Old Sins (129 page)

‘Well, thank you.’

She was angry, disappointed. She walked faster, frowning into the cold air. Miles looked at her and smiled to himself. He put out a hand on her arm. She shook it off. ‘Don’t.’

‘I’m sorry. Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course,’ she said, coolly distant.

‘Did you screw Roz’s bloke?’

Phaedria looked at him and rage suddenly swept over her. The crudity, the insolence of the question on top of her other anger drove her beyond reason. She raised her hand and struck him hard across the face.

‘How dare you!’ she said. ‘How dare you. It is nothing, nothing to do with you. There is absolutely no reason why I should answer that question, particularly as I’ve told you before, but no, I did not, I did not screw him as you put it, I wanted to, I wanted to like hell, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t because I cared about what it would do to Roz. All right? Satisfied? You’d better go back to London right away, Miles. I can’t see that we have a great deal to say to one another.’

‘Hey,’ he said, easily, catching her wrist, rubbing at his face cautiously with his other hand. ‘You have a real temper, don’t you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you so much. I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘No,’ said Phaedria, still breathing heavily, rage still pounding in her head. ‘No, you shouldn’t. Now leave me alone.’ She shook her hand free, stood looking at him, flushed, her eyes blazing; he looked back at her, calm, relaxed, smiling slightly, and suddenly like a thunderbolt, shocking, unexpected, she felt a desperate lunge of desire, stood there, staring at him, fear and hunger in her eyes. He moved towards her, recognizing it, put his hands up, placed them on her shoulders; for a brief brief moment she stood there, aching, throbbing for him, her eyes held in his; then she leant forward and kissed him hard, fiercely on the mouth, and as suddenly drew back as if he had hit her.

‘Shit!’ she said, ‘shit. Leave me alone.’

She started to run then, through the growing dark, down the hill, back to the safety of the grounds; the house. She ran upstairs to her bedroom, locked the door, lay on the bed, crying. She felt shocked, ashamed, horrified at herself; what was the matter with her, was she some kind of whore, a slut as Roz had said, that she could have lain down on the hard ground and let one man take her there and then, when she was supposedly so much in love with another? What had it been about that situation that had been so powerful, she wondered, what had made her feel that way? Was it just her own sexuality surfacing after so long, or was it that Miles with his rotten,
powerful, arrogant beauty had been too much for her? Partly perhaps, but there was something else, something gnawing away in her subconscious, some memory long buried, newly awoken.

Suddenly she knew what it was. It was the juxtaposition of anger and sex. And there had been a time when it had happened before. Here, in the country lane near Marriotts, in the middle of the night, when she had run away in the Bugatti, and Julian had taken her, crudely, gloriously, wonderfully on the back seat of the car.

And there had been something about Miles in that moment on the downs, as he stood there looking at her, that had exactly brought it all back.

Miles, being Miles, put matters right fairly swiftly. He came up to her room, knocked on the door, said he had some tea for her, and he really really wanted to talk to her; reluctantly, shamefaced, she opened the door and he came in and sat on the bed, and said he was really sorry, he should never have asked the question, it was he who was the schmuck, not Michael, and the best thing he could do was go back to California as soon as a plane could carry him, that maybe he should let Julia buy his shares, just to get matters settled, and that what was a kiss between friends, which he hoped he and Phaedria were, she just shouldn’t worry about anything, she worried too much, and she’d been through a tough time, she was overwrought and that made people behave very strangely. He said Candy did extremely strange things when she was overwrought, and then could hardly remember them afterwards. He could never remember them either, he said tactfully if illogically, and why didn’t they have a drink and then he would be on his way.

He meant it all too, he was not play-acting, he was genuinely concerned for Phaedria and sorry he had hurt her, and he gave no more real thought to the kiss than if she had shaken him by the hand. His days on the beach and in the bedrooms of the hotels of Nassau had taught him to set a low value on sexual currency; it was good, it could be very good, it was fun, it made a relationship better, a day brighter, but it was not of any lasting importance or significance. What moved him about Candy was not really her eager, responsive body, but her loyal, brave little
heart. He would have been prepared, as a last resort, to share the first, but not, never the second.

And so they had sat, he and Phaedria, by the Aga in the kitchen at Marriotts, and drank a bottle of champagne, and he had told her that Candy had been keen for him to join the company, work for it, and what did Phaedria think about that? Phaedria said she thought it was a terrible idea, that he would loathe it, and he had said yes, he thought he probably would too, but he had promised Candy to give it a try, or at least to see what everybody thought about it.

‘Well,’ she said, relaxed by the champagne and their sudden closeness, leaning forward, kissing him in an entirely friendly manner on the cheek, ‘I’ll think about it, but I don’t think you should do it. When I get back from New York next week and I’m back in the office, we can have lunch if you’re still here, and discuss it properly.’

She spoke without thinking, and then suddenly realized what she had said, that she had told him she was going to New York, and looked at him wide-eyed in horror; he saw it all, grasped the implication of what she had said, realized what it must mean to her that he knew.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, smiling at her, reaching out, patting her hand, almost fatherly, ‘I won’t say anything. I swear it.’

She looked at him and half smiled back, pale, frightened, as amazed by his swift perception as she was distraught at what she had said.

‘Come along,’ he said, refilling her glass, ‘you have to trust me. You can. Now forget it. I won’t tell. And I’d love to have lunch with you in January. OK? Now I must go. Candy will be wondering what’s happened to me.’

‘Of course,’ she said, struggling to relax, to smile, ‘I’ll come and see you off. And thank you, Miles. For everything.’

‘That’s OK.’

On the front steps of Marriotts she kissed him again on the cheek.

‘Give my love to Candy, Miles. Happy New Year. And – sorry about this afternoon.’

‘No, it was my fault. Just forget it. Happy New Year, Phaedria.’

He drove up to London, turning the afternoon over and over
in his mind, thinking about her. She was a far more complex person than she appeared. Sexy too. He hadn’t realized that at first. She didn’t project sex like Roz did. She’d seemed rather cool, distant, despite her beauty. Well, she’d been through enough in the past year to turn anybody frigid.

And what, he wondered, trying vainly to urge the Ford Escort into a speed above sixty-nine, was she going to be doing in New York? And with whom? As if he didn’t know.

Phaedria went inside and up to the nursery where Julia was wailing indignantly and took her down to the kitchen to feed her, trying to calm herself. What on earth was the matter with her? First her appalling behaviour on the downs, and then letting it slip about New York. God, she hoped Miles would keep his word. If he told Roz now, everything, all her self-control and self-denial (God, she thought, I sound like a nun) would have been for nothing. Should she have spelt everything out further, made him understand how important it was Roz didn’t know? Maybe she should phone him in London. No, probably best not. That would simply make seriously heavy weather of the thing. He had promised and she had to trust him. And if he was going to tell, then her going on and on about it would simply make things worse. God, he was sharp. Extraordinary that under that lazy, laid-back charm should lie such piercing shrewdness. Maybe Richard was right, maybe in the long run he would decide to stay, discover he had a taste for the real world. She was sure he would be extremely successful if he did. She wondered for the hundredth, the thousandth time what his parents must really have been like.

Phaedria smiled, reliving for the hundredth time the relief, the happiness she had felt when Letitia had talked to her about Miles and Julian, dispelling the nightmare, once and for all. She had not realized, and she told Letitia she had not realized, how fearful she had been. She had even told Michael about it when he phoned that night: about the fear and the fact that it was groundless. ‘Jesus, honeybunch,’ he said, ‘I cannot believe, I really cannot believe, that you have only got around to telling me all this.’

And why, she said, had he really then suspected it all along? And he had said yes, of course he had, anyone with half a mind
would have suspected it, but since she had never said anything about it before, he had assumed it had been thought of and cleared up in the very beginning. ‘Oh,’ said Phaedria, sounding and feeling very small.

She managed, by the time she went to bed, to convince herself that Miles would keep quiet about New York. She couldn’t do anything else really, anyway, she was entirely at his mercy; but she kept envisaging his honest, wide blue eyes, his voice, concerned for her as he swore not to tell, and she felt she really did not need to worry. She put him firmly out of her head and turned her mind to the two days ahead. Two days that would, she felt sure, set the pattern of her life, one way or another, for years ahead.

She went to sleep thinking about Michael. But she dreamed about Miles.

‘Candy thinks I should come and work for the company,’ said Miles to Roz, ‘hang on to my share. What do you think?’

‘God,’ said Roz, ‘what an idea. I don’t know, I wouldn’t have thought you’d like it.’

They were sitting by a roaring fire in the Great Hall of Garrylaig Castle, two days later; Miles had phoned her to see if he could come up a day or two early for the promised Hogmanay, as Candy had had to go back home early. Dolly had done a bunk with her new toyboy and Mason was distraught.

‘That’s what Phaedria said,’ he said.

‘Phaedria? When did you see her?’

‘Day before yesterday. I wanted to talk to her about something.’

Roz looked at him sharply. Was he deliberately trying to wind her up? But his eyes were smiling, his face open, as friendly as ever.

‘What?’

‘Oh, a proposition she put to me.’

‘I suppose you’re not going to tell me?’

‘That’s right. It’s confidential.’

‘Have you – have you thought any more about the outside offer?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And?’

‘And I kind of like it. It would let me off the hook. But the one thing I can’t understand is how it would be any good for you.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t,’ said Roz coolly. ‘That’s surely not the idea anyway. It wasn’t designed to be good for me. But it would at least break the stranglehold with Phaedria. And it’s only two per cent after all. Not a very powerful stake.’

‘Could grow though.’

‘How?’

‘Oh, they might work on one of you. Buy some more. Inveigle you on to their side.’

‘Not me. Her possibly.’

‘But Roz, you’d still be at loggerheads with her. Still couldn’t resolve anything.’

‘Of course we could. There’d still be a casting vote. Every time.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And I think she’d weary of it anyway. She only wants to get control now because of me. She has no real interest in it.’

‘What about Julia?’

‘What about her?’

‘Don’t you think she might want some of it for her?’

‘No. Why, has she said anything to you about it?’

‘No.’

Roz, looking at him sharply, trying to read his face, saw nothing in it at all; it was smooth, devoid of emotion, his eyes totally blank. It unnerved her slightly, that look; it was so unlike Miles. It stirred unwelcome emotions, odd, placeless memories. She struggled to disentangle them, but couldn’t; Miles was talking again.

‘Tell me why you think me working for the company would be such a bad idea?’

Roz thought fast. Maybe it wasn’t an entirely bad idea. He was bound to tire of it fairly soon. In the meantime, she felt confident, she could draw him slowly, imperceptibly further towards her side. It would also be quite amusing. She would enjoy seeing Phaedria trounced slowly and agonizingly, rather than in one swift, straight move. She could actually have enormous fun with the situation: a real live cat and mouse game. Besides she enjoyed Miles’ company enormously. The sexual attraction she felt towards him apart, he relaxed her,
made her laugh, forget Michael, forget everything. It would be wonderful to have him around all the time. She had no intention of trying to seduce him sexually, it would be undignified, it would be politically inept, and besides there was Candy. She had no stomach just now for any kind of sexual drama. But the fact remained that he charged everything up in a very agreeable way, made her feel good, alive, aware of herself. She enjoyed his company, in the fullest possible sense; it would be the greatest fun to have him around the office.

‘Why does Candy like the idea so much?’ she asked, playing for time, time to think about it, to plan her answer more skilfully.

‘Well, I guess she likes the idea of being married to a tycoon, as she calls it. And then her dad says if I’m working, you know, for you, then we could get married straight away. She’d really like that.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I would. I want to get married to her really badly. But being married to her in London, working, wasn’t really what I had in mind.’

She looked at him shrewdly. ‘It would depend, maybe, on what you did?’

‘Yeah. Candy was talking to old Mrs Morell about it. She had some really wild ideas.’

‘Like what?’ said Roz, slightly irritably. It was too bad of Letitia to think she could still interfere in the running of the company.