Octavia

by Jilly Cooper

  I felt better after I’d had a bath, washed my hair and rubbed quantities of Joan’s bottle of Joy over my body. I hoped she wouldn’t recognize the smell on me. Anyway, she deserved to be Joyless, the old bag.

  Combing my wet hair, I looked out of the window. Two girls — the kind who open their legs like airport doors whenever a man approaches — wearing white bikinis, stiletto heels and about a hundredweight each of make-up, were teetering across the lawn. They must have been brought down by Andreas. He always carried a spare. Suddenly Jeremy came out of the door leading to the swimming pool and walked past the tarts without even noticing them. They, on the other hand, swivelled round, gazing at him in wonder, watching him avidly as he loped with lazy animal grace towards the house. I can’t say I blamed them.

  Bring me my beau of burning gold, I muttered, as, wrapped only in a huge fluffy blue towel, I curled up on the floor to dry my hair. I didn’t wait long. There was a quick step outside, and a knock on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ I said huskily.

  He closed the door behind him. I let the towel slip slightly.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I said. ‘I’m amazed you could tear yourself away from those first editions.’

  ‘You’re why I’m here,’ he said. ‘Who was that repulsive man you were talking to?’

  My heart sang. It had worked.

  ‘Andreas Katz. I’ve known him for years.’

  ‘How well?’

  I went on drying my hair.

  ‘How well?’ persisted Jeremy. ‘Oh for God’s sake, turn that bloody thing off.’

  ‘Not as well as he would like,’ I said, but I turned off the dryer.

  He put his hands down, pulled me to my feet and kissed me passionately, his hands moving down to my breasts and over my hips. Just for once, I thought, the millpond smoothness of Joan’s flowered counterpane is going to be ruffled. Then suddenly Jeremy pushed me away and went over to the window.

  It took him a few seconds to get himself under control. I picked up the dryer.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘For Christ’s sake don’t turn it on yet. Look, you must understand how crazy I am about you.’

  ‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it.’

  He knelt down beside me, took my face in his hands, began stroking it very gently, as though he wanted to memorize all the contours.

  ‘Gus doesn’t deserve to be hurt, you know that as well as I do. Not now anyway, when Gareth’s around to fuck everything up as well. If you and I have got something going for us, and I believe we have, let’s wait until we get back to London.’

  For a minute I looked mutinous. But I knew it wouldn’t further my cause to tell him that part of the charm of hooking him would be to upset Gussie and Gareth.

  ‘It’s only tonight and Monday to get through,’ he went on. ‘On Tuesday we go back to London and we can meet on Wednesday and decide what the hell to do about it. You’re so important to me, I reckon it’s worth waiting for.’

  I nodded, picking up his hand and planting a kiss in the palm. ‘All right, I’ll try,’ I said.

  With the tips of his fingers he traced a vein on the inside of my arm, down to the scar that ran across my wrist.

  ‘How did you get that?’

  ‘With a razor. The day Xander married Pamela. I felt the only person in the world who really loved me was being taken away from me.’

  He bent his head and kissed the scar.

  ‘You do need looking after, don’t you? Be brave and trust me, little one. It isn’t long to wait.’

  After he was gone I finished drying my hair, and went downstairs, experiencing a great and joyous calm. The road was clear now, there was nothing Gareth could do.

  Down at the pool the two tarts were swimming, holding their made-up faces high out of the water, encouraged by Gareth, who was sitting on the edge talking to Ricky and Andreas, and drinking a Bloody Mary. He’d been swimming again and his black hair fell in wet tendrils on his forehead.

  ‘I certainly don’t want yes-men around me anymore,’ said Ricky.

  ‘I certainly want “yes” women around me,’ said Gareth. ‘I suppose we’d better go in a minute. Oh, there you are Octavia, cleansed in mind and body I hope.’

  The three men looked at me. Together they made a nerve-racking trio.

  ‘Octavia has so far refused to cook a single meal on board,’ said Gareth. ‘So no doubt I’ll be slaving over a hot tin opener again tonight. I really don’t approve of role-reversal.’

  ‘The only time any role-reversal takes place in our house’, said Ricky, laughing heartily, ‘is when Joan reverses the Rolls into the gateposts.’

  ‘Who’s taking my name in vain?’ said Joan, coming through the gate, followed by Gussie and Jeremy, absolutely weighed down with loot from the vegetable garden.

  ‘Look,’ screamed Gussie. ‘Isn’t Joan angelic? We can have asparagus for supper tonight, and strawberries.’

  ‘At least we won’t get scurvy,’ said Gareth, smiling at Joan. ‘Thank you very much.’ He got up. ‘We must go.’

  ‘You’d better go and change darling,’ said Ricky. ‘I’ll walk down to the boathouse with them. It’ll give the dogs a run. I won’t be long.’

  He bustled into the house.

  ‘Such a pity we’re going out to supper,’ Joan said, kissing Gussie. ‘Do send me a postcard when you know what your telephone number’s going to be. And I’ll get Alison and Peter to give you a ring. I know you’ll get on.’

  ‘Goodbye, Octavia.’ She gave me the usual chilly peck.

  ‘You must bring Mrs Smith down one evening,’ she said to Gareth. ‘I hear she’s the most gorgeous gel.’

  She’d only started saying ‘gel’ since Pamela came out.

  Ricky returned with the visitor’s book. ‘You must all sign before you go.’

  He always does this so he can remember who to claim on expenses. I didn’t dare look at Jeremy when Gussie signed them both under their new address.

  ‘We won’t be actually living there for a month or two,’ she said, beaming round.

  Andreas abandoned us at the edge of the hayfields. He was not cut out for country walks.

  ‘Goodbye Octavia,’ he said. ‘Think about what I’ve said. We can’t go on not meeting like this.’

  ‘That man’s a shit,’ said Gareth, as soon as we were out of earshot.

  ‘I know,’ said Ricky, ‘but an extremely clever one.’

  Chapter Ten

  After the thrill of my recent encounter with Jeremy I behaved atrociously for the rest of the day. As we were sailing towards evening through low fields of buttercups and overhanging trees, I made Jeremy teach me how to steer the boat. I insisted on driving it towards the bank all the time, so he had to keep putting his hands over mine in order to straighten up. Gussie seemed to see nothing wrong. She beamed at us both. Gareth was making Pimms.

  After dinner Gussie dragged a very reluctant Jeremy across the fields to look at a Norman church, and Gareth and I were left on the boat together drinking brandy. The night was very hot and still. An owl hooted in a nearby spinney. The first star flickered like a white moth in a dark blue sky. Gareth smoked a cigar to keep off the midges. The wireless was playing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. If only it was Jeremy sitting there, I thought. Nevertheless, I’d made such good progress that day. I felt nothing could dim my happiness.

  Gareth got up, flicked his cigar into the water and strolled over to the other side of the boat to stand looking at the darkening horizon.

  ‘How’s your weekend of sun, sex and sleep going?’ I asked.

  ‘Not quite as eventfully as yours,’ he said.

  He came and stood over me, looking down at me, huge against the sky. Suddenly my heart began to thump unpleasantly, perhaps at last he was going to try his luck with me after all.

  ‘I want another drink,’ I said, getting quickly to my feet and wandering into the saloon.

  Gareth followed me. ‘Aren’t you beginning to wonder why I h
aven’t made a pass at you?’

  I turned round. ‘Since you seem quite incapable of passing anyone up, it had crossed my mind.’

  He looked at me for a minute and then grinned.

  ‘Because I don’t like bitches, and you’re the biggest bitch I’ve ever met.’

  Wham! I let him have it, slap across the cheek. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t even put his hand up to his face.

  ‘And that seems to substantiate my theory,’ he said, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his hip pocket and offering me one. I shook my head dumbly, appalled at what I had done. He selected a cigarette carefully and then lit it.

  ‘You’re not really my type,’ he went on. ‘I like my women gentle and loving, soft and tender. Women so vulnerable I want to protect them just as I’d look after a kitten or a little girl lost in the street. Women who don’t automatically expect me to love them more than they love me. Maybe once upon a time before everyone started spoiling you you were like that, but not any more. You’re so hard now, lovely, they could cut a diamond on you.’

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ I said furiously.

  ‘Because I’m probably the first man you’ve ever met who’s been left completely cold by you. I’ve met your sort before; you’re just a prick teaser or what the French call an “allumeuse”, more anxious to inflame men than gratify them once they’re well and truly hooked. You give off so much promise with that marvellous body and that great bright mane of hair falling over your eyes. And you’ve got the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. But it doesn’t add up to a thing, because you’re so much in love with yourself that there isn’t room for anyone else.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said in a choked voice. ‘I don’t want to listen.’

  ‘And another thing,’ he went on, pouring a couple of fingers of brandy into his glass, ‘although you’ve probably seen more ceilings than Michaelangelo, I guess you’ve never got any pleasure out of all those men you’ve slept with, and that troubles you a bit, because you’ve read somewhere that sex is supposed to be rather enjoyable and you can’t understand why it doesn’t work for you.’

  It was like a nightmare.

  ‘Stop it, stop it!’ I screamed. ‘You don’t understand anything. I was going to get married but he was killed in a car crash only a few months ago.’

  ‘I know all about that,’ he said softly. ‘Tod was never going to marry you.’

  I clutched the table for support; my legs seemed to give way.

  ‘You knew him?’ I whispered. ‘I don’t understand. Then you knew. .’

  ‘. . All about you long before I met you?’ said Gareth. ‘Yes, of course I did. Tod was living with an old girl friend of mine, Cathie Summers. They were fantastic together until you came along and broke it up.’

  ‘I didn’t break it up,’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh yes you did, lovely. You waited until Cathie’d gone to the States for a week and then you moved in. But it wasn’t any good. Tod was fallible like most men, but he saw through you pretty quickly.’

  ‘You’re wrong. You’re wrong. He loved me far more than he did her! He was with me the night he was killed.’

  Gareth turned to me, his eyes suddenly stony with contempt.

  ‘I know he was. But as usual Miss Brennen — Myth Brennen I ought to call you — you’re bending the facts. Tod and I had a drink in the Antelope that night. Cathie was due back the next day, and Tod was in a panic about what she’d say if she found out about you. He was steeling himself to come round and tell you it was all off. I told him not to bother, just to let you stew. But Tod, being an ethical sod, insisted on going through with it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I stammered. ‘And the moment he saw me he realized it was me he loved, not Cathie, and he was going to give her up.’

  ‘You’re a bloody liar,’ said Gareth. ‘Tod left me in the pub at five to eleven. He must have been with you by eleven o’clock. He was killed at ten past eleven — driving like the devil to get away from you.’

  For a second I couldn’t move or tear my eyes away from his. Then I gave a sob and fled out of the saloon down the passage to my cabin and, throwing myself down on my bunk, broke into a storm of weeping. I couldn’t stand it. Gareth knew Tod, he knew all about me. He’d looked into my mind and seen everything — the aridity, the desert, the emptiness — and he’d brought to light terrible things I’d never admitted, even to myself, disproving lies that even I had begun to believe were the truth. I cried and cried, great tearing sobs until I thought there were no more tears inside me, then I just lay there, my face buried in my sodden pillow, trembling with terror.

  Much later I heard Jeremy and Gussie come back. Oh God, I thought in agony, I expect Gareth’s giving them a blow-by-blow account of the whole incident. They must have stayed up to watch the midnight movie, because it was half-past two before Gareth came to bed.

  ‘Octavia,’ he said softly.

  I didn’t answer. I ached for Jeremy. I wanted him to take me in his arms, to caress and console me and reconcile me with myself.

  I didn’t sleep all night. Great waves of anguish kept sweeping over me. I toyed with the idea of creeping off the boat before anyone was up and going back to London. But how would I get there? There wasn’t a railway station for miles. I suppose I could ring one of my boyfriends and ask them to drive down and collect me. But would they? I’d never doubted I could get a man back at the drop of a hat. Now, suddenly, I wasn’t sure.

  I was feeling so paranoid I could hardly get myself out of bed. Thank God I’d brought the biggest pair of dark glasses in the world with me. In the kitchen Jeremy and Gussie were cooking breakfast.

  ‘If you’ve got a hangover like the rest of us,’ said Gussie, ‘there’s some Alka Seltzer in the cupboard.’

  ‘No, I haven’t actually.’ Gussie poured me out a cup of coffee.

  ‘Do you take sugar?’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t, she’s quite sweet enough as it is,’ said Jeremy, smiling at me. He was so used to getting the come-on sign from me, he seemed amazed I didn’t crack back, and when he handed me my cup, his fingers closed over mine for a second. Yesterday I would have been certain he was trying to make contact with me; now my self-confidence had taken such a bashing, I felt it must be accidental.

  I took my coffee up on deck. Three vast pairs of pants and the biggest bra in the Western Hemisphere were dripping from the railing. Gussie had obviously been doing some washing. A silver haze lay over the countryside. Pale green trees rose tender as lovers from the opposite bank. I couldn’t stop shaking. Amidst all this beauty and sunshine, I felt like an empty shell.

  A minute later Gussie came and joined me.

  ‘What a beautiful shirt that is,’ she said. ‘I do envy you, Tavy. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a hangover or feel off colour, you’ve got such a lovely figure and such marvellous hair, people still think you’re a knockout. But with me, my face is the only thing I’ve got — and that isn’t all that great — and when that looks awful,’ — she squinted at herself in the cabin window — ‘like today, with this spot, I’ve got nothing to offer.’

  She looked down at her left hand and flashed her engagement ring in the sun.

  ‘Jeremy’s wild about you,’ she said wistfully. ‘He was teasing me yesterday, saying that I was lucky I’d got his ring on my finger before he met you, or heaven knows what would have happened.’

  I suddenly wondered what Jeremy was playing at.

  ‘He’s got no right to say that,’ I said crossly. ‘He adores you. You’ve only got to see the way he looks at you when you don’t know he’s looking.’

  She looked at me, delighted.

  ‘Do you really think so? Oh that does make me feel so much better. You don’t think me silly?’

  I shook my head and she went on. ‘I was convinced Jeremy’d fallen for you. I was really screwed up about it. That’s why I’ve been eating so much lately. Not that I thought for a moment you’d lead him on. I mean, you�
��re one of my best friends — at least you were at school, I hope you still are. But you’re so beautiful I didn’t see how he could help it. And somehow you look so good together.

  ‘That’s why when he suggested asking you down for the weekend, I persuaded him to ask Gareth as well. Gareth’s so attractive, I thought you were bound to fancy him and that would put Jeremy off.’

  God, how naive she was! I concentrated on lighting a cigarette. Oh why were my hands shaking so much?

  ‘I like Jeremy enormously,’ I said slowly. ‘He’s extremely attractive too, but I also think he’s perfect for you.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s perfect for me at all,’ said Gussie. ‘I think he’ll probably be wildly unfaithful to me, but that’s because underneath he’s not very sure of himself, and he’ll need to make passes at women from time to time, just to boost his ego. But I hope so long as I make him happy enough, he’ll always come back to me in the end.’

  I looked at her round earnest face, appalled.

  ‘But you can’t marry him, Gus, not thinking that!’

  ‘Oh yes I can. I love him so much it hurts sometimes. And I know it’ll kill me when he is unfaithful, but at least I can try and make him more secure by loving him.’

  I looked at her in awe. This was the sort of girl Gareth was talking about last night. Friday’s child, loving and giving, prepared to give far more than she took.

  Jeremy came up on deck. His blond hair gleamed almost white from the sun. Instinctively I turned my head away.

  ‘I wish Gareth would step on it,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘To ring up some friends of his who live a few miles up the river,’ said Jeremy. ‘He thought we might take a drink off them. He must have run out of 2ps by now.’

  ‘Here he comes,’ said Gussie.

  Gareth walked up the path, whistling. He grinned when he saw us, wicked gypsy eyes narrowed against the sun. He bounded up the bank and, scorning the gangplank, jumped across onto the boat. He looked up at Gussie’s underclothes on the line.

  ‘Is that a signal?’ he said. ‘England expects every man to do Octavia?’