‘It is my business, and what precisely does seeing mean?’
‘Seeing. Talking to. Lunching with.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, because she was in Paris, and I was in Paris, and she was doing some work for Annick.’
‘And you expect me to believe that?’
‘No, I don’t expect it,’ he said, ‘I don’t ask you to and I don’t care. But it’s the truth.’
‘Julian,’ said Letitia, ‘you wouldn’t recognize the truth if it came up behind you and tapped you on the shoulder. I have heard from several sources that you have been seeing quite a lot of Camilla North –’
‘I really don’t think I like having your spies reporting on me all over the world.’ He was so white now, so angry his face was hardly recognizable. ‘How dare you listen to gossip about me?’
‘I dare. I’ve always dared to do a lot of things, Julian. I’m not easily frightened. And there’s been a lot of gossip. So much, it has been hard to ignore. Eliza had heard it, and so for that matter had Susan.’
‘Susan? For God’s sake, Mother, how could you discuss my affairs with Susan of all people?’
Letitia looked at him. ‘Unfortunately for Susan, she is rather over-familiar with your affairs, or was. Particularly the one with Camilla. There is little love lost between her and Phaedria, but even she was concerned. Anyway, that is beside the point. I am extremely fond of Phaedria, and I –’
‘Yes,’ he said, and his face was savage, ‘I know you are. Too bloody fond of her. You none of you really know very much about her, though. Do you? She isn’t the gentle, innocent baby everyone likes to imagine. She has great ambition, and she works night and day to realize it.’
‘And is that a crime? If so you are deeply guilty of it.’
‘In her case, I think it is a little. I feel she’s cheating on me. She has less and less time and energy for me, and more and more for her work. Not to mention all these wretched designers and photographers and so on she’s always fooling around with.’
‘So that gives you the right to go and fool around with Camilla North? Oh, Julian, don’t be such a child. Why do you think Phaedria is working so hard at fighting you? Because you’ve taught her to do it, you’re forty years older than her, although very little wiser apparently, you’ve encouraged her – pushed her, many would say – into something extremely difficult, and a monstrous situation incidentally, with Roz fighting her every inch of the way, you’ve asked her to succeed, and adapt to your very demanding lifestyle at the same time,
and then you complain that she’s squeezing you out of her life. You make me very very angry.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. You’re making me rather angry too, Mother, I think I’d better go.’
Camilla North knew perfectly well what had brought Julian back to her; it was not love for her, or desire, or even his terminal tendency to philander; it did not necessarily mean that the marriage had been the disaster that she had prophesied, nor that it had simply signified the male menopause at its most acute. It was fear, and Camilla could offer the unique gift of sexual reassurance that Julian needed.
She found that was enough.
In offering her gift, and in having it received, she received much herself: gratitude, tenderness and trust. Through the long nights, between her linen sheets, Camilla learnt of Julian’s marriage: of his disappointment, disillusion and despair. He was, she found, extremely fond of Phaedria, but he had found himself in the position of a man who had imagined he was buying a toy pistol when actually he had obtained a high-calibre, deadly revolver. He hadn’t acquired a wife, he had acquired a clever business partner and a highly visible personality, and he didn’t like it. Camilla wondered at the girl’s foolishness; she was by all reports intelligent, surely quite intelligent enough to realize that any male ego was a fragile thing, and the ego of the middle-aged male was poised to fracture into a thousand pieces at the first threat of rivalry – in whatever field.
Camilla smiled to herself as she sat in her executive office on Madison, just opposite Brooks Brothers, remembering with fierce vividness the pleasure of her reunion with Julian in bed. Uncertain, fearful he might be with Phaedria, or in his abortive attempt to seduce Regency, but with her he was as powerful, as skilful as she could ever remember. And since she had grown, greatly to her own surprise, more sensual in her middle age, was less inhibited, more imaginative, greedier – largely, she was sure, as a result of some very intensive and lengthy sessions from a new, highly aggressive female therapist – their love-making was very satisfactory indeed.
‘And just who exactly have you been doing this sort of thing
with for the past two years?’ he had asked with surprise and pleasure, and a gratifying tinge of jealousy, and no one, she had assured him, with her usual, painstaking honesty, no one at all.
‘I have learnt to communicate with myself, be in touch with myself, that’s all.’
‘Well,’ he said, settling his head gratefully on her magnificent breasts, ‘that must be extremely nice for yourself. Oh, Camilla, what is it about you, that I cannot live for very long without?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said, ‘I feel the same, you know. My analyst says it’s probably because our ego instincts and our sex instincts are very deeply compatible. Both in ourselves, and with each other.’
‘Balls,’ he said, lifting his head, smiling at her, lazily moving his hands over her flat stomach, her beautiful, slender thighs, and then seeing the slightly pompous, outraged expression she wore whenever he questioned her psycho fixation, as he called it, he added hastily, ‘I mean, balls are part of it. And bosoms. And this. And this. And this . . .’
Camilla was now highly successful. She had her own advertising agency, called simply North Creative; her clients numbered some of the richest and glossiest in town, in fashion, beauty, drinks and interiors; she had a small penthouse on the newly fashionable upper West Side, and a house in Connecticut, where she kept a fine string of horses, rode with the Fairfield Hunt Club and gave the most brilliantly orchestrated house parties to which she invited a careful blend of clients and friends.
She was happier, more relaxed than she had ever been in her life. She had long given up any idea of marriage; her new analyst had taught her to respect herself, what she had and what she wanted – ‘I have learnt to give myself permission to experience pleasure for its own sake,’ she explained to Julian – rather than desperately seeking to justify it, or to claim new territory. If she wanted to have an affair, then she now knew she should have it and enjoy it. As a result she was perfectly content to continue as mistress to Julian Morell for as long as they both wished without making any further demands on him. It seemed a very amicable and satisfactory arrangement.
Julian returned to London from Paris (via New York) early in March, looking fit and happy. Phaedria looked at him warily. She had learnt to trust none of his moods; the good ones could change swiftly, and the bad ones stayed stubbornly the same. But he seemed genuinely pleased to see her; he avoided sleeping with her the first night he came home, saying he was tired, that his jet lag would wake him at two; she accepted it resignedly, prepared for more to come, but in the morning she woke to find him sitting on the bed, looking at her, his eyes warm and tender.
‘I think we should begin again,’ he said, sliding into bed beside her, ‘I have missed you very much.’
And Phaedria, feeling she should be cool, controlled, distant, but finding herself hungry, eager for him for the first time for months, turned to him and smiled, and said, ‘I missed you too.’
Later he said he would stay at home, and would like her to do the same; they lunched together and then went back to bed. He gave her some presents: a Hockney swimming pool painting which he said would remind her of the Los Angeles she had fallen in love with, a deco diamond clip, an edition of the
New York Times
from the day she was born.
‘Oh Julian,’ she said, ‘what have I done to deserve this?’
‘A lot,’ he said, ‘but I want to ask you for more.’
‘What?’ she said, smiling still, but cautious, wary. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to give up Circe,’ he said. ‘It’s taking up too much of your time, of your attention, it’s causing many of our troubles. I think you – we – would be better without it.’
‘Give up Circe? Julian, I can’t. Two years of my life have gone into that. I love it, it’s too important to me. Don’t ask for that.’
‘Two years of my life have gone into you. I love you too, you’re too important to me. I have to ask. Please, Phaedria, please. For me. Because I love you.’
‘I can’t. If you loved me you wouldn’t ask. Besides, the me that you love is not a passive nobody of a wife.’
‘You don’t have to be a nobody to be a wife. Most women see it as quite a rigorous job.’
‘Well, I don’t.’ She sat up and looked at him, flushed, angry. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘No,’ he said, sitting up himself, drawing away from her in the bed, ‘you couldn’t. That ego of yours wouldn’t let you. It’s yourself you’re in love with, Phaedria, not me, and that great heap of hype you’ve built around yourself, and that’s what you can’t give up, not Circe, not the job. Being a star, featuring in all the glossy magazines, being sought after, interviewed on chat shows, that’s what you really want, not the work, not the store at all.’
‘It’s not true!’ she said. ‘You’re lying.’ But she spoke without conviction.
‘And even if it wasn’t true, if it was just the work, if you were doing the most important job in the world, would you really sacrifice our marriage, our happiness to it? Don’t you think that is something worth subjugating yourself to, Phaedria? Probably not. I’m afraid the person I fell in love with doesn’t exist any more. It makes me very sad.’
‘The person I fell in love with never existed,’ said Phaedria bitterly.
‘Oh Phaedria,’ he said, and his eyes were full of pain. ‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said, tenderness for him rising up in spite of herself.
‘And other times?’
‘Other times – I suppose – he’s still there.’
‘So will you not do this for that person? Give up your work. You need not do nothing. We can find you something else to do.’
‘And who – who would – care for it? Take it on?’ she asked in a sudden reckless act of surrender.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said easily. ‘It would move back under the stores umbrella, I suppose. Does it matter?’
‘Yes, Julian. Yes, it does.’
‘Oh well.’ He sighed, reached for his watch and looked at it. It was the first sign that he was returning to real life. In a flash of temper she snatched it from him, threw it across the room; he looked at her startled and then he smiled.
‘I like making you angry. It does wonderful things to you. Remember the flight in the Bugatti?’
‘Of course I remember,’ said Phaedria. ‘I learnt a lot about you that night.’
‘I suppose you did. The darker side. Well, you lost a hero and gained a car.’
‘I’d have preferred to keep the hero.’
‘Phaedria, we have to live in the real world. That’s why I want you to give up the store. We have problems; Circe doesn’t help them.’
‘But –’ she began and then stopped. There was no point in arguing with him. He was too skilful, too devious for her. She always ended confused, half won over.
‘I suspect I have no choice. If I want to stay with you.’
He looked at her, startled. ‘Is there any doubt about that?’
‘It doesn’t seem there is, no.’
He kissed her hand, her hair, her face; he looked into her eyes and smiled gently, tenderly, with no hint of triumph.
‘I know you won’t regret it.’
He fell asleep then, and Phaedria lay beside him watching the early spring sunshine playing on the walls; she felt unutterably weary, bereft, bereaved, as if someone dear to her was lost.
A memo went round the company from Phaedria a week later. She had decided (so it said) that the work of continuing to run the store was too demanding for her to reconcile with the increasing demands of her life as Lady Morell. Launching it had been challenging and rewarding, but now she was anxious to pass on the day to day running to Rosamund Emerson, in her capacity as president of the stores division. She was confident that Mrs Emerson would preserve the store in the mould she had so carefully created, and that discussion between them had revealed that Mrs Emerson had no desire to change any of her concepts substantially. A memo sent out concurrently from Mrs Emerson said that she had enormous respect and admiration for Lady Morell’s work and hoped that she would continue to work with her on the store in a consultant capacity.
If Phaedria had not been so heartsore and Roz had not been so triumphant, they would both have argued a great deal with the actual author of the memos. As it was neither of them had the stomach for it.
‘You don’t look very well, Phaedria darling.’ Julian sounded concerned, anxious. ‘Why not go away for a few days?’
‘I don’t want to go away.’
‘Why not? You have the time now. Do you feel all right?’
‘Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. I suppose it might help. Where would you suggest?’
‘Why not LA? You liked it there. Get a bit of sunshine.’
‘All right. It does sound lovely. I have nothing else to do.’
She flew down to Los Angeles ten days later, spent three days lying by the pool, another one shopping and (unable to help herself) checking on Circe LA, and felt at least physically better. She was still wounded, still uncertain about how she should conduct this strange marriage of hers, but she felt she had at least the strength to go on trying.
Roz had been quieter, easier lately; she had scarcely seen her. It wasn’t just the triumph over the store: that seemed to have done her very little good. She looked dreadful; her misery over the break-up with Michael Browning was very obvious. Phaedria was curious as to what he might be like. She wondered if she would ever meet him. He had to be a man of formidable character to love Roz, but he obviously did – or had. And she had clearly loved him, too. It was strange to think of the Roz she knew experiencing an emotion as tender, as positive as love. It didn’t seem possible that her ferocious heart could contain it. But it obviously had, and now the heart had been broken. Sitting there in the sunshine, thousands of safe miles away from her, Phaedria could almost feel a pang of pity for her.