Emily

Chapter Twelve

In November, later than expected, Coco and Buster came back.

Buster brought his new private plane, which he landed perilously on the sward outside the castle, terrifying the life out of the islanders and the local sheep, and nearly depositing himself, three labradors, gun cases, rod boxes and several hundred tons of pigskin luggage, in the sea.

‘Pity,’ said Rory. ‘Never mind, there’ll be plenty of other opportunities. In the old days he used to come up by train from Euston and take the dogs to lamp-posts as the train waited interminably at Crewe.’

Coco arrived in rip-roaring form and swept Rory and me into a round of gaiety, meeting people on the island and the mainland. It was a frightful strain trying to keep up the appearance that I was blissfully happy.

A few days later, Marina and Hamish asked us back to dinner. I was amazed and irritated to discover she was a very good cook, and had decorated Hamish’s huge, stark house with a wild elegance I could never achieve in a million years of poring over House and Garden.

The drawing-room had grey silk walls and flame-red curtains, and I felt sure, had been chosen to compliment Marina’s colouring.

‘Oh it’s lovely,’ I said wistfully, ‘you ought to go into interior decorating.’

‘Emily’s an inferior decorator,’ said Rory.

In my attempt to make our bedroom more feminine, I’d started painting it but had got bored in the middle. The colour, too, was disastrous. It looked all right on the chart but once on the wall turned out an appalling E — K directory pink.

I felt very overdressed that evening, too. Trying to compete with Marina, I’d put on a see-through blouse and a long skirt. Marina of course was wearing jeans.

There was another couple to dinner — Deidre and Calen Macdonald. She was a commanding, big-boned woman with a ringing voice. He had a handsome, dissipated face, roving grey eyes, and had obviously married her for her money. He turned out to be a shooting friend of Buster’s and made an absolute dead set at me.

‘I can’t claim to be a gentleman, but I’ve always preferred blondes,’ he said cornering me on the sofa as soon as we were introduced, ‘and you really are gorgeous.’

The intensity with which he gazed at my see-through blouse threw me off balance — I folded my arms firmly to cover up what I could.

‘Er — do you do anything for a living?’ I said, casting around for something to say.

‘Good God, no. I realized very early on that I was quite incapable of supporting myself, so I married old Deidre instead; she’s a pretty full time job, but I do get the odd afternoon off while she’s sitting on committees. How about you?’

‘I’ve only been married seven weeks,’ I said firmly.

‘So disillusion hasn’t set in yet. Pretty tricky customer Rory, I admire you if you can handle him. He runs rings round poor Buster. Is he still drinking too much?’

‘Hardly at all,’ I said, out of the corner of my eye watching Rory go to Marina’s sidetable, and help himself to a second very large glass of whisky.

‘Very loyal and proper,’ said Calen. ‘I must say you really are extremely attractive, I wish you’d stop sitting with your arms folded like a rugger player so I could appreciate you properly. Promise me that if you ever decide to be unfaithful to Rory, I can have first refusal.’

I tried to look disapproving, but after Rory’s indifference of the past few weeks, it was such heaven to be chatted up. I was sure Marina had invited Calen on purpose. But although he flirted outrageously with me all evening, I felt terribly depressed that Rory wasn’t betraying a spark of jealousy.

‘So nice for you to find someone of your own mental age to play with, Emily,’ was all he said afterwards.

As the weeks passed, we often encountered Marina and Hamish at parties. Marina and Rory so studiously avoided each other that I wondered if they were meeting on the sly.

Occasionally I saw her loathsome brother, Finn Maclean, driving round the island, obviously far too preoccupied with building his beastly hospital to waste time on parties.

In December, Coco slipped down some steps at the castle after a boozy evening and sprained her ankle. Next day she rang up, saying she was bored, would I come over and see her. On my way I drove into Penlorren to find her some nice escapist novel from the bookshop.

Having parked my car in the main street, I started browsing through some romances. Oh dear, the lovely things that happened to those heroines. Why didn’t Rory feel like that about me?

Finally, I heard a cough behind me. The owner wanting to shut up shop.

Hastily I bought the book and wandered dreamily into the main street, through the mist and rain. A man was standing by my car. There was something heroic about the way he stood, the massive breadth of the shoulders, the hair curling over the collar of his battered sheepskin coat like Michelangelo’s David.

Instinctively, I unhitched the long lock of hair from behind my ear and let it fall seductively over my eyes. Then I realized the man was Finn Maclean, and he was blazingly angry.

‘Is this your car?’

‘Yes… at least, it’s Rory’s.’

‘Can’t you read?’

He seized my arm and swung me round to face a notice on a garage door. It said, Doctor’s car, please leave free.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, in London, people often put notices like that on their garage doors even if they’re not doctors, just to keep people away.’

‘This is not London,’ he snapped, and in terms of the most blistering invective, proceeded to tell me exactly what he thought of Londoners who came to live in the country, and me in particular, and didn’t I realize that people could be dying because people like me parked their cars in places like this. Finally I got fed up.

‘It strikes me,’ I said, ‘that while you’ve been rabbiting on and on and on about my criminal responsibility, at least twenty more people could have died. Admittedly, a few of them may have been Chinese. In fact, if all the people who died while people like you were blowing their cool all over the islands were laid end to end…’

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snapped Finn. ‘There’s obviously no point in trying to get anything through to you. You’d better move your car.’

Of course, the beastly thing wouldn’t start. Eventually I remembered to let out the clutch, and it shot forward in a series of agonizing jerks.

‘Louse, swine, monster,’ I muttered to myself, as I drove to the castle. No wonder Rory and he couldn’t stand each other.