Jilly Cooper - Octavia

I escaped on deck and sat there gazing at the pink rose petals drifting across the khaki water. The panic and terror of the morning were fast hardening into hatred against Gareth. Once and for all I was going to get even with him.

Jeremy came and sat down beside me.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I get these blinding migraines sometimes, they make me completely stupid. I’m sorry I loused up lunch.’

‘Hell, that doesn’t matter. We should never have let you do all the cooking. Why didn’t you tell us you were feeling awful?’

I smiled up at him. ‘It’ll go soon. Do we have to go to this party tonight?’

‘Of course not, if you don’t want to. I rather fancy going, just for the sake of going into a room with you, and everyone thinking you belong to me.’

‘You win,’ I said.

He took my hand. ‘Do you still dislike Gareth that much?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

He nodded. ‘A bit.’

He caught at a leaf of an overhanging tree. ‘Gus gets some funny ideas. She thinks you’re very mixed up beneath the panache and the sophistication. She says you need someone like Gareth to sort you out.’

‘How kind of Gussie to be so concerned with my welfare,’ I said, trying to keep the tremble of anger out of my voice.

There was a burst of laughter from the other end of the boat. Such was my paranoia, I was convinced Gussie and Gareth were talking about me.

‘Would you make me any different?’ I asked, looking deep into Jeremy’s eyes.

‘I’d just like to make you,’ he said. ‘Let’s not bother about irrelevancies.’

It’s the same old story, I thought, as I did my face before we went ashore. Now he’s really pursuing me, I don’t want him so much. The intensity and lust in his eyes had me frightened. I had a feeling I might have got a tiger by the tail.

My thoughts turned to Gussie and Gareth.

‘Insecure, unhappy, mixed-up, frigid, hard enough to cut a diamond on.’ They were having a field-day passing judgements on me. How dare that fat slob Gussie patronize me, how dare Gareth take it upon himself to tell me so many home truths? The chips were down. If they thought I was a bitch, all right, I was going to behave like one.

Later in the afternoon as we went across water meadows into a large orchard, we could see a Queen Anne house through the trees.

‘What are these people called?’ asked Gussie.

‘Hamilton,’ said Gareth. ‘Hesketh and Bridget. They’ve got hordes of children, but I don’t know if any of them are at home.’

Gussie picked a scarlet cherry up from the long grass. ‘And they’re nice?’

‘Nice, but perfectly crazy,’ said Gareth. ‘Hesketh has madness on one side of the family and a Rumanian grandmother on the other, so you never know what to expect.’

‘I bet they’re hell,’ I whispered to Jeremy.

But they weren’t hell. They were a gently unworldly middle-aged couple. Hesketh Hamilton was tall and thin with spectacles on the end of his nose. He had been gardening and was wearing faded blue dungarees and a kind of mauve and white striped baseball cap on his head to keep off the sun. His wife had straggly pepper and salt hair, drawn back into a bun, and eyes the colour of faded denim. She was wearing odd shoes and an old felt skirt covered in dog hairs. They were both obviously delighted to see Gareth.

The house was beautiful but terribly untidy, with books and papers everywhere. It didn’t look as though anyone could possibly be giving a party that night. The afternoon sun slanting through the drawing-room window showed thick layers of dust on everything. Assorted dogs lay on the carpet panting from the heat.

‘We’ll have tea in the garden,’ said Bridget Hamilton. ‘You can come into the kitchen and help me carry the tray, Gareth. I want you to tell me if Hesketh’s got enough drink for this evening. We seem to have asked rather a lot of people.’

Out in the garden the lawn sloped down to a magnificent herbaceous border. Through an iron archway swarming with red roses, deckchairs and a table were set out under a walnut tree.

Gussie as usual went berserk, gushing like an oil well.

‘What a fantastic garden! My mother would be green with envy! Look at those roses and those fabulous blue hollyhocks!’

‘They’re delphiniums,’ said Hesketh Hamilton gently.

‘Oh yes,’ said Gussie unabashed. ‘And that heavenly catmint. I love the smell.’

‘It always reminds me of oversexed tomcats,’ Hesketh said, smiling.

‘It’s so kind of you to let us all come to your party,’ said Gussie, sitting down and putting a very severe strain on a deckchair.

She ought to be re-christened Gushie, I thought savagely.

Gareth came across the lawn carrying a tray, his eyes slanting away from the smoke of his cigar.

‘You’ve got enough drink in, Hesketh, to float the QE2,’ he said.

Bridget Hamilton, her hands still covered in earth from gardening, poured black tea into chipped mugs and handed sandwiches round.

‘How many of the children are home?’ asked Gareth.

‘Only Lorna, and she doesn’t know you’re all coming. She’s taken her new horse out. Absolute madness in this heat. She’s not such a child now you know, Gareth. She’ll be eighteen in August.’

Gareth grinned. ‘I know. I hope you’ve been keeping her on ice for me.’

He helped himself to a cucumber sandwich as big as a doorstep.

‘I’m starving.’ He gave an unpleasant smile in my direction. ‘I don’t know why but I couldn’t eat a thing at lunchtime.’

Bridget Hamilton turned to me. ‘And what do you do in London? You look like a model or an actress or something.’

‘She’s quite unemployable,’ said Gareth.

Bridget looked reproving. ‘I see you’re as rude as ever, Gareth.’ She smiled at me. ‘I never worked in my life until I got married. Anyway, I expect you meet lots of interesting people.’

‘Yes I do,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘The one I’d like to meet is Britt Ekland — so charming looking. Wouldn’t you like to meet Britt Ekland, Hesketh?’

‘Who’s he?’ said Hesketh.

Inevitably there was a good deal of laughter at this and Bridget Hamilton was just explaining, ‘He’s a she, Hesketh, he’s a she,’ when a door slammed and there was a sound of running foot steps and a girl exploded through the French windows. She was as slim as a blade, in jodhpurs and a red silk shirt, with a mass of curly hair and a freckled, laughing face. Her eyes lighted on Gareth and she gave a squeal of delight.

‘Gareth! What are you doing here? How lovely to see you!’

Gareth levered himself out of the deckchair and took both of her hands and stared at her for a long time.

‘But you’ve grown so beautiful, Lorna.’

She flushed. ‘Oh golly, have I really turned into a swan at last?’

‘A fully-fledged, paid-up member,’ he said, bending forward and kissing her smooth brown cheek. There was not much more he could do with us all watching him, but I had the feeling he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss the life out of her.

‘You might acknowledge someone else, darling,’ grumbled her mother.

‘Oh I’m sorry!’ The girl beamed at the rest of us. ‘I’m Lorna. It’s just that I’m so pleased to see Gareth. You will stay for the party, won’t you?’ she added anxiously.

‘I suppose we ought to think about washing a few glasses and rolling up the carpet,’ said Hesketh Hamilton.

‘I must wash my hair,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s the only way I’ll get the garden out of my nails.’

‘Aren’t they complete originals?’ said Gussie, as she and I changed later. She was wandering around in the nude trying to look at her back. Between her fiery red legs and shoulders, her skin was as white as lard.

‘I’m not peeling, am I?’ she asked anxiously. ‘It itches like mad.’

‘Looks a bit angry,’ I said, pleased to see that a few tiny white blisters had formed between her shoulders. It’d be coming off her in strips tomorrow.

‘Isn’t that girl Lorna quite devastating?’ she went on. ‘You could see Gareth wanted to absolutely gobble her up.’

‘She’s not that marvellous,’ I said, starting to pour water over my hair.

‘Oh but she is — quite lovely and so natural. Think of being seventeen again, all the things one was going to do, the books one was going to write, the places one was going to visit. I must say when a girl is beautiful at seventeen she gets a glow about her that old hags like you and I in our twenties can never hope to achieve.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ I muttered into the washbasin.

I knew when I finally finished doing my face that I’d never looked better. My eyes glittered brilliantly blue in my suntanned face; my hair, newly washed and straight, was almost white from the sun. Gussie, I’m glad to say, looked terrible. She was leaning out of the window when there was a crunch of wheels on the gravel outside.

‘Oh look, someone’s arriving. It’s the vicar.’

‘We’re obviously in for a wild evening,’ I said.

‘We’d better go down. Shall I wait?’

‘No. I’ll be ready in a minute. You go on.’

I was glad when she’d gone. I thought she might kick up a fuss at the dress I was going to wear. It was a short tunic in silver chain mail — the holes as big as half-crowns. High-necked at the front, it swooped to positive indecency at the back. Two very inadequate circles of silver sequins covered my breasts. I didn’t wear anything underneath except a pair of flesh-coloured pants, which gave the impression I wasn’t wearing anything at all.

Slowly I put it on, thinking all the time of the effect it would have on Jeremy when I walked into the sedate country living room. I gave a final brush to my hair and turned to look in the mirror. It was the first time I’d worn it with all my party warpaint, and the impact made even me catch my breath. Oh my, said I to myself, you’re going to set them by their country ears tonight. I was determined to make an entrance, so I fiddled with my hair until I could hear that more people had arrived.