’ said Susan, looking at
Phaedria who was standing and struggling to talk to a large crowd of people. ‘I was so much on Roz’s side, and of course I still am, somebody has to be, but I think I was wrong about her, she seems genuinely wretched, and I feel bad about that too.’

‘Oh, but she didn’t know,’ said Letitia. ‘She always said how nice you were. Although you frightened her. As you do all of us,’ she added with another half smile. ‘Susan, I think I will go upstairs now and lie down, I’m feeling very tired. Come up and see me later.’

Susan watched her walk out of the room, slowly, very erect, and thought she had never seen courage so simply displayed.

Eliza was very upset too; white and shaken, leaning on Peveril’s arm, very quiet, only speaking when someone asked her a question. David Sassoon, standing apart from the crowd, looking out for Roz’s car, wondering where she had gone and what he could do to help, looked at Eliza thoughtfully. She had obviously felt a great deal for the old bastard, probably without realizing it, for all her protestations of dislike and bitterness; he wondered whether Julian had ever realized it, and how he had really felt about her.

Roz had never returned to Marriotts that day; she had driven back to London and locked herself in her bedroom in the house at Cheyne Walk, only to emerge the following morning, dry-eyed, perfectly dressed, and thrown a tantrum because her driver was not available to take her to the office, being rather fully occupied ferrying the funeral guests to the airport. From then she had acted perfectly normally; someone, she said, had to keep the company going, and it looked as if it was going to be her. If anyone had proffered sympathy she had given them a terse nod, otherwise she had not mentioned her father’s death at all.

Until the reading of the will. That had taken place two weeks after the funeral; it drew the family together in a white heat of emotion and tension, and then tossed them apart again as if they were so many rag dolls.

Remembering the events of that day: of Camilla, arrived so bravely to confront them, summoned by Julian from wherever he might now be, of Roz, so powerfully, fearsomely angry and hurt, of Phaedria, so freshly wounded, so suddenly frail, her quiet secret suddenly, harshly public, half comfort, half added
burden fragmented into noise and rage, Letitia wondered with a mixture of horror and fascination at the cruelty of her son. In a way she was almost glad; it eased her grief, gave her something else to focus on, and besides being angry with him, being ashamed of him was oddly healing.

And so she lay pushing her sorrow away; refused to cry; worried instead about Roz and what was to happen to her now, without her father, the only real love of her life, the reason for everything she did; and about Phaedria and how she was going to cope with the new, shocking piece of treachery that was Miles, and wondering, as they all were, who and where Miles Wilburn was, and what he could possibly mean to Julian that he should inflict such pain and trauma on his family.

A few days later she felt a little better; she invited Susan to supper, weary of her own thoughts, anxious to share them and to discuss the situation with her.

‘If Julian were to walk in now,’ she said to her, ‘I would be so angry with him I don’t quite know what I might do.’

‘I wish he would,’ said Susan, smiling at her, encouraged by her return to her old spiritedness, ‘then we could grill him about Miles Wilburn and make him tell us who he is. Oh God, Letitia, trust Julian to manipulate people even when he’s dead. How could he do it? To us all, but to Roz and Phaedria in particular. When he was supposed to love them so much and find their feud so distressing.’

‘Well, he did little to ease it,’ said Letitia briskly. ‘Poor things. I really don’t know which of them I feel more sorry for.’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Susan. ‘Roz of course. Without a doubt. Phaedria never expected to get the company. Roz has spent her entire life waiting, and hoping for it. Now she has to battle it out not only with the woman she hates most in the world, but with some unknown man who her father obviously had a lot of time for. It’s terribly hard.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Letitia. ‘But it must be very hurtful for Phaedria too. She was his wife, she could have been supposed to know everything about him. This is a very public slap in the face for her. Good God, Susan, whatever could have possessed him to do it?’

‘Whatever it was that possessed him to do most things,’ said
Susan. ‘Oh, Letitia, don’t look like that. I know what you’re thinking, that it was your fault. It wasn’t, Letitia, it really wasn’t. Please stop blaming yourself about it.’

Letitia sighed. ‘I can’t help it, Susan. I feel to blame.’

‘Well, you’re very silly. Very very silly. And I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this.’

‘It’s going to be extremely exciting, it must be said,’ said Letitia. ‘Julian has certainly managed to make the last act of his life a very high drama. Poor Henry Winterbourne will never be the same again. I really found it very difficult not to laugh, when he was trying to look as if what was going on was perfectly normal legal procedure. But anyway, not only does Miles have to be found, but either Roz or Phaedria has to win him over. I hope he’s a strong character. For all our sakes.’

‘So do I. Now tell me, Letitia, in your capacity as family sage, who do you think might win that battle? If it ever gets fought?’

‘In my position as family sage,’ said Letitia very slowly, with an odd rather mysterious little smile, ‘I think I’d put my money on Phaedria.’

London, 1985

PHAEDRIA MORELL WAS
not behaving quite as a widow should. Well, not a grieving widow, at any rate, as Henry Winterbourne, amused and slightly shocked, remarked to his wife Caroline the day after the will had been read.

He – all of them – had expected a long period of mourning, of grief, a tacit withdrawal from the battleground that Julian had so unequivocally created. Especially in the light of her pregnancy – which she had confirmed to Henry with a cool, even amused look as he inquired after her health: ‘I am indeed, as some of you, I imagine, must have guessed, going to have a baby.’

Nobody had thought they would see very much of her at all for weeks – had assumed she would stay at home, safe from
conflict, from attention, from all the attendant scandal and surmise that the will would surely create – nurturing herself and her child, and coming to terms with her loss.

But at ten o’clock the next morning, there she was in Henry’s office, a little pale to be sure, but beautifully dressed in a stinging pink wool crepe dress, her hair caught back with the seed pearl and coral combs Julian had had made for her as a souvenir of their honeymoon, and a pair of very high-heeled, pink suede shoes that Henry could only categorize to himself as flighty.

She had her briefcase with her, and she had sat down in the big chair opposite Henry’s desk, looked at him with an expression that was cheerful and determined in equal measures, and told him that there was a great deal of talking to be got through and work to be done.

‘I want to find this person, Henry, this Miles Wilburn, and I want to find him quickly. The situation until we do will clearly be intolerable. In fact I would go so far as to say,’ she added, with the hint of a smile and of conspiracy in her eyes, ‘I am anxious to find him before – well, shall we say before anyone else does.’

He returned her look steadily. ‘I do understand exactly what you are saying, Phaedria. Unfortunately, much as I would like to help you, I don’t think I can enter into any kind of an exclusive search on your behalf. I am the Morell family’s solicitor and have been for many years. It would be extremely difficult, unethical even, for me to report solely to you.’

‘Oh, of course,’ said Phaedria, ‘I understand that, Henry; I merely thought that if you could begin to instigate some searches, and report to us all, naturally, on those, you might be able to suggest someone who could work with me a little later on. I know how busy you are, and I wouldn’t dream of making too many demands on your time. Of course confidentiality is essential; we can not, simply cannot, have this thing made public. And it is a pressing matter, as you must agree; there is a large and complex company to run, and trying to do so will be virtually impossible while Roz and I have these absolutely equal shares in it. We don’t always see completely eye to eye, as you may have heard.’

‘Well, yes, I had heard some reports to that effect,’ said
Henry, smiling his charmingly benign smile at her, ‘and I can see there would be considerable difficulties. But – well, forgive me, Phaedria, for being so frank – are you actually planning to become involved in the company and its day to day administration straight away?’

‘I am,’ she said, coolly, opening her briefcase. ‘Absolutely straight away. I have a meeting with Freddy Branksome and Richard Brookes this afternoon. There is clearly a great deal I need to learn and know, and the sooner I begin the better. Now I can see all the thoughts racing through your head, Henry, and let me put them into nice neat order for you. First of all, I have no intention of sitting in the house in Regent’s Park in widow’s weeds and grieving over Julian’s death for weeks, months on end. He was the most remarkable man, which was probably the main reason I loved and married him, and I intend to show my appreciation and my respect for that by keeping the company running as successfully and dynamically as it did when he was alive. Of course I won’t succeed altogether, but I am going to have a very good try. That also of course pre-empts any notion anyone might have had that I was going to spend the next six months or so knitting layettes and kitting out a nursery. This baby is going to be part of the Morell empire from day one, and if that means I have to give birth in the boardroom, then I will. I also – and this is in the strictest confidence, Henry, and you can forget I said it, if it makes you uncomfortable – I also intend to get a proper control over the company; it’s the only way I’m going to be able to work. Which means, of course, finding Mr Wilburn and enlisting his support. Quickly. Which is where you came in. Does that make my position clearer? I hope so, it’s important.’

‘It does,’ said Henry, ‘and I am filled with admiration for you. Although not envy.’