Those Wicked Pleasures (19 page)

‘Girls like you, Lara, want monogamy. It will never happen with me. I love women. I love sex, not love. And the greatest pleasure I have in life is to pursue and exploit them both. I live for sexual adventures. And not for you or any woman would I give that up. I am telling you now, because I do love you and want you to know what you are getting into. So long as we keep our sexual life a secret, our deeper love-feelings even more secret, then we can see more of each other socially, and no one will be the wiser. Come with me for as far as you can go, my way, and I will give you the best time of your life. That’s the only commitment I am prepared to give you.’

Lara listened. There was emotion in Jamal’s voice which was far more impressive for a young woman in love than the harsh facts he was so insistently stating. She banked on the emotion, and asked, ‘What if I want more?’

‘Lara, listen to me: I can give you no more than what I have offered. You want more, go elsewhere. It’s as simple as that. Mark my words well, there will be
no
marriage at the end of this rainbow. It’s not in my nature, nor is it what
I want. I know you better than you think, my love. You are exactly the sort of girl who follows the old, well-tried formula. Find your love, have a little adventure. Once you have bagged your quarry, it has to be marriage, and settling down to children and heavy-duty family life. You are not your mother’s daughter for nothing, Lara, but more like her, I think, than you would admit to. Nor your father’s either. You will want your rightful place in the world of the Four Hundred and all it entails. If we do not keep our sexual liaison secret, I will ruin your reputation and you will never get that place. Trust me. I know you, and I know me and I know us. It’s my way or it’s over. So don’t spoil that.’

‘I’ll never want any other man but you, Jamal.’ The promise flowed from her, and she kissed him.

‘That’s good. That’s what I like. You love me better and longer than anyone else and be happy. But I don’t necessarily think that’s true – that you will never want another man. You are a girl who always wants more. The day I don’t give you what you want, what makes you happy and fulfilled, you will walk away with the first man who will. And, incidentally, I promise we will still be friends. I will let you go with my blessing. Until then be mine, let me feed you a sexual life to satisfy your hunger. No one else will, and that’s a fact for you to live with.’

‘You make it sound like I’m making a pact of love with the devil.’

‘Well, maybe you are. A fairly dark angel, certainly.’

‘I don’t in the least believe that.’

‘You had better.’

‘Is that a warning?’

‘You might take it that way. It would be best for you if you did not create an unreal image of me. I want no tears over the other women, and I insist we remain a secret for both our sakes. Can you deal with that reality?’

‘You are afraid of the family.’

‘No, I respect the family. I love them like my own family. You too. But you have become the object of my sexual affection, and I love you the more for it. Leave it at that.’

Lara resisted no longer but gave herself up to Jamal.

Months passed by as if they were days, with Lara living only for those secret liaisons. She was fast becoming obsessive about sex and her lover. He had, as he promised her, found ways to be with her socially, for all the world to see, and yet for them not to become ‘an item’. Friendship by day, erotic oblivion by night. His attention filled her life. His liberal attitude towards her over-active libido gave her the security she needed to soar. She was happier than she had ever been, but he had been right: she wanted more. She kept that well hidden from him, and tried desperately to rationalise the greed out of her life.

What she had remained thrilling, a sexual adventure few women would ever dare to embark on. It took months for her to realise the perils of her sexual game with Jamal. She naively assumed that because he loved her she was safe. By the time she realised Jamal had an erotic hold over her, her will was powerless to break it. When they were alone, he dominated her sexually. Among the family, he displayed an open admiration for her. It was a double bond that chained her to him.

She suffered the humiliation of knowing there were other women in his life. He pursued them, and would never give them up for her. She began to see a kind of devil at work in him as he made her accept his infidelities by the reward he bestowed upon her: the admission she so cherished that he loved her more than any other woman he had ever made his own. And there were always new sexual experiences created to excite her pleasure. Her life
was full of fun and sexual gratification. But it was not enough. She began asking herself why, if her life was so good, she was always feeling empty and alone. Her sexual excesses with Jamal were soured by the fear that ultimately she must leave him, if she was to have all she wanted from a love relationship. Anxiety over her clandestine affair with him finally began to erode her happiness. She loathed her own weakness, the deceptions, her masochistic clinging to a man who undermined her self-esteem.

‘Today I leave him.’ Her near daily resolution was addressed to the mirror. Every night she went mad with anxiety, awaiting his summons to surrender to their sexual whims. Months passed without the pattern of her life changing. The will to leave him was simply not there. She didn’t have a chance. Her youth, her inexperience with men, her pampered, privileged life, worked against her. Had she been street-wise, or forced by circumstances to cope at survival level, she might have known better what to do.

Lara suffered more because she was not blind to what was happening to her. She saw it all: the ebbing of the last vestiges of self-esteem, her inability to halt her own decline. In desperation she at last gave a cry for help – but even that cry was self-destructive, and a little mistimed.

‘I’m in deep trouble. I want to tell you about it. If I don’t talk to someone, I think I’ll go mad. But you must promise me you will tell no one, do nothing. Never, ever let on that I confided in you. If he should find out, he would leave me and I couldn’t bear that. Not now, not ever. It’s me. I must be the one to leave him, or I will never recover from this love affair.’

Her voice was shaky, and she spoke only just above a whisper. She was terribly pale, pathetically nervous. Julia was aghast.

The organ was playing ‘O, Promise Me’, as Julia looked
at her friend. She was always beautiful, but at that moment she seemed so fragile. The frailty of her loveliness created a soft vulnerability that one rarely saw in her brand of sensual, provocative good looks. Julia took Lara’s white, kid-gloved hand in hers.

St Thomas’s was packed to the last flower-bedecked pew. There was a bevy of morning-coated men and well-hatted ladies, all smiles and pretty spring couture. Everyone loves someone else’s wedding.

‘You’re not going to faint are you, Lara?’

‘No.’ But she sounded unsure.

‘Well, you certainly pick your place and time; there’s no place like church for confessions! I’m here and I’ll help, but you must hang on. It will be all right.’

Lara tried to calm herself, but seemed more panicked than ever by partly relieving her emotional state. ‘How can we get out of here, Julia?’

‘We can’t. If we make a break for the door, everyone will think it’s the bride coming down the aisle.’ As if to prove her right, the organ suddenly blared into the march that launches bridesmaids into churches.

‘
Coraggio
! We’ll talk as soon as we get out of here.’

But they never really did talk. Not that Lara didn’t want to, or Julia wouldn’t listen and help any way she could. It was more that the moment of truth and pain got lost in the protracted ceremony and elaborate escape from church and people to the seclusion of Julia’s apartment.

The room overlooking the East River was muffled in silence. After pouring them both a glass of champagne, Julia sat down next to Lara, feeling such anguish for her friend that she could think of nothing to say. In silence she stroked her arm.

Lara had never looked more the tragic beauty than she did now in her white chiffon pleated skirt. Its jacket was of white raw silk with a large sailor collar piped in silver
and gold, and it had a double-breasted set of gold buttons. She still wore the wide-brimmed, white horse-hair hat, embroidered with gold stars. A clump of fresh magnolias was pinned to the gold band around the crown. Her beautiful clothes contrasted strangely with her wan look.

‘Now what’s this all about, Lara? And how can I help?’ asked Julia.

‘I don’t know where to begin, what even to tell you, except that I am at my wits’ end. I feel desperate. I don’t want to feel so bad, but I don’t know how to stop the pain.’

Julia’s feeling for Lara in her desperation left her shaken and unable to help. This was not the girl she had known for most of her life, and Lara’s inability to cope with her own feelings frightened her friend.

‘You’re obviously having some sort of an emotional breakdown. I can do nothing to help you unless you tell me exactly what has brought you down.’

A combination of things – the tone of Julia’s voice, her choice of words, the mere fact that someone outside herself was focusing on the state she was in, and demanding that she must reveal her secret if she were to receive the help she needed to expel her misery – snapped Lara out of her acute anxiety. She suddenly realised that she could not reveal even to this loyal and loving friend the depths of the despair she had fallen into because of her all-consuming sexual attachment to Jamal. She edited the story. She had to spare Julia the embarrassment.

Half-truths do not make a full confession. Minutes passed in silence, waiting for her to speak. During that time she kept mulling over the idea that evil branded with the light is no longer evil. Bring the darkest secret into the light and it vanishes. But to bring her relationship wholly into the light now seemed impossible to her. Exposure might entail an end to her affair with Jamal. That was a chance she would not hazard yet, no matter how unhappy she was.

She put down her empty glass and, placing her hands over her face, lowered her head and took several deep breaths. After several seconds, she removed her hands from her face to give her friend a reassuring look. She rose from the sofa and walked to the window. When she turned back to face Julia she felt buoyed up by the concern visible in her face.

‘I’m not having a nervous breakdown. I think I might have if I hadn’t poured my heart out to you in the church. What I am having is an affair with Jamal. An intense and very secret affair. Promise again you will never reveal it to anyone.’

It was at this point that Lara faltered. There was a crack in her voice, a suppressed sob of emotion.

‘You’re desperately in love with him?’

‘Desperately, and that’s what I can’t bear. Being desperate. I don’t want to feel that way over Jamal, or any man – anything, as a matter of fact. Desperation is a destroyer. I wouldn’t want it to have any place in my life, and here I am steeped in it. I loathe myself for that. But I just can’t crawl out of this dark place I seem to have created for myself.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Lara. You have a formidable lover who has a long-time reputation for doing the same to every woman he has an affair with. Give him up, if you want to be happy.’

It was good advice, and bound them closer together. Julia began to understand the more complex side of Lara’s nature, and accept it. She made many attempts to distract Lara from slipping into despair. Some of them worked. But nothing broke the spell of her romance.

Chapter 14

And it was a romance. Maybe even, in its own peculiar way, romance on a grand scale. There was a real bond between Lara and Jamal, a depth to his caring for her. The clandestine quality was confined to their sexual escapades. There were surprise holidays in Rio and Paris, a week in a castle in the Atlas mountains in Morocco. At those times they were careful that no one should guess their deeper relationship. Only during their secret romantic trips, when no one they knew was likely to appear – a river journey up the Nile, a sneaked break in Spain, another on safari in Africa – did they behave in public as the lovers they were in private. When those secret holidays came to an end and they returned to live apart – she in the world of deception he insisted they maintain – the sense of loss Lara felt was nearly unbearable.

The family watched her drift away from them, but without anxiety: she would drift back again. They labelled it ‘finding her place in the world’. Only Henry was concerned when Lara rejected a holiday with David, or another with Max in India. The old Lara would never have done that. Then passed up a chance to sail around the world with an ideal crew, one she would have hand-picked herself. She still had not undertaken any of the long journeys she had planned to make in her new four-seater plane. She appeared to her father to be happy
enough until he caught her off guard and then he saw a sadness in her he could not bear. He loved her too much not to do something about that sadness.

He went to Emily. ‘I don’t think Lara is having a very good time of it.’

She looked up from her book. ‘Not for want of trying. The girl never stops, she is invited everywhere. Her problem is she favours the wrong men.’

‘What exactly does that mean, Emily?’

‘What it says, Henry. The sooner she marries Sam the better.’ Emily went back to her book.

A phase. Every girl went through them en route to maturity. Henry knew his daughter, her good qualities and the bad. But he also knew that she had what all his children had: a core solid as steel to sustain her through any emotional traumas life might inflict upon her. Just one thing worried him. There was a flaw in her the other children never had, a vein of vulnerability that, worked on by the wrong sort of man, might damage her for ever. Almost certain that someone was tapping into the need Lara had to be loved, for the next few weeks he watched more closely what his daughter was doing with her life.

There had been so many signals, they became impossible to ignore. She no longer awakened in the River House apartment. The Fifty-Third Street house became their sexual play-pen. His erotic demands became even more adventurous, and yet their
rendezvous
less frequent. He flaunted his latest conquest, a leggy French model, in front of her. Actually brought the girl to Cannonberry Chase and taunted Lara with an open show of passion. The humiliation was too great. She knew in her heart that it was the beginning of the end of the affair with Jamal. She was doing her best to deal with it, working herself up to leave him. And when she was feeling at her lowest,
with little respect for herself and her behaviour in the matter, help materialised. Sam returned. He appeared at Cannonberry Chase one Sunday lunch.

Never was she so happy to see someone. His arrival was sunlight in the darkness of her soul. She suddenly felt light and gay. She was the innocent adolescent again. They greeted each other with the same kind of love and affection they had always shared. The family embraced him: it was a reunion that brought home to Lara how much she had missed Sam and all he represented to her.

In the weeks that followed they saw a great deal of each other. But they were cautious of each other when alone, even though they admitted they still loved each other as they always had. The sexual attraction was still there. But, although Sam plainly desired her, she asked for time. Neither mentioned the island and their last sexual encounter. Jamal was still very much her sexual scene, and she was involved with several other suitors whom she had used to ease herself away from him. Now Sam? Too complicated.

Missy still saw Lara every morning at nine o’clock when she was at home. Their routine rarely varied. Over breakfast they did her correspondence and the diary, and kept Lara generally in line with her busy social schedule. Every day it was their habit to review first that day and then the week ahead. It had become a procedure that kept Lara so distracted from her secret life that for most of the time she lived from day to day, accepting the diary as a life-pattern from which she rarely deviated. And so, when she was told she was dining with her father that evening, and going to an auction of Old Master drawings at Sotheby’s afterwards, it came as no surprise to her.

It had been many months since she had gone out anywhere alone with Henry. She was quite looking forward to the evening – that is, until the phone-call for
which she was always waiting. It came around eleven o’clock. Her heart skipped a beat the moment she heard his voice. He had not called for nearly a week.

‘I’ve missed you.’

‘And you love me,’ she intoned, a note of sarcasm in the voice.

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘Liar! You only play with me. Bothering to phone means you want sex.’

‘Is that so bad? You’ve always known the score. And, admit it, you love the game.’

Lara remained silent. He laughed. It was a wicked, teasing laugh. Foolishly she rose to it by maintaining a silence which told him she was pouting. That excited him. He loved her more when she was unable to cope with him. He took a tone with her that he knew she found irresistible, and commanded, ‘Come to me tonight, the Fifty-Third Street house.’

‘Impossible, I have other plans.’

‘Break them.’

‘Not this time, Jamal.’

‘Do I take it you have decided it’s over?’

Her voice trembled. ‘One day I’ll leave you, Jamal.’

‘Ah, but not today. Today would not be the moment to choose. I want you too much and, whether you believe it or not, I need you even more, my angel.’

‘I hate it when you call me angel.’

‘Why so tetchy today? Think of our coming together, the taste of us on your tongue, the feel of me inside you. Don’t be tetchy. Eight o’clock at the Fifty-Third Street house, and I will make love to you and let you make love to me. Isn’t that, after all, what we are all about?’

‘I hate it when you cunt-tease me.’

He smiled to himself. He always knew how to the reach the sensual, rebellious Lara. He enjoyed enormously
erasing the refined, spoiled deb in her. Cunt, cock, fuck – words she might be shunned for even knowing, never mind using, in her conservative, high-society world. In the throes of their thrusting, he could force from her obscenities fit to excite a hard-hat or make a stevedore blush. He was satisfied. The hardness in her voice, a smattering of lewdness: she would be there.

‘Well,’ he snapped, ‘over is over for me. You know that. Just say the word, Lara. Is it to be today?’

He could hear fear in the voice which answered him: ‘Not today, Jamal.’ There were tears of anxiety in her eyes that he could only visualise.

‘I do love you, you know, La?’ She knew at that moment that he believed he did. His tone was kinder now; it soothed them both.

‘I know. But, Jamal, I do have a problem about tonight. I am out this evening with my father. It’s dinner, then the auction at Sotheby’s.’

Never offend the family. Most certainly never Henry. That was something Jamal understood. It did not, however, deter his plan to be with her that night. Jamal was adept at getting what he wanted, a superior manipulator. He was quick to adapt his plan.

‘Ah, but I want you more than any other woman tonight. You’ll have to make excuses – a late-night party, for instance. You can be very convincing with excuses for your absences. Quite a pro when deceiving the family, I’ve watched you. You are a convincing little madam when you want to be.’

‘I may be good
at
it, Jamal, but it doesn’t mean that I feel good
about
it.’

He ignored that. ‘A party, and then staying the night over at Julia’s or some other friend’s. You know the form.’

‘What happened to this past week when it would have
been easy for me? The calls I made and you never returned. When I was free and wanting to be with you?’

‘Oh, that’s what this tetchiness is all about? Don’t behave like a spoilt child.’

‘Stop pretending I’m a child! I’m acting like a goddammed fool of a woman. Isn’t it enough that I let you put me down and pick me up again like some piece of old luggage, for crissakes? What about when I want you?’

‘Ah, but I have on many occasions responded to your call. Changed my plans to accommodate your sexual needs. Isn’t that true, Lara? Haven’t I come running when required?’

‘Not of late.’

‘Stop whining. We’ll be together tonight and I’ll make you tell me how much you love me and how happy I make you. You want me to do that, don’t you?’

She capitulated. ‘Of course that’s what I want. That’s what this conversation is all about, wanting you and not having you. Waiting for phone calls that never come. I hate it, Jamal. I am at my wits’ end about it.’

‘Then either leave me, or tell me where to pick you up and what time.’

That harsh voice she knew only too well. He was calling her bluff. He was stronger than she was; he meant it. She hesitated, but still the will-power wasn’t there. ‘Sotheby’s. The auction starts about ten. Dad says it should be over by midnight, champagne reception and all.’

‘Tell him I’ll be picking you up and you’re joining a party going to Jilly Wainwright’s bash. That I invite him on Jilly’s behalf to join us. He will, of course, decline and insist that you go. Perfect.’

‘Not so perfect. I hate these games you make me play, and especially with my father.’

‘I love these games. It puts an edge on things.
Excitement, that’s what we’re all about, Lara. Wear something provocative. I want you looking your most sensual. There’s someone I want you to meet. A little surprise. Something to add spice to the night.’

‘Jamal …’

‘Enough, Lara. Do it.’ She was left with the whine of a disconnected phone.

In the livingroom sat David, Henry and Emily, drinking double martinis, very dry with a twist of lemon. The men rose from their chairs when Lara entered the room. She noted the look of approval in her father’s eyes: he had always liked her in red. She had chosen a cardinal-red silk dress. It had long sleeves and a bodice that bloused to the waist, a straight slim skirt worn to just above the knee. It was high in the front and backless to the waist. It was young, fresh and provocative and she carried it with the swagger and self-confidence of youth. Her legs were clad in silvery silk stockings and her feet were shod in silver kid high-heeled shoes. She wore no jewellery except the diamond earrings her father had presented her with for her first coming-out party.

David poured her a drink from the silver shaker. ‘You look a knock out, La.’ He presented her with the conical stemmed glass of crystal-clear liquid. And with it a hug.

‘By God, you do a father proud to be such a dazzler,’ Henry smiled.

‘Jamal has just called to remind me there’s a party tonight. He wants me to go, Dad. Says he will pick me up after the auction and wants you to join us. He says he has a good crowd that you will enjoy in his party. He asked me to find out if you are going, David.’

‘Can’t. Mother and I are having dinner in the country on the way to the Chase.’

‘I told him I wasn’t sure, Dad.’

‘Good, then we can decide what to do after the auction.’

Lara knew what he would do. Send her on with Jamal. He would never deprive her of a good party. He would wave her off and go to his club. That was Henry.

He looked his devastatingly handsome self tonight. Powerful and important, and very elegant in his Savile Row dinner-jacket and black tie. Henry possessed the male charisma of certain older men that attracts luscious young ladies. Lara had often noticed longing looks cast in her father’s direction. She was proud to be his daughter and walk out with him.

‘A neighbourhood night-out, that’s what I’m offering you tonight, Lara. Depriving some young swain of your company doesn’t bother me in the least.’ And he offered her his arm after picking up the Sotheby’s catalogue from the table. David draped the matching red silk shawl of her dress around her shoulders.

‘Gotham’s Little Red Riding Hood,’ he teased. ‘I don’t suppose I have to warn you about all those wolves lying in wait for Goldilocks out there?’

Lara detected some irritation in Emily’s voice. ‘Lara, don’t let your father go berserk at the auction. When he gets his eye on the goodies, he always buys more than I mean him to.’

‘Good night, you two,’ called Lara, savouring her mother’s pettiness. She knew better: no one ever steamrollered Henry into anything. She threw her mother and David a kiss, and slipped her arm through her father’s. They left the house together and walked down their street, turning the corner into Madison Avenue. They strolled with a leisurely eye on the shop windows, and watched the upper East Side poseurs and were watched by them. It felt good to be on Henry’s arm.

He always emanated that manly, reassuring charm that goes with the good looks, breeding and mega-money of a sophisticated older man. Both men and women felt his allure. Lara had always been attracted to him, first as a father and then as a man. He was the role-model for the person she could be happy with, yet had never encountered.

They passed the famous auction house whose illuminated sign proclaimed its readiness for one of its more prestigious sales. A few blocks further down and around the corner was a restaurant she had not seen before. She was surprised when Henry led her to the door. It was not like him to dine in a small restaurant which, if not exactly unknown, was unfamiliar to Henry and Lara’s social set. She had expected La Côte Basque, The Carlisle, The Oak Room at the Plaza. There was a host of smart restaurants he frequented.

The inside of the restaurant was discreet, with a certain charm
ordinaire
. It was immediately obvious to Lara that the maitre d’ knew Henry Stanton. The man ushered them to a table where Lara was seated on the velvet, horseshoe-shaped, high-backed banquette. It gave an impression of being booth-like and private. Henry faced her from a well-upholstered armchair across a square table draped in starched white damask.