Cooper Jilly - Emily

‘Let’s have a look at your ankle,’ Finn said.

Coco stretched out one of her beautiful, smooth, brown legs. The ankle was very black and swollen. Although Finn handled it with amazing delicacy, she drew her breath in.

‘Sore is it?’ he said gently.

She nodded, catching her lip.

‘Poor old thing. Never mind, you’ve still got one perfect ankle,’ he said, getting up. ‘No reason why the other shouldn’t be as right as rain in a few weeks.’

‘What’s right about rain?’ I said gloomily, looking out of the window.

‘Still, I’d like to X-ray it,’ Finn went on, ignoring me. ‘I’ll send an ambulance to pick you up later. It’ll jolt you less than a car.’

‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to cook Rory’s supper.’

‘Finn will give you a lift,’ said Coco.

‘I’ve got a car,’ I said quickly.

It was very cold outside and I shivered: I didn’t want to leave the cosy warmth of the castle for one of Rory’s black moods. Finn Maclean got something out of the pocket of his overcoat.

‘I should have thought it was a bit early on in your marriage to escape into tripe like this,’ he said, handing it to me. It was the romantic novel I’d intended to give Coco.

Coco’s ankle was X-rayed, bound up and she was ordered to rest it. Just before Christmas, however, Maisie Downleesh (one of Coco’s friends) decided to give a ball to celebrate her daughter Diney’s engagement. We were all invited.

There is something about the idea of a ball that lifts the spirits, however low one is. I suppose it’s the excitement; buying a new dress, new make-up, a new hairstyle and settling down in front of the mirror in an attempt to magic oneself into the most glamorous girl in the room. In the past, a ball had offered all the excitement of the unknown, opportunity knocking. This time, I hoped, it would be a chance to make myself beautiful enough to win back Rory.

The ball was being held at the Downleeshes’ castle on the mainland. Coco, Buster, Rory and I were all to stay there. In the morning I took the car across the ferry and drove to Edinburgh to buy a new dress. In the afternoon I had to pick up a couple who were coming to the dance from London, then drive back and pick up Rory from the Irasa Ferry, and then drive on to the Downleeshes’.

I was determined that a new me was going to emerge, so gorgeous that every Laird would be mad with desire for me. I spent a frenzied morning rushing from shop to shop. Eventually in a back street I tracked down a gloriously tarty, pale pink dress, skin tight over the bottom, slashed at the front and plunging back and front.

It had been reduced in a sale because there was a slight mark on the navel, and because, the assistant said with a sniff, there was no call for that sort of garment in Edinburgh.

I tried it on; it was wildly sexy.

‘A little tight over the barkside, don’t ye thenk,’ said the assistant, who was keen to steer me into black velvet at three times the price.

‘That’s just how I like it,’ I said.

It was a bit long too, so I went and bought new six-inch high shoes, and then went to the hairdressers and had a pink rinse put on my hair. I never do things by three-quarters. All in all it was a bit of a rush getting to the airport.

The Frayns were waiting when I arrived — I recognized them a mile off. He was one of those braying chinless telegraph poles in a dung-coloured tweed jacket. She was a typical ex-deb, with flat ears from permanently wearing a headscarf, and a very long right arm from lugging suitcases to Paddington every weekend to go home to Mummy. She had blue eyes, mouse hair and one of those pink and white complexions that nothing, not rough winds nor drinking and dancing till dawn, can destroy. They were also nauseatingly besotted with one another. Every sentence began ‘Charles thinks’ or ‘Fiona thinks’. And they kept roaring with laughter at each other’s jokes, like hyenas. She also had that terrible complacency that often overtakes newly married women and stems from relief at having hooked a man, and being uncritically adored by him.

She was quite nice about me being late, but there was a lot of talk about stopping at a telephone box on the dot of 6.30 to ring up Nanny and find out how little Caroline was getting on; and did I think we’d get there in time to change?

‘It’s the first time I’ve been separated from Caroline,’ she said. ‘I do hope Nanny can cope.’

She sat in the front beside me, he sat in the back; they held hands all the time. Why didn’t they both get in the back and neck?

It was a bitterly cold day. Stripped, black trees were etched on the skyline. The heavy brown sky was full of snow. Shaggy forelocked heads of the cows tossed in the gloom as they cropped the sparse turf. Just before we reached the ferry to pick up Rory and Walter Scott, it started snowing in earnest. I had hoped Rory and I could have a truce for the evening — but I was an hour late which didn’t improve his temper.

Fiona, who had evidently known Rory as a child, went into a flurry of what’s happened to old so and so, and who did so and so marry.

Rory answered her in monosyllables; he had snow melting in his hair and paint on his hands.

‘Too awful,’ she went on. ‘Did you know Annie Richmond’s father threw himself under a taxi in the rush hour in Knightsbridge?’

‘Lucky to find one at that hour,’ said Rory, looking broodingly at the snowflakes swarming like great bees on the windscreen.

I giggled. Rory looked at me, and then noticed my hair.

‘Jesus,’ he said under his breath.

‘Do you like it?’ I said nervously.

‘No,’ he said and turned up the wireless full blast to drown Fiona’s chatter.

Suddenly she gave a scream.

‘Oh look, there’s a telephone box. Could you stop a minute, Rory, so I can telephone Nanny.’

Rory raised his eyes to heaven.

She got out of the car and, giving little shrieks, ran through the snow. Through the glass of the telephone box I could see her smiling fatuously, forcing l0p pieces into the telephone box. Rory didn’t reply to Charles’ desultory questions about shooting. His nails were so bitten that his drumming fingers made little sound on the dashboard.

A quarter of an hour later, Fiona returned.

‘Well?’ said Charles.

‘She’s fine, but she’s missing us,’ she said. ‘She brought up most of her lunch but she’s just had two rusks and finished all her bottle, so Nanny thinks she’s recovered.’

Rory scurled off through the snow, his hands clenched on the wheel.

‘What b-awful weather,’ said Fiona, looking out of the window. ‘You really must start a family very soon, Emily,’ she went on. ‘It gives a completely new dimension to one’s life. I think one’s awfully selfish really until one has children.’

‘Parents,’ said Rory, ‘should always be seen and not heard.’

Punctuated by giggles and murmurs of ‘Oh Charles’ from the back, we finally reached the turrets and gables and great blackened keep of Downleesh Castle. The windows threw shafts of light on to the snow which was gathering thickly on the surrounding fir trees and yews. The usual cavalcade of terriers and labradors came pounding out of the house to welcome us. Walter Scott was dragged off protesting by a footman to be given his dinner in the kitchen.

In the dark panelled hall, great banks of holly were piled round the suits of armour, the spears and the banners. We had a drink before going upstairs. Diney, Lady Downleesh’s daughter, who’d just got engaged, fell on Fiona’s neck and they both started yapping about weddings and babies.

We were taken to our bedroom down long, draughty passages to the West Tower. In spite of a fire in the grate, it was bitterly cold.

I found when I got there that my suitcase had been unpacked and all my clothes laid out neatly on the mildewed fourposter, including an old bone of Walter Scott’s and a half-eaten bar of chocolate I had stuffed into my suitcase at the last moment. On the walls were pictures of gun-dogs coming out of the bracken, their mouths full of feathers.

I missed Walter. Sometimes in those awful long silences I had with Rory I found it a relief to jabber away to him.

‘Can he come upstairs?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Rory.

In the bookshelves was a book called A Modern Guide to Pig Husbandry. ‘Perhaps I should read it,’ I said, ‘it might give me some advice about being married to a pig,’

Across the passage were the unspeakable Frayns. They had already hogged the bathroom, and judging from the sound of splashing and giggling, it wasn’t just a bath they were having. I realized I was jealous of their happiness and involvement. I wanted Rory to start every sentence ‘Emily says’ and roar with laughter at my jokes.

I took ages over dressing, painting my face as carefully as Rory painted any of his pictures. My pink dress looked pretty sensational; I put a ruby brooch Coco had given me over the mark on the navel. It was certainly tight, too, everyone would be able to see my goose-pimples, but on the whole I was pleased with the result — it was definitely one of my on days. The only problem was that when I put on my new tights, the crotch only came up to the middle of my thighs. I gave them a tug and they split irrevocably, leaving a large hole, so I had to make do with bare legs.

I was just trying to give myself a better cleavage with Sellotape when Rory announced that he was ready. Even I, though, was unprepared for his beauty, dressed up in a dark green velvet doublet with white lace at the throat and wrists and the dark green and blue kilt of the Balniels. Pale and haughty, his eyes glittering with bad temper, he looked like something out of Kidnapped; Alan Breck Stuart or young Lochinvar coming out of the West.