The Sin Was Mine

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

His meeting with the neurotic model-girl Candy Day spells danger for the marriage of Christopher Fairfax. His beautiful and devoted wife Rose is already getting too involved in her own interior decorating career. The seeds of tragedy were already lurking behind the loving façade of the marriage. But how much was Candy Day really responsible? Did Christopher ever, at any time, see her as real?

Release date: May 29, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 176

Sample

Rose Carfax watched the big Comet touch down at London Airport. She had been waiting for the last half hour. She stood there, expectantly, shading her eyes with one hand. The June sunshine was quite brilliant. She had not brought her dark glasses with her. When she caught her usual bus to work from Clareville Grove earlier this morning the weather had been dull. In this climate, one needs, Rose reflected, to have sunglasses in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

Lucky Chris to have been down in La Napoule for the last two weeks. He had been staying in a millionaire’s villa when he wasn’t on the yacht. She hoped that he would be quite well by now. He had really been very seedy since that vicious attack of flu which had brought him low after he returned from a business trip to the Midlands.

Suddenly she saw him walking with the others who had just disembarked from the aircraft. At the sight of the tall familiar figure her heart gave a leap that was surprising to her. She even experienced a tinge of embarrassment, as though ashamed that she could feel so thrilled by the sight of a man to whom she had been married for over six years. Chris often went away on business and she led a pretty busy life herself. They were used to being separated, but never before for so long.

He drew nearer. Through the glass window she could see more detail now; she never failed to admire his good looks. He stood out in a crowd: six-foot-three of him, lean and well proportioned. He seldom wore a hat. He had rough thick hair, not very tidy, and dark – more black than brown – which with the blueness of his eyes led people to suppose he was an Irish type. But he was wholly English.

Rose pressed forward, warming to the moment of reunion. She really had missed him a lot. Their attractive little house just off the Old Brompton Road had seemed quiet and lonely without him, although she had had plenty to do.

She was co-director in a small smart firm of Interior Decorators. They had a showroom just off Regent Street. It was a success. Christopher was born into success. His father was Ivor Carfax – head of the famous Carfax Banking firm. Theirs was a private concern which had been founded at the turn of the last century. Christopher’s work took him away frequently on visits to branches in Paris, Geneva and Brussels.

Christopher was by no means rich. Old Ivor had most of the money; Sidney, his brother, the rest. And Ivor had strong views about handing a ready-made fortune over to a youngster. He had made Christopher start at the beginning when he first left Oxford. Now, at twenty-seven, he was still only drawing a salary of two thousand five-hundred a year.

There was absolutely no need for Rose to work but she wanted to. Before her marriage she and Chris had decided to wait a couple of years before starting a family. They were both ambitious. They both enjoyed a gay social life and found it in London among friends of their own vintage. By the time the ‘couple of years’ were up, Rose was so involved in her own work that she had no time for motherhood.

She had brought money of her own, and fresh ideas, into the business which had been started by a man named Archie Spiers. Archie, in his middle thirties, was hard working and good with design, but Rose provided the dash and colour and imagination that was lacking. Together the two of them had built up a flourishing concern and Rose adored it. To take over an empty house, and decorate and furnish it was her idea of bliss. There certainly seemed neither room nor inclination for the child she had planned to produce.

Christopher wanted a son – an heir for the Carfax tribe. Her father-in-law, too, was always asking when Rose was going to have that baby. But she kept putting it off – reluctant to abandon her fascinating career.

Besides – she could make lovely houses but she was not very good at domesticity (which well she knew). She cooked indifferently and it was torture to her to have to do any housework. Luckily, she and Chris were able to employ a resident maid. They had a Swedish girl at the moment; Astrid, who cooked delightfully and strove to remember all the things that Rose forgot. It was lucky for her, Rose thought, that darling Christopher did not seem to mind much about the child. He, himself, was so busy.

How crazily they had been in love with each other when they first married! The honeymoon had been bliss of the type that Rose had read about but doubted it could really exist. Physically, they were ideally matched and the ecstasy they found in each other’s arms during those glorious days and nights seemed to last even after they got home. The fortnight spent in a Spanish castle by a gentian sea; the beach and countryside burnt up by the fierce sun, had been unforgettable.

They were both sun-worshippers. It had been a time for exploring their emotions and their senses, learning all the things about each other that had remained in the background during their engagement. It had been a positive pain for them to return to the little house in London, charming though it was; and to get down to the less glamorous task of earning the daily bread.

But they were very lucky; their six years together had so far been full and happy.

Christopher liked banking. He got on well with his father and uncle even if at times he felt that the Old Man, as he called his father, held him on rather too tight a rein. Ivor’s obsession about the family name, too, was apt to be a bore. What a Carfax did or didn’t do, how a Carfax behaved or didn’t behave, was to the Old Man a kind of religion.

Christopher was easy-going. He had a sense of humour which helped him over the hurdles of occasional frustration and irritability when he was being preached at or pushed too hard. Fundamentally he held his father – and his Uncle Sidney – in tremendous regard. But there were moments, and Rose knew about these, when he felt a bit weighed down by the family traditions; all these time-honoured formulas which he had to respect.

Rose remembered one evening when Chris had come back from the City branch, which was in Threadneedle Street, in a sullen thwarted mood. She had found it difficult to cope with him; it had taken her most of the evening to woo him back to his customary humour. The Old Man had been ‘getting at him’ again.

‘He lives too much in the past,’ Christopher complained. It was, she remembered now, a couple of years after their marriage. ‘He is only just fifty-seven but he thinks and behaves as though he were my grandfather. And do you know what the fuss was all about?’

‘No, what?’

‘Because that old fool of a cousin of his, Edward Carfax, saw you and myself at Crockford’s playing Chemmy. Cousin Edward doesn’t think anybody should play anything but a nice respectable rubber of bridge. He was appalled you know, when Crockford’s opened their new casino. The Old Man said I oughtn’t to be seen gambling in London and that it was bad for my reputation as a director of the Carfax Bank. The bank, the bank, the bank.’ Chris had laughed angrily.

Rose tried to be facetious, saying something about it being all in the business – one ran a bank playing Chemmy, didn’t one? But Christopher rejected this particular attempt to soothe him. He raged on about always having to watch his step ‘as though he were a doctor or something’. The Old Man was as sticky about reputation as the B.M.A. Finally Christopher promised to compromise and not to play Chemmy in London, but to reserve this form of gambling for France.

Then Rose had tried flattery as a sop. She stroked Chris’s head and told him that he was good and hard working and so loyal to the Bank that a little thing like this wouldn’t matter.

‘The Old Man thinks the world of you, Chris, and you know it. And so do I, angel. You’ve got a marvellous character. Nobody can say you haven’t.’

They had ended the evening as they often did, passionately, clasped in each other’s arms. The cloud had passed. Chris admitted that Rose was right. It was silly to take any notice of the Old Man’s pinpricks. Fundamentally they were all good friends and of course he, Chris, would never do anything that could really tarnish the excellent name of Carfax.

Rose, waiting now for Christopher to get through the Customs and join her, felt again that warm glow of desire when she saw her husband. It would be marvellous to be with him once more. She was pleased when one of the many young men in transit, gave her a sidelong look as he passed; the sort of look that tells a woman that she has got something. Of course she knew that she had. Especially for Chris. He was always telling her so.

She felt already old at twenty-six but knew that was absurd. She was as slim and graceful as she had been at nineteen, when Chris met her for the first time at a cocktail party. She was exactly like her name, he had said, abandoning all the other girls at the party and remaining firmly at her side. An English Rose. She had that exquisite pink and white complexion so much admired and envied on the Continent; and with it abundant fair hair. It used to be short but now she wore it long in a becoming Grecian knot at the back, and brushed smoothly away from her forehead; she thought it gave her an interesting look which went down well in business. But it was her eyes which finally decided the young banker that he wanted his Rose and no other; they were quite grey – he assured her they were a charcoal grey: with long fair lashes which when she darkened them, looked entrancingly long. And not only was Rose beautiful but intelligent. She had proved herself a good business-woman. He adored her. They were both money-spinners and able to buy what they needed, within reason.

What more could they want? Nothing except this child whom old Ivor continually demanded. Rose felt perfectly happy except when she considered the business of motherhood. Lately she had begun to feel almost ashamed of herself about it.

Feeling unusually emotional, waiting to welcome her husband home, it even flashed across Rose’s mind that she ought for Chris’s sake, to waive her doubts and start a family right away. It would be rather romantic if they could conceive an infant this very night of reunion. She could picture her Christopher being excited and delighted by the idea – if she could bring herself to broach it. But, of course, she thought with a sigh, it would mean goodbye to her darling business. Interior decoration was such a personal show. Dear old Archie was really no good without her. It was always Mrs. Carfax who was asked for when it came to choosing the bits and pieces or arranging the rooms.

She couldn’t go on stalling, she supposed. She would be nearly twenty-seven when the first child was born and that, in the eyes of Chris’s father, was already a bit late.

He didn’t understand. Chris was right – Ivor lived too much in the past, the dear old thing. Christopher’s own mother had suffered because of Ivor’s Victorian outlook. He should have lived in the last century. Mrs. Carfax had had a succession of miscarriages, then two still-born children, before Chris finally arrived to delight his father. And after that, Angela Carfax had had one more child – a daughter, who was married and living in Canada.

Rose’s mother-in-law, who had been a sweet gentle creature had died two years ago of that foul disease, the name of which the Carfax family was never allowed to mention. Once, the Old Man had hinted that it was a tragedy his wife had not lived to see a grandchild born. This made Rose feel guilty and embarrassed Chris.

Maybe she wasn’t maternal because she, herself, had never known a mother’s love. Her own parents had been killed when she was only four. They had been flying back from a visit to friends in South Africa. Rose had been adopted by her father’s brother, Sir Humphrey Tarn, a retired politician. He owned a beautiful Jacobean house near Beaconsfield where the Tarn family had lived for the last three hundred years.

Rose was devoted to Uncle Humph, as she called him, and he adored her; but she had never quite made the grade with her aunt. Pamela Tarn was dutiful but unaffectionate; one of those unfortunate worthy women who spend their lives performing good deeds; uphold the church and all its charities, work themselves to a standstill for strangers in need, forgetting what is wanted by those inside their own homes. Right from the start, when Rose was a lovely tempestuous child, she had found Aunt Pamela unsympathetic and difficult. Uncle Humph was always having to be a go-between. After she grew older, Rose saw for herself that the poor man was henpecked and defeated by this wife who was considered a saint in the village and could be such a devil in her home. She was so bitterly disapproving of those who fell short of her standards. Bitterly opposed to sex being either mentioned or acknowledged as a natural part of a man’s or woman’s daily life. Certainly not a woman’s!

When Rose was first married they used to discuss Aunt Pam’s sex-life with some amusement.

‘I’m sure poor Uncle Humph has never known the sweets of true love, and my cousin Mary must have been conceived in absolute loathing of the act.’

And that, of course, was why Mary had ‘gone off the rails’ soon after her coming-of-age. She had been so strictly watched and brought up, she had fallen for the first man who seriously made love to her. He was married – and not even her own social class. There had been an awful scandal. Rose who felt sorry for her pale, thin, rather unattractive cousin, with her weak disposition and frustrated passions – had felt herself to be fortunate because she, personally, managed to escape from Aunt Pamela into a happy marriage. Aunt Pam had approved of Chris because the Carfax Bank meant something in her snobbish mind, but she had always been rather jealous of her husband’s fondness for Rose. Since her marriage, Rose had seen little of her relatives and only when obliged to, did she and Chris go down to stay at Beaconsfield. It was too chilly and unfriendly an atmosphere to suit Christopher. He was essentially a gay friendly person.

While they were with the Tarns one evening Aunt Pamela had brought herself to mention the fact that it was time Rose had a child.

She had added that she and Uncle Humphrey found the big house rather empty nowadays and would welcome the patter of little feet! A concession from her ladyship!

Rose laughed it off and hadn’t dared remind Aunt Pamela that she had two grandchildren if she would only accept them. But poor Mary had never been allowed to return to the Old Manor, because her two children were illegitimate Aunt Pamela shrivelled at the mere mention of them, although Rose knew that Uncle Humph saw both Mary and his two grandsons from time to time, and helped the couple financially.

He, himself, had been desperately disappointed because his daughter had done this thing. But he loved her and for her sake accepted the man to whom she had gone, and with whom she was living, as her mother put it, in sin.

Rose, once she was married, had also visited her cousin. Mary was almost like a sister to her. And the man, Ron Parkinson, was immensely kind – a rough-diamond but gentle and touchingly devoted to Mary. He was not unsuccessful either, doing quite well in a Television and Radio business he and a friend had started. But even Rose, easy-going though she was, shared Aunt Pamela’s disapproval over the children. They were illegitimate because Ron’s wife persistently refused to divorce him, and it was not fair on them.

Mary kept urging Rose to have a family. Rose’s greatest friend, Catherine Parrish who had been at Roedean with her, had also planted another seed in Rose’s mind which had grown none too pleasantly into a great big doubt that disturbed her conscience.

‘Rose, darling, aren’t you afraid you might lose your husband one day if you go on with this no-baby business?’

Cathy Parrish was Rose’s opposite type; although married to an impecunious overworked doctor, she had already produced three boys, lived in a huge rambling country house in an out-of the-way village in Somerset, and didn’t seem to mind pinching and scraping in order to send the boys to a good school. Cathy was sublimely content, but Rose argued that it took all sorts to make a world and that she just wasn’t made that way. As for losing her husband – why should she? Christopher had agreed that they should delay having a family. Besides – she gave him so much else: she paid many of the bills, which meant that he was in a position to buy himself a much bigger car and lead a much more luxurious life than he would have done if she had been as penniless as Cathy. They were great friends and good lovers. Why should she lose him?

‘I don’t say you will,’ Catherine had qualified her warning. ‘But I do think a child binds a marriage.’

At this Rose had laughed and made one of her gay frothy answers:

‘If a couple fall out, children are about as binding as nails in wood that has gone rotten; once a marriage rots – it will rot, children or no children. The little nails will just drop out.’

Cathy had laughed too. But while Chris was away in the South of France, Rose had done some more thinking. She began to wonder whether Cathy was right about the baby.

As for losing him, she had never had cause to be jealous. One of the things he most liked, so he always told her, was her logical mind – her almost male way of thinking. Perhaps it was because she was in business and hadn’t time for petty jealousies or neuroses of any kind. She was a loyal decent person herself, and accepted Chris as being the same. It never entered her head, for instance, to suspect him of infidelity when he was away from her. She was quite sure he never had been unfaithful, any more than she had been to him, despite the fact that they were both attractive to the opposite sex, and both had their chances. No, she did not worry about Chris on that score. What Cathy said about having a baby had hardly worried her. Then a less friendly woman had discussed Chris’s personal secretary.

‘I wouldn’t like my husband to take such a nice looking girl away with him on business trips, darling; like yours does.’

Rose had laughed. She speedily squashed that piece of bitchery.

‘My dear, Miss Vine has been with Chris ever since he started at the bank and was there a year before him. She worked for his father. She is two years older than Chris – and he doesn’t find her at all attractive that way, I assure you. She is not bad looking but nothing unusual and Chris says she is quite a bore apart from her excellence as his P.A. She is a first class shorthand-typist and frightfully efficient. He says he doesn’t know how he would get on without her. He’s got a frightful memory. She remembers everything for him. But she is no. . .