London and Sussex, 1985
WOMEN ARE NOT asked to bear any pain greater than that of losing a child; Letitia had been asked to bear it twice already and she was not sure that she could stand it again. She lay in her brass-headed bed in First Street and felt she would never sleep again; she could not cry, she would not cry, she was afraid of tears, of the sweeping wave of pain that they released. She was fighting to hold back that wave, to control it, she knew if it came she would sink, drown in it. In a few days perhaps, she would be able to manage it; for now, dry-eyed, breathing a little heavily with what felt like a physical effort, she lay and held it at bay.
She was helped in her struggle by her thoughts of the rest of the family; of Phaedria, widowed before she had begun properly to know what marriage was, and with the added pain of a pregnancy to endure alone. Letitia had no doubt that she would come through; she was tough, and she was brave, but that did not diminish her grief and her misery. And there was grief; Letitia was almost relieved to see that grief. She had always felt that Phaedria had loved Julian, that she had married him for that reason, not for the money, the power, the fairy-tale transformation scene he could work upon her life, but she had been alone in her judgement at the beginning and had sometimes over the past two years begun to doubt it. Whether or not the marriage had been a success she had no real idea; the last few weeks of it had been very sad. She had, at least, been with him when he died, when he had been taken ill; there must have been a reconciliation of some kind. But it had clearly been brief; when Letitia, summoning a strength from she knew not where, had gone to visit Phaedria at the house the night after Julian died, all she had said over and over again, her voice cracked with pain was, ‘I didn’t tell him, Letitia, he didn’t know. I didn’t tell him, he didn’t know.’
She had thought at first that Phaedria had meant she hadn’t told Julian she loved him, but later when she had tried to give her a brandy, a sleeping pill, anything to calm her, she had said no, no, the least, the very least she could do was take care of her baby, of Julian’s baby, and Letitia had looked at her shocked and still with pity and wept with her for a long time.
And then there was Roz. Roz had reacted strangely: angrily, fiercely, when she was first told the news that Julian was in intensive care and not expected to live. C. J. had broken it to her, and then phoned Letitia in despair, saying Roz was raging, screaming, blaming Phaedria, saying it would never have happened had she not married Julian, saying she should be there with him, not Phaedria, and then, when Phaedria had said of course she should come, should see him, should say goodbye to him, had said, icy cold, ‘I do not intend to share him with her now.’
She had stood throughout the funeral stony-faced; she had not wept at all, until the moment when she tossed a small bunch of white roses on to the coffin as it went into the ground. Then she turned swiftly and ran, sobbing as she went, into the trees at the back of the graveyard, and would not come out, would not speak to anyone until the last car had left, insisting that everyone, her mother, her husband, her grandmother should go and leave her alone, and then she walked, slowly, heavily, an almost ghostly figure towards her own car and drove very fast away.
The funeral had been in Sussex, in the small church where Julian and Phaedria had been married; there had been hundreds of people there: from the village, from London, from all over the world they had come, his staff, his colleagues, his rivals, his friends. And of course his family.
Phaedria had kept the service very simple; the only dramatic gesture she made was when she placed some keys in the grave, on top of the coffin, nestling in her own flowers, white lilies, with a card that said simply ‘From Phaedria, with my special love.’
‘The keys of the Bugatti,’ she explained to Letitia with a half smile at the house later. ‘It was a very special present to me and I wanted to give it back to him. No one will ever drive it now.’
She had asked Letitia not to say anything about the baby: ‘I can’t bear to talk about it yet. I can’t bear to be happy about anything. Can you understand that?’
‘I can,’ said Letitia, ‘of course I can. I won’t tell anybody at all. You must do it when you are ready. It is your baby and your secret.’ She looked at Phaedria and smiled gently. ‘I am a very good keeper of secrets, Phaedria. As one day you will learn.’
She herself had wept at the funeral; not at the graveside, but in the church. She had stood very erect, her face composed behind her black veil, but when the congregation was asked to sing the Twenty-Third Psalm, on the words ‘He makes me down to lie’ she had suddenly sunk to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Phaedria, who was on one side of her, and C. J. on the other, had knelt beside her, their arms round her, but she had gently pushed them away, and stayed there, very still, until the psalm was over, and then stood up again, quite calm but with the tears still wet on her face, remembering with a dreadful vividness the small boy who had pinned his party invitations on his wall and ridden his pony with style and grace and the young man who had taken her to live with him in the little house in First Street and taken her about London with him as if she was a pretty young girl.
Afterwards at the house she talked to Susan, who was looking dreadful, white and drawn. ‘I feel so bad, Letitita, I loved him so much, and he never knew.’
‘Oh, much better he didn’t,’ said Letitia briskly, with a touch of a smile. ‘He would only have tried to seduce you again if he had. You were much more value to him as a friend, and to Phaedria too.’
‘I’m afraid I was no value to her at all,’ said Susan, looking at Phaedria who was standing and struggling to talk to a large crowd of people. ‘I was so much on Roz’s side, and of course I still am, somebody has to be, but I think I was wrong about her, she seems genuinely wretched, and I feel bad about that too.’
‘Oh, but she didn’t know,’ said Letitia. ‘She always said how nice you were. Although you frightened her. As you do all of us,’ she added with another half smile. ‘Susan, I think I will go upstairs now and lie down, I’m feeling very tired. Come up and see me later.’
Susan watched her walk out of the room, slowly, very erect, and thought she had never seen courage so simply displayed.
Eliza was very upset too; white and shaken, leaning on Peveril’s arm, very quiet, only speaking when someone asked her a question. David Sassoon, standing apart from the crowd, looking out for Roz’s car, wondering where she had gone and what he could do to help, looked at Eliza thoughtfully. She had obviously felt a great deal for the old bastard, probably without realizing it, for all her protestations of dislike and bitterness; he wondered whether Julian had ever realized it, and how he had really felt about her.
Roz had never returned to Marriotts that day; she had driven back to London and locked herself in her bedroom in the house at Cheyne Walk, only to emerge the following morning, dry-eyed, perfectly dressed, and thrown a tantrum because her driver was not available to take her to the office, being rather fully occupied ferrying the funeral guests to the airport. From then she had acted perfectly normally; someone, she said, had to keep the company going, and it looked as if it was going to be her. If anyone had proffered sympathy she had given them a terse nod, otherwise she had not mentioned her father’s death at all.
Until the reading of the will. That had taken place two weeks after the funeral; it drew the family together in a white heat of emotion and tension, and then tossed them apart again as if they were so many rag dolls.
Remembering the events of that day: of Camilla, arrived so bravely to confront them, summoned by Julian from wherever he might now be, of Roz, so powerfully, fearsomely angry and hurt, of Phaedria, so freshly wounded, so suddenly frail, her quiet secret suddenly, harshly public, half comfort, half added burden fragmented into noise and rage, Letitia wondered with a mixture of horror and fascination at the cruelty of her son. In a way she was almost glad; it eased her grief, gave her something else to focus on, and besides being angry with him, being ashamed of him was oddly healing.
And so she lay pushing her sorrow away; refused to cry; worried instead about Roz and what was to happen to her now, without her father, the only real love of her life, the reason for everything she did; and about Phaedria and how she was going to cope with the new, shocking piece of treachery that was Miles, and wondering, as they all were, who and where Miles Wilburn was, and what he could possibly mean to Julian that he should inflict such pain and trauma on his family.
A few days later she felt a little better; she invited Susan to supper, weary of her own thoughts, anxious to share them and to discuss the situation with her.
‘If Julian were to walk in now,’ she said to her, ‘I would be so angry with him I don’t quite know what I might do.’
‘I wish he would,’ said Susan, smiling at her, encouraged by her return to her old spiritedness, ‘then we could grill him about Miles Wilburn and make him tell us who he is. Oh God, Letitia, trust Julian to manipulate people even when he’s dead. How could he do it? To us all, but to Roz and Phaedria in particular. When he was supposed to love them so much and find their feud so distressing.’
‘Well, he did little to ease it,’ said Letitia briskly. ‘Poor things. I really don’t know which of them I feel more sorry for.’
‘Oh, I do,’ said Susan. ‘Roz of course. Without a doubt. Phaedria never expected to get the company. Roz has spent her entire life waiting, and hoping for it. Now she has to battle it out not only with the woman she hates most in the world, but with some unknown man who her father obviously had a lot of time for. It’s terribly hard.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Letitia. ‘But it must be very hurtful for Phaedria too. She was his wife, she could have been supposed to know everything about him. This is a very public slap in the face for her. Good God, Susan, whatever could have possessed him to do it?’
‘Whatever it was that possessed him to do most things,’ said Susan. ‘Oh, Letitia, don’t look like that. I know what you’re thinking, that it was your fault. It wasn’t, Letitia, it really wasn’t. Please stop blaming yourself about it.’
Letitia sighed. ‘I can’t help it, Susan. I feel to blame.’
‘Well, you’re very silly. Very very silly. And I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this.’
‘It’s going to be extremely exciting, it must be said,’ said Letitia. ‘Julian has certainly managed to make the last act of his life a very high drama. Poor Henry Winterbourne will never be the same again. I really found it very difficult not to laugh, when he was trying to look as if what was going on was perfectly normal legal procedure. But anyway, not only does Miles have to be found, but either Roz or Phaedria has to win him over. I hope he’s a strong character. For all our sakes.’
‘So do I. Now tell me, Letitia, in your capacity as family sage, who do you think might win that battle? If it ever gets fought?’
‘In my position as family sage,’ said Letitia very slowly, with an odd rather mysterious little smile, ‘I think I’d put my money on Phaedria.’