Imogen

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Get another bottle,’ she ordered Matt.

  Totally ignoring her, Matt turned towards Imogen, who was coming off the floor with James. Her hair was tumbled from dancing, her cheeks flushed, her breasts rising and almost falling out of the low cut dress.

  ‘My turn I think,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  ‘Beautiful, beautiful girl,’ said Antoine. ‘How I love Yorkshire girls.’

  Nicky was about to agree with him, and claim responsibility for discovering her, then, glancing at Cable’s face, thought better of it.

  ‘Isn’t that Bianca Jagger over there?’ said James, peering through the gloom. ‘I’m going to ask her to dance.’

  Imogen had been waiting to dance with Matt all evening. There was a thrill of excitement in the pit of her stomach, as, loose-jointed, he swayed in front of her, his lazy triangular eyes amused yet approving.

  ‘You’re having a good evening, darling. They’ve been after you like wasps round a water melon.’

  ‘It’s entirely due to you,’ she said. She looked across the room at Nicky and Cable who were deep in conversation. Nicky was holding Cable’s hand and apparently trying to calm her down.

  ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work – getting Nicky off Cable, I mean.’

  Matt shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not losing any sleep,’ he said. The music accelerated, the colours were shifting like a kaleidoscope. The floor was filling up and they were constantly thrown together. Matt put his hands on her shoulders to protect her. She was finding it difficult to breathe.

  Suddenly, he buried his face in her neck. Her body turned to liquid.

  ‘You’ve been pinching Cable’s scent,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, goodness, I’m sorry,’ said Imogen, blushing crimson in confusion.

  ‘I don’t mind. Pinch away. It doesn’t suit you, that’s all. Too clinging.’ Imogen was about to say she felt clinging when Nicky came over.

  ‘Antoine’s off, James is about to be duffed up by the husband of a girl he’s convinced is Bianca Jagger, and Cable says she’s bored.’

  ‘And I’m in absolutely no hurry. Cable can do the waiting for a change,’ said Matt.

  Imogen didn’t dare look in Cable’s direction, and tried not to feel elated, as they danced on for another two records by which time the table had emptied.

  Outside they found Rebel, the black chauffeur, bearing a heavily embracing Antoine and Mimi away in the huge Rolls-Royce. Cable was crouched over the wheel of the Mercedes with Nicky beside her, an arm along the back of the seat.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ said Cable, furiously revving up the car.

  ‘Keeping you waiting,’ snapped Matt.

  ‘You and your darling protégée have been doing that all day.’

  ‘I should write to The Times about it if I were you,’ said Matt.

  ‘Stop sending me up,’ howled Cable. ‘You can both bloody well walk home,’ and, jamming her foot down on the accelerator, she thundered off down the coast road.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Imogen in horror.

  ‘Silly bitch,’ said Matt totally unmoved. ‘Shall we walk? It’s only a mile or two. If you’re too knackered I’ll go back and ring for a taxi.’

  ‘Oh, no, I’d love to,’ said Imogen, unable to believe her luck.

  ‘Suits me,’ said Matt, taking her arm. ‘I want to have a closer butcher’s at Braganzi’s house on the way.’

  After the day’s relentless heat, the night was warm and sultry. Compared with the stuffiness of the disco the air was sweet and smelt faintly of dew, wild thyme and the sea. The cicadas were cawing in the trees like frogs. Port-les-Pins glittered in its cove ahead of them, and every few seconds its northern jut of rock was bathed in a white beam from the lighthouse. Far above them everything in the sky, stars, planets, Milky Way, moon seemed to be out and twinkling eons away in their own heavens. And I’m so lit up they can probably see me twinkling away down here on earth too, thought Imogen. She was swaying slightly from drink and euphoria, but Matt steadied her, holding her above the elbow, gently stroking the inside of her arm with his thumb. He’s probably so used to caressing Cable, he does it automatically, she thought.

  ‘You’re too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off you,’ hummed Matt abstractedly.

  They could see Braganzi’s house ghostly in the moonlight, its turrets thickly hung with creeper and silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘Is it really necessary to get to see him?’ said Imogen nervously. ‘Oughtn’t you to be relaxing on your holidays?’

  ‘All journalists are the same. Once they’ve got on to a scent they can’t let it alone, like dogs with a bitch on heat.’

  They were only a hundred yards away now. There were two lights on upstairs with bars like lift gates over the windows. Perhaps one was the Duchess’s bedroom. Imogen imagined her brushing out her long dark hair with silver brushes with coronets on. She longed to open all the shutters like an Advent calendar and perhaps find the little baby asleep in one room or Braganzi plotting some dastardly crime in a black shirt and a white tie in another.

  Outside the main gates, they could see a figure walking up and down with an Alsatian on a lead. The dog growled, the man stubbed out his cigarette and looked around. Imogen started to tremble.

  ‘Let’s have a look round the back,’ whispered Matt.

  Fifteen foot high walls with another three feet of iron spikes, and rolled barbed wire on top of that, went almost all the way round the house, then divided at the back, running down to the sea and protecting Braganzi’s stretch of private beach.

  ‘The only way into the house is from the sea,’ whispered Matt, ‘and I bet that’s guarded night and day. He’s not taking any chances, is he? It’s worse than Colditz.’ He looked at the burglar alarms that clung like limpets to the walls of the house.

  The brightness of the moonlight and the sweet heavy smell of tobacco plants and night-scented stocks made it all the more sinister.

  ‘Do let’s go,’ pleaded Imogen. She was sure the guard dogs could hear the frantic hammering of her heart. They were creeping close to the wall now. Suddenly she heard a tinny sound, as her foot hit something metallic.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Matt, bending down to look. ‘That’s probably an alarm.’

  Next moment there was a frantic barking of dogs, and sounds of a door clanging.

  ‘They’ve rumbled us,’ gasped Imogen.

  ‘Come here,’ said Matt, and the next moment he’d pushed her down on the ground and was kissing her, tugging down the top of her dress, baring her shoulders. She could feel the rough scrub against her back, and taste the salt and brandy on his lips.

  The growling grew closer and more ferocious.

  Imogen wriggled in terror.

  ‘Lie still,’ muttered Matt, putting his full weight on her. ‘It’s a lovely way to go.’

  Next moment the area was flooded with light. The dogs charged forward. It seemed they must rip them to pieces, and then suddenly the ferocious growling stopped not six inches away. Imogen’s French was not particularly fluent, but she could just make out Matt furiously asking what the bloody hell the guards thought they were doing as he pulled Imogen’s dress up over her shoulders.

  The guards dragged the dogs off and made her and Matt get to their feet. Matt explained that they were holidaymakers who’d got separated from the rest of the party and decided to walk home, that they were staying at La Reconnaissance in Port-les-Pins. Then the guards frisked Matt and had a look at his wallet and his traveller’s cheques. Imogen nearly fainted when she saw that all four men had guns. They certainly took their time searching her, rough hands wandering into the most embarrassing places until Matt shouted at them to leave her alone.

  Finally the guards conferred among themselves for a minute and then told them to be on their way, shouting something after them with a coarse laugh that Imogen didn’t understand. She could feel their eyes following her and Matt like eight prongs sticking into their backs.

/>   ‘Keep walking! Don’t look round,’ hissed Matt. ‘Thank Christ I didn’t have my passport on me, or they’d have rumbled us.’

  After what seemed an eternity they rounded the corner, out of sight, with Port-les-Pins’s friendly lights winking just below them.

  Imogen started to tremble violently.

  Matt put his arms round her. ‘Darling, I’m terribly sorry. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I thought our last moment had come.’

  He held her close to him and stroked her hair and her bare arms until the reassuring warmth of his body made her calmer.

  ‘But your reactions were like lightning,’ she stammered. ‘Pushing me on to the ground like that, then acting dumb and outraged like any old tourist caught in the act.’

  Matt laughed and got a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.

  ‘I always turn into a bumpkin at midnight. Anyway I’ve talked myself out of much worse trouble spots than that. All the same, I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have put you through it.’

  ‘What did they say as we were leaving?’

  ‘Next time I brought a bird up on to the cliffs for a quick poke to choose somewhere else.’

  ‘So they really believed you?’

  Matt shrugged his shoulders. ‘They won’t tomorrow when they check up with the hotel.’

  He was walking along with an arm round her shoulders now, and suddenly she felt choked with happiness almost to the point of tears, as it dawned on her how much, in spite of the danger, she’d enjoyed being kissed by him, and feeling the muscular weight of his body on top of her. She was still trembling, but not from fear.

  ‘He must be terrified of something to wire a place up like that.’

  ‘Losing the Duchess, I guess,’ said Matt.

  They had dropped down into the port now. Lights from the boats shivered in the black water like fallen earrings; the forest of masts swayed gently against the stars. In the distance they could hear the faint splash of the sea as it rolled over and over on the white sand.

  They came to an all-night café along the front. A few fishermen were drinking morosely at the bar; a tired-looking waitress had kicked off her shoes and was polishing glasses as though in her sleep.

  ‘What we need is immediate first aid,’ said Matt, and as he was ordering black coffee and triple brandies for them both, he suddenly turned round and smiled at her. The effect of him that close was so mind-blowing that her knees gave way. She had to fumble for a bar stool and clamber on to it.

  ‘Will you bother to go and see Antoine’s contact tomorrow?’ she asked, as they got their drinks.

  ‘If that doesn’t lead to anything, I’ll scrub the whole thing and preserve my energies for squabbling with Mrs Edgworth.’ He took her hand and she hoped he couldn’t feel the tremor that shot through her. ‘Look, angel, I’m really sorry you were frightened. When one’s had scraps with Provos, and white Rhodesians, and even Amin’s henchmen, as I have in my time, Braganzi’s hoods seem pretty small fry, but I know how terrifying it was for you.’

  ‘Honestly, I’m fine now.’ She could hardly tell him she’d never felt so happy in her life, and she thought he was the nicest man she’d ever met, and if he’d taken her in his arms, and thrown her down on the heath again, she wouldn’t have minded if the entire criminal world formed a shrieking witch’s coven round them. So instead she said, ‘What were Amin’s henchmen like?’

  Then he told her about some of the trouble spots he’d been to and they had several more brandies by which time the stars were fading and the horizon was lightening to a pale turquoise. They walked back past the Bar de la Marine and the Plaza Hotel, with its striped umbrellas folded and its dozing doorman. They passed a few elderly homosexuals looking for comfort, and guitarists from the nightclubs sleepily twanging their way home.

  ‘You’re too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off you,’ hummed Matt.

  At the reception area of La Reconnaissance with its one naked light bulb, he took down her key and extracted a dripping purple aster from the vase on the desk. Imogen ran upstairs pressing the lights and racing to catch the next switch before it went out and plunged them into darkness.

  Outside her room, he stopped. ‘Good-night little accomplice,’ he said softly, handing her the dripping purple aster.

  He’s going to kiss me, she thought in rapture. But as he bent his head and touched her lips a door flew open, and out charged a fat woman in a hair net, who barged past them and rushed down the passage to the lavatory. Next minute they heard the sound of terrible retching, and both collapsed with silent laughter.

  Then suddenly another door opened and there was Cable wrapped in a dark green towel, a cigarette hanging from her scarlet lips.

  ‘And about bloody time too,’ she said.

  Inside her room Imogen wandered around in a daze. Matt had kissed her. She knew how casual kisses could be, and they’d both been drinking all day. But she didn’t think Matt was a casual person. Port-les-Pins was teeming with beautiful girls but, unlike Nicky and James, beyond a cursory approving glance, he’d never shown much interest in any of them.

  She looked in the mirror, and touched her lips where he’d kissed off all her lipstick, then ran her hands over her body with a shiver of excitement – a genius in bed Cable had said. But it wasn’t just the bed she wanted.

  Wipe that silly grin off your face, she kept telling herself, you’re banking on too much. She lay down on the bed, but the room swung round and round, so she got up, and tried on all her new clothes, standing swaying on the bed to see them full length. Tomorrow she’d wear the pale green sundress, or perhaps the duck-egg blue shirt with most of the buttons undone like Cable did. She imagined Matt at this moment having a blazing row with Cable, saying it’s all over between us, I love Imogen.

  You mustn’t hope, she told herself sternly, he loves Cable, he only gave you those clothes to get Nicky off her back, but the words made no sense to her.

  I love him, I love him, she said, pressing her burning face in the pillow. Then she carefully put the purple aster between the pages of her diary, which wouldn’t shut now because of the yellow centre bit, and lay for a long time watching the sky lighten, listening to cocks crowing and cars starting up, and children shouting, before she fell asleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  She was woken by the sun on her body, the same delicious feeling of happiness spreading through her like a rosy glow. She put on the new pale blue sundress and went downstairs to find the rest of the party in various stages of disintegration, having breakfast on the front and reading the papers.

  Yvonne was displaying a black and blue foot on a chair for everyone to see. Having had no dinner last night, she had insisted on James ordering a boiled egg for her.

  ‘This egg is as hard as a bullet, Jumbo,’ she was screeching as she tried to force a buckling toast soldier into it.

  ‘I asked for quatorze minutes,’ said James defensively.

  ‘That’s fourteen, not four,’ shrieked Yvonne. ‘Why do you drink so much when you know you can’t hold it, Jumbo? You know how idiotic it makes you next morning.’

  James, desperately trying to disguise his hangover, was lifting his cup of coffee with both hands. He looked terrible. Matt didn’t look much better. He smiled rather guardedly when he saw Imogen, and didn’t quite meet her eyes as he ordered her some coffee.

  Nicky, looking healthy as ever, was reading the sports page of The Times.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘Connors got knocked out in the third round.’

  Imogen watched him surreptitiously move his foot forward, and rub it gently against Cable’s ankle. Cable returned the pressure, then stretched her beautiful brown legs out in front of her. She was wearing a Jean Machine rugger shirt and sitting on one of Matt’s knees, reading the Daily Mail horoscopes.

  ‘I do hate not getting the horoscopes till the day after. Evidently I should have had a disastrous day for romance yesterday, which si
mply wasn’t true, was it, darling?’ She coiled an arm round Matt’s neck, and kissed him lingeringly.

  Imogen picked pieces of skin out of her coffee with a spoon, and felt happiness slowly oozing out of her like air out of a badly tied balloon.

  Madame waddled out with a telegram for Matt.

  ‘It’s from Larry Gilmore,’ he said, when he’d opened the orange envelope. ‘“Arriving Plaza 8 p.m.,”’ he read.

  ‘Oh, that’s great,’ said Cable.

  ‘Is that Larry Gilmore, the photographer?’ said Yvonne. ‘I thought he was supposed to be a monster.’

  ‘He’s fine as long as you don’t burst into tears every time he calls you a stupid cow, and Bambi, his wife, is lovely,’ answered Cable defensively.

  ‘Bambi and Jumbo,’ said Nicky. ‘It’s getting more like the zoo every minute.’

  Everyone brightened at the prospect of new blood, it would perhaps get them off each other’s backs, except Imogen who merely expected it would mean more talk about models.

  ‘What d’you want to do today, Jumbo?’ said Yvonne petulantly.

  ‘Anything you like, darling.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be awkward. Anyway I’ve got to go into Marseilles to show this foot to a decent doctor.’ She turned steely forget-me-not eyes on the rest of the company. ‘They shoot horses you know, when they’re in this kind of pain.’

  ‘I’d like to go to the Isle of Levant and bathe nude,’ said Cable. ‘Have you any idea how lovely water feels on your naked body?’

  ‘Yes, every day in the bath,’ said Matt.

  Nicky yawned and stretched out his legs, once again rubbing his foot against Cable’s.

  ‘I feel bloody unfit,’ he said. ‘I’m going to find some courts in Marseilles and have a workout. Will you be all right on the beach, darling?’ he added to Imogen, who nodded with relief.