Jilly Cooper - Octavia

I nodded, picking up his hand and planting a kiss in the palm. ‘All right, I’ll try,’ I said.

With the tips of his fingers he traced a vein on the inside of my arm, down to the scar that ran across my wrist.

‘How did you get that?’

‘With a razor. The day Xander married Pamela. I felt the only person in the world who really loved me was being taken away from me.’

He bent his head and kissed the scar.

‘You do need looking after, don’t you? Be brave and trust me, little one. It isn’t long to wait.’

After he was gone I finished drying my hair, and went downstairs, experiencing a great and joyous calm. The road was clear now, there was nothing Gareth could do.

Down at the pool the two tarts were swimming, holding their made-up faces high out of the water, encouraged by Gareth, who was sitting on the edge talking to Ricky and Andreas, and drinking a Bloody Mary. He’d been swimming again and his black hair fell in wet tendrils on his forehead.

‘I certainly don’t want yes-men around me anymore,’ said Ricky.

‘I certainly want “yes” women around me,’ said Gareth. ‘I suppose we’d better go in a minute. Oh, there you are Octavia, cleansed in mind and body I hope.’

The three men looked at me. Together they made a nerve-racking trio.

‘Octavia has so far refused to cook a single meal on board,’ said Gareth. ‘So no doubt I’ll be slaving over a hot tin opener again tonight. I really don’t approve of role-reversal.’

‘The only time any role-reversal takes place in our house’, said Ricky, laughing heartily, ‘is when Joan reverses the Rolls into the gateposts.’

‘Who’s taking my name in vain?’ said Joan, coming through the gate, followed by Gussie and Jeremy, absolutely weighed down with loot from the vegetable garden.

‘Look,’ screamed Gussie. ‘Isn’t Joan angelic? We can have asparagus for supper tonight, and strawberries.’

‘At least we won’t get scurvy,’ said Gareth, smiling at Joan. ‘Thank you very much.’ He got up. ‘We must go.’

‘You’d better go and change darling,’ said Ricky. ‘I’ll walk down to the boathouse with them. It’ll give the dogs a run. I won’t be long.’

He bustled into the house.

‘Such a pity we’re going out to supper,’ Joan said, kissing Gussie. ‘Do send me a postcard when you know what your telephone number’s going to be. And I’ll get Alison and Peter to give you a ring. I know you’ll get on.’

‘Goodbye, Octavia.’ She gave me the usual chilly peck.

‘You must bring Mrs Smith down one evening,’ she said to Gareth. ‘I hear she’s the most gorgeous gel.’

She’d only started saying ‘gel’ since Pamela came out.

Ricky returned with the visitor’s book. ‘You must all sign before you go.’

He always does this so he can remember who to claim on expenses. I didn’t dare look at Jeremy when Gussie signed them both under their new address.

‘We won’t be actually living there for a month or two,’ she said, beaming round.

Andreas abandoned us at the edge of the hayfields. He was not cut out for country walks.

‘Goodbye Octavia,’ he said. ‘Think about what I’ve said. We can’t go on not meeting like this.’

‘That man’s a shit,’ said Gareth, as soon as we were out of earshot.

‘I know,’ said Ricky, ‘but an extremely clever one.’

After the thrill of my recent encounter with Jeremy I behaved atrociously for the rest of the day. As we were sailing towards evening through low fields of buttercups and overhanging trees, I made Jeremy teach me how to steer the boat. I insisted on driving it towards the bank all the time, so he had to keep putting his hands over mine in order to straighten up. Gussie seemed to see nothing wrong. She beamed at us both. Gareth was making Pimms.

After dinner Gussie dragged a very reluctant Jeremy across the fields to look at a Norman church, and Gareth and I were left on the boat together drinking brandy. The night was very hot and still. An owl hooted in a nearby spinney. The first star flickered like a white moth in a dark blue sky. Gareth smoked a cigar to keep off the midges. The wireless was playing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. If only it was Jeremy sitting there, I thought. Nevertheless, I’d made such good progress that day. I felt nothing could dim my happiness.

Gareth got up, flicked his cigar into the water and strolled over to the other side of the boat to stand looking at the darkening horizon.

‘How’s your weekend of sun, sex and sleep going?’ I asked.

‘Not quite as eventfully as yours,’ he said.

He came and stood over me, looking down at me, huge against the sky. Suddenly my heart began to thump unpleasantly, perhaps at last he was going to try his luck with me after all.

‘I want another drink,’ I said, getting quickly to my feet and wandering into the saloon.

Gareth followed me. ‘Aren’t you beginning to wonder why I haven’t made a pass at you?’

I turned round. ‘Since you seem quite incapable of passing anyone up, it had crossed my mind.’

He looked at me for a minute and then grinned.

‘Because I don’t like bitches, and you’re the biggest bitch I’ve ever met.’

Wham! I let him have it, slap across the cheek. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t even put his hand up to his face.

‘And that seems to substantiate my theory,’ he said, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his hip pocket and offering me one. I shook my head dumbly, appalled at what I had done. He selected a cigarette carefully and then lit it.

‘You’re not really my type,’ he went on. ‘I like my women gentle and loving, soft and tender. Women so vulnerable I want to protect them just as I’d look after a kitten or a little girl lost in the street. Women who don’t automatically expect me to love them more than they love me. Maybe once upon a time before everyone started spoiling you you were like that, but not any more. You’re so hard now, lovely, they could cut a diamond on you.’

‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ I said furiously.

‘Because I’m probably the first man you’ve ever met who’s been left completely cold by you. I’ve met your sort before; you’re just a prick teaser or what the French call an “allumeuse”, more anxious to inflame men than gratify them once they’re well and truly hooked. You give off so much promise with that marvellous body and that great bright mane of hair falling over your eyes. And you’ve got the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. But it doesn’t add up to a thing, because you’re so much in love with yourself that there isn’t room for anyone else.’

‘Shut up,’ I said in a choked voice. ‘I don’t want to listen.’

‘And another thing,’ he went on, pouring a couple of fingers of brandy into his glass, ‘although you’ve probably seen more ceilings than Michaelangelo, I guess you’ve never got any pleasure out of all those men you’ve slept with, and that troubles you a bit, because you’ve read somewhere that sex is supposed to be rather enjoyable and you can’t understand why it doesn’t work for you.’

It was like a nightmare.

‘Stop it, stop it!’ I screamed. ‘You don’t understand anything. I was going to get married but he was killed in a car crash only a few months ago.’

‘I know all about that,’ he said softly. ‘Tod was never going to marry you.’

I clutched the table for support; my legs seemed to give way.

‘You knew him?’ I whispered. ‘I don’t understand. Then you knew. .’

‘. . All about you long before I met you?’ said Gareth. ‘Yes, of course I did. Tod was living with an old girl friend of mine, Cathie Summers. They were fantastic together until you came along and broke it up.’

‘I didn’t break it up,’ I whispered.

‘Oh yes you did, lovely. You waited until Cathie’d gone to the States for a week and then you moved in. But it wasn’t any good. Tod was fallible like most men, but he saw through you pretty quickly.’

‘You’re wrong. You’re wrong. He loved me far more than he did her! He was with me the night he was killed.’

Gareth turned to me, his eyes suddenly stony with contempt.

‘I know he was. But as usual Miss Brennen — Myth Brennen I ought to call you — you’re bending the facts. Tod and I had a drink in the Antelope that night. Cathie was due back the next day, and Tod was in a panic about what she’d say if she found out about you. He was steeling himself to come round and tell you it was all off. I told him not to bother, just to let you stew. But Tod, being an ethical sod, insisted on going through with it.’

‘That’s right,’ I stammered. ‘And the moment he saw me he realized it was me he loved, not Cathie, and he was going to give her up.’

‘You’re a bloody liar,’ said Gareth. ‘Tod left me in the pub at five to eleven. He must have been with you by eleven o’clock. He was killed at ten past eleven — driving like the devil to get away from you.’

For a second I couldn’t move or tear my eyes away from his. Then I gave a sob and fled out of the saloon down the passage to my cabin and, throwing myself down on my bunk, broke into a storm of weeping. I couldn’t stand it. Gareth knew Tod, he knew all about me. He’d looked into my mind and seen everything — the aridity, the desert, the emptiness — and he’d brought to light terrible things I’d never admitted, even to myself, disproving lies that even I had begun to believe were the truth. I cried and cried, great tearing sobs until I thought there were no more tears inside me, then I just lay there, my face buried in my sodden pillow, trembling with terror.

Much later I heard Jeremy and Gussie come back. Oh God, I thought in agony, I expect Gareth’s giving them a blow-by-blow account of the whole incident. They must have stayed up to watch the midnight movie, because it was half-past two before Gareth came to bed.