Cooper Jilly - Emily

‘Put the luggage on the train,’ said Rory to the driver, and strolled over to the attendant who was giving his lists a last-minute check.

I edged away, terrified there was going to be a scene.

‘I’m afraid we’re booked solid, sir,’ I heard the attendant say.

‘Didn’t the Ritz ring through?’ said Rory, his voice taking on that carrying, bitchy, upper-class ring.

‘Afraid not, sir,’ said the attendant.

‘Bloody disgrace. Can’t rely on anyone these days. Expect your side slipped up, one of your staff must have forgotten to pass on the message.’

The attendant quailed before Rory’s steely gaze. He took off his peak cap and scratched his head.

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ said Rory. ‘I’m on my way back from my honeymoon, my wife is quite exhausted. We booked a sleeper and now you’re trying to tell me you’ve given it away.’

As the attendant looked in my direction, I edged further away, trying to merge into a slot machine.

‘I really don’t know what to say, sir.’

‘If you value your job,’ said Rory, ‘you’d better do something about it.’

Two minutes later an enraged middle-aged couple in pyjamas were being shunted into a carriage down the train.

‘I’m awfully sorry, sir,’ the attendant was saying.

‘You might have thanked him,’ I said, sitting down on the bed, and admiring the splendour of our first-class compartment.

‘One doesn’t thank peasants,’ said Rory, pulling off his tie.

We drove towards the ferry which was to carry us to Irasa. I glanced at Rory hunched over the wheel, demons at his back, the beautiful face sullen with bad temper. His black mood had been coming on for several hours now.

At last we reached the ferry. Under a grey and black sky a mountainous sea came hurtling towards us, thundering, moaning and screaming, and dirty with flying foam.

‘Hello, Mr Balniel,’ said the man on the gate. ‘I wish you’d brought some better weather. It’s been raining six weeks in Irasa, even the seagulls are wearing sou’westers.’

On the boat the sky darkened noticeably, the temperature dropped and the gulls were blown sideways like pieces of rag in the wind.

I’m not sure Scotland’s quite me, I later thought disloyally, as we bumped along one-track roads with occasional glimpses of sulky-looking sea.

On our left a huge forbidding castle lowered out of the mist.

‘Nice little weekend cottage,’ I said.

‘That’s where Buster and Coco live,’ said Rory. ‘This is us.’

I suppose it had once been a rather large lodge to the castle — a grey stone two-storey house, hung with creeper, surrounded by a wild, forsaken garden.

I started to quote Swinburne, but Rory shot me such a look.

I shut up.

I decided not to make any flash remarks, either, about being carried over the threshold. Rory was extraordinarily tense, as though he was expecting something horrible.

He certainly got it. I’ve never seen such shambles inside a house; broken bottles, knocked-down lamps and tables, glasses strewn all over the floor, dust everywhere, thick cobwebs. The bedrooms looked as though someone had used them as ashtrays, the fridge like a primeval forest, and someone had written ‘Goodbye forever’ in lipstick on the mirror.

The house consisted of a huge studio, a drawing-room almost entirely lined with books, two bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen and a bathroom; all were in absolute chaos.

‘Oh God,’ said Rory. ‘I left a message with my mother to get someone to clean the place up.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said faintly, ‘it’ll only take a few hundred years to put to rights.’

‘I’m not having you whisking around like Snow White,’ snapped Rory. ‘We’ll sleep at the castle tonight. I’ll get someone to come in tomorrow.’

I looked out of the bedroom window. The view was sensational. The house grew out of a two hundred and fifty foot cliff which dropped straight down to the sea.

‘I hope we don’t fall out too often,’ I joked weakly, then I saw a cellophane packet of flowers on the bed. ‘Oh look,’ I said, ‘someone remembered us.’ Then I shivered with horror as I realized it was a funeral wreath of lilies. Inside the envelope, on a black-edged card, was written ‘Welcome home, darlings’. ‘How beastly,’ I said in a trembling voice. ‘Who could have done that?’

Rory picked up the card. ‘Some joker who’s got it in for me.’

‘But that’s horrible.’

‘And quite unimportant,’ he said, tearing up the card. He opened the window and threw the wreath out, so it spun round and round and crashed on the rocks below.

Startled I looked into his face, which glowed suddenly with some malice I couldn’t place.

‘Come here,’ he said softly.

He pulled me against him, pushing my head down on his shoulder, one hand tracing my arm, the other moving over my body. Then he smiled and closed his long fingers round my wrist where the pulse pounded.

‘Poor little baby,’ he whispered. He could always do this to me. ‘Let’s go next door,’ and he pulled me into the dusty spare room with the huge window on to the road and began to kiss me.

‘Shouldn’t we draw the curtains?’ I muttered. ‘They can see us from the road.’

‘So what?’ he murmured.

Suddenly I heard a scrunch of wheels on the road outside. Swinging round I saw a blue Porsche flash by. In the driving seat was a red-headed girl who gazed in at us, a mixture of despair and hatred in her huge, haunted eyes.

I enjoyed staying at the castle, living in baronial comfort, and making the acquaintance of Rory’s black labrador Walter Scott, who had been living with Buster’s gamekeeper while he had been away. He was a charming dog, sleek, amiable, incurably greedy and not as well trained as Rory would have liked.

After a few days we went back to live in Rory’s house (very pretty it looked, after it had been cleaned up) and began marriage proper.

I didn’t find it easy. I was determined to be one of those wonderful little homemakers putting feminine touches everywhere but, as Rory remarked, the only feminine touches I added were dripping pants and stockings, and mascara on his towel.

I tried to cook, too. I once cooked moussaka, and we didn’t eat until one o’clock in the morning. But Rory, who was used to Coco’s French expertise, was not impressed.

I also took hours over the washing. There weren’t any launderettes in Irasa, and then it lay around for days in pillowcases waiting to be ironed; and Rory never seemed to have clean underpants when he needed them.

After a couple of weeks he said, quite gently, ‘With all the cobwebs, we seem to have formed a spider sanctuary here. You’re obviously not into housework, so I’ve hired a char, four days a week, and she can iron my shirts too.’

I felt humiliated but enormously relieved.

The char, Mrs Mackie, turned out to be a mixed blessing. She was wonderful at cleaning, but a terrible gossip, and obviously irritated Rory out of his mind. As soon as she arrived he used to disappear into the mountains to paint, and she and I sat round drinking cider and talking.

‘I’ve got a wicked bad leg,’ she said one morning. ‘I shall have to go and see Dr Maclean.’

‘Finn Maclean?’ I said.

She nodded.

‘What’s his sister Marina like?’

‘She’s no right in the head, although I shouldn’t say it. The old Macleans never had any money. Dr Maclean, her father, was a gud doctor, but he dinna know about saving. Marina married this old man for his riches, and it’s dancing him into his grave she is. Perhaps now young Dr Maclean’s come back he’ll keep her in order.’

‘Why’s he come back when he was doing so well in London?’

She shrugged. ‘Irasa has an enchantment. They all come back in the end.’

Irasa — Island of the Blessed, or of the Cursed. I could understand why none of them could escape its spell, and why only here could Rory find the real inspiration for his painting.

The countryside took your breath away; it was as though the autumn was pulling out all the stops before succumbing to the harshness of the Highland winter. Bracken singed the entire hillsides the colour of a red setter, the turning horse chestnuts blazed yellow, the acacias pale acid green.

With Rory painting all day, Walter Scott and I had plenty of time to wander about and explore. The island was fringed with wooded points like a starfish. Out of the ten or so big houses, on one point lived Rory and me, on another Buster and Coco, on another Finn Maclean and on yet another Marina and Hamish. The islanders’ white cottages were dotted between.

One afternoon in late October, I walked down to Penlorren, the island’s tiny capital.

Penlorren was a strange sleepy little town, exquisitely pretty, like a northern St Tropez. Wooded hills ringed the bay, but the main street was an arc of coloured houses, dark green, pink, white and duck-egg blue. In the boats the fishermen were sorting their slippery silver catch into boxes.

As I walked about I was aware of being watched. Suddenly I looked round and there was the blue Porsche parked by the side of the road: the same red-headed girl was watching me with great undefended eyes. I smiled at her, but she started up the car and stormed down the main street, scattering villagers.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked a nearby fisherman, and somehow knew he was going to answer, ‘Marina Maclean.’

I’d forgotten to get any potatoes and I went back to the main store. Three old biddies were having a yap, they didn’t hear me come in.