Wild Mountain Thyme

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  He was nursing his drink, but a waiter nipped up and refilled his glass when he wasn’t looking. Somebody trod on his shoe. A very young man wearing a brigade tie materialized at his elbow, trailing a protesting female by the arm. She was perhaps seventeen years old, and her hair looked like dandelion floss. “.… This girl wants to meet you. Been eyeing you across the room.”

  “Oh, Nigel, you are awful.”

  Mercifully, he spied his hostess. He excused himself, and edged, with some difficulty, across the room to her side. “Imogen.”

  “John! Darling!”

  She was immensely pretty. Grey-haired, blue-eyed, her skin smooth as a young girl’s, her manner unashamedly provocative.

  He kissed her politely, because she was obviously expecting to be kissed, with that flower-face turned up to his.

  “This certainly is a party.”

  “So gorgeous to see you. But Tania couldn’t come. She telephoned, something about having to go down to the country. So terribly disappointing. I was so looking forward to seeing you both. Never mind, you came and that’s all that matters. Have you had a word with Reggie? He’s longing to have a long, boring chat with you about the stock market or something.” A couple hovered, waiting to say good-bye. “Don’t go away,” Imogen told John out of the corner of her mouth, and then turned from him, all smiles. “Darling. Do you really have to go? Such a sadness. Heavenly to see you. So glad you enjoyed it…” She came back to John. “Look, as Tania hasn’t come, and you’re on your own, there’s a girl that perhaps you could go and chat up. She’s pretty as paint, so I’m not letting you in for anything gruesome, but I don’t think she knows many people. I mean, I asked her, because her mother’s one of our greatest friends, but somehow she seems a little out of her depth. Be an angel, and be sweet to her.”

  John, whose party manners had been rigorously drilled into him by his American mother (Imogen knew this, otherwise she would never have appealed to him for help) said that he would be delighted. But where was the girl?

  Imogen, who was not tall, stood tiptoes, and searched with her eyes. “There. Over in the corner.” Her little feminine hand closed over his wrist like a vise. “I’ll take you over and introduce you.”

  Which she proceeded to do, shouldering her way across the stifling room without once releasing her grip of him. John tagged along, willy-nilly, feeling like a bulky liner in the tow of a tug. They emerged at last, and it seemed to be a quiet corner of the room, perhaps because it was furthest from the door and the bar, but all at once there was room to stand, or move your elbows or even sit.

  “Victoria.”

  She was perched on the arm of a chair, talking to an elderly man who was obviously going on to some other party, for he was wearing a dinner suit and a black tie. When Imogen said her name, she stood up, but whether this was out of politeness to Imogen, or to escape from her companion, it was impossible to say.

  “Victoria, I do hope I’m not interrupting something absolutely riveting, but I do want you to meet John, because his girlfriend hasn’t been able to come tonight, and I want you to be terribly kind to him.” John, embarrassed both for himself and the girl, continued to smile politely. “He’s an American, and he’s one of my most favorite people…”

  With a clearing of the throat, and a small, imperceptible gesture of farewell, the elderly man in the dinner suit also stood up and eased himself away.

  “… and John”—the grip on his wrist had not lessened. Perhaps the blood stream to his hand had already seized up and in a moment his fingers would start falling off—“this is Victoria. And her mother is one of my best friends, and when Reggie and I were in Spain last year, we went and stayed with her. At Sotogrande. In the most heavenly house you’ve ever seen. So now you’ve got lots to talk about.”

  She let go of his wrist at last. It was like being freed from handcuffs.

  He said, “Hello, Victoria.”

  She said, “Hello.”

  Imogen had chosen the wrong words. She was not pretty as paint. But she had a scrubbed, immaculate look to her that reminded him, with some nostalgia, of the American girls he had known in his youth. Her hair was pale and silky, straight and long, cut cunningly to frame her face. Her eyes were blue, her face neatly boned, her head supported by a long neck and narrow shoulders. She had an unremarkable nose, disarmingly freckled, and a remarkable mouth. A sweet and expressive mouth with a dimple at one corner.

  It was an out-of-doors sort of face. The sort of face one expected to encounter at the tiller of a sailboat or at the top of some hair-raising ski-slope; not at a London cocktail party.

  “Did Imogen say Sotogrande?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has your mother lived out there?”

  “About three years. Have you ever been to Sotogrande?”

  “No, but I have friends who golf, and they get out there whenever they can.”

  “My stepfather plays golf every day. That’s why he chose to go and live there. Their house is right on the fairway. He steps out of the garden gate and he’s playing the tenth hole. It’s as easy as that.”

  “Do you play golf?”

  “No. But there are other things to do. You can swim. Play tennis. Ride, if you want to.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Well, I don’t very often go out, but when I do I play tennis mostly.”

  “Does your mother come back to this country?”

  “Yes. Two or three times a year. She dashes round from one art gallery to another, sees about six plays, buys some clothes, and then goes back again.”

  He smiled at this, and she smiled back. There came a small pause. The subject of Sotogrande seemed to have exhausted itself. Her eyes moved over his shoulder, and then quickly, as though she did not wish to appear ill-mannered, back to his face again. He wondered if she was expecting somebody.

  He said, “Do you know many people here?”

  “No, not really. Not anybody really.” She added, “I’m sorry your girlfriend couldn’t come.”

  “Like Imogen said, she had to go down to the country.”

  “Yes.” She stooped to take a handful of nuts out of a dish that had been placed on a low coffee-table. She began to eat them, putting them into her mouth one at a time. “Did Imogen say you were American?”

  “Yes, I think she did.”

  “You don’t sound like an American.”

  “How do I sound?”

  “Sort of halfway between. Mid-Atlantic. Alistair Cooke type American.”

  He was impressed. “You have a sharp ear. I have an American mother and British father. I’m sorry … a Scottish father.”

  “So you’re really British?”

  “I have a dual passport. I was born in the States.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Was your mother skiing at the time, or do your parents live there?”

  “No, they live there. They have a ranch in Southwest Colorado.”

  “I can’t imagine where that is.”

  “North of New Mexico. West of the Rockies. East of the San Juans.”

  “I’d have to have an atlas. But it sounds very spectacular.”

  “It is spectacular.”

  “Were you riding a horse before you could walk?”

  “Just about.”

  She said, “I can imagine it,” and he had a strange feeling that she probably could. “When did you leave Colorado?”

  He told her. “At eleven years old I was sent East to school. And then I came over to this country and I went to Wellington, because that’s where my father had been. And after that I went to Cambridge.”

  “You really do have a dual nationality, don’t you? What happened after Cambridge?”

  “I went back to New York for a spell, and now I’m back in London. I’ve been here since the summer.”

  “Do you work for an American firm?”

  “An investment bank.”

  “Do you get back t
o Colorado?”

  “Sure, whenever I can. Only I haven’t been for some time, because things have been pretty busy over here.”

  “Do you like being in London?”

  “Yes, I like it very much.” Her expression was very thoughtful. He smiled. “Why, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But just because I know it so well. I mean I can’t imagine, really, living anywhere else.”

  There came, for some reason, another lull. Once more her eyes strayed, only this time it was to the gold watch strapped to her slender wrist. Having a pretty girl look at her watch while he was chatting her up was an unfamiliar experience for John Dunbeath. He expected to be irritated, but instead found himself mildly amused, although the joke was against himself.

  “Are you expecting someone?” he asked her.

  “No.”

  He thought that her face had a private look about it; composed, polite, but private. He wondered if she was always like this, or if their lines of communication were being cut by the murderous impossibility of cocktail party conversation. In order to keep this going, she had asked him a number of friendly questions, but there was no knowing whether she had listened to half of his polite replies. They had talked banalities and found out nothing about each other. Perhaps she wanted it this way. He could not decide whether she was totally disinterested or simply shy. Now, she had started glancing around the crowded room once more as though desperate for a means of escape, and he began to wonder why she had come in the first place. Suddenly exasperated, and ready to cast formalities aside, he was about to ask her this, but she forestalled him by announcing, without preamble, that she ought to be going. “… It’s getting late, and I seem to have been here for ages.” At once she seemed to realize that this remark was perhaps not much of a compliment to him. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t mean that I seem to have been here for ages, I meant that I seem to have been at the party for ages. I … I’ve very much enjoyed meeting you, but I shouldn’t be too late.” John said nothing. She smiled brightly, hopefully. “I ought to get home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Pendleton Mews.”

  “That’s very close to where I live. I’m Cadogan Place.”

  “Oh, how nice.” Now she was beginning to sound desperate. “It’s so quiet, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s very quiet.”

  Stealthily, she set down her glass, and hitched the strap of her bag up onto her shoulder. “Well, then, I’ll say good-bye…”

  But all at once he was consumed with an unfamiliar and healthy annoyance, and told himself that he was damned if he was going to be palmed off like this. Anyway, with his Scotch finished and no Tania to attend to, the party had gone sour for him. Tomorrow and the long flight to Bahrain loomed on the edge of his mind. He still had to pack, check his papers, leave messages for Mrs. Robbins.

  He said, “I’m going too.”

  “But you’ve only just arrived.”

  He finished his drink and laid down the empty tumbler. “I’ll take you home.”

  “You don’t need to take me home.”

  “I know I don’t need to, but I may as well.”

  “I can get a taxi.”

  “Why get a taxi, when we’re going in the same direction?”

  “There’s really no need…”

  He was becoming bored by the tedious argument. “No problem. I don’t want to be late either. I have a plane to catch in the early morning.”

  “To America?”

  “No, to the Middle East.”

  “What are you going to do there?”

  He put a hand under her elbow in order to propel her in the direction of the door. “Talk,” he told her.

  Imogen was torn between astonishment that he had hit it off so swiftly with her dearest friend’s daughter, and a certain peevishness that he had stayed at her party for such a short time.

  “But, John darling, you’ve only just come.”

  “It’s a great party, but I’m headed for the Middle East tomorrow; an early flight, and…”

  “But tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s too cruel having to fly off on a Saturday. I suppose that’s what happens if you’re a budding tycoon. But I wish you could stay a little longer.”

  “I wish I could too, but I really must go.”

  “Well, it’s been divine, and sweet of you to come. Have you talked to Reggie? No, I don’t suppose you have, but I’ll tell him what’s happening, and you must come for dinner when you get home again. Good-bye, Victoria. Heaven to see you. I’ll write and tell your mother you’re looking fabulously well.”

  On the landing he said, “Have you got a coat?”

  “Yes. It’s downstairs.”

  They went down. On a chair in the hall was a mound of coats. She dug from this an unfashionable fur, probably inherited and much worn. John helped her into it. The man in the starched white coat opened the door for them, and they emerged into the windy darkness and walked together up the pavement to where he had parked his car.

  Waiting at the end of Church Street for the lights to change, John became aware of pangs of hunger. He had eaten a sandwich for lunch and nothing since. The clock on his dashboard told him that it was nearly nine o’clock. The lights changed, and they moved out and into the stream of traffic that poured east towards Kensington Gore.

  He thought about eating dinner. He glanced at the girl beside him. Her closeness, her reserve, was a challenge. It intrigued him, and against all reason he found himself wanting to break it down, to find out what went on behind that private face. It was like being confronted by a high wall, a notice saying No Trespassers, and imagining that beyond lay the promise of enchanting gardens and inviting tree-shaded walks. He saw her profile, outlined against the lights, her chin deep in the fur collar of the coat. He thought, well, why not?

  He said, “Do you want to come and have dinner with me someplace?”

  “Oh…” She turned towards him. “How kind.”

  “I have to eat, and if you’d like to join me…”

  “I do appreciate it, but if you don’t mind, I really should get back. I mean, I’m having dinner at home. I arranged to have dinner at home.”

  It was the second time she had used the word “home,” and it disconcerted him, with its implication of close relatives. He wondered who waited for her. A sister, a lover, or even a husband. Anything was possible.

  “That’s all right. I just thought if you weren’t doing anything.”

  “Really so kind of you, but I can’t…”

  A long silence fell between them, broken only by her giving him directions as to how to get most easily to Pendleton Mews. When they reached the archway that separated the Mews from the street, she said, “You can put me down here. I can walk the rest.”

  But by now he was feeling stubborn. If she would not have dinner with him, at least he would drive her to her door. He turned the car into the narrow angle beneath the arch and let it idle its way down between the garages and the painted front doors and the tubs that would soon be bright with spring flowers. The rain had stopped, but the cobbles were still damp and shone, like some country street, in the lamplight.

  “Which number?” he asked.

  “It’s right at the very end. I’m afraid there’s scarcely room to turn. You’ll have to back out.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “It’s this one.”

  The lights were on. They shone from upstairs windows and through the small pane of glass at the top of the blue front door. She peered anxiously upwards as though expecting a window to be flung open and a face to appear, announcing bad news.

  But nothing happened. She got out of the car, and John got out too, not because he wanted to be invited in, but because he had been meticulously brought up, and good manners insisted that a girl should not be simply dumped on her doorstep, but that her latchkey should be located, her door politely opened, her safety and wellbeing assured.

  She had found her key.
She had opened her door. She was, obviously, anxious to get away and up the stairs.

  “Thank you so much for bringing me back. Really kind of you, and you didn’t need to bother…”

  She stopped. From upstairs there came the unmistakable wail of a furious child. The sound rooted them to where they stood. They stared at each other, the girl looking as astonished as John felt. The wails continued, rising in volume and fury. He expected some sort of an explanation, but none came. In the hard light from the staircase, her face was, all at once, very pale. She said in a strained sort of way, “Good night.”

  It was a dismissal. He thought, damn you. He said, “Good night, Victoria.”

  “Have a good time in Bahrain.”

  To hell with Bahrain. “I will.”

  “And thank you for bringing me home.”

  The blue front door was closed in his face. The light beyond was turned off. He looked up at the windows, secret behind the drawn curtains. He thought, and to hell with you too.

  Getting back into his car he reversed at top speed down the length of the Mews and into the street, missing the side of the archway by inches. There he sat for a moment or two endeavouring to recover his natural good humor.

  A baby. Whose baby? Probably her baby. There was no reason why she shouldn’t have a baby. Just because she looked such a child herself, there was no reason why she shouldn’t have a husband or a lover. A girl with a baby.

  He thought, I must tell Tania that. It’ll make her laugh. You couldn’t come to Imogen’s party, so I went by myself and got hooked up with a girl who had to go home to her baby.

  As his annoyance abated, so did his hunger, and their going left him feeling flat. He decided to skip dinner and instead go back to his flat and make a sandwich. His car moved forward, and deliberately, his thoughts moved with it, ahead to the following day, to the early start, the drive to Heathrow, the long flight to Bahrain.