Dangerous Pleasures Read online

  ‘Casing the joint for Harry. My son. He’s nearly thirteen. I wasn’t sure. I’m still not, but Elsa’s been on at me. My wife.’

  Grinning, Lucas nodded, showing a wing of fine lines around each eye.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You met her?’

  ‘No. I mean I knew you’d got married. I saw it in the papers.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Lucas held open the door to the yard and Colin could not help but notice that he too wore a plain gold band.

  ‘You’re settled too?’ he asked, unsure how he felt about this.

  ‘And how. Ten years now. Funnily enough, we’re sniffing around for a place to send Willy.’

  ‘Could do worse.’

  ‘Could do better. Christ, this place still has tin baths! I know America’s spoiled me but even by English standards the plumbing here is medieval.’

  ‘Ah but the academic standards…’

  ‘Yes. I know I know. I’ve heard it. It’s always the ones who didn’t come to these places who fight to perpetuate the whole thing. Left to us it would turn co-ed and be handed over to the state, right? I tell you, Colin, night after night I’ve had nothing but academic excellence, valuable networking, cultural heritage. I had to agree to come just to get some peace. Where’s — Elsa, did you say her name was?’

  ‘Watching cricket. She’s a fanatic’

  ‘That’s where I left my lot too. We brought a picnic. Seeing the alma mater was one thing, but I baulked at sherry with the housemaster. So. It’s been a long time.’

  ‘It certainly has.’

  Again Colin felt Lucas’s great hand on his back only this time it moved up to his shoulder and rested there. What the hell? No one was staring. They were two married men now. Two very obviously married men. He fought back a disturbing desire to kiss him full on the lips then and there and forced himself to talk personal history. By the time the cricket match was in sight, and its dense band of brightly coloured spectators gathered around the drinks marquee, he had told Lucas everything. The year off teaching in the Sudan. Oxford. Law school. The Bar. His mother’s death. Elsa. Harry.

  ‘There they are,’ he said, raising a manly hand in reply to Elsa’s languorous wave from a deck chair. ‘But what about you? You’ve been to America?’

  ‘Ever since Cambridge. I studied film at UCLA and wasted some time directing budgetless art, then I got into scripts and hit lucky. Sucked into Hollywood. A living hell but obscenely well paid. But that’s where Fran came along so it was worth every minute.’

  ‘Your wife.’

  ‘My man, Colin, my man.’ Lucas laughed, giving Colin a playful punch in the ribs. ‘Jesus. There he is now, the impossibly cute one chatting up your wife. He was married, of course, but she’s a wild thing and very understanding, so she let us have custody of the kid. Fran had always spent more time with him in any case. Anyway, I’ve gotten into production now and Fran’s company are transferring him to London so —’ he shrugged and gestured around them with his spare hand, ‘here we are sorting out Willy’s future. Christ but I hope he can pass the exams. American schools are so backward, you have no idea.’

  ‘Darling!’ Elsa raised a hand, which she clearly intended Colin to kiss. He merely clutched it, masking his panic with a sort of benevolent leer. She was drinking Pimms. The questionably blond American at her side stood to introduce her.

  ‘Elsa, this is Lucas.’

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘Hello.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘And this is my one!’ Elsa laughed. ‘Darling, meet Fran. It’s such fun. They’re moving to England and I’ve promised to help them find a lovely house. I’ve been telling Fran about that nice one for sale near us. You know? With the pretty old conservatory? Lucas, do sit here. I don’t think those old trouts will dare come back. Darling? Can you see if the boys are all right? I gave Harry his pocket money and I think he might be trying to buy them both Pimms.’

  Colin walked into the mouth of the tent. The air inside was baking, heavy with alcohol, flowers and the smell of hot, damp grass. He spotted Harry buying innocuous enough ice cream for himself and a boy with snowy blond hair, jeans and a baseball cap. In his suit and tie, Harry looked like a bank manager beside him. Suddenly thirsty, Colin turned back to ask the others what they wanted. Mid-anecdote, Elsa was tapping a hand on one of Lucas’s knees as he sprawled in his deck chair. His — Colin sought a usable word — friend was laughing uproariously. Contenting himself with a more elegant chuckle, Lucas flicked a glance over Elsa’s head to meet Colin’s gaze and Colin felt a huge, threatening alteration in the scene, as though the ground had changed its angle or all the trees had suddenly grown another yard. Perhaps it was just the heat.

  THE LIST

  for Suzy Eva

  ‘MOTHER will have a fit,’ I told her.

  ‘Polly,’ she said, taking my hand in hers beneath our discarded coats. ‘Calm down. It’ll be okay. It’s not as though it will be any great surprise for her. She knows about us and everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At least she should do by now — she can be evasive. But I’m her baby. Her littlest.’

  ‘Even littlests have to fly the nest some time. You’re twenty-six for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Twenty-six next birthday.’ I smiled. The taxi pulled over. Mother’s street. Holy Mary, Mother of God.

  ‘You make me feel so old,’ Claudia complained.

  ‘Mother will think you’re a cradle-snatcher.’

  ‘She won’t, will she?’ A moment of panic from Claudia.

  ‘Just teasing.’

  Now it was her hand’s turn to be pressed.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘with you having lived it up in Rome for the last year, she can scarcely accuse me of ripping you untimely from the maternal nest.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, thinking of Rome, of Claudia’s enormous bed in Rome, of the old pewter plate of figs and nectarines on the bedside table and the buzz of afternoon scooters beneath the shuttered window. ‘But that didn’t count. Abroad doesn’t count as long as your mother has a room full of your things.’

  ‘What things?’ She withdrew her hand to push some hair back, exposing a silver earring in the shape of a shell. She saw me look at it. Renaissance silver. I had the other one but was not wearing it today. Mother had superstitions about wearing odd earrings. Like so many younger habits, she found it spiritually unhygienic.

  ‘Oh. Just things,’ I said. ‘Books. Boxes of letters. Clothes I never wear. Winter coats. My bears.’

  ‘Bears?’

  ‘Teddy bears. You know. Toys. I have several. They were my grandmother’s. They get passed down.’

  She smiled and looked out of the window.

  ‘We must adopt a baby subito,’ she said.

  The cab driver was counting the numbers on the white-painted porticos. Forty-six. Forty-eight. Now and at the hour of our death.

  ‘Just stop right here.’ I tugged his little window open. Claudia had shut it earlier to give our conversation privacy.

  ‘But I thought she lived at eighty-something,’ she protested.

  ‘Yup. Right here’s just fine. Thanks,’ I told the driver. ‘I want to walk a little,’ I told her. ‘Fresh air will do us good.’

  ‘Sorry we’re in the dark,’ Mother said. ‘Mrs Sopwith’s polishing silver.’

  All the thick downstairs curtains were drawn. The dining room table had been opened out and covered with several old flannel sheets. The family silver, which was kept in a broken twin-tub in the basement, was spread out on it, its variety of impractical or impenetrable shapes glistening in the light of a single, low-wattage lamp. Mrs Sopwith was hunched over a coffee pot, scrubbing at it with the brush my late father had used on his false teeth.

  ‘Come up, come up,’ sang Mother, mounting the stairs, ‘and let me have a good look at you. Both of you.’

  Claudia slipped a hand be
tween my legs as we followed. Mrs Sopwith saw. I know she did.

  Mother led us into the morning room. It was full of things. Even without her silver knick-knacks (which Mrs Sopwith was polishing along with the bulkier stuff) its table tops were cluttered. Family photographs smiled equably over one another’s shoulders. Potpourri mouldered in assorted Chinese containers. African violets and small begonias thrived on several surfaces and a vase of lilies sent out scarves of scent from the mantel shelf. New, unread novels, freshly delivered on account, caught the autumn sunlight on her desk-top. A sheaf of well-thumbed magazines had been painstakingly fanned out on the low, rectangular table between the sofas. A coffee table in any other house, it had always remained nameless in ours, scorned by Mother for its blameless lack of antique charm. I wished myself in Rome, furled in Claudia’s matchless bed linen.

  ‘I do wish Mrs Sopwith wouldn’t do that,’ said Mother, sweeping the magazines back into a vertical pile. ‘Makes the place look like a chiropodist’s waiting room.’ With a few soft pats to the sofa cushion, she gestured to Claudia to sit beside her. I sat on the sofa before them and saw with a shock that they looked almost the same age, although Mother was the older by at least ten years.

  Mother was what I had always thought of as a Chelsea Blonde. I was blonde too, but to qualify for Chelsea Blondedom one’s hair had to be dead straight, hanging just to the shoulder, and preferably with the subtlest hint of who-gives-a-damn silver. Seen at its best oiled sleek on a beach or revealed, après ski by the removal of an unflattering woolly hat, it was worn around town as occasion demanded. The severity of the look could be (and usually was) offset with all manner of frills and flounces down below and had the advantage over the dowdier Mayfair Perm of conveying an unerring purity and youthful vigour rather than mere respectability.

  ‘So,’ Mother said, fatuously, ‘you must be Claudia.’

  Thoughtlessly I corrected her pronunciation.

  ‘Thank you, dear. Claudia. Claudia.’ She turned to Claudia for confirmation, smiling girlishly. ‘Claudia to rhyme with rowdier?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Claudia gave her a slow smile.

  ‘Claudia.’ Mother tried it again. ‘But it sounds so much more attractive that way; quite fresh!’ She laughed. I slipped off my shoes and drew my feet up onto the sofa, retreating. ‘Polly’s told me so much about you in her letters: Claudia this and Claudia that.’

  ‘I hope she didn’t bore you too much.’

  ‘On the contrary. What an enchanting earring that is.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Mother was actually lifting Claudia’s hair for a closer look. How dared she? Her liver-spotted digits on Claudia’s silky darkness! She would never have shown such intimate interest in the few boys I had ever brought home. Smiling at the thought of her stooping to fondle Jeremy’s belt buckle or Simon’s latest loafer, I feigned interest in some new photographs of my cousins.

  ‘I’ve given the other one to Polly,’ said Claudia. ‘They’re pretty, aren’t they? Mamma always swore they were seventeenth century, but fakes are so clever nowadays, it’s almost impossible to tell.’

  ‘Good Lord! Polly, have you got yours on now?’

  ‘No. It’s…It’s back with my things.’

  ‘Well I hope your things are somewhere safe.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘My brother’s flat has more security than Fort Knox,’ put in Claudia. ‘Quite absurd because Enzo seems to spend his every daylight hour at the bank and has nothing to steal.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘Enzo? No. Only to his bonds and his little screens. He does drive an absurdly powerful car, though, so I suspect he may yet surprise us all.’

  ‘Like our Polly,’ said Mother and giggled. ‘But you won’t be living at his place indefinitely, surely?’

  ‘We’re flat-hunting already,’ I broke in.

  ‘We?’ Mother queried.

  ‘Claudia and I.’ I crossed my fingers. ‘We’re going to live together.’

  ‘But surely you have to get back to Rome for your studies, darling?’

  ‘The course is over. I must have told you several times in my letters. It finished in June. I was thinking of staying on for a bit but then Claudia’s partner had this idea of opening a London office so we decided to come and set up house over here.’

  In the space of a few, sunlit seconds, a miniature drama of reaction and snatched understanding was played out across Mother’s greyhound features.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Oh,’ (this with an undermining smile of self-mockery), ‘I see.’ She stood quickly and came to sit beside me. ‘Darling, I hadn’t realized. You must think me so stupid. It’ll be so lovely having you back for good. It is for good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fairly good,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

  She kissed me then pushed back my hair to reveal where the other earring should have glistened. She was showing all manner of unfamiliar emotions and I was not sure I was altogether happy with any of them. She kissed me again.

  ‘I’m so glad for you,’ she said, then turned to Claudia. ‘And Claudia, too,’ she said, holding out her hand which Claudia, bemused but smiling, took. ‘I’m so glad. We must have a party.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  She prodded me in the ribs and scoffed.

  ‘You’re so like your father, darling. Why? To celebrate. To welcome you back, to introduce everyone to Claudia and to celebrate! Have you found somewhere to live yet?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ Claudia admitted, ‘we looked over somewhere yesterday which was perfect. Right on the park, with a roof terrace and some good-sized rooms which would be convenient for showing off pieces to clients and a quite extraordinary bathroom…’

  ‘But they were asking the earth for it,’ I said. ‘It was fairly huge.’

  ‘…and I wasn’t going to tell Polly until I’d had some confirmation, but I rang them this morning and made an offer which they accepted.’

  ‘Claudia!’

  ‘Are you cross?’

  ‘No. I’m thrilled. But…you didn’t tell me.’

  I was thrilled. I was very, very happy. The flat was indeed perfect for us. Somehow the whole treat had been spoilt, however, by being revealed in Mother’s presence. Our new love-nest was twenty minutes’ or more drive from where we sat but suddenly I felt as though its newly painted, spectacularly empty spaces were merely a previously undisclosed adjunct to Mother’s overfurnished domain. No sooner was the precious territory offered me than it was annexed by the Kingdom of Knick-Knack.

  Excited, Mother clapped her hands. ‘Now you mustn’t say no. As my only daughter you can’t escape a proper send-off. Your father set aside a tidy sum for just such an eventuality — well, maybe this wasn’t quite the eventuality he had in mind but still — so it won’t cost you a thing. By rights I feel we should put an announcement in The Times.’

  ‘Mother!’

  She pointed at my face and laughed at its expression.

  ‘Just like your father! Don’t worry. No announcements. I’m not utterly grotesque. But I do insist on giving you both a proper reception with invitations and I’m damned if I see why all your dreary brothers should have got married and had lists and you shouldn’t.’

  ‘But I’m not getting married.’

  ‘Well you’re not going to marry anyone else are you?’

  ‘No, but…’ She was breaking every rule. She was quite mad. I looked to Claudia for help but she was sitting back, stroking her gentle smile with the back of a forefinger and looking to see what Mother would say next. She was charmed. I could tell.

  ‘There we are then. Why don’t we go round there now? It would be such fun.’ Mother uncurled herself from the sofa and stood, giving her Chelsea blondeness a quick flick as she glanced in the looking glass. ‘Have you got much to do this morning?’

  ‘No. Not really,’ said Claudia, still smiling to herself. ‘But tell me,
Mrs Reith…’

  ‘Prudie, please.’

  ‘Prudie.’ Claudia’s pronunciation was right first time, although the pout it lent her lips was perhaps unnecessarily seductive. ‘I don’t quite understand. What is this list?’

  ‘When you set up house together…’

  ‘Get married,’ I broke in.

  ‘Same thing,’ Mother snapped.

  ‘But it’s meant to be a reward,’ I said, astonished. ‘For doing the right thing.’

  ‘Just like her father,’ she told Claudia again, shaking her head in mock sorrow. ‘Such a shame you never met him. Anyway, when you set up house together — or marry,’ she added, with a bow in my direction, ‘you run up a list at your favourite shop of all the things you need to make domestic bliss complete and your friends and well-wishers call in there and buy them for you. If you get your timing right and don’t go living in sin for too long beforehand, you don’t have to buy a thing. You’d be amazed at people’s generosity. You shall be.’

  We drank a quick, celebratory gin while Claudia met Mrs Sopwith and was asked to cast a charitably professional eye over some of the more outlandish family silver. The few excuses I could drum up were quickly quashed by both Mother and Claudia and soon the three of us were walking down the road to Sloane Square.

  ‘It’s an inexplicably dull shop,’ Mother explained as I held open a swing door for them both, ‘but utterly trustworthy. You could leave a child in its care. I quite often did.’

  The Bride’s Book was still appropriately close to the department selling prams and pushchairs. The only apparent concession to modern living was the computer on which its lists were now maintained. Twisted with mortification, I dawdled by a shelf of soft toys and succeeded in making Claudia drop back to find me.

  ‘What’s wrong, Polly?’ she asked. ‘You look quite grey. Do you want to go back into the fresh air?’

  ‘Quite right I do. She’s only doing this to embarrass us. She wants to punish me for not bringing home some dull man she can approve of and tease.’ I snatched a donkey and pulled on its pink felt ears. ‘She’s going to make a huge scene, I warn you. And so will the shop. They only do lists for nice young girls with fiances. Not…’ I hesitated.