Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (25 page)

‘No,’ she said quickly, too quickly she supposed, but she couldn’t let him think for a single moment that she was in love with him, ‘I’m not saying that. I’m terribly, terribly fond of you, I love being with you, but I’m not in love with you. I’m sorry.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, taking his hand, leaning forward to kiss him gently, ‘you look so very sad.’

‘I feel pretty sad,’ he said. ‘That was a fairly powerful rejection.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘Barty, it was. You should have heard yourself: “No, Charlie, I don’t love you. No, I probably never will love you. But I do like being with you. So will that do?”’

‘What about Meg?’

‘What about Meg?’

‘Don’t you still feel a great loyalty to her?’

‘Yes, I do. But it’s been a long time, I’ve moved on. And she wouldn’t mind, I know she wouldn’t, if I was going to be happy. Would Laurence mind?’

‘Mind?’ she said, laughing. ‘Charlie, he’d send a thunderbolt down. Two to be on the safe side, and kill you, no hesitation whatsoever.’

‘That would be kind of mean.’

‘He was kind of mean. He was very far from perfect. But what I felt for him and what he felt for me was perfect.’

‘Well,’ he said, and his voice was very sober, quite heavy, ‘maybe I should stop seeing you. Just stay out of your life altogether. It’d be better, I guess. For you and for me. We could manage the girls’ friendship without actually meeting, I think.’

There was a silence; Barty felt suddenly chilled. Looked at her life without Charlie, without the endless meetings over the girls’ arrangements, the laughing discussions about school, teachers, homework, ballet class, the other girls, the imminence of the dreaded adolescence, without the weekly dinners, the trips to the cinema and the skating rink with the girls, the easy chats about everything. It looked empty and very bleak; she felt almost afraid.

She took a deep breath. ‘I – don’t think I’d want that,’ she said, ‘not seeing you any more.’

‘Yes but—’

‘I know, I know. I’m asking you to take all the risks. Saying maybe one day, all that kind of thing. But I – well, I’m asking you, Charlie. If I honestly thought there was nothing in it for you, ever, I’d say. I’m quite – strong, you know. Quite honest, too.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said with a touch of a smile in his dark eyes, ‘I had observed both those qualities.’

‘Sorry. They’re not necessarily very attractive.’

‘Everything about you is attractive,’ he said, ‘I think. Everything. I think you’re beautiful, and clever, and I love the way you laugh, and your quite bad jokes—’

‘They’re not bad,’ she said indignantly.

‘They’re quite bad, that’s what I said. And the way you dress, and the way your hair is always untidy—’

‘It’s not!’

‘It is, but it suits you. And the food you cook and the games you play with the girls, and the way you’re so astonishingly hopeless at Scrabble, and the way you get drunk so easily, and the way you care about your work, and a hundred more, I love all those things.’

‘Oh,’ she said and felt touched, infinitely warmed by what he said, the intimacy, by his knowledge of her. ‘Oh Charlie—’

He kissed her suddenly, on the mouth; harder and with more passion than he ever had before. Something in her moved then; something she had supposed long-buried, not forgotten but certainly dead just as Laurence was dead, a flicker, a warmth, a leaping, a reaching out. It was sexual desire; and slight as it was, it felt important and strong.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘I think I would like us to go upstairs. If you would like that too.’

‘I would,’ he said. ‘I would like it very much indeed.’

He was wonderful; careful, patient, tender. He led her, waited for her, led her some more; talked to her gently and sweetly, listened to her, smiled at her, told her he loved her. She did not quite come; something held her back, cut her off, frightened her almost. But as he did, she relaxed and received him absolutely; and afterwards, as he held her, she first smiled and then laughed with sheer joy. And after that, each time, it got better.

He had not exactly asked her to marry him – at first. He had mentioned it, mentioned that he couldn’t help thinking about it, and thinking too how absurd a notion it was, how wonderfully, gloriously ridiculous. And she had said why, why absurd, why ridiculous, asked him if she had not become more real to him, less of an object. To which he had replied yes, she had, but even so, he had too little to offer even to consider it. She had grown almost irritable then, had said what mattered in a marriage were intangible things, tenderness, humour, acceptance, ‘And sex. Of course.’

Then, afraid of the conversation going further, growing out of control, she had suggested they went to bed. She did that quite often; having rediscovered sex, she was hungry for it, wanted it more than she would have believed. Her early fears of guilt, self-distaste, thunderbolts even, did not materialise. Sex with Charlie made her happy, relaxed, easier. If it did not quite scale the heights she could remember, it still carried her a long way, took her deeper and deeper into their relationship.

And then one night he did it; got very drunk, told her why he was very drunk – ‘I have to summon up my courage somehow’ – and then after a long pause while he fiddled with his cuffs, pushed back his hair, adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat, told her yet again that he loved her, said, after a long silence, that although there was no point in doing it, he still couldn’t stop thinking about marrying her. ‘One day, maybe. When I’m a millionaire, own half Manhattan.’

Barty looked at him, very steadily. ‘Do you really think that would make any difference to me?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, ‘probably not. But it would to me.’

A very long silence; then, ‘Maybe I should think about it too,’ she said.

A longer one. Finally, ‘Oh, Barty,’ he said, ‘if only, if only you would.’

‘He’s being very sweet,’ she said to Sebastian now. ‘Very patient and understanding. But I do have to give him an answer soon. And I don’t know what I want it to be.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘I’m really not sure,’ she said slowly. ‘Certainly not as I loved Laurence. But then – I love being with him, he’s gentle and funny and easy and all the things Laurence wasn’t. It’s quite – different, so I don’t feel too disloyal. And I’m much happier in a way with him. No, not happier. That
is
disloyal. But more comfortable. And certainly not lonely any more. And we get on so well, we like the same things, we think the same about the girls, how we bring them up, about an awful lot, really. But Sebastian, no, I don’t love him. Not as I understand love, anyway. And so maybe I shouldn’t marry him, maybe it’s wrong. Unfair to him.’

‘Let me meet him,’ he said, understanding everything she said. ‘Let me meet him and tell you what I think. I shall give you my full and frank opinion of him and quite possibly we will never speak again as a result of it. Mind you, it’s a heavy burden of responsibility. I hope the whole thing won’t hang on my judgement.’
^I

‘Of course it won’t. I’m a bit more sure of myself than that. It’s just that – well, no one I care about or whose opinion I value has met him, except Izzie. Who does love him. But then she loves most people.’

‘No one in particular, though?’

His voice was casual, but his eyes were watchful; Barty smiled at him and patted his hand.

‘No one in particular. I wish there was. She needs to be loved.’

‘We all do, don’t we?’ said Sebastian.

‘Yes,’ said Barty, ‘yes, I suppose we do.’

‘Keir,’ said Elspeth. He was staying with her for a week, it was half term.

‘Yes?’

He scarcely looked up, he was deep in an article in the paper about the uprising in Hungary and its brutal suppression by the Soviets. ‘I’ve half a mind to go out there,’ he said. ‘A lot of young people have, you know.’

‘Keir, please! I need to talk to you. I don’t want to have to compete with the newspapers.’

‘You were pretty bloody well engrossed in that rubbish about Grace Kelly marrying some ridiculous Ruritanian prince. As if I cared.’

‘Oh don’t be ridiculous,’ she said irritably. ‘You’re so vicious about everything. It’s like the royal family here, what harm have they done you?’

‘Same as they’ve done to all of us,’ he said, ‘lived at our expense in absurd style while perpetuating the worst of the class system in this country. You know what John Osborne said about them.’

‘No,’ said Elspeth rather wearily.

‘That they were the gold filling in the mouth of decay in this country. I think it would have been a good idea if she’d married Group Captain whatever his name is. Margaret, I mean. And gone to live in a semidetached with him as plain Mrs Group Captain. Step in the right direction.’

‘Yes, all right, Keir. If you say so.’

‘Now then, I want to go to the pictures. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’re always complaining I never want to go out. There’s this film called
The Blackboard Jungle
, it’s about violence in an American school. What do you think?’

She said nothing; he looked at her sharply, put down the paper.

‘What’s the matter?’

A long silence; then ‘I’m late,’ she said.

‘What for?’ He looked genuinely puzzled.

‘Keir! Don’t be dense.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are. I’m late.’ Her dark eyes were large, bright with fear. ‘My period’s late. Nearly two weeks. I – well, I went to see a doctor today. I might be pregnant, Keir, I’m really, really scared.’

CHAPTER 13

The door slammed: he was home. Cathy switched off the television quickly and ran over to the table, rifled through her books, pulling a couple out, opened one, leaned over it.

Her father came in, smiled rather wearily at her.

‘Hi, darling.’

‘Hi, Dad.’

He looked terribly tired; he often did these days. She knew he was worried about something, but she didn’t know what. He wouldn’t tell her.

‘Homework done?’

‘Almost,’ she said, ‘almost finished.’

‘Practice?’

‘Yup.’

‘You might have to give up your piano lessons,’ he said.

Cathy stared at him. ‘Why?’

‘Can’t afford them, poppet. They’re so expensive. Would you mind very much?’

Cathy wouldn’t have minded in the least, she hated practising, and she could play well enough now to do what she and Jenna called jam sessions. But she saw an opportunity here to milk things. Her blue eyes filled effortlessly with tears; she bit her lip, fumbled for her handkerchief.

‘No,’ she whispered, ‘of course not.’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said and his voice was quite different suddenly, ‘don’t make things worse.’

‘Sorry. Sorry, Daddy.’

‘It’s not bloody fair,’ he said, sitting down, pulling her on to his knee. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, shouldn’t have said that, rude word, but it’s not, is it? Why shouldn’t you have whatever you want? Why shouldn’t I, for that matter? When so many people do.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve tried so hard,’ he said, ‘tried to do my best for us both. Worked so hard.’

Cathy was silent; she didn’t actually think that was true. She had observed someone working hard, and that was Barty, starting early, working late, both at the office and then at home, even at the weekends at South Lodge. Much as Cathy loved her father, she could see he did nothing of that. He often came home, saying he had work to do and then just sat in front of the TV, drinking beer and eating pretzels, until it was time to get the supper and then he said he was too tired to do any more. He was always home when she got in from school, or came to meet her from the bus; of course she liked that, all the other girls envied her having such a handsome father who was free in the afternoon, and then when he said they could go to the movies, which he quite often did, that was incredible. But it didn’t add up to working hard.

‘You should marry Barty,’ she said slowly, anxious to offer him a solution, to cheer him up. ‘Then we could have everything, couldn’t we?’

‘Oh Cathy,’ he said, ‘believe me I’d like to. And yes, yes, I guess we could.’

‘So why don’t you ask her?’

‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘it isn’t quite as simple as that.’

She was disappointed. She and Jenna had talked a lot about how wonderful it would be, had agreed it was getting more likely, that their parents seemed terribly fond of one another.

‘I’ll get the supper,’ she said, sliding off his knee; he looked miserable suddenly. ‘You just sit there; can I get you a beer or something?’

‘Yes. If there are any.’

‘I’ll look. Spaghetti OK?’

‘Absolutely OK.’

She found him some beer and even a bottle of wine, which he drank most of with his spaghetti, but he was still out of sorts. After supper they sat and watched TV together, his arm round her on the sofa. She looked up at him; he was half asleep, half gazing into the distance, not concentrating on the TV at all.

‘Daddy, is something the matter?’ she said. ‘Really really the matter?’

‘You could say that,’ he said, his voice slurry as it often did get after supper, his eyes focussing on her with some difficulty. ‘You could say something was the matter. I’m running out of time, Cathy, that’s what it is. Running out real fast. I don’t know that I can hang on much longer. I really don’t.’

‘Shall I – shall I talk to Jenna about it?’ she said, and then was frightened by the speed with which he seemed to come back to life, to be sober, to look really scared.

‘No,’ he said, gripping her arm suddenly, gripping it really hard, his face sharp and angry, his eyes almost black. ‘No, you will not. About any of it, ever. Not to anybody, and especially not to Jenna. Do you understand that, Cathy?’

She said she did; and she stood up and went to bed very quickly and quietly. It was the only thing to do on such occasions.

‘Oh this is such fun.’ Barty smiled round her dining table. ‘All my favourite people.’

‘What about Charlie?’ said Jenna.

‘Charlie will be here later,’ said Barty quickly. ‘Just look at us all, Izzie, Sebastian, Kit, and now Geordie. It’s wonderful. A toast, Geordie, welcome to New York. And every possible success with the book. Not that you need much help from anyone. It’s already riding high. Scribners have a window full of it, Barnes and Noble too, and the requests I’ve had for interviews – endless. It’s all terribly exciting.’

‘It is. And it’s lovely to be here. Thank you. Here’s to Lyttons.’

‘I just wish you’d stay with us,’ said Barty. ‘Is it really so much less comfortable than the Algonquin?’

‘Much more. But the Algonquin is so very central. And I’m going to be keeping some odd hours. And of course it’s publishing heaven.’

‘Mike told me such a funny story about the Algonquin,’ said Izzie, ‘apparently, when impoverished English publishers and agents come here, they tell all the New York publishers they’re staying there, it being absolutely the place, only really they stay down the street at some really cheap place and just go up to the Algonquin to meet people for tea. Every now and again, they get caught because someone from Simon & Schuster or Doubleday calls the Algonquin to change an appointment and of course the hotel says they’ve never heard of them.’

‘I heard that too,’ said Geordie, smiling at her. ‘You must introduce me to these people you work for, Izzie, they sound great. Maybe they could come to my launch party, Barty.’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Izzie, ‘could they really? They’ll be so thrilled. I can’t wait to tell them. You’ll love them, Geordie. And maybe we can do some work for you—’

‘Maybe. You’ll have to ask Barty.’

‘I already did. She said Lyttons had quite a lot of stuff in place, but there could be the odd little thing, and it was up to you. They are just so talented—’

‘You’re beginning to sound like a New Yorker, Izzie,’ he said, smiling at her. She smiled back.

‘I take that as a huge compliment.’

‘Oh really? Well that’s nice. And you’re looking stunning. Isn’t she, Barty? So – well, so grown up.’

Izzie smiled at him again, flushed slightly, pleased to be flattered by him. ‘I should look grown up, Geordie. I’m twenty-six.’

‘Good Lord, are you? I always think of you as—’

‘Dear little Izzie. I know.’ She sighed. ‘Everyone does.’

‘Well you’re not any more,’ he said. ‘Not to me, anyway.’ There was a slightly odd silence.

‘Why didn’t you bring Adele?’ said Jenna suddenly.

‘Jenna,’ said Barty warningly.

‘But—’

‘She couldn’t come,’ said Geordie easily. ‘She’s very busy with her photography. Maybe next time.’

‘She’s doing a lot of work for
Vogue
, I heard,’ said Izzie.

‘Yes, quite a lot.’ Another silence.

‘How’s Noni?’ said Jenna. She was clearly yearning to be part of the grown-up conversation, thought Barty; well, she was growing up, fast, and she and Cathy spent as much time now drooling over Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and grieving over the newly deceased James Dean as they did over their dolls and their ponies.

And she was beginning to look grown up, too; she had developed a waist, her legs and arms were less gangly looking and, unmistakably on her flat chest, were two tiny budding breasts. She was obviously going to be beautiful; while Cathy’s synthetic prettiness had hardly changed, Jenna had acquired cheekbones, a fuller mouth, and the clear, freckled skin of childhood was changing to a pale translucency. The red-gold hair, the blue-green eyes, were not blighted by the pale lashes and brows usual in her colouring; Barty’s only visible legacy to her were very dark, very thick eyebrows. ‘Like Liz Taylor’s, you’re so lucky,’ Cathy would wail, while Jenna, who hated them, would tug at them mercilessly with her mother’s tweezers until the skin around them was red and sore-looking. Their twice-weekly dancing lessons at the Colony Club (attended by suitable boys from Buckley and St Bernard’s) now required up to an hour’s worth of preparation. ‘I reckon we have one, or maybe, if we’re lucky, two years left,’ Charlie had said to Barty. ‘After that – mayhem. We’ll have to lock them up.’ Barty hadn’t said anything, but she was hoping that the intense friendship would have eased a little by then; she planned to send Jenna to boarding school when she was thirteen, preferably to Dana Hall, which was very sporty and single-sex. She felt that Jenna and boys should be kept apart for as long as possible. She knew she would miss her horribly, but she wanted a more academic education for her than she was getting at the Chapin school where Jenna was now coasting through most of the lessons. Dana Hall was also extremely expensive; she doubted very much if Charlie, or rather Charlie’s mother-in-law, would be able to afford it. Unless . . .

Barty switched her thoughts very firmly away from that and returned them to her dinner table.

Elspeth faced her mother bravely. Venetia had not been as angry as she had expected, but she had been quite horribly upset; ‘I don’t know how you could have been so stupid,’ she kept saying, ‘in this day and age, surely—’

‘Mummy, I was careful. Honestly, I was. I went to see someone, right at the beginning of our relationship. But—’

‘All right, all right. And now what do you want to do about it? You say you want to keep the baby—’

‘I do, I do,’ said Elspeth miserably. ‘And I want to marry Keir. But he’s being so difficult—’

‘Oh he is, is he?’ said Venetia. ‘Well, we shall have to see what your father has to say about that. He can talk to him. If that’s what we decide is best.’

Elspeth didn’t like that ‘we’. It seemed to imply that the baby was her parents’ problem, rather than her own.

‘Are you quite sure – ’ Venetia hesitated ‘ – quite sure that having it is the best thing? I mean these days . . .’

‘Mummy! How can you even consider such a thing? This is a baby, mine and Keir’s, we couldn’t possibly just get rid of it. It’s a disgusting idea, it’s murder, I—’

‘It is indeed a baby, Elspeth. That’s the whole point. Babies need homes, set-ups, nannies, money. Above all they need parents. Two of them. And if Keir is being difficult . . .’

‘Oh, not difficult like that. He’s very – pleased about the baby.’

‘Oh really?’

Elspeth hesitated; then ‘Yes,’ she said firmly.

It wasn’t quite true; Keir’s first reaction had been ‘Christ!’ and then, ‘What on God’s earth are we going to do about it?’ She had been so upset she had screamed at him that she hated him and told him to get out of her flat and out of her life; two days later a letter had arrived from him, remorseful, loving, telling her it had just been a shock, that he would have been delighted and proud for them to have a baby together if they were ready for it, but surely she could see that they were not.

Elspeth had written back and said that they might not be ready to have a baby, but the baby was certainly ready to be had. ‘It’s ours and our responsibility. If you’re not prepared to face up to that fact, I’ll do it for both of us.’

He came down to London again the following weekend and said he had been thinking very hard about it; he loved her, he cared about her, and he thought they should get married. Elspeth stared at him, so patently astonished that he had laughed.

‘Am I really so much of a rotter?’

‘Yes. No. I thought you were, that’s all.’

‘Well, you were wrong.’

‘Oh Keir.’ She flung herself into his arms. ‘I’m so, so happy.’

‘But there’s just one thing – ’

‘Yes?’

He looked at her warily. ‘Quite a big thing.’

‘What?’

‘You have to come and live in Glasgow. On my salary. I’m not being kept by the Lyttons, in any way. My wife and the mother of my child is my responsibility and mine only. Is that quite clear?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Elspeth. She smiled at him as wholeheartedly as she could, hugged him, told him she loved him; but an icy fear was trickling into her which she did her best to ignore. There was no doubt he meant it. He was immensely proud and immensely stubborn. And it was of course a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Wives did follow their husbands – wherever they led them. But – she thought of living up in Glasgow, in some tiny house, which would be the best she could hope for, or even worse, with his parents, of giving up her flat, giving up her work, leaving her friends, her family . . . she felt quite sick. Or rather, even sicker than she did already.

‘That’s all right, is it?’ he said, watching her closely.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Perfectly all right. It’s just that – well, I have got a flat, in London, and quite a well-paid job—’

‘No Elspeth,’ he said, ‘oh no. You marry me, you live with me. And I don’t want you working. And don’t think you can talk me round. We’ll manage. The baby will have a perfectly adequate roof over its head. So will you. But it won’t be in bloody Chelsea and you won’t be swanning off to Lyttons every day, leaving our son with a nanny. I don’t approve of it, and that’s an end to it. Children should be with their mothers.’

‘It’s perfectly ridiculous,’ Venetia said, when Elspeth explained this. ‘Totally selfish. How can he expect you to go and live in some hovel in Glasgow? On a teacher’s salary? Your father will have to speak to him.’

‘Oh no!’ wailed Elspeth. ‘No, don’t let him, that’ll just make matters worse. He’s so proud, Mummy, surely you can see that. He can’t be asked to live off his wife.’

‘He should be grateful for the offer,’ said Venetia tartly. ‘Most young men in his situation would leap at it.’

‘I don’t think they would. And if he did, you wouldn’t admire him for it, would you?’

‘I don’t admire anything about him at this particular moment,’ said Venetia.