Emily

Chapter Thirty

All in all I didn’t feel in a very festive state for Coco’s party. Numb misery would have just about summed it up. Rory had noticed my red eyes when he got home, and demanded to know what was the matter. I’d refused to tell him, and he’d got extremely bad tempered.

I was wearing a very sexy red dress, but in my current condition I felt about as sexy as a pillar-box.

‘At least it matches your eyes,’ said Rory.

Coco’s party was the usual noisy success, but everyone seemed even more anxious to get drunk than usual.

‘My sister arrives later,’ Coco told me. ‘She says she is bringing me a surprise. I think I am too old to be surprised by anything, but perhaps it will be something that amuses Buster.’

Marina was wearing a beautiful white dress: everything about her shimmered and glimmered softly as though the material had been woven of candle beams. But inside it she looked like a stricken masquerader. Hamish was there, too, looking dreadfully old and ill. I hadn’t seen him since the night he told me Rory and Marina were brother and sister.

Rory was drinking steadily and talking to Buster about fishing — Buster was in a very good temper, having landed a huge salmon that afternoon.

I was being the death and soul of the party.

About ten o’clock, after supper, a crowd of us were in a little room off the hall, playing roulette. Rory was winning, Hamish was losing heavily. Buster was still talking about his salmon. ‘Amazing fish, the salmon,’ he said, placing four chips on Rouge. ‘They live for years in salt water, and then always come back to the same freshwater spot to breed.’

‘Not surprising,’ said Marina, and she looked at Rory and laughed. ‘As you’d know, Buster, if you’d ever suffered the agony of making love in salt water.’

‘I really thought the bugger had got away,’ said Buster, not listening at all.

‘Not surprising,’ said Rory, ‘if he saw you hauling on the other end of the line.’

Then, just as there was a pause in play, and Buster was raking in counters, Hamish looked at Rory.

‘I hope you’ve been keeping a pretty close guard on your wife lately,’ he said.

Rory stopped in the middle of lighting a cigarette.

‘Shut up, Hamish,’ I snapped.

‘Hush, darling,’ Rory put his hand on my arm. ‘Hamish is about to explain himself.’

‘All I’m saying,’ said Hamish, flashing his false teeth evilly, ‘is that patients often fall in love with their doctors, and it’s nice to know I’m not the only cuckold in Irasa.’

His words brought an uneasy silence.

‘Belt up, Hamish,’ said Buster. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘Oh, I do, Buster, old chap. All I’m saying to Rory is that next time he goes to Edinburgh, and my wife disappears to join him, he should realize that while he’s away, pretty Mrs Balniel will be amusing herself with Dr Maclean.’

‘That’s not true,’ I squeaked.

‘Are you going to take that back?’ said Rory through clenched teeth.

‘No, dear boy, I’m not. Your wife is as big a whore…’

He got no further. Rory had chucked his drink into Hamish’s face.

‘And that’s a waste of good whisky,’ he said.

Hamish, whisky dripping from his face, made a lunge at Rory.

Buster pulled him off.

The doorbell rang noisily, bringing us back to our senses.

‘Buster, Rory,’ shrieked Coco from the hall, ‘I think it must be Marcelle.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Buster, and hurried out.

Hamish wiped the whisky off his face. I dared not look at Rory or Marina.

The next minute, Coco swept into the room with her sister, Marcelle.

We all tried to act normally and everyone kissed everyone on both cheeks. Marcelle was not as pretty as Coco, younger and brassier, but pretty high voltage all the same.

She said, with a touch of malice: ‘I’ve brought you your surprise, chérie. He’s putting the car away and feeling a little shy, too.’

‘Why don’t you go and get him, Buster?’ said Coco.

Buster trotted out obediently.

‘Who can it be?’ said Coco excitedly. ‘I have so many skeletons in the wardrobe.’

I’d had my share of surprises, too. I was still shaking from Hamish’s accusations. I sat down on the sofa. The next moment Buster came through the door. For once he’d lost his superb indolence. He looked shattered. He went up to Coco.

‘Darling,’ he whispered. ‘This is going to be something of a shock.’

‘I hope it’s a nice one,’ said Coco, patting her curls and arranging her breasts in the low-cut black dress. Someone else stood behind Buster in the door, a tall thin figure.

Alerted by everyone’s faces, Buster swung round.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘I told you to wait.’

I watched, fascinated, as the man came through the door. He had unruly black hair streaked with grey, high cheek bones, formidable, contemptuous black eyes above grey pouches, and a haughty thin-lipped mouth. He was dressed theatrically in a black cloak with a gold earring hanging from one ear. He looked around slowly, taking everyone in. He must have been at least fifty — but he was still sensationally attractive. And I knew positively that I’d met him somewhere before.

There was a pause, then Coco turned as white as a sheet. ‘Alexei,’ she said in a frozen tone. Then she gave a strange little laugh that was almost a sob, and running towards him, flung her arms round his neck.

The odd thing was the silence. Everyone in the room looked stunned.

‘You’re still very beautiful, Coco,’ Alexei said softly. ‘How did I ever let you go?’

Coco seemed to recover herself.

‘I was not rich enough for you,’ she said unromantically.

‘You haven’t been properly introduced to my husband, have you, Alexei?’ said Coco. ‘Alexei was a great boyfriend of mine before I married Hector,’ she said.

‘So it seems,’ said Buster.

‘I seem to have stumbled on a little family gathering,’ said the stranger with amusement.

Oh, where had I seen that arrogant, equivocal smile before?

‘You must also meet my son, Rory,’ said Coco.

Rory got to his feet.

Very carefully, they looked each other up and down.

I looked from Rory to the stranger. The resemblance was unmistakable.

‘Did you say Alexei was a boyfriend of yours before you married my father, or afterwards?’ Rory said softly.

Coco shrugged her shoulders, ‘Well, a bit of both, darling.’

Alexei turned to Rory. ‘Your mother and I were very much in love but, alas, we neither of us had any money. So she married Hector, and I, alas, martyred in the arms of…’

‘A fat American heiress,’ said Coco.

Then Rory started to laugh. He got a drink and raised it to Hector’s portrait, kilted and bristling, over the fire. ‘So the old bastard wasn’t my father after all,’ he said, and turning to Alexei, ‘I do hope you don’t expect me to call you Daddy?’

Coco smiled. ‘You do not mind, chérie?’

Rory shook his head. ‘As long as his references are all right.’

Alexei grinned in genuine amusement. ‘Oh, they’re extremely good, my dear. I’m Russian; white, of course, and can trace my ancestry back to centuries before Peter the Great.’

His glance wandered in my direction. He had exactly the same way of stripping off all one’s clothes that Rory had.

‘This is Rory’s wife,’ said Coco.

Alexei sighed and bowed over my hand. ‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘I suppose that puts her out of bounds?’

‘I wouldn’t let that worry you,’ I said in a shaking voice. ‘Incest has never deterred anyone in this house.’

I’ll never understand any of them, I thought hopelessly. Only Marina was beginning to generate a fitting amount of emotion.

The next moment she had rushed up to Rory and flung her arms round his neck.

‘Don’t you see, darling?’ she cried wildly. ‘That lets you and me off the hook.’

The room swam before me.