Emily (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

    CEDRIC wasn’t the only one who was angry. Annie Richmond was livid, too.

    ‘You can’t marry Rory, he’s never been faithful to anyone for more than five minutes. He’s immoral and dreadfully spoilt. He even used to cheat at conkers when he was a little boy!’

    Nina was even more discouraging. Genuine concern for me combined - when she’d actually met Rory in the flesh - with overwhelming envy.

    ‘I know he’s lovely to look at, but he’s an absolute devil. You’re batting out of your league. Cedric was far more suitable.’

    ‘It was you in the first place,’ I said crossly, ‘who was so against Cedric, and hustled me off to Annie Richmond’s party.’

    ‘I never dreamed you’d go to these extremes. Where are you going to live?’

    ‘In the Highlands, on an island. It sounds too romantic for words.’

    Nina sighed. ‘It is not romantic living on an island. What will you do, except talk to sheep and go mad while he slaps paint on canvases all day? You won’t hold him in a million years. You’ll be thoroughly miserable, and then come and snivel all over me. The only thing a whirlwind courtship does is blow dust in everyone’s eyes.’

    I didn’t care. I was hanging from chandeliers, swinging round lamp-posts. I was so deranged with love I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt I was drowning and I didn’t want anyone to save me.

    Another aspect that delighted me was the being married part of the whole thing. I’d never been cut out for a career and the thought that I could chuck in my nine-tofive job and spend the rest of my life looking after Rory filled me with joy. I had fantasies of greeting him at the door, after a hard day at his studio, a beautiful child hanging on each hand.

    Three days later, Rory and I were married at Chelsea Register Office. I had been to see the Renoirs at the Tate, and wore a Laura Ashley dress and a black breton on the back of my head. Even Nina admitted I looked good.

    Rory was waiting when we arrived, smoking and gazing moodily at the road. It was the first time I’d seen him in a suit - pale grey velvet with a black shirt.

    ‘Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen!’ I said rapturously.

    ‘Yes,’ said Nina. ‘It isn’t too late to change your mind.’

    He smiled when he saw us, then his narrowed eyes fixed coldly on my hat. Tearing it from my head, he threw it on the ground and kicked it into the Kings Road, where a milk van ran over it.

    ‘Don’t you ever dare wear a hat again,’ he said, ruffling my hair.

    Then he took my hand and led me into the Register Office.

    Afterwards we had a party and drank champagne, and flew to Paris for our honeymoon. When we arrived at our hotel - which was pretty, with shutters, vines and pink geraniums, overlooking the Seine - Rory ordered more champagne.

    He was in a strange, wild mood. I wondered how much he’d drunk before he got to the Register Office. I very much wanted him to pounce on me and ravish me at once. I suddenly felt apprehensive, lost and very much alone.

    I went off and had a bath. Isn’t that what all brides do? All my things were new - sponge bag, flannel, talcum powder, toothbrush. Even my name was new - Emily Balniel.

    I said it over and over to myself as I lay in the bath, with the water not too hot so I wouldn’t emerge like a lobster.

    I rubbed scented bath oil into every inch of my body and put on a new white negligée, fantastically expensive and pretty and virginal. I went into the bedroom, and waited for Rory’s gasp of approval. It never came. He was on the telephone, his face ashen.

    ‘Hullo,’ he was saying. ‘Hullo, yes, it’s me all right. I know it’s been a long time. Where am I? In Paris, at the Reconnaissance. Do you remember the Reconnaissance, darling? I just wanted to tell you that I got married this afternoon, so that makes us level again, doesn’t it?’ And, with a ghastly expression of triumph on his face, he dropped the telephone back in its cradle.’Who were you ringing?’ I asked.

    He looked at me for a minute as though I were a stranger. There was the same sinister stillness, the lurking danger that I’d been so aware of the first night I met him.

    ‘Who was it?’ I asked again.

    ‘Mind your own business,’ he snarled. ‘Just because I’ve married you, it doesn’t give you the right to question all my movements.’

    I felt as though he’d hit me. For a minute we stared at each other, bristling with hostility. Then he pulled himself together, apologized for jumping down my throat - and began to kiss me almost frenziedly.

    When I woke up, in the middle of the night, I found him standing by the window, smoking a cigarette. He had his back to me but there was something infinitely despairing about the hunched set of his shoulders.

    With a sick feeling of fear, I wondered why he had felt it necessary to ring up a woman on the first night of his honeymoon, and taunt her with the fact that he’d just got married.

    Marriage, as I discovered on my honeymoon, may be a bed of roses, but there are plenty of thorns lying around.

    Not that I found myself loving Rory any the less; rather the reverse, but he was not easy to live with. To begin with, I never knew what mood he was going to be in. There were the prolonged black glooms, followed by sudden firework bursts of affection, followed by an abstracted fit when he would sit for hours watching the sun on the plane trees outside our window. There were also the sudden, uncontrollable rages - in a smart French restaurant he had picked up a dish of potato puree, and hurled it at a passing fly!

    I also had to get used to everyone looking at Rory rather than at me; and that was another thing about marriage. I couldn’t spend hours tarting myself up to compete with all those svelte French women. If Rory suddenly decided he wanted to go out, it was straight out of bed, into the shower and ‘what the hell do you want to bother with make-up for?’

    I found being with him day in, day out, slightly claustrophobic. There wasn’t a moment to shave my armpits or touch up the roots of my hair. He did quite a lot of work. I was longing for him to sketch me, and kept sweeping my hair back for him to admire the beauty of my bone structure, but he was far more interested in drawing old men and women with wrinkled faces in cafés. The drawings were amazingly good.

CHAPTER FOUR

    WE were sitting in bed one afternoon after one of those heavy French lunches, when suddenly there was a pounding on the door.

    ‘Who the hell’s that?’ I asked.

    ‘A chambermaid gone berserk and unable to contain herself,’ said Rory, and shouted something very impolite in French.

    The pounding went on.

    ‘Perhaps it’s the flics,’ said Rory, getting out of bed and putting on his trousers. Through a haze of alcohol, I looked at his tousled black hair and broad brown shoulders.

    Swearing, he unlocked the door. A beautiful woman stood there.

    ‘Chéri,’ she cried ecstatically. ‘Bébé, I knew you were ‘ere. The man on the desk was so discreet. He refuse to admit it.’ And flinging her arms round Rory’s neck, she kissed him on both cheeks.

    ‘I think you are ver’ unkind,’ she went on reproachfully in a strong French accent, ‘sloping off and getting married without a word to anyone. I mean, think of the wedding presents you missed.’

    Rory looked half exasperated, half amused.

    ‘I’m afraid this is my mother,’ he said.

    ‘Oh gosh,’ I squeaked. ‘How fright… I mean, how lovely. How do you do?’

    It was a fine way to meet one’s mother-in-law for the first time; sitting up in bed, wearing nothing but a crumpled sheet and a bright smile.

    ‘This is Emily,’ said Rory.

    Rory’s mother rushed across the room and hugged me.

    ‘But you are so pretty,’ she said. ‘This pleases me very much. I keep telling Rory to find a nice wife and settle down. I know you will make ‘im ‘appy, and he will start behaving beautifully.’

    ‘I’ll try,’ I faltered.

    She was stunning looking - lush, opulent, exotic, with huge dark blue eyes, hair dyed the most terrific shade of strawberry blonde, the most marvellous legs and lots of jewellery. It was easy to see from where Rory got his traffic-stopping looks.

    One of her eyelids was made up with brilliant violet eye-shadow, the other smeared with emerald green.

    ‘I have just been to Dior for a fitting. I tried out their new make-up, it’s a very pretty shade of green, no?’

    ‘Where’s Buster?’ asked Rory.

    ‘Coming later,’ she said. ‘He’s having a drink with some friends.’

    ‘He’s lying,’ said Rory. ‘He couldn’t possibly have a friend.’

    Rory’s mother giggled. ‘Now, chéri, you must not be naughty. Buster is my second ‘usband,’ she explained to me. Rory’s father, Hector, was my first.

    ‘When I marry Buster, Rory say to me, "You’re getting better at choosing husbands, maman, but not much".’

    Rory’s mother suddenly gave a shriek. ‘Ah! Mon Dieu, I remember the taxi is still waiting downstairs. We ‘ave run out of money. We knew you would have some, Rory, you’re so rich now. Could you ring down and get the manager to pay the taxi?’

    Rory looked at her with intense irritation, then he laughed, picked up the telephone and gabbled away in French.

    ‘Ask ‘im to send up some champagne,’ said Rory’s mother. ‘At least two bottles, I want to drink my new daughter-in-law’s health. You must call me Coco,’ she said.

    I caught Rory’s eye and tried not to giggle. Everything was getting out of hand.

    Later, when the champagne arrived, Rory said, ‘Why have you run out of money? Pa didn’t leave you badly off.’

    ‘Of course he didn’t, darling, it was just that we had to have central heating for the castle, or we’d have frozen to death.’

    ‘And a sauna bath, and a flagellation room?’ said Rory.

    ‘Of course, darling, Buster ‘as been used to the best, and he’s been shooting four or five times a week and thatall adds up. Everything’s in such a muddle, we can’t decide whether we want to spend the winter in Irasa.’ She turned to me. ‘I hope you’re going to like our island, chéri, those Highland winters can be very terrible, and it’s so boring seeing the same old people all the time, and all those sheep. That’s what Buster’s seeing his friend about.’

    ‘What?’ said Rory.

    ‘Buying this aeroplane. He thinks he can get it cheap. Then we can all escape to London, or Paris, or the Riviera when we feel like it.’

    Rory raised his eyes to heaven.

    ‘He does need it, darling,’ said Coco, almost pleadingly.

    ‘Who told you we were here?’

    ‘Marina did. She telephoned me in Cannes to tell me the news.’

    ‘The bitch,’ said Rory.

    ‘Who’s Marina?’ I asked.

    ‘Marina Maclean,’ said Coco. ‘At least, she was. Now she’s Marina Buchanan. She’s just married Hamish Buchanan, who’s very rich and more than twice her age. She lives on the Island too. I saw her just before we left, Rory. She didn’t look very happy. Sort of feverish; she’s spending a fortune on clothes and jewellery.’

    ‘That’s what comes of trying to marry one’s grandfather,’ said Rory unemotionally.

    ‘Hamish looks terrible too,’ said Coco. ‘He’s suddenly gone all hip, growing his hair, not eating meat, and dancing in the modern way - trying to keep up with Marina, I suppose. He looks twenty years older. Oh well, it’s no use wasting sympathy on Marina. She’s made her bed.’

    ‘And now she’s about to lie in someone else’s,’ said Rory.

    ‘Oh look, here comes Buster.’

    ‘I should like to get dressed,’ I said plaintively. ‘Oh, nobody dresses for Buster,’ said Rory.

    Buster Macpherson, when he arrived, turned out to be the kind of man my mother would have gone mad for. He had well-brushed blond hair and blue eyes that let out a perpetual sparkle. He looked like the hero in a boys’ comic. He showed a lot of film-star teeth.

    He was absolutely not my type. He had none of Rory’s explosive feline grace, but he obviously exerted considerable fascination over Coco who, although she didn’t look a day over thirty-five, must have been nearing fifty, and a good ten years older than Buster.

    ‘Congratulations, you chaps,’ said Buster. He peered through the gloom at me under my sheet.

    ‘May I kiss the bride?’ he asked.

    No,’ said Rory. ‘You’d better watch Buster, he’s going through the change of life.’

    Buster shot him an unfriendly look, helped himself to a large glass of champagne and sat down.

    ‘Ah, honeymoons, honeymoons,’ he said, shaking his head.

    Did you buy that aeroplane?’ asked Rory.

    ‘I think so,’ said Buster.

    Coco gave a crow of delight.

    ‘Where are you going to land it?’ asked Rory. ‘In the High Street?’

    No,’ said Coco. ‘We’ve got a little runway on the island now. I knew I had something to tell you, darling, Finn Maclean is back.’

    Rory’s eyes narrowed.

    ‘The hell he is. What’s he poking his nose into now?’

    ‘He’s thrown up his smart Harley Street practice and come back to Irasa as Medical Officer overseeing all the islands,’ said Buster. ‘He’s persuaded the Scottish Medical Board to build him a cottage hospital in the old church hall and buy him an aeroplane so he can hop from island to island.’

    ‘Our own flying doctor,’ said Rory. ‘Why the hell has he come back?’

    ‘I think he wanted to get out of London,’ said Buster. ‘His marriage broke up.’

    ‘Not surprised,’ said Rory. No woman in her right senses could stand him.’

    ‘Finn Maclean is Marina’s elder brother,’ Coco explained to me. ‘Rory and he don’t get on, you understand. He never got on with Rory’s father either - he kept complaining about the poorness of the tenants.’

    ‘He’s an arrogant sod,’ said Rory. ‘You won’t like him.’

    ‘I rather like him,’ mused Coco. ‘He does not have the bedroom manner, but he is all man.’

    Life on Irasa, I decided, certainly wasn’t going to be dull. The unpredictable Marina running rings round her ancient husband; Rory feuding with Finn Maclean, who was ‘all man’; plus Buster and Coco, a knockabout comedy act in themselves.

    ‘This is a nice hotel,’ said Coco meditatively, trying on some of my scent. ‘Can you get Buster and me a room here, Rory?’

    No I can’t,’ said Rory. ‘I happen to be on my honeymoon, and I’d like to get on with it without your assistance.’