Octavia

by Jilly Cooper

  I sat very still, watching the white marks left by his fingers slowly turning red. Then out of the corner of my eye I noticed the peach silk petticoat I’d tied round his arm completely drenched in blood, and a red stain creeping down his blue check shirt. He’d gone very white. Suddenly the fight went out of me.

  ‘For God’s sake let’s call a truce and go to Roehampton Hospital. You need stitches in that arm,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want any stitches,’ he said, screeching to a halt at the top of my road. Leaning across, he opened the door.

  ‘Now get out, or I’ll throw you out, and don’t come grovelling back to Jakey either. You’re on your own from now on.’

  And, swinging the car round, he drove off in a cloud of dust.

  As soon as he’d gone I began to shake again. How the hell was I going to tell Xander I hadn’t got the money? I hadn’t got the rent either. Mrs Lonsdale-Taylor was sure to sling me out. The trauma of the afternoon had left me in a state of total shock. Numbly I walked towards the river, kicking my shoes off, when I came to the Common, not even noticing the sharp dry grass cutting into my feet.

  A large drop of rain fell on the path in front of me. Perhaps at last the drought was at an end. The poplar trees by the bowling green clattered their leaves in a sudden gust of wind. The light was curious, as though one was swimming under water. Picnickers and dog-walkers hurried home, looking anxiously up at the sky; even the rooks were silent. The river bank was covered with coke tins, bottles and old ice-cream cartons. Two dogs were splashing about in the water, cooling off. I wished I had Monkey for company.

  A large drop of warm rain splashed on my face, then on my hand; the discoloured sky was suddenly veined by lightning, followed three seconds later by an earth-shattering clap of thunder. The whole valley seemed to be boiling, the rain was coming down faster now, pattering on the leaves above me, pitting the river with rings, bouncing off the iron-hard ground. Another flash of lightning unzipped the sky, followed by another, far more brilliant, which seemed to snake down the centre of a huge elm tree only fifty yards away, and rip it apart. Then the whole sky exploded with rain.

  I didn’t care. I wanted to be struck down. I put back my head, feeling the drops dripping down my neck, cascading on my face, washing away all the horrible stage make-up. In two minutes I was drenched. The lightning was coming at the same time as the thunder-claps now; it sounded like Gareth up in heaven breaking up another studio.

  I don’t know how many hours I wandered round, half crazy with grief. I felt like Lear: ‘poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are, that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm.’

  Then suddenly it was getting dark, and the storm was moving away, grumbling like a drunk turned out of the pub. The rain was letting up, night was falling. In the distance I could see the orange lights on the roads around the common. It must be nearly ten o’clock.

  Xander, Mrs Lonsdale-Taylor and the music had to be faced. Listlessly I started to walk home. I was frozen and drenched. The temperature had probably dropped to the seventies, but after weeks up in the nineties, it felt like midwinter. My pink smock, worn on Andreas’ instructions, had instructions of its own on the label about being only dry-cleaned. Wet-cleaned, it had shrunk drastically, risen to miniskirt level, and was now clinging to every inch of my body. My hair was hanging in dripping tendrils. People giving their dogs last runs before bedtime looked at me strangely as I wandered barefoot past them. The whole common was steaming now like a crocodile swamp.

  I walked listlessly up the street, the drenched gardens bowed down under their great weight of water. The gutters ran like millstreams, the street lamps reflected in the wet pavement. I paused outside my digs, trying to screw up enough courage to go in, rubbing the rain from my eyelashes. The iron gate was ice-cold beneath my touch.

  The next minute Monkey hurtled out of the front door and threw himself on me, yelping hysterically, licking my hands, scrabbling at my bare legs with his claws. I tried to creep up the stairs past Mrs Lonsdale-Taylor, but she shot out of the kitchen, her tough roast beef face rigid with disapproval.

  ‘Damn storm’s snapped off half the delphiniums,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. What a shame, after the way you’ve nursed them through the drought,’ I said, sidling up the stairs, but she was not to be deflected.

  ‘Where on earth have you been? Your office has been ringing all day. People have been calling in. You’re not in any trouble are you? I hope you’ve remembered the rent.’

  ‘I’ll get it by tomorrow.’ I had reached the bend in the stairs now.

  ‘The agreement was every fourth Friday in the month,’ she called after me, ‘so I’d like it now; and there’s someone waiting for you upstairs. I told you I won’t have men in after nine o’clock. He must go at once.’

  With a heavy heart I climbed the next flight. It must be Xander, waiting for the cash. I opened the door. The room was in darkness. Then my heart gave a lurch. A man was standing against the window. No one could mistake the width of those shoulders. It was Gareth.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I whispered.

  ‘Looking for you,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said simply, ‘and I can’t go on anymore.’

  I ran towards him: ‘Oh please, hold me.’

  He put his arms round me and, as he kissed me, I felt the strength and warmth and love flowing out of him.

  ‘Oh darling,’ he muttered into my hair. ‘Christ, I’m sorry. I was so angry this afternoon, but I was so jealous and I didn’t understand what was going on.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ I said, starting to sob hysterically. ‘It was the only way I could get the cash.’

  ‘I know it was. Hush, sweetheart, hush. I’ve been with Xander since I left you. I was so miserable, I had to talk to someone. He told me everything.’

  ‘Oh God, what’s he going to do?’

  ‘He told Pamela, then he went to the police. It was the only hope. I took him to the station and held his hand for the first half hour. He’ll be all right.’

  ‘But what did Pamela say, and Ricky?’

  ‘Darling, I really couldn’t care less.’

  ‘I couldn’t let Xander down,’ I muttered. ‘He’s always looked after me.’

  ‘I know, I know, you’re a bloody star, I just wish you’d come to me, instead of Andreas. Now for God’s sake get out of those wet clothes.’

  He let go of me and switched on the light. My legs wouldn’t hold me up any longer so I sat down on the bed, gazing dumbly at him. His right eye had closed up completely now. He was still wearing the same blood-stained shirt but at least someone had bandaged up his arm. The next moment he’d pulled my suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and, taking my dresses off the hangers, started throwing them in.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Packing. You’re getting out of here.’

  ‘I haven’t got anywhere else to go,’ I whispered.

  ‘You’re coming home with me.’

  ‘But I can’t. Lorna wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘What’s she got to do with it?’ He picked up my cornflower blue dress. ‘You were wearing that the first time I met you. Put it on now.’ He put it on the bed.

  ‘But you and Lorna,’ I was gagging on the words. ‘Aren’t you going to get married?’

  He stopped for a second, his hands full of my underwear.

  ‘What on earth gave you that idea?’

  ‘She did. She said, you and she.’

  ‘Not me, Charlie!’

  ‘Charlie,’ I said stupidly. ‘Charlie! But how on earth?’

  ‘They met at your place,’ said Gareth. ‘The night she stayed with you, he asked her to come along to the shop, started taking her out, and bingo. She said you said you were crazy about someone that night. She assumed it was Charlie. That’s why she felt so awful about telling you.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘It was you all the
time. I never stopped loving you for a moment since that evening I was sick on the boat. God, what a stupid muddle!’ And I started to laugh, but it went wrong in the middle and I started to cry again. Gareth chucked the rest of my underclothes into the suitcase and put his arms round me, holding me so tight I thought my ribs would crack.

  ‘Now for Heaven’s sake get that dress off or I’ll strip it off you myself.’

  I started to blush. ‘I can’t while you’re looking.’

  He grinned. ‘After that matinée earlier, I can’t see much point in false modesty.’

  Then he must have seen something in my face because he turned his back and started talking to Monkey who was sitting shivering in the suitcase.

  I’d just peeled off my wet smock when there was a loud knocking on the door. I grabbed a towel as Mrs Lonsdale-Taylor walked in.

  ‘Miss Brennen,’ she spluttered. ‘I’ve told you I won’t have men in my house. You must leave at once,’ she added to Gareth.

  ‘She’ll be out of here in five minutes,’ said Gareth curtly, ‘so beat it.’

  ‘Don’t you dare address me like that, young man,’ said Mrs Lonsdale-Taylor. ‘What about my rent? She owes me £60.’

  Gareth put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a wad of notes. He counted out six tenners and gave them to her. Then he looked at poor little Monkey still shuddering in the suitcase.

  ‘How much d’you want for the dog?’

  ‘He’s not for sale. He belonged to my late husband.’

  ‘Ten quid,’ said Gareth.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Twenty,’ said Gareth, thrusting the notes into her hand. ‘Now get out, you fat bitch, and bully someone your own size.’

  Three quarters of an hour later, Gareth and his two waifs had reached home, and were sitting in the drawing-room. Although I was wearing one of his sweaters and nursing a large glass of brandy, I was assailed once again by a terrible fit of shaking. The tension was unbearable. The only sound was Monkey gnawing ecstatically on the remains of a leg of mutton which Gareth had found him in the fridge.

  ‘He’s happy,’ said Gareth. ‘Now it’s my turn, come here.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said in a stifled voice.

  ‘All right, I’ll come to you.’

  He sat down on the sofa about a foot away from me. I gazed desperately at my brandy.

  ‘I’m now going to give you a short lecture,’ he said. ‘If you had any idea what I’ve been through since we got back from the boat, wanting you so fucking badly I thought I’d go up in smoke. I know I showed it in a funny way, fighting it because I didn’t want to betray myself, because I couldn’t see any way that you could possibly feel the same way about me. The reason I finally agreed to take over Seaford-Brennen was because it gave me a chance to keep in touch with you, and that wasn’t the only length I went to, sucking up to your degenerate brother, Xander, in the hope he might put in a good word for me, ringing Jakey every evening to see you were OK. Why do you suppose none of the guys there ever laid a finger on you? Because I’d have fired them if they had.’

  ‘I don’t b-believe you,’ I said incredulously.

  ‘Don’t interrupt,’ he said. ‘You’re also right about my being a Welsh prude. I couldn’t stand anyone coming near you. I nearly went spare over Jeremy and Charlie. This afternoon, as you saw, I flipped my lid.’

  ‘You were wonderful,’ I breathed, putting a hand up to touch his poor bruised eye.

  He grinned, imprisoning my hand against his cheek:

  ‘There’s something to be said for being brought up in the valley. Then I talked to Xander. He told me about your childhood, and your parents and what a lousy deal you had all along. But that’s all over now.’

  And, kneeling beside me, he took me in his arms. I started to cry.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I sobbed. ‘I love you more than anything else in the world. I’m crucified with longing for you, but that’s just in my heart. You were right from the beginning, I am frigid. I’ve been to bed with so many men I can hardly remember, but I hated it with all of them. I can put on a good act, but inside I just freeze up.’

  ‘Hush lovie, hush.’ He was stroking me in that soothing way you might gentle a horse.

  ‘I’m telling you this because I love you, I’m no good to you.’

  ‘I’m the best judge of that,’ he said. ‘You’ve never been properly loved in your life, just spoilt, and told to push off and play somewhere else, and produced to show off when grown-ups came to tea because you’re so beautiful. Come on,’ he went on, pulling me to my feet and leading me towards the bedroom. ‘Let’s not muck about any more.’

  ‘No.’ I shrank away from him. ‘You’d be disappointed. I couldn’t fake it with you.’

  ‘I won’t, because I don’t expect anything. We’ve got to get used to each other.’

  In the bedroom he switched on a sidelight, illuminating the vast double bed, and drew back the fur counterpane. As he undressed me with undeniable deftness, I thought of all the women he must have laid on that bed before me. . I felt like a novice horse entering the Horse of the Year Show for the first time, with the jumps up to six feet and all the previous competitors having had clear rounds.

  Once we were in bed he just held me very gently until the horrors of the day began to recede. Then he said:

  ‘I’m not going to lay a finger on you tonight. You’re too tired.’

  I felt a stab of disappointment.

  ‘At least I don’t think I am,’ he went on, putting a warm hand on my tits, spanning both nipples with finger and thumb.

  ‘Look,’ he whispered, ‘I can stretch an Octavia.’

  I giggled.

  ‘That’s better. Come on lovely, remember, from now on I’ve got custody, care and control of you — and I’m not going to leave you, like your bloody mother did, ever again.’

  And with infinite tenderness he kissed me, until I felt the waves of lust begin to ripple through me.

  ‘It’s Friday,’ he said, as his hand edged downwards. ‘We’ve got the whole weekend ahead. We needn’t get up at all.’

  Then later he said, ‘Relax sweetheart, don’t try so hard, there’s no hurry. I actually like doing these things for you.’

  Then later, more harshly, ‘Stop fighting me; we’re on the same side.’

  Then suddenly it happened — like a great, glorious, whooshing washing machine — it’s the only way I can describe it — leaving me shuddering and shuddering with pleasure at the end, like the last gasps of the spin-dryer. And afterwards I cried some more because I was so happy, and he held me in his arms, telling me how much he loved me until I fell asleep.

  A few hours later the dawn woke me. We’d forgotten to draw the curtains. All I could see were huge windows framing the plane trees of Holland Park. I blinked, turned and found Gareth looking at me. I must be dreaming.

  I put my hand out to touch his cheek.

  ‘Are you real?’ I said incredulously.

  He smiled. ‘I am if you are.’

  His eye had turned black, his chest was covered in bruises.

  ‘I think I’m in bed with Henry Cooper,’ I said. ‘I never dreamt he’d make such a sensational lover. Do you think we could possibly do it again?’

  And we did, and it was even better than the last time, and I screamed with delight and joy because I’d been so clever.

  When I woke again he wasn’t there. I looked round in panic; then I found a note pinned to the pillow.

  ‘Gone shopping with Monkey. Back about eleven. I love you, G.’

  Still overwhelmed with wonder at what was happening to me, I got up, wrapped myself in a towel and, wandering into the kitchen, found a pile of unopened mail. I flipped through it. Three envelopes were written in distinctively female hands. I turned them over. One was from someone called Michelle in France, another from a Sally in the Middle East, another hadn’t put her name on the back
, but it was post-marked Taunton, and she’d written ‘private and confidential’ on the bottom.

  I stood, overwhelmed with terror. Gareth had had millions of women before me. What was to stop him having millions in the future? Last night’s protestations might have been just a ruse to get me into bed. I couldn’t bear it. I went back into the bedroom and sat shaking on the bed, feeling myself pulled down into the familiar black slimy cavern of horror.

  ‘Keep calm,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘It’s all right.’

  Suddenly I jumped out of my skin as the telephone rang. It was Mrs Smith.

  ‘He’s not here,’ I said. I could feel myself bristling.

  ‘Well that’s all right. Just give him a message that everything’s OK.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ I said stiffly.

  Mrs Smith laughed, ‘I’m so glad you two have finally got it together,’ she said. ‘He’s been absolutely insufferable since he came back from that boat trip. It’ll be nice working for a human being again.’

  ‘Oh,’ I stammered, feeling myself blushing all over. ‘Do you mean to say — was it that obvious?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s a very dear man. I think you’re very lucky, and if you look behind the drawing-room door you might find something else to convince you.’

  She dropped the receiver.

  I ran to the drawing-room. Behind the door were two canvases stacked against the wall. I turned them over and gave a gasp of delight. One was my Adam and Eve picture, the other the Cotman. I looked at them incredulously, tears filling my eyes.

  Then I heard a key in the door, and a scampering of feet. Monkey, rushing up the stairs, reached me first, but the next moment I was in Gareth’s arms, with Monkey frolicking and frisking round our feet.

  ‘I was worried some of Andreas’ hoods might have got you. Annabel Smith says you’ve been like a bear with a sore head since the boat trip,’ I gabbled incoherently. ‘And you bought back my pictures; it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me, I can’t believe it. When did you do it?’ I added as we went upstairs.

  ‘Last week sometime. I didn’t hang them. I thought you could decide where you want to put them. But I’m not having Adam and Eve over the bed to distract you whenever we have sex.’