London, Paris and New York, 1980–82
ANNICK VALERY, WHO had expected to dislike Roz heartily, and to find working with her an unpleasant experience, found very little in her work to criticize and, even more to her own surprise, liked her very much.
The Paris office of Juliana was the least active, from a marketing point of view; most of the creative work on the cosmetics was done in London, with a considerable input from New York.
Roz found herself working as a junior brand manager on the colour ranges (as opposed to skin care and perfume), which meant to a large degree simply watching sales figures, overseeing the translation on packaging, checking distribution, watching and adjusting price levels, and rubber stamping media schedules. It was not inspiring, it allowed little if any scope for creative flair and it involved an enormous amount of tedious routine work. She could have sulked; she could have traded on her position and slacked; she could have thrown her weight around. She did none of those things; she worked very hard and efficiently, made modest suggestions about prices and packaging, always had her paper work up to date and made a point of spending at least one day a week behind the counter in one or other of Juliana’s outlets.
Annick reported very favourably on her to Julian after the first six months, and passed on a couple of suggestions Roz had made which were clearly based on extremely sound judgement.
‘She is a clever girl. She does not mind what she does. And she works very hard. She suggested to me that we price up all the lipsticks and make the eye shadows a slightly more budget line. And sell them together. Just as a promotion. I think it will work.’
‘Why?’ said Julian. ‘Sounds a bit cockeyed to me.’
‘Because she says women use up their lipsticks and want more. The eye shadow is never finished. So they will spend more replacing a lipstick they like and will buy more eye shadows, simply to get the new colours.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘But it is so simple,’ said Annick, surprised at his denseness. ‘If a woman likes a lipstick, it is because of not just the colour, but the texture, the perfume, even. So she will pay much more for it. It is a personal thing. Eye shadow is different. It is just the fashion, the colours. If you sell the two as a pair, you will persuade her to buy an eye shadow she is not perhaps ready for, especially if it is cheaper. And she will also pay more for the lipstick, because it comes as part of a package.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Julian. ‘It might work. Test market it in the next promotion.’
It did work. Sales increased by about ten per cent in all the stores offering the new see-saw prices, as Roz had privately named them.
‘It’s very good,’ said Annick happily, to Roz, over the sales figures at the end of the first two months. ‘You are a clever girl. Your father will be pleased with you, I think.’
‘I hope so,’ said Roz. ‘He’s the boss. Come on, Annick, I’ll buy you lunch.’
Roz was enjoying Paris. She had a tiny flat just off the Tuileries; and with Annick’s help she was learning to dress well. She had discovered the joy of French clothes, and the way French women, whether rich or poor, could put together and accessorize an outfit so that the end result was not just stylish, but witty as well, how the addition of the right, sharply noticeable hat, belt, tights or even earrings could make an unremarkable dress or suit look original and distinctive, how one simple dress could appear romantic, sharply chic or highly sophisticated, according to the wearer’s hairstyle, make-up, accessories and even perfume; how colour should work in an outfit, turning up imaginatively and unexpectedly in shoes, a scarf, a brooch, so that no overall tone was ever quite left to dominate an outfit; how individual style was crucial, and the emphasis of natural assets rather than rigid enslavement to the length, shape, and mood of the season; all this and much more Roz learnt, and spent all of her modest salary and much of her immodest income (which came from the trust set up long ago by Julian and on which she had been drawing since her twenty-first birthday) at such pleasure palaces as the Pierre Cardin boutiques (often visiting with Annick the treasure trove of his markdown emporium on the Boulevard Sebastopol, where for strictly cash you could acquire the most stunning bargains), Dorothee Bis, Cacherel, and occasionally, when she was especially happy or excited, at Chanel, to gorge her taste buds on shirts, T-shirts, earrings, bags.
She began to look very chic; eighties fashion in any case became her well: the trouser suit which suited her rangy walk, the short skirts which showed off her superb legs, the strong, bold colours, the dashingly patterned knitwear which flattered her dark colouring, and the infiltration of the fitness craze into the fashion industry, via the ‘sweats collection’ of Norma Kamali, with her ra-ra skirts, leggings and sweatshirting tops with huge shoulder pads all perfectly suited Roz’s dynamic, athletic style.
She had her dark hair cropped short, which emphasized her large green eyes, her big mouth, making no concessions to prettiness but everything to drama; she learnt to make up superbly, to wear strong colours on her lips and dramatic shapes on her eyes; she had her father’s natural physical grace, she moved, sat, stood well, and she dieted and exercised ruthlessly, running in the Paris streets early every morning, working out in the Juliana salon most evenings, pushing herself harder and harder, until there was not an ounce of spare fat to be seen on her lean long body. She looked sleek, elegant, expensive. And the look pleased her.
Then she managed to enjoy her work, dull as it was; she felt she was learning things that really mattered; and she also had a very close and good friend. She liked Annick more than she had ever liked any other female, apart from Susan; she was very young, only two years older than Roz herself, fiercely ambitious and hard working (both qualities Roz recognized and respected), but work was very far from everything to her; she was amusing, she was irreverent, she was warm and supportive, and perhaps most importantly, she put no value whatsoever on Roz’s background or position, she made it perfectly plain that she liked her for what she was, no more no less, and never even referred to her father, or why Roz just conceivably might be working with her.
And then there was Michael Browning.
Michael Browning was in love with her. Seriously in love with her. Roz could tell this quite clearly and the novelty of being loved wholeheartedly made her very happy indeed. It improved her temper, shrank the chip on her shoulder to manageable limits, increased her self-confidence, even in her appearance, and enabled her to regard the rest of the world with a little more tolerance.
‘You’re a bitch, Rosamund,’ he had said to her frequently, from the very beginning of their relationship. ‘A hard, bad-tempered bitch. And it turns me on. Don’t change. I adore you.’
Being adored by Michael was a dizzy experience. He was thirty-five years old, a rough, tough Brooklyn diamond. His father had run an all-night deli, and Michael had worked in it from the age of fourteen. When sixteen he had observed the ever soaring sales of soft drinks, and wondered if there mightn’t be room for a new one. He talked to a contact with a factory about it, and they came up with Fizzin’ Flavours, a series of new imaginative mixtures in drinks: orange with lemon, blackcurrant with apple, pineapple with grapefruit. Mr Browning Senior shook his head over them, put them on a back shelf and they stayed there. Undeterred, Michael took six crates with him on vacation to California, and set up a stall near the boardwalk in Venice. They sold in a day, which he had known they would; next day people came back for more, which he hadn’t been so confident about, and were disappointed at having to settle for 7-Up and Pepsi.
Michael flew home again, and went to see the bank; the manager lent him five hundred dollars against his father’s surety. It wasn’t much, but it filled a lot more crates; he shipped them down to Venice and sold them for more than half as much again as he had last time.
Then he went looking for another small soft drinks factory.
In five years Michael Browning was a millionaire with a chain of supermarkets, and married to a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn called Anita, whom he had impregnated on their second meeting in his newly acquired penthouse just off Madison.
Both families were very happy, and given the size of the penthouse and Michael Browning’s fortune, Anita’s parents were easily able to ignore the fact that she looked just a little plump on her wedding day and that Michael Browning the Third was born a couple of months early.
Five years later Michael was a multi millionaire, heavily involved in oil, as well as food chains, and married to another rather less nice gentile girl from Washington, whom he had seduced on their second meeting in the Waldorf Astoria where he was chairing a conference.
Anita Browning took one look at the ravishing, ice-cool blonde on her husband’s arm in the Cholly Knickerbocker column next day and knew when she was beaten. She took him to the cleaners for two million dollars and refused him access to Little Michael and Baby Sharon except at Thanksgiving, Christmas time, and an occasional weekend at her own specification if she particularly wanted to go off on her own. Michael minded this very much, but there was precious little he could do about it.
Carol Walsh left Michael Browning in 1975, wooed away from him by some older, more socially acceptable money; Michael was left with a profound mistrust of marriage, and a strong need for the company of women, the more beautiful the better. He did not have too much trouble finding them.
He was not very tall, just a little over five foot ten, and neither was he conventionally good-looking. But just looking at him, as Carol Walsh had remarked to her best friend the day after the seduction, made you think about sex. Michael Browning exuded sex, of a strangely emotional kind. He made women think not merely about their physical needs but their emotional ones; he made them aware not only of their bodies but their minds. As a result, he was extraordinarily successful, not only in bed, but in persuading women they would like to join him there at the earliest possible opportunity.
He was dark haired, with a slightly floppy preppy hair cut, ‘Designed to bring out the mother of the bastard in us all,’ Anita had been heard to pronounce in tones of absolute contempt a great deal more than once; he had brown eyes which looked as if they had seen and profited by every possible variety of carnal knowledge; a nose that only just betrayed his Jewish origins; and a slightly lugubrious expression which relaxed into good humour rather slowly, a little reluctantly even. This expression, an entirely natural asset, was nevertheless of great value to Michael Browning in his relationships with women; they felt he must be sad, that he had some problem, some sorrow, and they went to some trouble to ascertain what it might be and whether they could help him with it. By the time they had discovered there was no problem, he could, should he so wish, persuade them to do almost anything.
And then there was his voice. Michael Browning’s voice was unique. ‘It sounds,’ Roz had said to Annick, uncharacteristically poetic in her attempt to describe it, ‘like a voice that started out perfectly ordinary, and then had a punch-up with a dozen men and then got soothed again with honey and hot lemon, with a slug of bourbon thrown in for good measure.’
‘Mon dieu,’ said Annick. ‘And what does it say, this voice?’
‘Oh,’ said Roz vaguely. ‘Not an awful lot really.’
This was quite true. Michael Browning was not a raconteur, not a dazzler at dinner tables; he spoke with that particular form of Brooklyn succinctness which is so charming when a novelty and so wonderfully reassuring to those who have grown up around it. If he was asked a question, he would answer very fully, he was not a man for monosyllables, and he could be thoughtful and amusing in conversation. But women in love with him waited in vain to be told that they were beautiful, or charming, or all that he had ever wanted. He told them instead the simple truth: that they were a great piece of ass, that they were terrific company, that he wanted to go to bed with them as soon as possible, that this or that dress looked good on them. All in that gravelly, silken voice, while at the same time looking at them mournfully and interestedly with those dark brown eyes: ‘As if he’s never met anyone quite like you before,’ Roz said on another occasion.
He did not dress particularly well; Roz joined a long line of women who tried to reform his wardrobe, with a total lack of success. He was quite simply uninterested; he bought his clothes in all the proper places – his shirts and ties came from Brooks Brothers, he had his suits tailored at J. Press, his shoes from Paul Stuart, and he acquired all the perpetually crumpled Burberrys, which he lost relentlessly, in London at Harrods. But he never looked stylish, and he always looked as if he had borrowed someone else’s clothes, which didn’t quite suit him, but rather surprisingly managed to fit him fairly well.
He lived in a penthouse duplex on Fifth Avenue, right on the park, one block up from the Pierre; it was much too big for him, but it was useful when Little Michael and Baby Sharon, and the ferocious English nanny who Anita insisted should accompany them, came to stay for the weekend. The duplex was a shrine to new money; it had marble flooring throughout, a pond and a waterfall in the lobby, a living area with a sunken floor and so many mirrored walls you hadn’t the least idea where you really were, a master bedroom with not only a Jacuzzi, a sauna and a sunbed, but a small swimming pool adjacent as well, a large number of very expensive paintings by fashionable New York artists on every wall, a fully equipped gymnasium, a music room complete with a computer-drive piano and a computerized mixing deck so that Michael could indulge in his hobby of composing modern variations on the works of Bach, Mozart and even Wagner when he was feeling particularly creative, a playroom for Little Michael and Baby Sharon which made the toy department of Bloomingdale’s look rather poorly stocked, and a roof garden bearing trees and shrubs so big they had to be hoisted by crane from Fifth Avenue fifty floors up the face of the building.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Michael Browning was that despite his considerable wealth, his success, and the constant parade of women in and out of his life, he remained a comparatively nice unspoilt man. He had, of course, forgotten some of life’s minor hazards; he did not have to worry about letters from his bank manager, nor do his own cleaning; he could go on vacation when he wished either alone or in the company of any number of beautiful women; he could acquire for himself anything at all that he wished for (a great deal, one of his greatest faults being an insatiable greed) and he could rid himself of anything he had ceased to like (be it a set of Louis Quinze chairs, a jet-propelled surf board from Hammacher Schlammer or a complete gold-plated dinner service, to name the three most recent) without giving a thought to how much money he might be losing in the process; but the fact remained, that despite a rather strong streak of self-interest, and a complete inability to deny himself what or whoever he wanted, he was kind, and honest.
He had an extraordinary and genuine interest in everybody; he could become as deeply engrossed in conversation with the teller at the bank about his vacation or the cleaning lady in his office about her grandchildren as he could in his own multi-million-pound deals. It was not in the least unknown for a new secretary to go in for dictation and spend the next thirty-five minutes showing him photographs of her parents’ silver wedding, encouraged to describe painstakingly exactly what the cake had been like, and the precise age and state of health of her father’s great aunt, who had somehow managed to take up a prominent position in nearly every shot. He did not do this sort of thing to charm people, as a means to an end; he simply had a great capacity for wanting to know about people, for finding out what they were really like, and very much enjoying himself in the process.
Which was precisely why he had fallen in love with Roz.
Roz had been responsible for his invitation to Harvard; she had suggested to one of her tutors that he would be an interesting person as a guest lecturer (having heard her father and Freddy Branksome both mention him) and had consequently also been assigned the task of meeting him in the shabby splendour of Boston station, escorting him back to the college, and attending the luncheon (along with several other carefully selected students) in his honour. She had dressed for the occasion with great care; she was wearing a white gaberdine jacket and jodhpurs from Montana, with very pale beige flat-heeled suede boots; her hair was tied back on her neck with a silk scarf, she carried a large, beige canvas bag from Ralph Lauren. She looked expensive, classy, stylish. Michael Browning’s first words made her feel less so. ‘You wouldn’t, I suppose –’ he said, ‘be the chauffeur from Harvard?’ He had got off the train and stood looking around him in his rather hopeless way; at first she couldn’t believe anyone so rumpled looking, so unimpressive, could possibly be the undisputed king of the cut-price foodmarket, self-made and self-hyped, she had heard and read so much about. However, there was nobody else leaving the New York train looking any more impressive, or rather nobody who was clearly looking for someone and waiting to be looked after, so she stepped forward and said, ‘Yes, I’m the chauffeur. Mr Browning?’ and he had looked at her very solemnly and said, ‘Miss Morell?’ and she had felt a strange lurch somewhere in the depths of herself and had led him to her car and driven him back to the college.
She knew precisely when she had fallen in love with Michael Browning, and it had not been the first time he had kissed her, nor when he had told her he wanted to go to bed with her more than he could ever remember wanting to go to bed with anyone; not even when he had told her she had a mind that was better and quicker than most of the men he most respected, or that if she should ever need a job, he would give her one at ten grand a year more than anyone else could offer. It wasn’t even when he said that he hoped his small daughter would grow up into just such a woman as she was; it was when he said, ‘Hey, are you Julian Morell’s daughter?’ and she had said, ‘Yes, I am as a matter of fact,’ and he had looked at her consideringly and very seriously, and said, ‘That has to be quite an obstacle race.’
Roz had felt at that moment that after spending much of her life trying to explain things to people who spoke another language she had found herself in a country that spoke her own; who understood not just what she was saying, but why she was saying it; and she had actually stopped the car and looked at Michael Browning very seriously in a kind of pleased disbelief.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘did we run out of gas or something?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I’m sorry, it was just what you said.’
‘About your father?’ he said, and smiled at her again. ‘Did I hit the button?’
‘Very hard,’ said Roz briefly, starting the car again.
‘You’re a terrible driver,’ he said after they had gone a few more miles in silence. ‘You drive like a New York cab driver.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘Well, you were.’
‘I know. It happens all the time.’
‘Can’t you control it?’ asked Roz, smiling in spite of her irritation.
‘It seems not. I’ve been in analysis and had deep hypnosis and electric shock treatment and it just goes right on.’
‘How unfortunate for you.’
‘I get by.’
‘So I understand.’
‘I do find the English accent terribly sexy,’ he said suddenly.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I really do. It’s so kind of lazy.’
‘And do you find laziness sexy as well?’
‘Oh absolutely. One hundred and one per cent sexy. I have to tell you, you could make me feel very lazy,’ he added as an afterthought.
Roz felt confused, disoriented. The conversation seemed to be meandering down a series of wrong turnings, not at all the dynamic business-like route she had imagined.
‘Do you like giving lectures?’ she asked in an attempt to haul him back on to the main highway.
‘I don’t know. I never gave one before.’
‘Oh.’
‘It could be interesting. I’ll tell you afterwards. Do I get to see you afterwards?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. Briefly.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘briefly will be better than nothing.’
The lecture, unrehearsed, unstructured, often funny, told the students more about food retailing than they had ever imagined they might need to know; afterwards he sought Roz out at the buffet lunch, gave her his card and told her to phone him next time she was in New York. Roz said she never went to New York.
Three days later she got a call from him.
‘This is Michael Browning here. I thought if you were never going to come to New York, I would have to come to Harvard.’
‘Why?’ said Roz foolishly.
‘Oh, just to take another look at you. Make sure I’d got it right.’
‘Got what right?’
‘Well,’ he said, and there was a heavy sigh down the phone, ‘it’s those legs of yours, really. They’re coming between me and my sleep. Were you born with them that long, like a racehorse, or did they just go on growing, like Topsy?’
‘I think,’ said Roz carefully, feeling oddly dizzy and happier than she could ever remember, ‘they were quite short when I was born.’
‘Well I would really like to take another look at them. And possibly the rest of you as well. Do you ever eat dinner?’
‘Just occasionally,’ she said.
When he was first getting to know her, Michael Browning had been unable to believe in the spoiltness, the truculence, the outrageous self-obsession of Roz.
He looked at her, and he wanted her, but he was not quite sure that he could take her on. Then he got to know her a little more, learnt of her wretched childhood, her totally unsatisfactory parents, the painstaking indulgence of her every whim that had gone on through fifteen years of recompense, and he had known that he could.
He treated her rough: at first. He told her she had no right, no one had any right to be so angry, so hostile, so aggressive, so self-pitying. He told her of girls he had grown up with, who had been raped by their mothers’ boyfriends, their own fathers before they had reached puberty; who had had to go on the streets every night to fill their bellies; who had had their first unanaesthetized abortions at twelve, their fifth or sixth at fifteen, and dared her to go on being sorry for herself.
Then, having broken down some of her defences, he set to work on the rest. Roz was sexually, as well as emotionally, a mess. The fearsome attentions of the Vicomte du Chene apart, her history was unhappy.
By the time Michael Browning came into her life and her bed, she had a great need for skill and kindness as well as passion. He provided them; he coaxed her and cosseted her, teased her and tormented her, took her and fulfilled her, night after glorious night. He taught her to know what she wanted and ask for it; he taught her to please him, and to please herself; he taught her to think about sex and to give it her attention, just as she did to food and clothes and work. He turned her into a sexual being aware of her own sensuality and what she could do with it, possessed of great pleasures and new powers. Despite strong desires and instincts of her own, she was, she felt, his creation in bed; she sometimes wondered uneasily if he wished her to become his creation in other things.
He flew in to Paris from New York at least once a month for the weekend, amused and charmed, for the time being at least, by her bid for independence. They seldom left her apartment off the Tuileries those weekends; occasionally he would, in one of the grand gestures he so excelled in, take her off to the South of France, or to London, or to Venice, ‘So that I can know you – in the Biblical sense – in another place. It might make a difference.’
Roz supposed she was in love. She had very little knowledge of love, although she had seen the worst excesses committed in its name; but if being filled with thoughts and concern and desire and joy by someone was love, then she felt she was experiencing it now.
She consulted another of her visitors, her mother, an expert she could only suppose, on the subject, but Eliza was charmingly vague.
‘I can only tell you, darling, you’ll know if it is. Not if it’s not. Not the first time, anyway.’
‘Oh, Mummy, surely you can be more precise.’
‘No, Roz, I can’t. There’s nothing precise about love. That’s what’s so dangerous.’
Eliza was in Paris shopping. They were lunching in the Hotel Maurice. Eliza was picking her way painstakingly through a tiny grilled sole; Roz was eating a steak tartare with rather more enjoyment. Eliza looked at her; she had never seen her so happy. Her skin, her eyes, even her hair glowed; she was wearing a smudgy pink cotton sweater with a pair of full linen trousers from Ralph Lauren; a long rope of pearls round her neck. Eliza, more formally dressed in a short black linen dress from Valentino, looked equally relaxed; newly married to her Peveril in that summer of 1980, she was surprisingly happy. Letitia had been right; the pain had eased.
It had been a quiet wedding in the private chapel at Garrylaig; Letitia had been there, and Roz, and Peveril’s sisters, and Eliza’s parents, and that had been all. Eliza had worn a ravishing ivory silk dress by Yves St Laurent, and had managed not to look ridiculous with wild roses in her silvery hair, and Peveril had worn his kilt and a look of such love that Letitia had felt her eyes fill with tears. Perhaps, this time, the child had done the right thing. She looked at Roz, who was also looking softer, tender, moved. Whoever this man Michael Browning was, he was undoubtedly doing her good.
Eliza was now intent on doing up the castle which had had no mistress for ten years. Quite what the Earl of Garrylaig thought of the new furnishings and pictures that were finding their way on to his austere walls was doubtful; he had already learnt not to criticize his new wife, and as prettying up the place, as he put it, seemed to keep her happy, he held his tongue as century-old brocades were packed away and replaced with silks and chintzes, and cavernous halls filled with seventeenth and eighteenth-century sofas, chaises longues and escritoires. He spent more time than ever in pursuit of the grouse and the deer; what did it matter, after all, he thought, as long as his bride was content and out of mischief. She looked after him beautifully, pandering to his every whim, and seemed to find him agreeable and attractive. Peveril was well content and found himself looking forward to bedtime more and more.
‘You’re a fine filly, my dear,’ he would say, slapping her fondly on her tiny backside, ‘very fine. I’m a lucky chap.’
Which indeed he was, and Eliza felt perfectly entitled to regular trips to London and Paris to spend his money and see her daughter, with whom she was suddenly finding it easier to communicate. She was rigidly faithful to Peveril, besides being truly fond of him, and she was enjoying being a countess and her new situation in life. She had fun shocking her Scottish neighbours and importing her London friends into the castle, and she was perfectly happy inflicting her slightly excessive taste on its decor.
‘It sounds dreadful, Mummy,’ said Roz after listening to her for most of lunch, describing the colour scheme for the main guest room, ‘more suitable for Surrey than Scotland. Pink chintz in a castle; it’s like poodle-clipping the deer. Whatever does Peveril think?’
‘Oh, don’t be so superior,’ said Eliza, more than slightly miffed, for she greatly admired her own taste. ‘Peveril likes everything I do for him. And he’s thrilled with the way the castle’s turning out. It was so horribly uncomfortable and bleak before. Well, you saw it; don’t you honestly think so?’
‘No, I liked it,’ said Roz. ‘I like austerity. And I think it has great dignity. You’ll take all that away if you’re not careful. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. How is my new stepfather?’
‘It does matter,’ said Eliza, ‘it matters very much to me. I’m putting a great deal of time and effort into that place, Rosamund. I don’t want doubts cast upon it by my own daughter. Anyway, I don’t see much evidence of any interior design skills in your own home, my dear.’
This was true; Roz, who was at last demonstrating some taste, albeit modest, for clothes, cared nothing for her surroundings and would have agreed to spend the rest of her life in a twelve-foot-square attic, provided it was warm and clean, had she been asked.
‘Oh, don’t be so touchy, Mummy,’ she said, ‘I’m sure it’s quite all right really, and I know Peveril thinks you’re wonderful. Have another glass of wine and let’s talk about something interesting.’
‘Like what?’ said Eliza, a trifle sulky.
‘Me.’
‘And what is so interesting about you?’
‘Well, I need a bit of advice.’
‘What about?’
‘A man.’
‘Ah. This Browning person.’
‘I don’t really like what I hear about him, darling. He has an appalling reputation with women. What exactly do you want advice about?’
‘Michael has asked me to marry him.’
‘Oh, good God, don’t,’ said Eliza. ‘Whatever you do, never marry his sort. It’s quite wrong.’
‘Mummy,’ said Roz, half amused, half intrigued, ‘what advice to be dishing out to your only daughter. Do I just continue as his mistress, then?’
‘If you want to, if you enjoy it. You’re so lucky these days, Roz, not having to have at least one ring on your wedding finger before you can go to bed with anyone. When I was a girl, virginity was still almost obligatory for a bride. Have fun, darling. But don’t marry Michael Browning.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’ll be divorced again in two years. Six months into the marriage and he’ll have a new mistress. Believe me.’
Roz sighed. ‘He says he loves me.’
‘I’m sure he thinks he does.’
‘He says I’m different.’
‘We’re all different. Take no notice.’
‘He says he wants to settle down.’
‘No man of thirty-five wants to settle down.’
‘He says he wants more children. I’d like that.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rosamund, I can’t believe you can be so naïve and stupid! Why on earth do you want to go having babies at the age of twenty-four? It’s absolutely ridiculous.’
‘You were twenty when you had me.’
‘I know, and it was a terrible mistake. The marriage was a terrible mistake. I was much too young. I hadn’t lived at all. Nor have you. Just enjoy the man, Roz. Besides, I thought you were intent on building a proper career.’
‘Well, I am. But Michael says he won’t interfere. He says I can carry on with it.’
‘Rosamund,’ said Eliza darkly, signalling at the waiter. ‘Michael Browning would be not interfering for about forty-eight hours. If that. I have learnt a few things in my misspent life. Now have some more wine,’ she added, ‘and darling, you’d better have some black coffee. You’ve got to go back to work. Please, please believe me, Roz. A career is far more important and worth while at your age – probably at any age – than a man.’
‘But I can have both.’
‘Darling, you can’t. Perhaps if you married some milksop of a man who did exactly what you told him, and thought you should be allowed to do what you liked. But not people like Browning.’
‘I don’t see how you can be so sure,’ said Roz sulkily. ‘We’ve talked about it for hours and hours. Michael is very proud of me. He wants me to do well.’
‘Rosamund, he won’t want you to do well. Doing well will mean you not being there when he wants you. Men don’t like that.’
‘Don’t they? I really think he might. Oh, I don’t know,’ said Roz with a sigh, draining her glass. ‘I do absolutely adore him. And he is such fun.’
‘Well, that’s all right,’ said Eliza. ‘Just go on having fun with him.’
‘Michael, I’ve told you, I just want more time to think about it,’ Roz said earnestly. ‘I’m not saying no. I’m not even saying probably no. I just need to think it through.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Browning wearily. ‘Don’t use your Harvard jargon on me.’
They were sitting in a café on the Champs Elysées having breakfast (croissants, orange juice and champagne), it was Saturday mid morning, and the sun was shining; Michael had spent the night on a plane and was tired and irritable and blind to the pleasures in front of him. He had dropped a box into Roz’s lap as the waiter filled their glasses.
‘That’s for you, Roz. Part of a deal.’
‘What kind of a deal?’
‘You get that and I get you.’
Roz opened the box; inside was a diamond ring of monster proportions, a huge solitaire set in a rough-cut chunk of gold spangled with tiny sapphires. She looked at it thoughtfully.
‘It’s gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. I love it.’
‘Put it on.’
‘I can’t. Not if it’s what I think it is.’
‘Rosamund, if you don’t know what that is, you’ve even less sense than I thought. It’s a diamond. You will have heard of diamonds, I imagine. This is a big one. The goods. It’s to show you what I think of you.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean. And yes, it’s that. It’s an engagement ring, Roz, as you call them in England. I really do want to marry you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I love you. God knows why, but I do.’
‘I love you too. But things are fine as they are.’
‘I wouldn’t agree with that. I want them settled. I’m sick of jetting in here every other day. I want you with me.’
‘Where do you mean?’
‘New York.’
‘I’ve just been offered a new job. In London.’
‘London! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t know. I was only offered it yesterday.’
‘Well, turn it down. Or say you want to go to New York instead.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘What do you mean, you can’t? Your father’s got offices there.’
‘Michael, my father isn’t slotting me in somewhere just to suit me. He’s given me a proper job to do. It’s important. It’s promotion.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rosamund, how important is it to get promotion in your father’s company?’
‘It’s terribly important, Michael. Terribly. I can’t believe you don’t understand. I really have earned it. I’m going to be marketing manager of all the Juliana colour products in the UK. It’s a terrific job.’
‘And I suppose the opposition was really stiff for this terrific job?’
‘Oh, don’t,’ said Roz angrily. ‘You don’t know my father. He wouldn’t give me any job he didn’t think I could do.’
‘I do know your father, and I think he would.’
‘Well, thanks a lot.’ Roz drained her coffee cup and called the waiter. ‘L’addition, s’il vous plait!’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake get off your high horse and have some more champagne.’
‘No, thank you. I want to keep my head clear.’
She was finding the conversation difficult and terrifying. She kept hearing her mother’s voice saying ‘You can’t have both’ and pushing it resolutely to somewhere at the back of her head. It wouldn’t stay there.
‘Rosamund, I really want you to have a career. It’s one of the things I value in you. I love the fact that you want to do well. But I want you to do well with me.’
‘But Michael, I can’t come to New York now. I can’t give up my job, and be a proper good wife to you. Not yet.’
Michael picked up her left hand and slid the ring on to it.
‘Please wear it.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can wear it, for Christ’s sake. That doesn’t commit you to a life sentence of picking out shirts for me at Brooks Brothers and doing the flowers for our dinner parties, which is what you seem to imagine I want.’
‘No, I don’t imagine that, of course I don’t. But if I did marry you, if I was your wife, I’d want to be a proper one. I’ve seen too many wrecked marriages. And this way I’d be cheating. Well, I feel I would.’
‘Well look, wear the ring. And say you’ll marry me soon. I’m not insisting on next week. You can do this important job for a bit, if you really want to. I’ll wait. Please, darling.’
‘Michael, I’m not going to promise anything.’
‘Why not? What harm’s in a promise?’
‘You have to keep them.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop playing games.’
‘I’m not playing games. I just –’
‘What?’
Roz looked at him suddenly. He was white-faced with exhaustion; he had a night’s growth of beard, his voice was shaking with rage and some other emotion, she wasn’t sure what: in a moment of rare unselfishness, she realized she should stop hitting him when he was down.
‘I just want time to think. Come on.’
She stood up and held out her hand. ‘Let’s go back to my flat and you can go to bed for a couple of hours.’
Michael’s eyes flicked over her.
‘You going to join me?’
‘I do like. I certainly do.’
At one o’clock he was still asleep. Roz rolled out of bed cautiously and crept out of the room. She felt exhilarated, recharged, absolutely alive. Sex with Michael Browning did that to her. Not just her body, but her emotions and her intellect had all been absolutely engaged, focused on the taking and giving of pleasure. She was left with a surge of adrenaline coursing through her; she felt she could quite literally have flown in the air.
She made herself a strong coffee and wandered into the bathroom, looked at her face, flushed, worked over with love, and smiled at it. Perhaps, perhaps, after all, Michael could be, would be, enough. She wished for that, at that moment, more than she had ever wished for anything in her life.
Then she looked at the great ring on her finger, where he had put it, and she thought about her father, about London, about her new job and the passion of excitement she had felt when he had phoned her about it: telling her she had earned it, that he was impressed with her work, that he knew she could do it, and do it well, and she knew that she could not, would not, give it up. Not for all the rings, all the money, all the sex, all the love in the world. It was difficult, because she wanted love, and she needed it; but the choice had to be made.
A milksop of a man, she thought sadly, hearing yet again her mother’s voice. That’s what I shall have to find.
In the event it wasn’t really very difficult.
C. J. Emerson arrived at Harvard just as Roz was leaving, a charming, gentle young man whose only real ambition in life had been to study archaeology. His father, however, had rather different ones for him. He was only moderately successful himself, lacking the necessary drive and ruthlessness to head up empires and make fortunes; but he had had moments of inspired vision, and backed some brilliant investments: Scott Emerson’s reputation on Wall Street was front rank.
None had been more brilliant than the one he had pushed through in 1957 when Julian Morell had come to him with his proposals for Circe; and the friendship forged then had remained through the years. They lunched, dined, talked and at times still worked together, they had visited each other’s houses, become involved in each other’s children.
Scott was impressed by Julian’s immense success and fortune, he admired it, but he did not envy it. He had watched his personal unhappiness grow, seen his uncertainties and his agonies, observed his straightforward optimism become something darker and more complex; and he found himself (somewhat to his own surprise) increasingly content with his own more mediocre achievements, and his extraordinarily happy family life.
Scott Emerson in 1980, then, found himself viewing the thirty years to come in the same sanguine spirit as he had viewed the thirty that had so pleasantly passed. His daughters were all doing well; only his son was causing Scott the odd moment’s anxiety. Or more than a moment, as he confided to his friend Julian Morell over lunch at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central station one spring day. The two of them sat and looked (each from their own standpoint) at the pretty girls around them, shedding like so many fluttering butterflies their coats, their boots, their scarves, their gloves and emerging in the delicious, slightly self-conscious sexiness of lighter, clingy dresses, of neatly cut, figure-hugging skirts and jackets, of higher heels and silky stockings. Scott looked and regretted, just perhaps for a fleeting moment, that such pleasures were purely visual; Julian enjoyed, for perhaps just a little longer, the reflection that the pleasures might be extended.
Settled into their martinis, their oysters ordered, the room surveyed, however, they turned their mind to more important matters: to the present, and the future of their families.
‘C. J.’s a dreamer,’ said Scott, gazing a trifle morosely into his martini. ‘He’s gone to Harvard, but his heart’s not in it. Not really. He wants to be an archaeologist. I ask you, Julian, what kind of a job is that?’
‘A fascinating pursuit,’ said Julian, ‘but I don’t think I’d actually call it a job. More of a recreation. I didn’t know you had such things in your country anyway, Scott. I didn’t think there was anything to dig up.’
‘Well, hell, of course there isn’t, that’s why it’s such a crazy idea. He wants to travel, spend years on sites here, there and everywhere; do a postgraduate course at Oxford. That’s no life for a young man, I told him so. Where’s your ambition, I asked him, where are you aiming for in the world? I said he could have a job any time at the bank, but he wouldn’t hear of it. It worries me, Julian, because I think he’ll drift his life away if he’s given the chance. And I won’t have that.’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ said Julian. ‘Young men should have proper jobs. I quite agree with you. Make their way in the world. Take life on. Plenty of time for dreaming when they’re older. Nothing makes me angrier than this modern tendency to put the pursuit of happiness and self-fulfilment and some bloody silly ideals before the real stuff of life. I wouldn’t have it if it was my son.’
He spoke with surprising passion; Scott looked at him sharply. He wouldn’t have expected a man with no son, and no experience of such matters, to feel so strongly, to have given the subject so much thought.
‘What about Roz?’ he asked tentatively, wondering if she was failing her father in this matter, as she had in so many others. ‘Is she frittering her life away, buying frocks and so on? How’s she doing?’
‘Very well,’ said Julian, more warmly than he had spoken of Roz since she had been a little girl. ‘She’s working for me and she’s working very hard. She’s got brains and she’s got push. She’s very, very ambitious.’
‘What a waste,’ said Scott, half humorous, half genuinely envious. ‘How ironic that you should have one daughter with all the traditional male virtues, and I should have one son with apparently none of them.’
‘Well, work on him,’ said Julian briskly. ‘Don’t let him throw his life away. Tell him there’s plenty of time for archaeology when he’s retired, in his vacations. Ideal sort of occupation then.’
‘Oh, I have. I’ve tried that one. And he does try to see it my way. He’s a good boy. And he’s working quite hard at Harvard. But I worry about him long term.’
‘Harvard might well sort him out. Roz loved it. Did her the world of good. I shouldn’t worry too soon, Scott. Have another martini. Ah, here are the oysters.’
But six months later Scott was still worrying. C. J. had scraped his way through Harvard and was now sitting at home in Oyster Bay writing endless applications for jobs he didn’t want. He was a tall, slender young man, with a pale softly freckled face and large dreamy brown eyes. He wore his clothes casual, his hair long, and he never seemed to be entirely present at any occasion.
He could be witty and entertaining, when he felt relaxed and appreciated, but his charm was low-key and diffident. At twenty-five he felt as confused about life and his future as he had at eighteen; and he could work up no feelings at all for money and business, profits and power. The prospect of having to find a job and work amongst such things, his father’s assumption that he would change his mind and grow to like the idea, depressed him utterly; he loved his parents deeply and he wanted to please them, but it seemed to him this was too much for them to ask and for him to give.
He knew, deep in his gentle bones, that there was no real question of him actually being permitted to spend his life on the great digs of the ancient world, but he kept hoping against increasingly forlorn hope that a more pleasing occupation than wheeling and dealing on Wall Street might come his way. Publishing perhaps, he thought, or antiques; but he had made little headway with applications in that direction. You needed contacts in that world, as much as any other, he had discovered.
Nevertheless, he did finally get an offer of a job as junior editor with Doubleday at a modest salary. He looked up from the letter at the breakfast table, his brown eyes shining.
‘I’ve been offered a job, Dad.’
‘Have you now, son?’ said Scott, putting down his coffee and beaming benevolently at him. ‘What is it? Did that opening at Citicorp I gave you lead to anything?’
‘Er – no, not exactly,’ said C. J., who had kept that particular letter of rejection to himself for several days, bracing himself to tell his parents (he had had several and each one had upset them more than the last).
‘No, actually, it’s not banking, it’s publishing.’
‘Publishing,’ said Scott. ‘I didn’t know you knew anything about it.’
‘Well, I don’t much,’ said C. J., ‘but I don’t know anything about banking either. And I think I’d like publishing better. And this is a wonderful offer. I’m going to be an assistant editor at Doubleday’s. It’s a terrific opportunity. I’d really like to take it, Dad.’
Scott looked at him, and bit back the words of discouragement and disappointment that were struggling to get out. The boy had shown some initiative, after all, and Doubleday’s were a good firm. He smiled at him.
‘That’s great, C. J. Well done. When do you start?’
‘In a month, Dad. So you don’t mind?’
‘No, no son, not at all. I’m proud of you, you’ve got there on your own initiative, and that’s a hell of a good thing to do. Write and accept it. Now here’s a letter from Julian; what’s he got to say, I wonder.’
He started to read and then drew in his breath sharply.
‘C. J., listen to this. Julian Morell says he has an opening for you in his London office. He wants you to join the management team of the hotels division. He’s hell bent on opening more of them, God knows why, and he’s got guys working on it night and day. He needs people to do feasibility studies of various sites worldwide. You’d be working on that side. It’s a hell of an opportunity, C. J. You’d do well. He says you could stay with him in London for a few weeks while you’re finding somewhere to live. He’ll pay you handsomely too. It says here, “. . . Tell C. J. he can have five grand and a BMW for starters.” Now that really is great, C. J., isn’t it? Listen, it would make me so happy to think that Julian and I could really put our friendship to work.’
‘But Dad, I already have a job. I don’t want handouts. It’s very kind of Mr Morell, but I really would rather not take it. You just said it was very good that I’d got the job at Doubleday on my own initiative. And I don’t want to go to London.’
‘Why on earth not?’ said Scott. ‘I’d have thought it would be just the greatest. All those old buildings, and you could go do your digging at the weekends. I don’t understand you, C. J., I really don’t.’
‘Dad, I know you don’t and I’m sorry. But my life is here, and my work is here, and I want to stay. I don’t want to work for Julian Morell.’
He was quite pale; he was so naturally conciliatory that every word pitted against his father felt like a self-inflicted wound.
‘Well, think about it at least,’ said Scott, disappointment and deflation echoing in his voice. ‘Don’t write to Doubleday’s for a day or two, and I won’t write to Julian.’
‘OK,’ said C. J. with a sigh.
‘There’s my boy. Now I have to go. I have a medical check this morning, this crazy ulcer is getting worse. Say goodbye to your mother for me when she comes down. See you later, C. J.’
‘Yes Dad,’ said C. J. absently. He sat reading and re-reading the letter from Doubleday for a long time. He was determined not to go to work for Julian Morell. But he trembled at the battles that lay ahead.
In the event there were no battles. Scott’s ulcer proved to be cancer and C. J. could clearly not deprive him of the pleasure in the last year of his life of seeing his son go to work for his oldest and dearest friend.
But having put his shoulder to the wheel, C. J. did push at it with a vengeance. He worked hard at his new job, and put thoughts of archaeology and publishing resolutely behind him; hotels were clearly what Fate had had in mind for him and he went along with her as graciously as he knew how. And in actual fact he didn’t mind it as much as he had expected. His father had been right in one respect; he found London wonderful. He began a love affair with the city that summer, that lasted for the rest of his life; it consumed his heart as well as his intellect. Where other young men pursued girls or worldly success in their spare time, C. J. pursued London. Every weekend he walked, exploring, looking, learning the place, familiarizing himself with every twist and turn of his beloved’s form. He began with the centre, as it seemed to him, the City, and roamed the small lanes as well as the high, winding streets; wandering down tiny alleys, discovering shops, churches, workshops, that stood as if in a time warp. He walked by the river, under the bridges, explored the docklands; he went to all the markets in Whitechapel and Leather Lane and the Caledonian Road, buying, bargaining, being inevitably and hopelessly (but quite happily) cheated. He watched the newly opened hyper-chic Covent Garden taking shape, and mourned for the one he remembered from visits in his childhood, when the streets had been littered with vegetables and lorries piled high with flowers had held up the impotent traffic. He visited a strange pot pourri of places: the Museum of Childhood, the Battersea Dogs’ Home, Pollock’s Toy Museum. He spent a whole weekend in Fleet Street and its environs, absorbing the smell and feel of the place, watching its twenty-four-hour day pass from one early dawn as the lorries thundered out of the bays with their load of newspapers to the next. He could have written a thesis on the churches and cathedrals of the city, from the sweeping majesty of St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, to the high self-conscious fashionableness of Chelsea Old Church and St James’s Spanish Place, which made him feel strangely at home and homesick for New York. He walked the residential areas: Belgravia, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Fulham; he knew the layout of every big store and small smart shop in the city. He ate in every kind of restaurant, from the chic eateries of Fulham and Knightsbridge to the more physically satisfying all-night cafes of Fleet Street and thence to the great English establishments, to Simpson’s in the Strand and Rules. He learnt the layout of the parks by heart: he visited Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, the Orangery in Holland Park, spent days in Hyde Park, rowed along the Serpentine; he sat in St James’s Park, and marvelled at the way it managed somehow to contain the English countryside, and he walked across Regent’s Park, and spent a dizzy, happy day at the zoo.
All this he did alone, for who after all, in the first phases of a love affair, wants to share the beloved; London was company and happiness enough, and he did not ask for any more.
And then he did not actually hate the job quite as much as he had expected. C. J. was a carer, and hotels were in the caring business; having overcome his initial distaste, he found he could actually get quite interestingly involved in how best to ensure the maximum comfort, visual delight and pleasure of one person for twenty-four hours a day.
Julian Morell was swift to realize that where C. J. worked, people tended to think more visually, more imaginatively, and he encouraged and nurtured him. He was a brilliant employer; as with his own daughter, he gave C. J. no special privileges, attention or opportunities – until they were earned. And as in the case of his own daughter, they were earned quickly. In eight months C. J. was promoted to deputy marketing manager, Morell Hotels Europe, at a hugely increased salary – every penny of which he earned.
Julian had taken a considerable gamble in giving him a job at all, but in the event it had paid off. And it was making Scott very happy as he lay failing in his huge bed in the house in Oyster Bay.
Roz was very unhappy. More than she would have believed possible. She missed Michael Browning with every fibre of her being; she hated every beginning of every day.
When they had finally parted (at her instigation and against appalling opposition from him) she spent forty-eight totally wakeful hours, wondering if she could stand the pain and the knowledge of what she had given up. She, who had been looking for love ever since she had been a tiny girl sitting on the stairs and had heard her father’s voice rejecting her, had thrown it wantonly away. And not just love, but appreciation, acceptance, admiration, physical pleasure: simply so that she could be seen to be a worldly success, and to be taking up her position as her father’s rightful heir. And it might well be worth it, indeed she had to believe it was, but the price was horrifically high. She had expected to feel bad; what she hadn’t expected was to feel bad for so long. As the days became weeks, and the weeks a month, two, and her pain continued, she became angry and resentful.
It was very hard, even after this time, to stick to her decision; not to lift the phone, not to write, not to get on a plane. By one simple action, she knew, she could feel well, healed, happy again; but somehow she resisted. She had to.
At first she had expected him to make approaches to her, to try to make her change her mind. But such behaviour was not Browning’s style. He was a proud man. If Roz told him she couldn’t give him her life, then he was not about to crawl round her, trying to change her mind. They had one last night together, when he made love to her again and again, angrily, despairingly: ‘This is what you are losing,’ his body said to her through the long, endless hours, ‘this pleasure, this hunger, this love,’ and in the morning he had got out of bed and left her without saying another word to her, not even goodbye.
She had wept for hours. That was in itself a rare event; she surprised herself by her capacity to feel. Physical pain, this was; her skin felt sore, her head bruised, her joints ached. She couldn’t think clearly, or concentrate or remember anything at all for more than sixty seconds. That went on for weeks. It was only when she flunked an important presentation that she remembered sharply and with a kind of thankfulness why she had subjected herself to this: precisely so that she could work and impress and succeed and excel.
She went home that night and took a sleeping pill, set her alarm for five-thirty. By six-thirty she had run three miles, showered and dressed; by seven she was in the office, dictating memos. That day she instigated a complete re-evaluation of all Juliana’s outlets, made a review of the advertising and arranged presentations from five new agencies; called the studio in for a major briefing on re-packaging three of the lines, and tried to persuade her father of the wisdom of putting small, Circe-style boutiques in the hotels.
‘I think it would work, Daddy. Let me give you some of my ideas.’
Julian looked at her white, drawn face and her dark eyes raw with the pain and saw how he could help her. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that for a while. I’m not convinced it’s right, though. I’d like a document soon, Roz. I can’t wait months. Can you let me have it in three weeks?’
She looked at him with weary gratitude. ‘Yes, I think so. Yes. I can.’
He looked after her with great respect as she went out of the room. He was deeply thankful that the affair with Browning was over; but it wasn’t entirely pleasant to see her so patently wretched.
Roz was too unhappy to think very rationally at the time, but later on it was to occur to her quite forcibly that she could perfectly well have done her new job in New York under the aegis of Miss Bentinck, rather than in London under her father, and continued to see Michael at the same time. It was yet another example of her father’s power over her, and his insistence that she recognized and accepted it.
The document she delivered was excellent: clear sighted, financially well based, persuasive. Julian, who had not had the slightest intention of putting any boutiques in the hotels, agreed to do a test in the Nice and the London Morell. As this came under C. J.’s domain, he called him in.
‘Have lunch with Roz, C. J., and talk to her about her ideas. They’re interesting. She thinks these boutiques should not be just expensive little shops but have properly planned merchandise with a fashion consultant in each one to coordinate accessories. It’s a good idea. Let me have your views on it.’
C. J., who was pushing himself equally hard to try and numb himself against the pain of his father’s death, hurled himself into the project with fervour. He didn’t particularly like Roz, but he admired her and her ideas, and he enjoyed working with her; personally she terrified him, but on a business level she was a delight. Her brain was much more incisive than his, she could see her way through a problem or situation with extraordinary clarity. She was a brilliant analyst and a very clever negotiator. But she undoubtedly lacked flair and fashion instinct, her own appearance apart, and C. J. possessed both; they made an unbeatable team. It was a source of great sadness as well as huge pride to Madeleine that Scott missed seeing his son’s promotion to junior vice president of Morell Hotels by just three months. Roz was given the same title at the same time. It was an interesting period in the Morell empire.
‘C. J.,’ said Roz one night, just after Christmas, ‘why don’t we go through these designers’ names over dinner? I’m really hungry.’
C. J. looked at her warily. He was less frightened of her than he had been, but she was still far from the kind of dinner companion he would have chosen.
Nevertheless, it was a pleasant evening. They got through the list of designers (and a bottle of champagne) in half an hour and by the time the first course arrived they were sitting isolated from the in-buzzing and shrieking of San Frediano’s restaurant in the Fulham Road in a kind of euphoric relaxation. Roz was enjoying herself for the first time in months.
‘Oh, it’s the best feeling in the world, this,’ she said happily. ‘Don’t you think so, C. J.?’
‘Being round half a bottle of champagne?’
‘No, you fool, you know perfectly well what I mean. Finishing a difficult job, and knowing you’ve done it well. And knowing you’ve earned being round half a bottle of champagne. What a ghastly expression, anyway, C. J. Is that an Americanism?’
‘My father told me it was an Anglicism,’ said C. J., smiling at her. She looked very good; she was wearing a white silk shirt and a pair of tan leather jodhpurs with high boots; over her shoulders, slung casually, was one of Edina Ronay’s fair-isle sweaters. She was leaning back in her chair, her long legs thrust out into the aisle between the tables, threatening to trip up the waiters as they hurtled past; almost for the first time he realized she was a very attractive woman in her strong, slightly forbidding way.
‘How are you feeling about your father now?’ asked Roz. ‘Awful still?’
‘Pretty awful.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not so bad for me, I guess. It’s my mother who’s really doing the suffering. She’s been so brave. She loved him so much. They were just all the world to each other. I guess not many people grow up looking at a happy marriage. It’s a great privilege.’
‘One I wouldn’t know about,’ said Roz, sad rather than angry for once about her parents’ spectacular inability to form satisfactory relationships with anyone, let alone one another. ‘Is she all right? How does she cope?’
‘Not too badly. The girls are all in New York, and they see her a lot, and I go over quite often and call her all the time. But it’s no use at all, really. It’s Dad she wants. I’m just glad I was doing what he wanted me to do when he died.’
‘That’s a very unselfish sentiment. What a nice person you are, C. J.’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Not about you. But I’m always surprised by niceness.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I haven’t met an awful lot of it.’
‘Are you feeling better?’ asked C. J., anxious to change the direction of the conversation.
‘What do you mean?’ She looked suddenly defensive.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said C. J., confused and nervous again. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have asked. Here’s our food. Can we have some more champagne?’ he said suddenly to the waiter.
‘C. J.!’ said Roz. ‘What lavish behaviour.’
‘My father always said champagne was cheaper than psychiatry,’ said C. J., smiling at her, ‘and it worked a darn sight better. I think he’s right.’
‘Do you need psychiatry? Do I?’
‘I do,’ said C. J., looking suddenly serious. ‘Or something like it. I’d be in analysis if I was in America.’
‘C. J., what is it? No, you don’t have to tell me. I’m prying. I’m sorry.’
‘No, I’d like to,’ he said and to his total embarrassment and misery his eyes filled with tears. He blew his nose. ‘It would be a relief, in a way. Although you’re the last person I expected to tell.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, because you scare the shit out of me.’
‘So I see,’ said Roz, ‘and it’s deeply flattering. Now come on, C. J. Just forget I’m so terrifying and you don’t like me and all that and just spill the beans.’
C. J. looked wretchedly down at the table. ‘I – well, I think – that is, since Dad died – I – well, I don’t have any sexual feelings at all. It scares me, Roz, it really does. I don’t fancy anyone. I don’t even want to fancy anyone. I’m not suggesting I’m impotent or anything drastic like that, I just feel – dead.’
‘You mean sexually dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about emotionally?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well I mean, don’t you think about girls and falling in love with them and all that sort of thing?’
C. J. looked at her, surprised. He had not expected Roz to look at his problem with such sensitivity and imaginativeness. ‘Well, I worry about it. About not being in love. Not being able to be. But I haven’t met anyone for ages who made me even think positively about it.’
‘You mean you haven’t met anyone you like enough, or fancy enough?’
‘Both.’
‘It is.’
‘No dreams even?’
‘No dreams even,’ said C. J. sadly, and then suddenly he smiled. ‘What a strange girl you are, Roz.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re so tough and clever and ambitious –’
‘And terrifying.’
‘And terrifying. And yet you seem to understand the most surprising things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, loneliness. Isolation, dreams. I mean that really is strange. For you to talk about dreams.’
‘Oh, I’m a mass of contradictions,’ said Roz, just slightly bitter. ‘I’ve just been through the mill myself, C. J. That’s how I know what you’re talking about. I dream a lot. In fact I get all my sex in my sleep at the moment.’
‘Well,’ said C. J. ‘At least you’re getting some.’ And totally unaware of the comedy of the situation, he heaved a shuddering sigh.
Roz sat there and a whole range of emotions filled her. She felt sadness for C. J. and pity; she felt remote and sad for herself; she felt a strong urge to giggle; and strongest of all and quite unbidden, she felt a great lick of desire. And she knew precisely what she would have to do.
‘C. J.,’ she said almost briskly, ‘drink your coffee and take me home. I’m very very tired. Could you call a taxi, do you think, while you’re paying the bill? I’m going to the loo.’
C. J. looked after her miserably as she disappeared. He had made a fool of himself, but at least she was clearly not going to attempt to comfort him or offer any advice. He should be grateful for that. And frightening as she was, he did know she wasn’t a gossip. His misery was in safe hands. He paid the (enormous) bill, collected their coats and was standing in the doorway when Roz appeared, looking briskly cheerful, in a cloud of perfume. ‘Got a taxi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
Inside the flat, which surprised him by its lack of style, its blanket decor of beige and white, its dull, born-again Conran furniture, its dearth of pictures and books, Roz kicked off her shoes, threw her coat on the sofa, put on a record – the LP of Forty-Second Street – and disappeared into the kitchen.
‘Make yourself comfortable, C. J. That’s what they say, isn’t it? I won’t be long.’
C. J. paced up and down the sitting room. ‘Evening shadows fall!’ cried the record player provocatively. He felt sick. He felt like a rabbit in a trap. He would have bolted if he’d had the courage, but he didn’t. He wondered how he could have been quite such a fool, and had just decided to put in for a transfer to Sydney in the morning when Roz reappeared with two mugs of coffee.
‘OK. Now I want to go over that list of designers just once more. I think we may have rushed it.’
C. J. felt a surge of gratitude. She was a clever girl. She knew exactly how to defuse the situation after all. He relaxed suddenly.
‘I felt that.’
‘What?’
‘You relaxing.’
‘Ah.’
‘Now, don’t go all tense again, C. J. Get the list.’
‘OK.’ He went out to the hall where he had left his briefcase. When he came back she stretched out her hand.
‘Here you are.’
‘Thanks. Now then,’ she said, patting the sofa beside her. ‘Let’s see. Are you quite sure about Jean Muir?’
‘Quite.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Why?’
‘Too subtle. Zandra certainly. Belinda Belville almost certainly. But I’m doubtful about Jean. Give me your hand, C. J.’
He was so relaxed, he gave her his hand without thinking. Roz raised it to her lips and he looked at her, startled.
‘Roz, don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like pity.’
‘You’re not going to get any.’
‘Ah.’
The record had mercifully stopped; all he could hear, thundering somewhere inside him, was his heart.
‘Kiss me.’
‘Roz, I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why not.’
‘I don’t. Kiss me.’
‘No.’
‘Then,’ she said taking his face in her hands, ‘I shall kiss you.’ And she leant forward very very slowly and kissed him very gently. ‘Was that so dreadful?’ she said, drawing back.
‘Not dreadful at all.’
‘I liked it too. I shall do it again.’
And she did.
‘How was that?’
‘It was great,’ said C. J., and then suddenly drew back from her and collapsed into the corner of the sofa, roaring with laughter.
‘C. J., what is the matter with you?’
‘This is too ridiculous. It’s like a re-run of Some Like It Hot. You know, when Tony Curtis has told Monroe he’s impotent and she’s really trying to get him going, and he keeps saying “Nothing” every time she asks him how he feels. It’s just ridiculous!’
‘Well, thanks,’ said Roz, slightly nettled, but then she started to laugh too, and fell against him, and then she turned her head up to him, and pulled him down against her. And he kissed her again, and then again, and ‘Still nothing?’ she said, apeing Marilyn Monroe’s baby voice, and ‘Yes, something,’ said C. J. in a thick American accent and then, his eyes still full of laughter, he pushed her upright and raised his hands and unbuttoned her shirt and began to slide it off her shoulder, and as he looked at her breasts naked under the silk shirt he felt at the same time a dreadful stab of terror and panic and a great lunge of desire, and he stopped smiling altogether and froze quite quite still.
‘Oh, C. J., don’t be afraid,’ she said in a voice so soft he would not have believed it of her, and she took his head in her hands and pressed it very tenderly against her breasts, stroking his hair, and as he took one of her nipples in his mouth, played with it, teased it, she began to moan, very very quietly. And then suddenly he felt everything was totally out of control, and a white-hot need came into him, that was blind, driving, deadly. He was tearing at her clothes, and his own, and kissing her everywhere, her face, her shoulders, her breasts, her hands, and drawing her down on top of him. He felt her thin back, her tight hard buttocks, and then her soft moistness, so tender, so yielding at first, and then so hungry, and so strong; and he turned her and entered her with a great surge of triumph; he had only been in her for the briefest of times, it seemed, settling, searching and feeling her juices flowing to meet him, when it was over, in a shuddering agony of relief and the months of misery and loneliness were wiped out and he lay weeping on her breast. And Roz lay too, hardly begun to be satisfied, aching with hunger, weeping for the loss of Michael for the first time for months, but smiling nevertheless; and in her ears she could hear, as if she was in the chair on the other side of the room, her mother saying, ‘Find some milksop of a man who would do exactly what you told him.’
She looked up into his slightly anxious brown eyes and smiled, and reached out a hungry hand, cupping his balls, caressing them with light, feathery strokes. ‘C. J.,’ she said. ‘Do it again. Now. Before I scream.’
C. J. did it again.
C. J. did not do quite what she told him. At first. After a heady two months, when they saw each other three times a week, in secrecy, and went to bed together whenever they could (and during which time she managed to improve his performance considerably), Roz asked him to go to Paris with her one weekend, ostensibly on business, booked them into the anonymity of the Paris Hilton, and on Saturday morning, after some particularly satisfactory sex, proposed to him. C. J. refused.
‘You know as well as I do, Roz, it wouldn’t work.’
‘Why wouldn’t it work?’
‘Because you’re the boss’s daughter, for a start. And you’d boss me to be going on with. And we’re too unlike ever to make a go of it.’
‘You once said,’ said Roz, bending down to kiss his flat stomach, ‘that you wouldn’t mind me being your boss.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t, in a business context. But I don’t want to be bossed in my marriage.’
‘Maybe I could learn not to.’
‘No, I don’t think you could.’
‘C. J., I really think we could be very happy.’
‘I don’t.’
‘But why not? I fancy you rotten. I enjoy your company. I’ (and there was a fraction of a second’s hesitation) ‘love you.’
‘No, Roz, you don’t. And I don’t love you.’
‘I see.’
‘Rosamund, I adore you. I think you’re a terrific lay. I admire you. But I don’t love you. You can’t have thought I did.’
‘God in heaven!’ said Roz. ‘How I hate being called Rosamund. It always heralds disaster. And I did think you loved me.’
‘Roz, I never said –’
‘Oh, go to hell,’ said Roz angrily, climbing out of bed. She went into the bathroom, reappeared dressed and made up, and walked over to the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see Annick. To discuss sales figures. That’s all I’m really fit for, isn’t it? Work. Let’s keep things in order. Goodbye, C. J.’
‘Roz, please!’
She was gone, the door slammed after her. She took a taxi to Annick’s flat and stormed up the stairs.
‘My goodness gracious, Roz, whatever is it? What is the matter?’
‘Nothing! Everything!’
‘Have a drink. Tell me.’
‘Thank you. I’ll have a brandy.’
‘Before lunch! This must be bad.’
‘Oh, it isn’t really, I suppose,’ said Roz, sinking into Annick’s deep leather armchair with a hugh sigh. ‘It’s the old story. I want to marry someone and he doesn’t want to marry me.’
‘Not – not Michael Browning?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Roz, with a wry grin. ‘He wanted to marry me. It’s ironic, isn’t it, Annick? He would have married me and it would have been disastrous for me. This one would work, and he won’t. And I don’t know what to do.’
‘Forget him,’ said Annick. ‘There is no point in marrying someone who is not right for you.’
‘I think he is, though, that’s the point.’
‘Well, chérie, even if he is you can’t force him. And besides, Roz, why are you in such a hurry to get married? It is not so very long since you finished with Michael. You have your career. I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t quite myself,’ said Roz slowly. ‘I only know I really really want to be married. I want to be wanted, and I want everyone to know I’m wanted. A lot of people thought Michael ended our relationship. I don’t like that. And I’m afraid of being alone. Ever since Michael I’ve been afraid of being alone.’
‘And your career?’
‘Oh, that’s no problem. Of course I want my career. But I want to be married too. I want it all, Annick. We all do, our generation. Don’t you?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Oh Annick, what am I going to do? How am I going to persuade him?’
‘I don’t know, chérie. Truly. After all, the good old days when women trapped men are gone, are they not?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘By becoming pregnant. Mon Dieu, how many men got caught like that. But not any more. And what a disastrous beginning for the marriage anyway. Now, have another glass of brandy, Roz, and tell yourself there are other pebbles in the river, or whatever it is you say.’
‘Fish in the sea,’ said Roz slowly. ‘Thank you, Annick. Good advice. You’re right, of course.’
She went back to the hotel that night and found C. J. had checked out. She was not over-bothered. She had a little time. Back in London she sought him out after a few days, apologized for making a fool of herself, and said they might as well be friends. Loving friends. C. J., relieved to see a peaceful end to the conflict, agreed. Within ten days she had seduced him again. After a month, they were back where they had been – passionate lovers – with the difference that Roz confided in her father about the relationship.
‘You won’t believe this, Daddy. But we really really get on.’
‘Darling, I’m delighted. Surprised. But delighted. My oldest friend’s son. It’s charming. I suppose I shouldn’t be encouraging my daughter in an irregular relationship, but I’m so fond of C. J. and I know he’ll take care of you.’
‘Don’t say anything to him, will you? He’s so shy.’
‘Of course not. But it is very nice news indeed. What delightful hands I am finding my company in.’
Roz had correctly anticipated her father’s pleasure; but she had not quite thought through how deeply her future in the company might be affected by a marriage to C. J. The two of them – or rather the one of them, she thought wrily – could make an uncontested takeover for the whole thing in the fullness of time. Her father was sixty-two. He couldn’t go on for ever. Any fear that somebody might emerge – the spectre of a son being born to Camilla, or indeed anybody, was receding steadily these days, thank God – would be greatly diminished if Julian’s only child – she wondered idly, occasionally, why he always referred to her as his only daughter – was married to the son of his oldest friend and that son already a proven asset to the company. Roz smiled to herself over the glass of champagne her father had poured her. How very nicely everything would be working out.
Three weeks later they were having a lazy Sunday breakfast in C. J.’s flat in Primrose Hill when Roz put down the Sunday Times and looked at him just slightly nervously.
‘C. J.,’ she said, ‘I have a tiny problem.’
‘What’s that?’ said C. J. He was learning to be wary of her. ‘Can I help?’
‘I don’t know. Probably not.’ She paused and took a sip of coffee. ‘My period’s rather late.’
C. J. looked at her intently and rather oddly and put down his newspaper.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I say. My period’s rather late. Ten days, actually. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ said C. J. ‘I don’t know what I think. Or I hope I don’t. Is it often late?’
‘Well – sometimes. Not often. Bit worrying, isn’t it?’
‘I thought you were on the pill.’
‘I am. But it’s a low-dosage one and you do have to be terribly careful about not forgetting. Even taking it at the same time each day. Maybe I slipped up. I don’t think I did, but I might have.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘Fine. Perfectly fine. Although –’
‘Yes?’
‘Well the only thing is, I’m terribly hungry all the time. But I certainly don’t feel sick or anything like that. Oh, don’t look so worried, C. J. I’m sure it’s nothing. If it hasn’t arrived by Friday I’ll have a test done. Now let’s get dressed and go for a walk or something. Don’t you want to go and explore Spitalfields, or somewhere equally exotic?’
‘What? Oh, no, it doesn’t matter,’ said C. J. absently.
‘Well, anyway, you choose. I don’t mind where we go.’
Coming out of the shower, she looked at C. J. He was staring out of the window, his face blank and white, his eyes somehow sunk into his face, darker than ever and full of fear.