Folly's Child Page 34

  ‘Overdressed? That’s my creations you are maligning!’

  ‘Sorry – slip of the tongue. No, the gowns are fine, I guess. It’s the faces I can’t stand – skin as taut as a …’ His eyes flicked to Paula, wicked, teasing eyes, before he finished, ‘as taut as a pair of surgeon’s gloves.’

  Hugo laughed, totally unaware of the meaning behind the innuendo.

  ‘I haven’t seen much evidence of you being landed with only the glamourous grannies. You’ve numbered a nubile beauty or two amongst your conquests tonight if I’m not much mistaken, so don’t expect my sympathy!’

  Paula could not look at him. She felt as if she were blushing all over. But her heart was beating with excitement and her pulses were echoing it. Tomorrow … tomorrow … She did not know how she could bear to wait.

  Over the next months their affaire continued, as erratic and disturbing as his persual of her had been.

  Why now? she asked herself when she paused to draw breath. Why after waiting so long had he moved in so suddenly and possessed her? Because his relationship with the Texas Rose had come to an end, presumably. But she preferred not to think about it too deeply, simply revel in what they were sharing, this crazy intense tempestuous affaire. Since that first time, which Paula was convinced Greg had planned as carefully as he planned everything he did, they made love whenever and wherever they found themselves alone together – in his apartment, in the bathroom of some house when they were at the same party, in her own suite. The danger seemed to act as an aphrodisiac to Greg, and Paula was almost past caring if they were caught or not. At least if Hugo found out then she and Greg could be together openly; it would be an end to those other times, the ones she found unbearable when he left for days on end with no explanation, not contacting her. For in spite of the fact that she was so totally obsessed with him that she could think of nothing beyond when they would be together again yet still she could not be sure of him, He wanted her – there was no doubt in her mind about that – he possessed her and made her his in ways she would never have dreamed possible – yet he was also master of himself as well as her, sometimes withholding himself with total self-control, sometimes ignoring her just as he always had so that she felt she would scream with need of him, frantic for a smile, a gesture, never mind more, that would tell her he was aware of her very existence.

  She was living on a knife edge. He had her exactly where he wanted her – she, who had always made the men around her dance to her tune. And though it was torture the very uncertainty kept her interest. In the rare moments when she was able to think rationally she knew it was true, even as she longed for reassurance. But she could think of nothing beyond when he would take her again, bring her again to the sharp sweet ecstacy that only he could induce, and which left her always trembling and wanting more. Even the fear that had haunted her since Chris Connelly’s suicide was pushed to the back of her mind – if Zachary had been going to point the finger at her he would have done so by now – and why should he? She had not identified herself and even if he had recognised her voice and guessed at who his informant might be he would never dare say so without proof. As for the possibility of someone else putting two and two together, it was not as if she was the only one privy to a State secret. If she had known about it so must others. No, Hugo was unlikely now ever to discover that she had sneaked on his assistant and friend. But there was always the danger he might discover her adventures in another quarter.

  In the bitter New York winter Hugo’s mother’s health deteriorated fast. In vain Hugo tried to persuade her to move to warmer climes – she had never lived anywhere but New York, she said, and she intended to die there. As a worried Hugo spent more and more time with her Paula could only rejoice that she was free to be with Greg whenever he called her. Sometimes Hugo played right into their hands, allowing Greg to escort her to the parties he could not attend, and Paula could summon only the slightest feelings of guilt. If Hugo could be so blind, then he had only himself to blame.

  In January Martha Varna died and for Paula her funeral was memorable because Greg followed her to the bathroom where he took her with breath taking speed and the wry explanation that: ‘I never saw you look more fuckable than you do in mourning.’ After that he left for a business trip and she did not see or hear from him for almost six weeks.

  The turbulent affaire was still continuing in the same way when summer came.

  ‘You two have got to spend some time on my boat this year,’ Greg said. ‘I won’t take no for an answer.’ To her delight Hugo agreed and the three of them flew to Italy where they spent three weeks together, sunbathing on the white scrubbed decks by day, sipping champagne and talking into the balmy nights. The holiday was torment for Paula; to be so close to Greg and not be able to have him was hell on earth. The yacht, though luxurious, was small enough for Greg to be able to sail alone, without a crew, island hopping rather than sea going, and this meant there was nowhere where they could be alone together. But Greg seemed almost to enjoy the irony of it, enjoy his own enforced celibacy, enjoy watching her squirm with desire. Eventually Paula could stand it no longer. She pleaded with Hugo that she was missing Harriet and they cut the holiday short by a few days and flew home.

  ‘One day I’ll buy a big boat,’ Greg promised, double-talking as usual. ‘Perhaps then you’ll stay with me, Paula.’

  ‘The way your business is going you’ll soon to able to buy and sell us all three times over,’ Hugo said.

  Greg did not come home with them, claiming that he wanted to do some business whilst he was here in Italy. There were fabric manufacturers he wanted to see – people with plans for setting up fashion cartels. With his own Italian origins the idea appealed to him.

  ‘I might be able to do you some good, Hugo,’ he explained.

  Hugo smiled. ‘It sounds a little like a fashion Mafia to me, but I’m happy to leave the business side to you, Greg. It leaves me free to get on with what I am good at – designing.’

  Paula said nothing. She could have commented that there were a few other areas where Greg excelled besides business deals. But they were not the sort of things one talked about.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Hugo was not quite as oblivious to Paula’s obsession with Greg as she believed. He was far too deeply in love with her to be unaware of the extra sparkle that radiated from her when his partner was around. But it did not occur to him that there was anything sinister about it. Hugo knew women and liked them – wasn’t that the basic reason why his designs were so successful, because he wanted to make them look good and could empathise with what they could also wear comfortably? He knew that women had their dreams – it was another piece of instinctive knowledge that he used in his work – and he did not hold it against them. If Greg fulfilled some part of Paula that he could not and brought a little colour and romance into staid married life then where was the harm? And here Hugo committed his fatal mistake, for he trusted Greg implicitly in the real old American buddy fashion. Greg was his partner and his friend – he wouldn’t cheat on him. Womaniser he might be – they had often laughed over Greg’s conquests whilst sharing a drink – but he would never shit on his own doorstep as the rather inelegant saying went. Hugo was confident of that – and it made him indulgent towards Paula and her fancies. Besides – Greg never gave the slightest indication of any interest in Paula beyond the fact that she was a beautiful woman and the wife of his friend. For a very long time that was the end of the story as far as Hugo was concerned and when he did begin to entertain his first doubts they were concerned not with Paula but with the financial wizardry of the man he had trusted to manage his affairs. Rumours, as yet mere whispers, had begun to circulate that some of Greg’s dealings were not as lily-white as they might have been and Hugo was shocked when they reached his ears. At first he discounted them, loyal as ever to his friend. He had long suspected that Greg sometimes sailed close to the wind but then didn’t most men who called themselves financiers? It was by tak
ing chances that their money was made and he could not believe Greg could be responsible for something downright dishonest. But the whispers continued to grow louder and for the first time Hugo experienced doubts as to Greg’s sincerity. For what they were saying was that Greg was sinking a great deal of money into launching a young Italian fashion designer.

  Though Hugo was now well established and though he had the sense to know he did not have a monopoly on talent he was still hurt and puzzled that Greg had not mentioned the venture to him.

  ‘What’s this about you dabbling in Italian fashion now?’ he asked one day when they were lunching together. ‘ Isn’t the US big enough for you any more?’

  Greg smiled, showing his very white teeth.

  ‘I make money where I can, pal – and I have a feeling in my bones there is a lot of money to be made in Italy if I play my cards right. Besides, I am part Italian, remember.’

  ‘So who’s the designer – and what’s the deal?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know the name yet. Though I guarantee you will. The deal is simple – I persuade a big fabric firm and manufacturer to bankroll my protégé. They will bear the cost of the first few collections and keep most of the profits until the designer has earned back his share.’

  ‘So what’s in it for you?’ Hugo asked, trying to quash the ridiculous feeling that Greg had switched allegiance.

  Greg laughed and tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘I shall do all right, never fear. Fixers always do.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hugo said wryly, thinking that for all his success Greg was far better off than he.

  He mentioned as much to Laddie next day and was surprised when his assistant looked grim.

  ‘I’ve heard things lately about Greg that have me a mite worried,’ he confided.

  ‘It’s galling, I admit,’ Hugo agreed. ‘ But I can’t see that a new Italian designer will hurt us much. Our market is mainly here, in the States.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ Laddie ran a hand through his close-cropped hair which had turned snow white overnight with shock when Chris had killed himself. ‘What I heard is much closer to home. I haven’t mentioned it because I know Greg is a friend of yours and anyway the chat was confidential.’ His voice tailed away and Hugo guessed that it had been with one of his other homosexual friends, perhaps high placed and still in the closet. ‘It’s to do with his financial dealings,’ he continued after a moment. ‘I hope to God I’m wrong but there was a suggestion he might be investigated.’

  ‘Christ!’ Hugo sat very still but inwardly he had gone cold. What the hell had Greg been up to? And what implications might there be for him and the business if there was any truth in it?

  It was soon after this conversation that Hugo noticed that Paula was changing for the worse, slipping back into bouts of silence, moody and tense, interspersed with almost hysterical outbursts. Once he woke in the night thinking he had heard an intruder and went downstairs to find her wandering about like a sleep walker.

  ‘Honey – what’s wrong?’ he asked anxiously.

  She stared at him wide-eyed as if she had seen a ghost.

  ‘What is it?’ he pressed her, and she flew at him.

  ‘Nothing – nothing! Why can’t you leave me alone? Why does everyone have to go on at me?’

  ‘No one is going on at you’, he soothed. ‘ But it’s four in the morning. Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘No, I can’t. And is it any wonder?’ She burst into floods of tears, beating at him with her hands when he tried to put his arms around her.

  ‘Sweetheart, I don’t know what’s wrong with you and I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what it is,’ he said, exasperated and anxious. ‘For goodness’ sake go back to bed. Nothing will seem so bad in the morning.’

  He persuaded her back up the stairs though she was sobbing so loudly he was afraid she would wake Harriet, if not Nanny and the other staff. She was shaking like a leaf, cold and apparently frightened, but he got her into bed, fetched her a glass of brandy and sat on the bed beside her, making her sip it.

  ‘Was it a bad dream?’ he asked her gently, as one would ask a child, when she was calmer. She shook her head but still seemed incapable of telling him what had upset her so. He gave her a couple of sleeping tablets and stayed with her until they took effect. He was tempted to slip into bed beside her and hold her close but he was afraid this might make things worse instead of better. With Paula one could never be sure, and she seemed to have such an aversion to love-making.

  He would speak to Buster in the morning, he decided – ask him to have a look at her. But he shrank too from doing that. Paula was so adamant there was nothing wrong with her – and how could he explain the situation? It had been bad enough when he had been able to offer Harriet’s birth as a cause of Paula’s strange behaviour but Harriet was now almost four years old. It struck at the very roots of Hugo’s masculine pride to have to admit that his wife simply could not bear to have him near her. His body ached with need of her and his heart ached with love. He had had such hopes when he had brought her to New York and he had been so determined to make her happy. Everything that was his he had offered her yet somehow none of it could satisfy her. He adored her, worshipped her almost, so that he had been prepared to overlook all her short-comings as a wife and mother simply to have her there. But it was still not enough. She was slipping away from him, body and soul.

  Shivering in his thin silk pyjamas in the cold grey dawn Hugo sat on the edge of her bed, watching her sleep. Her face, in repose now, was as beautiful as it had ever been, her hair fanned out on the pillow. Hugo touched it and ran a finger down the line of her jaw to her throat.

  How easy it would be to kill her as she slept – to take a pillow and press it down on her face, or to wind one of her own stockings around that delicate throat and pull it tight!

  If I killed her now I would only lose her to death, he thought, not to someone else who can perhaps make her happier than I can …

  It was the first time the thought of losing her to someone else had consciously occurred to him though from the ease with which it slipped up into his mind he somehow knew that deep down he must have been aware of the possibility for a very long time.

  She has never loved me as I loved her, he thought. Perhaps there is someone who could awaken and fulfil her … but I’ll be damned if I’ll ever let her go to find out. Yes, if it came to that, I would kill her first …

  He began to shake, partly from cold, partly from the strength of his own emotions and because he could no longer trust himself he got up from the bed, crept out and went back to his own room. But he could not sleep. Dawn broke fully and became day and still he lay there, tormented like Pandora by the sight of the horrors within the box of tricks he had unwittingly opened.

  What a fool I have been, he thought, a fool and a dreamer, believing I could keep my ice-maiden in her ivory tower for ever. So much for the romantic. So much for a love so strong that it blinds one to sweet reason – and makes one turn away from unpalatable facts.

  Now, with a shocking and almost inexplicable suddenness the blinds had been torn from his eyes. Forced at last to face what he had until now refused to acknowledge Hugo knew with sick certainty that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Paula was in torment. It was weeks – months now – since she and Greg had been together and in her darkest moments she was horribly afraid they would never be together again.

  The prospect was unbearable. It hung over her like a huge dark cloud invading every waking thought and creeping into her dreams to instill a sense of nightmare. She didn’t want to eat – food tasted sour and her stomach revolted against it; she couldn’t hold a proper conversation because half her mind was constantly occupied with her own private dread. Greg couldn’t have left her forever – could he? Heaven knew, he’d given her hard times before and had always come back. But the facts were inescapable. Even when he had been in New York he had not called and when he had come to the
house to see Hugo he had not given her one single sign of his interest. Throughout the spring and early summer she waited in a ferment of anxiety and frustration. Hugo suspected there was something wrong, she knew, and had done ever since the night he had found her wandering sleepless and beside herself, but she could not summon up the energy to care.

  Nothing mattered, nothing was the least bit important, except seeing Greg again, being with him, making love – if that was what such a frenzied, yet detached, act could be called.

  It was June now, six whole months without him. Was there someone else? Was that it? In New York he was the same, social grasshopper he had always been but he was abroad a lot. Besides, there was always the possibility that his new amour was as secret as their liaison had been. But she would know, Paula thought, if that were the case. If Greg was behaving with someone else as he had behaved with her she would be the first to spot it. She would recognise that casual cruelty anywhere.

  The summer heatwave hit the city early. In the house on East 70th the air conditioning kept the rooms from becoming unbearable but outside dust settled on the leaves of the trees, and a heat haze shimmered just above the grey ashphalt of the roads and sidewalks.

  In boardrooms and offices the temperature was rising too, though this owed little to the weather. Greg Martin’s name was being bandied about and coupled with such descriptions as charlatan, con-man and crook and the investors who had placed money with his investment service began to become restive.

  Eventually Hugo, beside himself with worry, called a hasty meeting with Greg. But far from allaying his fears his backer’s breezy, unconcerned attitude only made him more sickeningly certain that something was terribly amiss.

  ‘Christ knows what he’s playing at,’ he said to Paula over dinner. He had not meant to talk to her about his business worries – she would not want to hear about it, he thought, and it might drive her into another of her withdrawn moods – but somehow, overwhelmed with concern as he was, there was no way he could keep from talking about it, and to his surprise Paula responded as if she was actually interested.