Old Sins (36 page)

‘And since when,’ said Roz rudely, ‘did you and Mummy decide things together for me? I’d have thought you’d want to do the opposite of what Mummy thought.’

‘Rosamund, don’t be rude,’ said Julian briskly. He only ever called her Rosamund when he was very cross with her.

‘I don’t see,’ said Roz, determined not to be frightened away from her position, ‘why I shouldn’t be rude. You seem to want to get rid of me. Why should I be polite about it?’

‘Darling, we don’t want to get rid of you. We think you’d like it.’

‘No you don’t. You don’t know what I’d like. You don’t spend enough time with me to find out. And you do want to get
rid of me, so you can go to New York whenever you want, and out to dinner all the time, and Mummy can go rushing off to France and things with her boyfriends, and have them to stay without having to worry about me being rude to them. You both want to get rid of me. I know you do.’

‘Darling,’ said Julian patiently, choosing to ignore her attack rather than defend himself against it, ‘you’re wrong. We love you very much. But going to boarding school is what an awful lot of girls your age do. Isn’t Rosie going?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. She wants to go to St Paul’s. And so do I.’

‘You don’t know anything about it.’

She could see he was beginning to lose his temper. She enjoyed that, urging him nearer and nearer the edge. When he pushed his hair back, she knew she was nearly there. She gave a final shove. ‘Anyway, I’m not going just to please you.’

She watched his lips go rather tight and white round the edges. She had done it. But he still didn’t say anything really angry. ‘Well, what you’re going to do, Roz, is take your Common Entrance next January and we’ll go and look at a few schools.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Rosamund,’ said Julian, ‘you will do what you’re told.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t.’

She sat in the Common Entrance examination and didn’t write a word. The headmistress sent for both her parents: her father came and took her home with him. She had never seen him so angry.

‘I hope you don’t imagine,’ he said, ‘that you are going to get your own way in this. All this sort of behaviour does is convince me you are grossly spoilt and you need the discipline of boarding school.’

Roz shrugged. ‘You’ve spoilt me. It’s not my fault.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you’re right, it isn’t. None of it is. But I am not going to allow you to ruin your life because we have been stupid enough to do it for you so far. You are going to boarding school, Roz, and that is the end of it. Had you behaved more reasonably I might have considered day school. Now it’s out of the question.’

‘No one will take me. Not now I haven’t done the exam.’

‘Oh, but they will. Your headmistress says you are an extremely clever child, and she is personally writing to the heads of the schools we have chosen for you, with some examples of your work, and you will sit the individual entrance exams.’

‘I won’t do them either.’

‘Yes, Rosamund, you will. Otherwise you will go to a school that doesn’t require any kind of exam. The sort that exists to help difficult children like you.’

‘I’ll run away.’

‘Do. You’ll be taken back.’

Suddenly she stopped being brave, allowed the tears to flow, and once the tears started, the screams followed, the ones she had been silencing for years and years; her father looked at her in horror for a moment then stepped forward and slapped her hard across the face. It hurt horribly; she hit him back.

‘I hate you. I hate you all. You and Mummy and Thetford and Camilla. You all hate me. You want to be rid of me. Send me away so I don’t interfere in your own precious lives. So you can all do what you like and Mummy and her boyfriends and you and Camilla can – can have – have –’ ‘intercourse’ she had been going to say, but her courage failed her, and she stood silent, white, her eyes huge, tears streaming down her face, sobs shaking her body.

Her father stepped forward and took her in his arms, and held her close for a long time, soothing her, stroking her, kissing her hair, telling her it was all right, that he loved her, that they all loved her, that they didn’t want to send her away, that it was for her own good, they thought she was lonely and unhappy and getting more so.

She didn’t believe him, she couldn’t remember when she had last believed anyone, when they told her such things; and she didn’t argue any more or say the reason she was lonely and unhappy was because they had no time for her; but she could see she was beaten. Slowly, very slowly she stopped crying.

He held her away from him, looked down at her, wiped her eyes on his hanky.

‘Better?’

She nodded.

‘Good girl. I’m sorry, I’m so terribly terribly sorry, Roz, that we’ve hurt you so much. We didn’t mean to.’

‘Didn’t you?’ she said.

‘No. You have to believe me.’

She had learnt that when her father said that he was invariably lying; she pulled herself out of his arms and went over to the window. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so bad. She wondered how they could possibly go on and on being so cruel to her. It was interesting that her father at least realized it.

She suddenly remembered a request she had been storing up for several weeks. This was clearly a good time.

‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘can I have a new horse? A hunter?’

‘Of course you can,’ he said. ‘We’ll go to some sales this holidays.’

Once again she had been bought off.

They decided on Cheltenham Ladies’ College for her; Roz loathed it. She loathed everything about it from the very first day; the awful dreary green uniform, the way they were all scattered round the town in houses, and marched through it in crocodiles, the endless games, the misery of communal bathing and dressing, the aching horror of homesickness, the hearty jolly staff, the way everyone acted as if they were terribly lucky to be there, the awful food and most of all the feeling of dreadful isolation from the real world. She wasn’t popular because she didn’t conform; she wasn’t friendly and jolly and eager to get on with, she was aloof and patently miserable and refused to join any clubs or societies or even do any extra lessons. She did what she was required to do; she went there and she stayed there and she worked very hard, because it was the only thing that seemed to make it bearable, and she was always top or nearly top of everything, but beyond that she wouldn’t cooperate. She would go, but she was not going to be happy. That was asking too much.

Camilla had interceded on Roz’s behalf over the matter of boarding school; she told Julian that if there was one thing a rejected child didn’t need it was to be sent away from the rejecting parents and that she should be allowed to stay at home
and go to day school; Julian told her that he wished she would keep her damn fool psychology to herself. Camilla had an uneasy feeling she had probably made poor Roz more and not less likely to be sent away.

After Roz had actually started at Cheltenham her hostility to Camilla became greater. She was illogically afraid that in her absence they might suddenly decide they were able to get married and have a baby.

Camilla, sensing at least some of this, decided she should talk to Roz, bring some of her fears into the open (knowing that honesty and openness were crucial in these matters). She felt that if Roz realized there was no likelihood of her ever marrying her father, she would be more friendly, and open up a little, come out of her hostile little shell. During the Christmas holidays, when Camilla was in London, working over and anglicizing the advertising campaign, she invited Roz to tea with her and told her she would like to hear about her new school. She made little progress; Roz sat in a sullen silence, pushing her teacake round her plate in a manner very reminiscent of her father. Camilla suddenly took a deep breath and said, ‘Roz dear, there’s something I would like to discuss with you.’

‘What?’ said Roz rudely.

‘Well, I have always imagined that you felt rather as if I was trying to come between you and your father.’

‘No,’ said Roz, ‘not at all. Nobody could do that.’

‘Well perhaps not come between you. But that you thought that if I was going to marry your father, then I might be – well – a threat.’

Roz was silent.

‘Well, the thing is, dear, that I have no intention of marrying him. Not because I am not very fond of him, but because neither of us really wants that kind of commitment.’

‘Why not? Isn’t he good enough for you?’

‘Of course he is. Too good in lots of ways. But you see, some women, and I am one, feel that there is much more to our lives than marriage. We are people in our own right, we may want to have relationships with people, but we don’t want those relationships to take our lives over. We want other things. My career has always been terribly important to me, and I would
never combine it with marriage, I would feel I had to neglect either the career or the husband. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can’t feel very lovingly towards people and enjoy their company. So you see, Roz, there is absolutely no danger of my ever becoming your stepmother, and moving into your home on a permanent basis. I thought that might make you feel more friendly towards me.’

Roz’s sullen, pinched face told Camilla that friendship was not forthcoming.

The other large thorn in Camilla’s side at this time was Letitia. Camilla loathed Letitia. Whenever she allowed herself to consider, however briefly, whether she might, after all, like to be the second Mrs Julian Morell, she reflected upon the reality of becoming Letitia’s daughter-in-law and quite literally shuddered.

She loathed Letitia on two counts: personal and professional. She found it quite extraordinary that this old lady (Letitia was now sixty-nine) should still hold a position of considerable power in the company, and she could not help but feel that Julian was being less than professionally fastidious to allow it. Although Letitia was no longer involved on a day-to-day basis, having retired with a stupendously extravagant party at the age of sixty-five, at which she had danced the Charleston into the small hours at the Savoy, she was still a director of the company, with a most formidable grasp of its workings, a sure steady instinct for financial complexities, and an equally strong feeling for the cosmetic industry in general. The new financial director, Freddy Branksome, said that the day he was no longer able to consult her on company matters, he would take an early pension and go; to an extent he was being diplomatic, but the fact remained that he did give considerable credence to her views, and liked to have her at all major financial review meetings. Camilla found this incomprehensible, and was perfectly certain that both Julian and Freddy must simply be flattering a vain and difficult old lady. It simply did not make sense so far as she could see, that a woman with no formal education, no training in business affairs or company management, could possibly be of any value to a multi-million-pound company. She had tried to say as much to Julian, but he had
become extremely angry, told her to keep her business-school nonsense to herself, and that Letitia had more nous and flair in her little finger than the entire staff of the Harvard Business School.

‘When I need your opinion on company structure, Camilla, I will ask for it. Otherwise I would be intensely grateful if you would keep your elegant nose out of things which have nothing whatever to do with you.’

Camilla had said nothing more. She never minded when Julian attacked her views on management and policy. She knew perfectly well his touchiness on the subject and his suspicion of any formal scientific approach sprang from insecurity, but she did think it was a pity he refused to study modern business theory with a sightly more open mind. She supposed it all came from the well-known English passion for the amateur; in time, no doubt, Julian would come to see his methods were simply not professional enough for the hugely competitive business environment of the sixties.

But if she found Letitia’s professional relationship with Julian difficult to cope with, his personal one was almost impossible. He seemed to regard her more as a mistress than a mother; whenever he got back to London he seemed more eager to see Letitia even than his daughter (‘I am,’ he said cheerfully, when she taxed him with this quite early on in their relationship, ‘she’s better tempered.’) And would take her out to dinner, to lunch, and quite often away for the weekend, down to Marriotts, leaving Camilla (should she have accompanied him on a trip) fuming alone in London, rather than face the disagreeable prospect of spending forty-eight hours alone with them, listening to their silly jokes, their convoluted conversations, their detailed accounts of how each of them had spent the intervening few weeks. She knew Letitia found her tiresome; what enraged her was that she made so little effort to disguise the fact.

Camilla had tried terribly hard at first, she had been courteous, patient and polite; she had talked about Julian at great length (knowing this to be the key to a mother’s heart), she had been very careful not to imply any suggestion that she might be trying to encroach on their relationship in any way; and she had made it as clear as she could, without being
actually rude or crass, that she had no intention of marrying Julian, that she saw herself purely as a professional colleague.

On her trip to London in the summer of 1967 she decided once again to try to form an adult, working relationship with Letitia; she phoned her and invited her to lunch at the Savoy, which she knew was her favourite place. But Letitia said no, she was on a strict diet and why didn’t they meet in the Juliana salon, for a fruit juice and a salad; Camilla, always grateful to be able to avoid gastronomic temptation and for an opportunity to indulge her body in some therapy or another, agreed and booked herself into the salon for a massage and a sauna for the hour before lunch.

She was now thirty, and against the atmosphere of frenetic pursuit of youth that was taking place in that year, she felt old. London was full of girls who looked just past their seventeenth birthdays, with silky straight hair tumbling down their backs, bambi-wide eyes, and skirts that just skimmed their bottoms. Jean Shrimpton’s face, photographed by David Bailey, gazed with a sexy tenderness from every magazine cover, every hoarding; Marianne Faithfull, Sandie Shaw, Cathy McGowan lookalikes stalked the streets, rangy, self-confident; and through the open window of every car in the capital the Beatles and the Stones sang ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Ruby Tuesday’ and ‘Penny Lane’. It was no time to be over twenty-five.