A Perfect Heritage (41 page)

And she said, and this was her fatal, dreadful mistake, struggling to save him further pain, and afterwards she could hardly believe she had said something so stupid, so dangerous, ‘There could be . . .’

He had left soon after that, saying he needed to think and she kissed him briefly on the cheek, said she was sorry, that she hoped he would be all right, that she would never forget him, that he had been very special to her.

She went very slowly into the bedroom and lay down on the bed; she felt completely exhausted. She looked at her watch: only eleven. How had she lived a lifetime, several lifetimes, and the morning only half over?

She must have fallen asleep, for when she looked again, it was after one. Incredible, amidst all that turmoil. Just escaping, she supposed. She looked at her phone: nothing from Jonjo. That was bad. She took a deep breath and texted him, desperate for some proper contact.
Things going well. Might be able to come earlier. OK with you?

Surely that would get a response. It didn’t.

Jonjo had gone for a walk. The streets and quaysides of Canary Wharf were busy, people enjoying the frosty sunshine. He felt a bit disorientated. There she was, this gorgeous, sexy, funny, warm, perfect girl, who had been dropped into his life by some kindly fate or other, at a moment that would have seemed ideal for both of them and something wasn’t quite right. More than that, something was wrong. He had no idea what, but whatever it was, she wasn’t being entirely truthful with him. And if there was one thing Jonjo couldn’t cope with it was dishonesty. He needed, more than anything, more than the sexiness and the gorgeousness and the warmth, for absolute honesty, for knowing where he was. One minute Susie had seemed honest, the next there was a sliver of deceit in the way she looked at him, the things she was doing. Better to end it, quickly, to turn away, however much it hurt, than trail after her, hoping for the best. He’d called her this morning first thing, and she hadn’t answered. That was odd, he thought, for a girl who was supposed to be glued to her laptop. Her later text, that she was in the shower, didn’t quite ring true. He’d steeled himself not to answer it. He’d gone for the walk to try and clear his head, tell himself he could be making a mistake on the slenderest of evidence; he’d taken his phone, but failed to notice it was almost out of juice – a clue to the emotional turmoil he was in; normally it was part of him, required to function perfectly.

He stopped for a coffee and croissant and to pick up a paper, and when he got back and realised, and plugged it in to return her call, his heart suddenly wonderfully lighter, there was no reply.

Susie was sitting, trying genuinely to work, to distract herself from what was a long failure to reply to her text, when there was a hammering on her door. Her heart sank; she was afraid she was actually going to be sick.

‘Susie!’ It was Henk. ‘Susie, it’s me. Let me in, I have to see you.’

She got up, double-locked the door, hoping Henk wouldn’t hear, and sat on the sofa, staring at it; if she waited long enough, surely he would assume she was out, would go away. Even so . . .

‘Susie, we need to talk. I know you’re there. Let me in.’

She sat, silent, motionless; time passed. The hammering, the shouting went on. She had never been so frightened, never felt so trapped.

Her phone rang; she looked at it. Damn, damn, damn! Jonjo, and she daren’t answer it – Henk might hear her. She went into the bathroom, shut the door, thinking she could text him, then realised there was nothing she could say that made any kind of sense.

She started to cry and heard other voices, her neighbours from downstairs, a nice middle-aged couple, telling Henk to stop making such a noise, that they had no idea where Susie was.

The hammering stopped, and the shouting. She waited, her heart thudding, for fifteen minutes. She was far too frightened to open the door.

Inspiration struck her and she called the couple downstairs – they’d insisted on her having their number, in case she ever had a problem or locked herself out. She was very sorry about the noise, Henk was upset, they’d had a row, but could they possibly just look and see if he was there, she was frightened to come out.

They were up in thirty seconds, kind and reassuring: he had gone, they’d seen him go. She should have called before, would she like a cup of tea, should they call the police?

She thanked them, said she was fine for now, and that if he came back she would call the police; thinking she could at least threaten Henk with that.

All of which took over half an hour; and when they had gone, then of course she called Jonjo back, and actually managed to have a half-reasonable conversation with him and he said he was sorry, he hadn’t got her text and of course she should come over sooner, or should he come to her? Which was tempting, because then she wouldn’t have to go out, but then suppose Henk came back while Jonjo was there? So she said no, she’d come over, maybe about four? Which would give her time, she thought, to have a bath and recover her equilibrium; and she could order a cab to Waterloo and just shoot out into it – that would give her some protection; Henk wouldn’t dare attack her in the street.

Four would be just great, Jonjo said, and she ran a bath and lay in it for a long time, and then did her hair and dressed very, very carefully casual – jeans and a sweater and a Kate Moss-style parka – and ordered a cab and when it rang to say it was outside, shot out, double locking the door and down the stairs and into it, and was so frightened still that she kept looking out of the back window all the way to Waterloo, and as she ran down the escalator to the Jubilee line she still half expected him to be behind her, and at each station they came to she stared at the people coming in, as if Henk could possibly know where she was going, and when she finally reached Canary Wharf, she ran up the impossibly long escalator into what was now darkness and Jonjo was there, waiting for her as he had said he would be, and she collapsed into his arms crying, and said she’d had a horrible experience with a neighbour, and he said she should have told him, and she must go to the police and tried to make her do it there and then, but she got out of it somehow, and promised to do it first thing in the morning, and he said come on then, I have crumpets and a boiling kettle, and everything was magically and wonderfully all right again. And she felt she could have flown with happiness and relief and later he tried to make her stay, and she said she couldn’t, she had nothing with her and it was Monday in a few hours; so he said he’d send her home in a cab and not too late either, because he had to be at work at six, and after a takeaway they settled down to some more snogging, and finally, reluctantly, she said she should go.

She got home safely, peering fearfully out of the cab as she reached her flat, shooting inside, the kindly neighbours’ number ready on her phone; but it was all right. He wasn’t there. He must have accepted it, after all. The worst was over; she could move on.

And then the texts began.

Chapter 39

He’d asked her to marry him. Properly, down on one knee, smiling at his own foolishness as he did so, ring in pocket, eyes anxious.

She was seriously tempted. She didn’t love him, of course, but she was very fond of him and they had much in common: music, books, a love of walking. Sex had not entered the equation – he was too much of a gentleman even to propose it, but he was tactile and warm, liked her to take his arm, often reached for her hand in the cinema, or in concerts, kissed her tenderly when he left her. She was sure it would be – well, fine. And how important was it, after all, at her age?

She asked for time to think about it. She would want to continue with her career, she said. Would that be acceptable to him? He was retired, he might want her constant company. But he said that was fine, it was one of the things he most admired about her, her professional expertise; he had his golf and a lot of committees, and he had no wish to deprive her of something so important in her life. And he loved to hear the gossipy stories about the industry; about how Elizabeth Arden had her racehorses massaged with her Eight Hour Cream to improve their coats, how Helena Rubinstein loathed Charles Revson, creator of Revlon, but also admired him to the extent of buying Revlon stock, and how she witheringly referred to him as ‘that man’; and how, when he launched his male line, Revson christened it ‘That Man’ by way of a rejoinder.

Timothy Benning was a widower; his wife had died five years earlier.

‘It was a happy marriage,’ he told her, ‘and I know she would have wished me to find happiness again if I could.’

He had been a solicitor, and was tall and quite good-looking, sixty-five years old, with two delightful grown-up children who clearly loved him and welcomed Florence into the family. Such straightforwardness, such overall pleasantness seemed almost incredible to her, after the tortuous ramifications of the Farrells.

She had met Timothy at a supper party and afterwards he asked for her telephone number and said he would like to take her to a concert – there was a programme at the Wigmore Hall that she would clearly enjoy.

The Wigmore, being permanently linked in Florence’s mind with her first serious encounter with Cornelius, didn’t seem to her ideal and she gently suggested an alternative at the Festival Hall.

‘I hope you won’t mind, but I do prefer orchestral music to chamber.’ And Timothy said actually, so did he, and a great and happy friendship was born.

If it could only have remained so, Florence thought. But romance managed, most wonderfully and sweetly, to find its way, and after three months of concerts and walks and art galleries, Timothy took her one night to a restaurant – a small, unpretentious one in Victoria, for he lacked both the income and the style preferred by the Farrells and their set, and took her hand rather awkwardly as they waited for dessert and said that she surely must have realised he had grown very fond of her, and was feeling emotions stronger than friendship for her. Flattered and charmed, Florence had leaned forward and kissed him gently on the cheek, and thanked him, but asked if they might take things a little slowly, whereupon he acceded very happily. But after another few weeks, the proposal came, and she lay awake most of the night, confronting what was temptation of a considerable kind.

For yes, she did love Cornelius, deeply and passionately, and knew she always would; but she was tired of being a mistress, tired of always being the good guy, against Athina’s bad, always being sweet-tempered, sympathetic, fun, sexy. Tired of lonely weekends, holidays, Christmases, birthdays often: although they had a little ritual for those, dinner at some new, and surprising place – his challenge to find it – and then, dangerously but determinedly, back to her house, where they went straight up to her bed with the bottle of champagne he had had delivered days before, and then a wonderful present, usually jewellery, not necessarily of the precious variety: she had developed a taste for Butler and Wilson’s witty brooches – she had a leopard, a Scotty dog, and a petrifying, Tarantula-size spider – but occasionally Chanel jewellery, or one of her long pearl chains.

He was less lavish with his gifts these days because there was less money; Farrell’s were no longer shooting stars: they trailed in the wake of other, newer, names; even Revlon trailed behind Lauder and L’Oréal and Clinique, as did many other great names.

Lauder reigned, brilliantly confident, inventive, with vast resources; Mrs Lauder was a living legend, dazzling, charming, gracious – and a saleswoman to the last drop of her blood.

Athina could not stand her, seeing her as the embodiment of what she might have been herself; she denounced her as vulgar, while admiring her tactics, and as greedy, while envying her ability to buy up what seemed half the cosmetic universe.

The great brands now were all skincare based, houses like Clarins, with its seemingly untouchable image of quality and purity, and there was much talk of a holistic approach, where health and fitness were far more important than the colour of eyeshadow – everyone was going to the gym and to Jane Fonda-style exercise classes. Skin and hair care led the research field and L’Oréal were said to employ over a thousand chemists in the early eighties.

Perfumes were no longer about smell, but that mysterious thing called lifestyle, pioneered a decade earlier by Charles Revson launching the lovely Shelley Hack from
Charlie’s Angels
as his sexy, trouser-suited Charlie, and followed by the entire market. The actual scents were all intriguing, chemically based, very potent and long-lasting and their one virtue for Athina, at least, was that they made Lauder’s
Youth Dew
seem old fashioned. Florence’s favourite was Rive Gauche, with its glorious message ‘
Ce
n’est pas un parfum pour les femmes effacées
’ – ‘it is not a perfume for women without personality’.

It was the era of Princess Diana, and her lovely face with its over-glossed lips and over-mascara’ed eyelashes smiled radiantly, or sometimes a little sadly, from every cover of every magazine, every front page of every newspaper, every country in every continent. She was a phenomenon, her looks as much as her emotional life analysed, wondered at, and copied.

There were still colour houses that mattered; Mary Quant led the field, and a few of the teenage brands, Boots Seventeen, Rimmel, Maybelline, but with the exception of Quant, they were despised by Athina Farrell. Indeed as the years went by, she despised more and more and admired less: a dangerous condition for a creative mind.

‘I fear we are floundering,’ Cornelius admitted to Florence more than once. ‘We need a new direction and we are not going to find it with Athina in this mood.’

‘Perhaps you could find it yourself?’ Florence volunteered.

‘My darling, creativity was never my forte. I just know it when I see it. And I don’t see it. At this rate we’re going to have to sell the Hove flat, which will be utterly dreadful. Weekends in London, so depressing.’

‘I’m sure you’ll survive,’ said Florence briskly.

‘Well, of course we’ll survive, darling, it just won’t be so much fun.’

He was sometimes extraordinarily thick-skinned but she supposed he needed to be, to endure life with Athina, and in the event, Athina did come up with something: clever, rather than brilliant, but catching the mood of the moment. She designed the Skin Breathing collection: ‘Every product so light your skin breathes night and day!’

Wildly inaccurate scientifically – ‘For what product could possibly stop the air getting to your skin?’ Francine said rather witheringly to Florence. They nevertheless got away with it because the beauty editors were having a lean season, so the consultants had something to talk about and the public went for it. The advertising campaign, shot by the brilliant Terence Donovan, showed a girl riding a bicycle down a country lane, her long hair streaming behind her. Cornelius had a field day, talking it up and selling it in, and the Hove flat was able to remain unsold. For some reason, this made Florence more rather than less keen on the idea of marriage to Timothy.

She had been rather hurt by Cornelius’s open admiration for, and flirtation with, the model for the Skin Breathing range, a lovely dark-eyed, dark-haired girl called Gilly Gould; he had insisted on being present at the photoshoot, and at the launch party paid the most inordinately extravagant tribute to her and her beauty, presenting her with a huge bouquet of red roses, and bore her off to dinner at The Ritz with Athina – who was equally irritated, but was at least permitted to show it. Florence had to pretend it was nothing to her; but when, a week later, after a promotion at Selfridges where Gilly Gould modelled the range, Cornelius seemed able to talk of little else, she told him she was finding his conversation a little limited and was leaving.

‘But darling, I thought we were all going to drinks at the Connaught?’

‘You all are. I have better things to do.’

‘That might look a little rude.’

‘To whom?’

‘To Gilly, to Athina. And to me.’

‘Cornelius, Athina never minds if I am present at a function or not. To Miss Gould I am the hired help. I don’t think she has ever uttered more than two consecutive words to me. And I think I have earned the right, just occasionally, to be rude to you.’

He understood at once. ‘I’m sorry, my darling, I’ve been tactless. May I come round later? Athina is dining with Caro and Martin and I’ve pleaded overwork.’

‘I . . . suppose so.’

‘Not very enthusiastic. Miss Hamilton, do be kind enough to allow me to call.’

‘All right.’

He arrived with a vast bouquet of white roses, and said he was sorry.

‘I’m just an old man, besotted with a young beauty. Pathetic. But it happens, my darling. We can’t help it, we old chaps.’

‘Of course.’ And she smiled at him, drank two glasses of champagne, said that of course she understood and then made it very plain she had no desire to go upstairs.

‘I’m tired, Cornelius, it’s been a long day. And we old ladies, we need a little more rest than we used to.’

Normally she would not have dreamed of saying such a thing, of implying that she was no longer as passionately attracted to him as she had been in the heady early days, but today she felt she had a right to. That was all the difference, she thought: he could claim attraction to a young beauty and a need to boost his flagging sexual prowess and she must accept that as his right. Which was all right if a man was your husband, but a long-term lover . . .

She decided, sitting there, contemplating Cornelius with more irritation than she had ever experienced, that she would accept Timothy’s proposal. Cornelius would rage and rant and quite possibly cry, but then, at the end, he would have to accept it. It was finally time for her to be selfish.

‘Right,’ he said, easing himself up from the sofa, ‘I must go. Now, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m taking the Trentham with me.’

‘You’re what?’

‘Only borrowing it,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind and Leonard needs it.’

‘Well, he can’t have it!’ she said, panic rising. Cornelius had never spotted the fake, but Leonard would.

‘Sweetheart, it’s only for a few weeks.’

‘Even so. And what for?’

‘Well, he’s a bit on his uppers, poor old boy, and he’s going to hold an exhibition and needs as much of his work as possible to hang. It won’t be sold, you’ll get it back. Well, I suppose someone might make an offer he can’t refuse . . .’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, fear making her irritable. ‘That painting’s priceless to me, you know it is!’

‘Well, that’s nice to hear. But like I say, you’ll get it back.’

‘Cornelius, I really don’t want to let him have it.’

‘Now you’re being silly,’ he said, taking the picture down. It wasn’t very big: only about eighteen inches by twelve in its frame. She looked at him in horror.

‘Cornelius . . .’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘No. Well – yes. You’re being rather high-handed.’

‘And you’re being a bit dog in the manger, if you don’t mind my saying so. He’s an old friend, Florence, he needs my help.’

‘It seems to be
me
that’s giving the help,’ she said, but she didn’t argue any more. There was no point. She would just have to sit it out.

Timothy phoned later; would she like to spend Saturday with him? They could go for a walk on the Downs, he said, and then he would cook dinner for them and introduce her to a new rather sophisticated hi-fi system he had just bought. ‘And then, of course, you must stay the night, and we can savour the joys of the village pub next morning. I have to go to church, I am, for my sins, churchwarden, but after that I am a free man.’

It all sounded wonderfully pleasant and undemanding and she accepted with pleasure. But as she packed on Saturday morning, lots of soft jersey casual separates and her stout brogues for their walk, she felt the opposite of relaxed, fearing every moment for a call from Cornelius about the picture.

It did not come, and she left for Waterloo and the Guildford train feeling calmer and more optimistic. Perhaps if he didn’t want to sell it, Leonard Trentham would simply hang the picture – in its original frame – without paying it too much attention.

The weekend passed happily and easily. Timothy was so – so uncomplicated. He spoke fondly, smiling even, about his wife, Barbara.

‘She was such a lovely person, you would have liked her. So kind and so generous. And so brave. We were very happy. And for a long time I didn’t think I could bear life without her. It seemed so utterly pointless. But – things have proved otherwise. And you know, Florence, they say people who have known one happy, stable relationship are able more easily to form another. Do you agree with that?’

‘I – don’t know,’ she said carefully. Could her relationship with Cornelius, with all its attendant complications and deceits, its wild highs and its sorry, lonely lows, be described as either happy or stable?