Sin (2 page)

This particular method of presentation reassured my female colleagues. The men I met at work soon found that their advances towards me elicited a response of such vague elusiveness that—initially attracted by the mysterious quality surrounding me— they eventually retreated. Baffled, but with their pride still in place.

Though my colleagues were not aware of it, and indeed the idea was only half-formed, I considered the possibility of trying to build a small book publishing division within my father's magazine empire. I had a lot to learn.

In London, I lived during the week in an elegant flat in a cul-de-sac behind Harrods. It was discreet. Though clearly implying that I did not live on my salary alone, it avoided any overt statement of my financial position. From this base I pursued a social life that, by careful manipulation, ran parallel to that of Elizabeth. I believed myself to be in control.

Elizabeth was striking. Not beautiful. The promise of those early childhood years of golden hair and fine features had faded into a pale attractiveness, that she seemed unwilling to redeem in any way. It was her height, inherited from her father, Oliver, that made an impact. She was long-limbed, and slender. Her shoulders were of a slightly masculine strength, which the severity of her clothes seemed to emphasise.

If mine was a wardrobe picked with care for a purpose only I could comprehend, hers seemed to be genuinely the result of a fastidious cleanliness, a high purity, that almost festered the eye. She dressed in white shirts of cotton or silk, with jeans or tailored trousers. In the evening, she wore velvet or silk jackets over longish, silk skirts, which she seemed to wrap sarong-like around her long waist. During the day, her hair was worn back from her face and held by a barrette. In the evening it was pleated into a simple chignon. It was a style that remained unchanged through the years as almost identical new items replaced the old.

After art school—where Elizabeth enjoyed a modest success—she lived in an enormous studio flat in Kensington, where she painted. Obsessed with sky, she was unfashionable, rarely exhibited and in my opinion totally without talent.

Her friends were few, and mostly artists. However, she retained from her school days a close relationship with the Baathus family, respected international bankers. Maria Baathus regularly invited Elizabeth to Paris, and to the Loire, where the family had a château. Elizabeth accepted those invitations with almost child-like joy. This hospitality she returned, by inviting Maria Baathus for occasional visits to Lexington. These visits were much appreciated by Maria, who seemed to love Lexington and its famous lake. For its “mystery,” she'd once said.

Lexington is, from one perspective, a hidden, secret house. It is approached by a winding, climbing drive through woods. Then a sudden clearing and, shockingly, Lexington, washed red, commands the hill. Long, open parkland falls gently through tree-shadowed acres into water-light.

Lexington, the house and lake into which over time we poured so much of our lives, had been acquired by my grandfather in the first flush of his spectacular business success. “The ultimate chess game,” as he described it.

He had bought a small magazine publishing company with well-established, though not very profitable, titles. He moved the company out of its enormous, old-fashioned building in central London, and thereby realised the hidden asset he had seen all along. The property. With a considerable fortune in the bank from the sale of the building, within three years he had closed six weak magazines, transformed others into market leaders and successfully launched two more. He had created a publishing empire—Alpha Publishing. So called because my grandmother's name was Alexa, and they had called their two daughters Astrid and Aileen. “All Alphas” had been his little joke.

After her husband died, my grandmother, either from grief or from joy, had Lexington's grey stone washed red.

My grandfather and my father returned from London each weekend and pursued male pastimes of fishing, hunting, cards, Weekends at Lexington were full of male odours, of an alien pitch of laughter that as a child had thrilled me. Even the colour of Lexington had seemed to change—its red hue seemed daring and triumphant. During its female week it had seemed to me blood red, with black somewhere clotted in its depths.

FIVE

I have never been interested in handsome men. This is not because I believe that they are necessarily vain; nor indeed that they are incapable, as is often implied, of loving deeply. No. I know that nature is not all-bountiful, and, having endowed beauty, it will almost certainly not feel the necessity to be generous with other qualities.

On a summer's day when Elizabeth was in her late twenties, into Lexington walked the reason for the increased frequency of her visits to France. Hubert Baathus.

He strode across the lawn towards my garden chair, his smiling, courtly face a veritable topography of the balances and planes of light and shade that make a man handsome.

It is true that it was with a minimum of originality I intended on the seduction of Elizabeth's lover, a plan conceived in the split second of his arrival. This banality did not, would not in any way, lessen the pain she would suffer.

I smiled at him through the sunlight, and held my hand out for his perfect bow. And for the kiss on the hand, which, as he was a gentleman, avoided final contact.

“Elizabeth speaks of you with such admiration—I have so longed to meet you.”

“You're too kind,” I replied.

“Too kind? Can one ever be too kind?”

My too clever weekend guest, Helen, now spoke.

“You're taking the phrase too literally, Hubert. Sometimes in England we say, ‘you're too kind,' and mean something entirely different.”

Hubert looked at me slightly puzzled.

“I am sure I got Ruth's meaning correctly. How clumsy I sound. My English is … stilted.”

“No. Your English is charming,” I said.

“Ah, yes. Charming. Now I do understand what the English mean when they say ‘charming.' I understand the ‘nuance.'”

He laughed. Elizabeth smiled gently at his little triumph.

“Hubert may come to live in London for three or four years,” she said.

“Really? Why?” I asked.

“We have established a branch of the Bank in London. I will stay for a time to develop it before returning to Paris.”

“Do you think you'll like living in England?”

“Oh yes. I am certain of that.” He shot a look of affection towards Elizabeth.

“Have you ever lived in London before?” I asked.

“Lived, no. But I have visited often. I love London. Its theatre particularly … is the best in the world. But now I seem to flatter you, no?”

“We like being flattered.”

Helen was now smiling at him too. Her cleverness had been put to one side as an inappropriate accessory in the face of his charm.

Elizabeth was entranced. But why did she interest him? Did he perhaps have a lust for her soul? What a potent weapon it is when observed with the clarity of vision required to appreciate it. How serious were they about each other? Elizabeth? Very. Hubert?

“Ruth.”

Startled, I turned towards my mother.

“Ruth, dear. You seem lost in thought. We should move to the terrace, darling. Lunch is ready.”

I watched Elizabeth and Hubert walk towards the house. He had his arm about her waist, and she turned towards him. And gazed at him as if to light his path. Even on a summer day.

I walked after them. My shadow fell across them. They stopped, and turned to me, smiling. I placed myself on the other side of Hubert.

“I hope we'll see you at Lexington at the weekends when you come to live in England.”

“Hubert starts next month,” Elizabeth said.

“You've bought somewhere to live in London?”

“No. There is a company flat. In Mayfair. I shall stay there, at least for the immediate future.”

We had arrived at the house. Lunch was being served on the terrace. Folds of white linen—an obsession of my mother, whose linen cupboard had an almost Alpine purity—fell from the oblong table onto the grey stone of the terrace. I watched Hubert eat. He was full of appetite, but discreet. An interesting tension. Elizabeth smiled with pleasure as he complimented my father on the wine—which he drank in considerable quantities, though not to excess. He goes just to the edge, I thought. But no further.

Elizabeth toyed with her food. She drank virtually nothing. Elizabeth never goes to the edge. In her painting, for example, there is no danger, no excitement. As if he had read my thoughts, Hubert spoke.

“I admire Elizabeth's painting very much. She is committed to beauty. She is very much in the French tradition. We do not celebrate … ugliness … just because it shocks. You understand?” He turned to me.

“Yes, indeed I do.” I tried to sound diplomatic. “But great art has always shocked. N'est-ce pas?”

“Yes. But Elizabeth does not claim to be a great artist, Ruth. She does, however, have a true eye. And in time she may surprise you all. I have a feeling about …”

“Oh, Hubert. Please.” Blushing, Elizabeth interjected. “It's simple really. Painting is all I'm good at. And even at that, I have only a small talent. But it makes me very happy, and my small successes encourage me to continue with my …”

“Enchantment?” Hubert offered.

“Well!” sighed Helen. “You make an enchanted couple. God knows there aren't many around.”

“Ruth, where's Dominick?” asked my mother. When he was not asking me to marry him, I found Dominick useful company on occasional weekends at Lexington.

“He's in America, Mother. Giving a series of lectures at Berkeley,” I replied.

Dominick's subject, mathematics, was such that it rendered any conversation concerning his work impossible. All enquiries were full of dread—that he might be tempted to explain. He read modern novels, avidly. Most of them he loathed. “It gives me something to talk about,” he often said laughingly.

Yes, he had his charms. But with me he had strayed onto the wrong path. One of these days I would have to lead him to an exit. I hoped that he would leave with grace.

SIX

“Ruth.”

“Elizabeth.”

“I don't deserve this, Ruth.”

I smiled briefly back at her.

“I don't deserve to be so happy. From the moment I saw him …”

“I'm sure he feels the same. Like Dante and Beatrice. ‘I did but see her passing by and yet will love her till I die.”'

“You always have the right words, Ruth. Always. It's such a gift.”

And her radiance—the bride's radiance, caught in the long, oval mirror—seemed fairy-tale. Unreal. As though the image were such a powerful distillation of reality that finally only the image existed. I moved behind her, my deep rose dress blotted out by the folds of ivory in which Elizabeth stood. She turned suddenly. For a second we stood eye to eye. The bride and her maid of honour. She kissed me. I made no move. What should I betray? And, with the touch of Elizabeth's cool lips still seeming to flutter on my cheek, I followed her from her room to join my mother in the hall.

“Oh, Elizabeth. You look beautiful.”

“Mother.” Elizabeth embraced her.

Mother.
Not true. And shortly after,
Father.
Not true either. His turn to worship. Then steadily, past various acolytes, we made our way through Elizabeth's enchanted time to the church, and to Hubert.

It is indeed a holy thing, the ritual of marriage. I looked at Hubert. His features had a kind of classic timelessness. It would ensure that any photograph of him stumbled upon in a trunk, or in a corner of some room, by an adolescent girl in time to come would elicit a little gasp of appreciation—that men could be so beautiful. As he turned towards Elizabeth, his face witnessed truth and love. I felt no pain. They should love each other … I searched for a word … profoundly. That was satisfying to me. Its perfection challenged me. Why mar something already imperfect? It is the first crack that ruins the Ming. The first lie that destroys Truth. The first adultery that breaks the conjunction. After that it's only repetition.

And after that, of course, it is always repetition. When perfection is defiled it is hard to resist the pleasures of destruction, and of lies, and of concupiscence. For then the sacrifice is for nothing.

And so I stood, rose-coloured, beside the lily, and examined quietly the tiny thorns of my bouquet.

I walked behind them, down the aisle. Alone. The third. Hooded, in silk. Then other rosy maidens followed us out into the low, gold summer day, which spread its slightly cloying warmth around the marble purity of the newly wedded couple.

Lexington, as though drunk, seemed to dance with the rhythm of their laughter and to twinkle back at each and every smile. Long tables in the courtyard followed the shape of the house. The principal table was centred before the main building for the key actors in the tableau. Two long tables, on either side, followed the shape of the east and west wings of Alexa's old dynastic dream for her daughters. After lunch and speeches, people drifted dreamily down the lawns, and a few towards the greater privacy of the distant lake.

“They make a perfect couple.” Charlotte Baathus, Hubert's twin sister, spoke to me.

“Oh. Yes, indeed. Perfect.”

“It was so sudden,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I will admit I was a little … surprised. Shocked even. Though Maria is thrilled. Maria always adored Elizabeth.”

“Shocked? Why shocked?”

“Well,” she went on. “They decided to marry within a month of Hubert coming to London. Then the wedding was so … soon … after that.”

“Elizabeth wanted a summer wedding. There seemed no point in waiting until next summer,” I replied.

I disliked Charlotte Baathus. Whereas Hubert was handsome, she had the common prettiness of the pale-blue-eyes-and-rosy-lips kind. She had a soft, rather breathless way of speaking her almost accentless English.