Old Sins (4 page)

There was a long silence; Susan reached out and took Letitia’s hand; Letitia looked down into her lap. Then she smiled bravely at Henry.

‘Do go on, Henry dear. Although,’ she added, sparkling through her tears, ‘as Queen of England
manqué
, I wonder if I might ask for another small glass of sherry.’

‘Of course,’ said Henry. ‘Jane, would you . . .’

Jane did.

Henry waited until everyone was quiet again, and then cleared his throat, rather loudly.

‘To my granddaughter, Miranda Emerson, I bequeath £2 million free of tax from my Guernsey bank account, to be held in trust for her by her mother, until Miranda reaches the age of twenty-one. The trust to be administered for her by my firm of solicitors, Winterbourne and Winterbourne. I also bequeath her the sum of £100,000 free of tax, to be spent entirely on horses, in recognition of her already apparent talent for horsemanship, and their upkeep, training, and any related activities she herself might wish to pursue.’

‘How old is that child?’ said Letitia quietly to Susan. ‘Three? Well, that should buy her the odd pony.’

‘Er – if I might continue. To my beloved daughter Rosamund –’ again a pause. Roz tensed, closed her eyes briefly – ‘I bequeath the following: £5 million free of tax, all of the horses in my stables at Marriotts Manor, with the exception of the aforementioned Rose Red (That was cruel, thought Letitia, Phaedria loved those horses) and’ – Henry paused, looking at Roz carefully, for a brief second – ‘forty-nine per cent of the shares in Morell Industries.’

There was a long, hurtful silence. Roz clenched her fists, folded her lips; whatever she did, she knew, she must not move or make a sound, otherwise everything would break out, she would scream, punch the air, Henry, Phaedria, anyone. She looked at the floor, at her feet; they suddenly looked very far away. Then she managed, with a supreme act of courage, to meet Phaedria’s eyes.

The expression in them was thoughtful, concerned, almost kind; but still triumphant. I have won, that look said. I have won and you have not.

Henry paused again, then perceptibly straightened and continued reading.

‘To my dear wife, Phaedria Morell’ – only dear wife, thought Roz savagely, her rage and misery lifting just for a moment, I was his beloved daughter, she is only his dear wife – ‘I bequeath the following: £10 million free of tax, my house in Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, London; Lower Marriotts Manor, in the County of Sussex; Turtle Cove House on the Island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, and my entire collection of paintings, with the exception of the two Stubbs, the Rembrandts, the Hockneys and the Sidney Nolans already mentioned.’

There was yet another silence. That’s funny, thought Roz, who is getting his plane? He loved that plane.

Henry looked round the room again with an expression almost impossible to interpret; there was a challenge in that look and amusement, much apprehension, a sort of triumph even, and as it brushed over Phaedria, tenderness and concern. He took a long drink of water, cleared his throat, shifted in his chair – anything, thought Roz, anything rather than continue. Finally he looked back at the document on his desk.

‘I also bequeath my wife Phaedria forty-nine per cent of the shares in Morell Industries.’

The mathematical implication of this bequest hit the room slowly; the silence grew heavier. Phaedria was no longer pale, she was flushed, she could feel sweat breaking out on her forehead. Roz was standing almost to attention now, her eyes very bright in her white face, her fists clenched. C. J. was looking with equal apprehension from Roz to Phaedria; Camilla was no longer relaxed but taut – tense, thought C. J.,
who had always rather admired her, like a race horse under starter’s orders, hardly able to contain herself and her nervous energy. Eliza broke the stillness; she got up suddenly and walked over to the window, turned to face the room from behind Henry’s chair, intense interest on her face.

‘Do go on,’ she said. ‘I imagine there must be more.’

‘Yes,’ said Henry, and looked down again at his desk. ‘Finally, I bequeath the remaining two per cent of shares in Morell Industries to Miles Wilburn, in the hope and indeed belief that he will use them wisely and well. I also bequeath my Lear jet to Miles Wilburn, as he may find a need for greater mobility in the future, together with the residue of the estate. There remains only for me to bid you all farewell and to say that I hope you will in time see the wisdom of what I have done.’

The first sound to break the silence again was of Eliza laughing; it began as a smothered chuckle and became a gorgeous, joyous peal. ‘He did have style,’ she said, to no one in particular, ‘real style.’

Almost simultaneously Phaedria fainted, simply slid out of her chair and on to the floor.

Living the events of the next hour over and over again in her mind, Roz could only remember nightmarish oddly inconsequential fragments: of C. J. and Henry helping Phaedria into another room; of her own loud and inappropriate demand for a stiff drink; of Letitia suggesting to her that they should go outside together and get some fresh air, and her irritable wretched refusal; of her mother asking inane questions of Peveril, of Letitia, of Susan, of C. J., if any of them had ever met or heard of a Miles Wilburn, and even more inane suggestions that he might be the son, cousin, brother, uncle of various men she had known or that Julian had known; of Camilla, become suddenly part of the previously hostile gathering, offering to go through her old address books and diaries (all predictably stored and filed in date order) in search of some kind of clue; of Henry, fussily important, returning to the room and professing as much ignorance of Miles as the rest of them, while volunteering the strangely relevant and unexpected information that he had not drawn up the will, or even set eyes on it until Julian had died and Phaedria had found it in the safe and
sent it over to him; of her own savagely swift personal revelation as to the cause of Phaedria’s faintness; of Henry’s insistence, largely she felt for her mother’s benefit, that no whisper of the will must reach the outside world, and particularly that part of it centred in Fleet Street; of the departure of the family, in small, disparate groups, oddly subdued (with the exception of Phaedria, glassily pale, but possessed of a strange almost feverish excitement); and lastly the sound of her own voice, the panic and despair she was feeling disguised in a harsh brightness, declaring that she knew that whoever and wherever Mr Wilburn might be, she would personally hate him unreservedly for the whole of the rest of her life.

‘Miles,’ said the girl from the depths of the bed. ‘Miles, you just have to get up. It’s almost seven, and you have that meeting with your uncle this morning. And you know how important it is. Miles, please wake up.’

Miles put out his hand, his eyes still closed, and traced the outline of her breasts, moved down over her abdomen, rested tenderly for a moment on the mound of pubic hair; then moved on, gently, relentlessly probing her secret places, feeling her soft moistness, parting her; she could feel his penis hardening, rising against her, and her own juices obediently, delightfully, start to flow.

‘Miles,’ she said, in a last desperate effort to divert him. ‘Miles, please.’

‘You don’t have to ask,’ he said, smiling into her eyes, deliberately misunderstanding; and for a while everything was forgotten, the debts, the lawsuit, the trap closing in on him, all lost in a tangle of hair and skin and pleasure and desire.

Wiltshire, France, London, 1939–1948

JULIAN MORELL
’
S ENEMIES
often said he could never quite make up his mind who he loved more, his mother or himself.

This judgement, pronounced as frequently in company boardrooms as at dinner parties, might well have been considered just a little harsh; but there was certainly sufficient truth in it to ensure its frequent repetition. And certainly anyone observing the two of them dining together at the Ritz one evening in the autumn of 1952 would have been irresistibly reminded of it – watching Julian looking alternately fondly at his mother, and almost as fondly into the mirror behind her.

They looked alike to a degree; they were both dark-haired, both tall and slim, but Julian’s eyes were brown and his face was long and already threatening to be gaunt. Letitia had deep, almost purple, blue eyes and the kind of bone structure that would look good for another fifty years: high cheekbones, and a very slight squarishness to the jaw. She had the sort of mouth possessed by all great beauties of the twenties and thirties: a perfect bow, neither full nor thin; and a nose of classical straightness. But the most remarkable thing about her (and this would not have seemed quite so remarkable to anybody who had not known she was fifty-four years old) was her skin. It was not only much admired, Letitia’s skin, it was hugely commented upon; it not only inspired admiration, it defied science. It was soft and dewy, and extraordinarily unlined, and one of her more florid admirers had once said (rather unfortunately for him) that as he sat looking at it, it seemed to him to be more and more like looking into a rose petal.

Everything else about Letitia Morell’s extraordinary beauty could be explained away by face lifts (she was rumoured to have had three already), expensive skin treatments, skilled
maquillage
, and the attentions of the best cosmetic chemists in the country placed permanently at her disposal, but the fact was
that Miss Arden and Madame Rubinstein, with many of the same advantages, did not look nearly as young as she did.

Julian, on the other hand, could easily have been older than his thirty-two years; he had the kind of looks that settle on a face in their owner’s mid twenties, and stay, relatively unchanged, for thirty years or more. He was conventionally good-looking; he had his mother’s straight nose, and rather sharply defined mouth, but his eyes were very dark. They were remarkable eyes, curiously expressionless for much of the time, but with a capacity to light up and to dance when he was amused or setting out to charm (which was frequently) and to disturb, particularly women; they held an expression that was almost insolent, probing, amused, shrewd; they were hard eyes to meet, without feeling threatened, in some way or another, pleasurably or otherwise. His hair was a little longer than the current vogue; and his clothes bore the unmistakable mark of much attention and a strong sense of style. His dark grey suit, beautifully and clearly hand made, nevertheless had lapels just fractionally wider, the jacket a touch longer, flaring only a little more at the back, than the classic style his tailor would have offered him; his shirt was not white or cream, but very pale blue; his red silk tie was tied in a Windsor knot; and his shoes (hand made for him by Lobb) were softer, and lighter-looking, than those on most of the feet under most of the tables in the room. His watch was a classic gold Cartier, on a black leather strap; on the little finger of his left hand he wore a heavy gold signet ring; and although he did not smoke himself, he always had with him a slim gold cigarette case, permanently filled with the oval Passing Clouds cigarettes so beloved by the stylish of the fifties, and a gold Dunhill lighter. These lay between them on the table now; Letitia, who had been young in the twenties (and had once most famously danced the Charleston with the Prince of Wales in the Glass Slipper Nightclub, an event she was given to reliving in ever greater detail after a glass or two of champagne), and had seen the cigarette as a symbol of emancipation and sophistication, still occasionally smoked before or after a meal through a long black cigarette holder. She was using it now, as she studied the menu, reaching out to cover Julian’s hand with her own as he lit it for her, smiling at him through the cloud of smoke; certainly they did not look, the
two of them, like mother and son at all, but a wonderful-looking couple amusing and interesting one another intensely.

‘Mother,’ said Julian fondly, ‘you do look particularly amazing. How long have you spent with Adam Sarsted this evening?’

‘Oh, darling,
hours
,’ said Letitia, smiling at him and stroking his cheek appreciatively, ‘he takes longer and longer every single time. He’s got a marvellous new foundation he wanted to demonstrate and I do have to say I think it’s extremely good. But I had to listen to him extolling its virtues for at least twice as long as it took to put it on.’

‘Well, he works on his own,’ said Julian, ‘he needs to talk about the things he’s been doing from time to time. Listening to him is an investment. He was talking to me about that foundation. I’m glad it’s good. He’s a clever chap. Worth all that money I pay him. Or don’t you think so?’

‘Mmm,’ said Letitia thoughtfully. ‘Just. Yes, I suppose so. But I do keep telling you, darling, the very best cosmetic chemists are in New York. You really should think about finding some people over there. Next time you go I might come with you and talk to a few, if you won’t.’

‘Well, maybe I will – when I go,’ said Julian, ‘and I’d love to have you with me. But I honestly don’t think you’re going to find anyone better than Sarsted. The man’s a genius.’

‘No, he’s not a genius,’ said Letitia, ‘he’s a very good chemist and that’s all. He hasn’t got any creativity. He isn’t inspired. He doesn’t have any ideas.’

‘Mother, darling, we have enough ideas between us to keep a dozen cosmetic companies afloat. Stop fussing. What do you want to drink?’

‘Gin and french. And I’m hungry. Do let’s order quickly. Last time we had dinner here I seem to remember eating so much melba toast I scrunched when I moved. So common, nibbling.’

‘Mother,’ said Julian, laughing and signalling at the waiter, ‘you could never look common. However much you nibbled. Not in that dress, anyway.’

‘Do you like it, darling? Good. Cavanagh. Such a clever man.’ She glanced over her shoulder into the mirror behind her and smiled briefly at her reflection; white crepe dress,
accordion pleated from the shoulders, swathed across the bosom and drawn into a tiny waist with a narrow, pale suede cummerbund; her dark hair was swept back, around her neck she wore the fabled treble-stranded Morell pearls given to her by her mother-in-law on her wedding day, and the overtly fake cluster of beads and diamante in her ears gave a style and wit to the discreet taste of the rest.