Jilly Cooper - Prudence

Last, round the woody turn we swing.

Goodbye, goodbye to everything.’

I turned and caught a last glimpse of the Mulhollands’ house with its dark fringe of pines. I felt I must be leaving behind a shiny snail’s mark of tears.

Suddenly I heard a low chuckle. I looked at Mr Braddock’s impassive face; then he chuckled again.

‘Mrs Braddock and I could scarcely restrain ourselves,’ he said. ‘We could have cheered and cheered. To my dying day I shall remember the expression on her face with all the milk and stuff dripping down it. I wish I had the nerve to do something like that. Anyway your name shall be writ large for evermore.’

‘Oh dear, I could do without the publicity. Ace is going to be livid.’

‘Perhaps it will make the scales fall from his eyes. If that woman becomes mistress of Ambleside, Mrs Braddock and I will be out on our ears.’

Then he chuckled again.

After buying a platform ticket and carrying my suitcase and the still furiously mewing kitten on to the platform, he said he’d be off. ‘I’ve got a lot of snow to shovel, but perhaps I may shake you by the hand.’

‘Pleased I’ve made someone happy,’ I said, gloomily.

The journey back to London was a nightmare. Tears kept trickling out from under my dark glasses. The train was packed, and all the old ladies who said how sweet the kitten was when I got into the carriage and begged me to let him out of his basket, got fed up when he crawled all over them and laddered their stockings. I commuted between the loos all down the train, crying myself stupid until someone rattled the door, then moving on to the next one.

Jane was obviously not expecting me back for ages. She was out, and she’d been making full use of my wardrobe. My clothes were strewn all over the bedroom, and she’d left the top off my favourite bottle of scent. I made the kitten at home, gave it a tin of lobster we had in the larder, and wandered desolately round the flat wondering if I’d been crazy to walk out like that.

Jane came in about ten, and made a great fuss about being pleased to see me. She was horribly embarrassed, because she was wearing my fur coat and my boots. Suddenly she looked at me for the first time full in the face. Her embarrassment turned to horror.

‘Pru, lovie, you look like a road accident. What, or rather who, have you been up to?’

‘I’ve been ill,’ I said, and burst into tears. Eventually, the whole story came pouring out.

‘I knew all along, of course,’ said Jane sententiously. ‘I could tell from your letter you were getting over Pendle pretty quickly, and there was an obvious swing towards Ace.

‘Mind you, I think you’re raving mad,’ she went on. ‘I wouldn’t have left. I’d have battled it out with this Berenice woman — what a soppy name! Look how keen on Pendle you were, and now look at you. Well, Ace may have fancied this woman a bit, and now he doesn’t. You wait, he’ll come pounding after you.’

But Ace didn’t come after me. For the first time in my life, I became familiar with real hell. You don’t need a pitchfork and demons, just take someone away from someone they love — that’s enough. Before, when I’d been unhappily in love, it only needed a handsome man giving me the glad eye in the street, or a patch of blue sky above a grey building to jerk me temporarily out of my gloom. But this time it was unrelieved despair. I dragged myself round the flat like a wounded animal and every night I cried great earth-shaking sobs until dawn came.

The weekend crawled by — not a letter, not a telephone call. I even rang up the engineers to check if the telephone was working. Jane, worried at first, got rather fed up with me. One can’t dole out sympathy indefinitely. She rang Rodney, who took her out for a long drunken Sunday lunch to discuss what to do for and about Prudence.

On Monday morning, back in the office, gazing at a lot of statistics about canned peaches, I was just wondering how I’d ever get through the week when the telephone rang. Rodney answered it.

‘It’s for you,’ he said, waving the receiver. ‘A voice from your immediate past.’

‘Who is it?’ I said listlessly.

‘Someone called Mulholland.’

I was across the room like a streak of light.

‘Hullo, Pru,’ said a familiar drawling voice. It was Maggie.

‘How are you?’ I said, battling with my disappointment.

‘Comme ci, comme very ca. Pendle’s out. Come to lunch.’

‘I’d like to,’ I said. Crazy masochist, I couldn’t resist talking to someone who knew Ace, and I was also curious to know how she was enjoying living with Pendle.

When I arrived, I hardly recognized Pendle’s flat. It had always been so impeccably tidy. Now clothes lay everywhere, carrier bags and tissue paper were littered all over the floor. Ashtrays were overflowing, and Maggie had made dramatic inroads into that well-stocked drinks cupboard. Professor Copeland’s hat, still carrying a fair sprinkling of Antonia Fraser’s ginger hairs, was perched rakishly over the nose of Julius Caesar’s bust.

She hugged me when I arrived. ‘Pru, how lovely to see you! I rang quite on the off-chance. I thought you might still be at home. Are you wildly hungry?’

I shook my head.

‘Good, because I’m afraid we’ve only got whisky and some smoked salmon for lunch.’

She poured us out huge drinks.

‘Do you like my new kit?’ she asked, twirling round. She was wearing a red midi dress, and her hair was permed into tight little curls. She’d plucked her eyebrows to the edge of extinction, and was wearing pink shoes.

‘Super,’ I said. I thought she looked frightful.

‘I’m as “in” as you are now. I came away without any luggage so Pendle had to buy me a new wardrobe. We’ve been out every night, plays and films and nightclubs. We went to Hester’s last night. Have you ever been there?’

I shook my head.

‘Pendle’s wonderful. He does everything to keep me amused. Do you know what he said to me as soon as I got here? “Please unpack, darling — everything — then I can get rid of your suitcase,” and then, towards the end of the first night — neither of us slept a wink — he said, “This is the happiest night of my life, better than when I passed my Bar finals, or got that scholarship to Oxford.” The awful thing is, having longed for me to come and live with him for so long, I don’t think he quite knows what to do with me.’ She rattled on feverishly.

Then suddenly, as she was casually shaking ice around in her glass, she said, ‘How was Jack when I left? Did he mind?’

‘Yes, he did, he minded like hell. He nearly murdered Rose when she said he was better off without you. He loves you. He was simply shattered. He couldn’t stop looking at your photograph and saying he couldn’t believe it.’

She went over to the record-player. ‘Pendle has such ghastly records. I went and bought some pop ones, but I’ve played them into the ground.’

She swung round. Her eyes were full of tears. ‘Was Jack really upset?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why didn’t he come and get me?’

‘He wanted to, but Ace wouldn’t let him. Ace said it would be better if you realized you didn’t like living with Pendle first.’

Maggie put her face in her hands. ‘Ace is quite right, blast him!’ she said. ‘I always thought Pendle was much more interesting and enigmatic than Jack. But he isn’t. He’s just boring. Jack’s much funnier, and he never minded me being a slut; he just roared with laughter. If only he didn’t run after other women so much.’

‘He doesn’t mean anything by it,’ I said. ‘He’s just proving that he’s attractive, like gorillas beat their chests.’

‘And, what’s more, I think I’m pregnant and it’s Jack’s child and Pendle wants me to have an abortion.’

‘Oh, you can’t.’

‘I know. I’ve had a lot of time to think about Jack, and I think if we were away from Rose with a house and baby of our own we might get it together.’

‘What are you going to do?’

Maggie got up and picked up one of her new dresses, and held it against her. ‘I don’t know. Do you think I can take these new clothes with me?’

She looked at my untouched smoked salmon.

‘You’re not eating anything — you look ghastly.’

‘Thanks!’ I said.

‘It’s Ace, I suppose.’

‘What do you mean?’ I stammered, my mouth full of ashes.

‘All that bull about hating his guts. It stood out as plain as a spot on one’s nose that you were hooked on him.’

‘How?’ I said.

‘You never addressed a civil word to him, and the way you were always going on about him not being attractive. It’s like saying grass is red.’

‘Anyway,’ I said wearily, ‘it doesn’t matter what I feel. He’s going to marry Berenice.’

‘Of course he won’t,’ said Maggie scornfully, ‘Jack reckons Ace is hooked on you too. All that little Hitler behaviour when you were ill, and that’s why he was so stroppy when Berenice turned up and put a spoke in the wheel. I mean, he couldn’t just throw her out the moment she arrived. They had been living together in New York. Oh look, you’ve spilt your drink all over the carpet.’ She mopped it up with one of Pendle’s silk cushions.

‘Do you really think he won’t marry her?’

‘Not in a million years. Do you really think Jack was missing me?’

During the afternoon, my elation subsided. If Ace had been keen on me, he would have contacted me by now. I felt completely exhausted when I got back to the flat.

Jane was eating bread and jam with one hand and trying to put in heated rollers with the other.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.