Wild Oats

by Veronica Henry

  ‘You pig. You undid it…’ As she put her arms up in a desperate attempt to retie the strings behind her neck, her breasts betrayed her again, revealing themselves from behind the triangles of gingham. Tears of humiliation stung her eyes. ‘Help me, for God’s sake…’

  Olivier stopped laughing when he saw how distressed she was. Gently he came over to help her.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was only supposed to be a joke. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  Jamie brushed away her tears with the back of her hand, too angry to reply or even acknowledge his apology. She stood as tense as a racehorse in the starting gate as he did up the ties on her back. When he’d finished, his hands slid down to her waist.

  ‘I really am sorry,’ he said softly, and Jamie felt the brush of his lips on the back of her neck. Then he turned away and dived into the water.

  Jamie stood stock-still. One moment she had been rigid with fury and humiliation, then the next… His kiss should have filled her with further indignation, but it hadn’t. Her anger had melted, to be replaced by a feeling of swirling bliss.

  Her father’s second whistle from the shore brought her back to reality. She plunged into the cool water. Within seconds the moment was lost, and the feeling washed away.

  When they got back to shore, it seemed the holiday had come to an impromptu close. The Wildings’ car had been packed up hastily, ready for the journey home. Someone had shoved Jamie’s things back into her suitcase hurriedly; nothing had been folded. Jack ushered her into the car, muttering about a misunderstanding between ‘the girls’, as he always called Isabelle and Louisa. Louisa was waiting in the front seat, inscrutable behind her sunglasses.

  As Jack jumped in and started up the engine, driving away without so much as a backwards glance, Jamie was baffled. It was obvious she wasn’t going to get a proper explanation for their hasty departure, but she suspected it might have something to do with Olivier’s mother. She’d seen Isabelle giving Jack the come-on over the past week, her manicured hands on his knee, her demands for him to top up her champagne and rub in her suntan lotion. And the way Jack kept chirruping into cheerful conversation on the way home, only to be met with if not a stony, then a resigned, silence from Louisa, merely confirmed Jamie’s suspicions that her father had overstepped the mark. Not that she was bothered about finding out the truth. She was too busy reliving the agonizing memory of Olivier and that kiss. What might have happened between them if the holiday had been allowed to continue? She tortured herself as only a fifteen-year-old can, imagining all sorts of scenarios.

  Her fantasies sustained her on the interminable ferry-crossing all the way back to Bucklebury Farm.

  Now, as her bathwater went from scalding to lukewarm to cold, Jamie recalled the last moment she’d seen Olivier. They’d exchanged bewildered glances through the car window as Jack accelerated out of the drive, and he’d given her a helpless shrug as if to say he hadn’t a clue what was going on either. No one had actually said as much, but it was pretty clear that, whatever had gone on between the grown-ups, they were now sworn enemies and she was unlikely to see Olivier ever again…

  Yet here he was, evidently her father’s new best friend and with the upper hand to boot – while she’d been caught unawares, looking like the Wild Woman of Borneo. Grabbing the rusty old razor she’d found in the medicine cabinet, she was determined that the next time they met she’d be better equipped to do battle and regain her position as mistress of the house.

  Half an hour later, she felt like a different person. She’d managed to shave her legs and underarms, only nicking herself twice. Her hair was washed if not conditioned, and her nails were neatly trimmed and scrubbed. She promised herself a splurge in Boots the next day – the only beauty items she had left were a stick of deodorant, some Vaseline and a bottle of sun cream. In some ways, it had been liberating not to worry about her appearance for months on end, but now she was back on English soil she felt the need to be somewhat more groomed. She was, after all, getting a little old to rely on her natural beauty. At just short of thirty, the youthful sparkle was beginning to fade. Or was she being hard on herself? She pulled on a faded pink T-shirt dress and realized that she’d lost weight – it had once clung snugly to her hips but now hung quite freely. Not that she’d ever been fat, but a combination of unreliable food sources and having to walk and climb long distances over the past months meant she was lean and toned. Or did she look haggard? There was nothing like massive weight loss for ageing you. She surveyed herself critically from all angles, deciding that her golden tan and the freckles like a dusting of cinnamon over her nose saved her from gauntness. Her hair was a disaster though, falling in a tangled mass of unkempt copper to well past her shoulders, her fringe long grown out but yet to catch up with the rest. She tugged a comb through it, then twisted it up in a butterfly clip. She dug round in her drawer for some make-up, finding some old mascara and a millimetre of pink lipstick, and was pleased to see they brought some life to her face. She tutted at herself for being so vain all of a sudden, when she hadn’t given a second thought to how she looked for ages.

  She wondered if she would have been so anxious if Olivier hadn’t been around. She remembered how he’d made her feel all those years ago; how she’d repeatedly checked her appearance on that fateful holiday, wondering if she was too fat, too thin, too flat-chested, too pale, too frumpy, too freckly. Not that she’d cared what he thought then, or now, of course…

  She went downstairs. The kitchen was empty and she felt a tiny prick of disappointment. The tea things had gone from the table and the ashtray had been cleared away. There was no sign of Olivier.

  Her stomach rumbled and she went in search of sustenance, but there was absolutely nothing to eat. Plenty of bottles of Budweiser in the fridge, half a pint of milk, a packet of curling bacon and some Flora. No eggs. No bread. Typical blokes. Never mind. One of the advantages of living near Ludlow was that the once gastronomically-challenged post office was now an epicurean paradise.

  She was fishing about for the keys to her old Ford Fiesta when the early afternoon peace was shattered by an almighty roar that made her jump out of her skin. She peered through the window at the sky: sometimes fighter planes went overhead on exercise. But the sky was empty. And the noise was coming nearer. It seemed to be coming from the stable yard. With her heart in her mouth, she hurried outside to investigate.

  2

  Parsnip and Gumdrop shot out of the door behind Jamie, barking frantically and nearly tripping her up as she raced round to the front of the house, her heart hammering. What she saw made her stop in her tracks.

  The impossibly long bonnet of a car was nosing its way through the archway that led from the stables, its blue and silver paintwork glittering in the afternoon sun. It glided across the cobbles, as purposeful and predatory as a shark cruising shallow waters, before coming to a halt in front of Jamie, resplendent in all its glory.

  It was a Bugatti, the ultimate in vintage racing cars: a welding of nostalgia, glamour, sex-appeal and horsepower. Sleek, streamlined and understated, its perfection lay in its simplicity. Each line, each contour, had a purpose. There was no unnecessary embellishment. It was a design classic. And, like the most ravishing Italian film star, it took centre stage quietly confident that nothing could compete with its beauty, knowing that all eyes were feasting upon its curves with longing and wonder.

  At the steering wheel was Olivier. Dressed in a white polo shirt that showed off his tan, a cigarette smouldering in his mouth, he looked for all the world like a thirties playboy on the hunt for his next conquest. He dropped the revs, letting the engine idle. It now sounded like a gentle purr, but Jamie could still feel the power of the car reverberate through her body. It was having a disturbing effect on her, combined with the heat of the sun, the noise and the overpowering smell of the fumes. She told herself it was lack of food and sleep that was making her feel faint, rather than the disarming grin Olivier was giving her as he gauged her reactio
n, narrow-eyed, through the plume of smoke from his cigarette.

  ‘Is this… Dad’s car?’ she managed to stammer. ‘The one he used to share with your father?’

  Olivier nodded happily.

  ‘They still do share it, technically. Jack and I have been restoring it.’

  Jamie gazed at the car as the memories came flooding back. Some twenty years ago, Olivier’s father Eric had stumbled across the Bugatti on his travels, had phoned Jack in excitement, and the two of them had gone halves, getting it for a ridiculous price as it was in a shocking state of neglect. As gleeful as two schoolboys, they’d brought the car back to Bucklebury Farm, where Jack had spent a long winter restoring it to its former glory. Everyone had assumed they were going to sell it on, make a quick, easy buck. Perhaps that had been their initial intention. But when they’d taken it to a vintage race meeting at Donington Park to put it through its paces, they’d both been bitten by the bug.

  From then on, every weekend during the racing season, from April to October, Eric and Jack would dash off all over the country to take part in death-defying races and rallies and hill-climbs, leaving their wives to wonder if they would come back alive. Jamie remembered their jubilant celebrations if they returned with a trophy; the hours discussing tactics if they were defeated; the evenings her father spent in the barn, fine-tuning the engine – the roar that sometimes frightened the horses as he turned it over and over. It had been their joint obsession, and how it had suited them: two devil-may-care jack-the-lads at the wheel of half a ton of precision engineering, competing for nothing but the glory of winning. There was certainly no money in it. On the contrary, it proved a most effective way of burning a hole in both their pockets.

  Of course, after they’d fallen out that summer, the partnership had come to an end. As far as Jamie knew, the car had been shoved under a tarpaulin in the barn and forgotten. But here it was, a phoenix risen from the ashes.

  ‘Hop in,’ said Olivier. ‘I need to get some petrol. I’ll take you for a spin.’

  Jamie hesitated. It wasn’t so much the car as the sight of Olivier’s long, brown legs disappearing under the dashboard that made her uncertain. Then a rumble in her stomach reminded her that she was on the brink of starvation.

  ‘I was about to go into the village anyway,’ she said, climbing in. There was no door; she had to scramble over the side and slide on to the leather bench seat next to him. There was only just room, and for a moment she felt disconcerted by their proximity, then realized Olivier was far more interested in the car than the fact that her dress was riding up her legs. Nevertheless, as he flung his arm carelessly over the back of her seat in order to reverse, she leaned forwards slightly, anxious to avoid physical contact.

  ‘Don’t you men ever do any grocery shopping?’ she babbled, feeling the need to bring the conversation round to the mundane in order to bring herself down to earth. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to eat!’

  ‘We tend to go to the pub,’ admitted Olivier sheepishly. ‘It saves washing up. Hold tight!’

  The next moment Jamie found her breath quite literally taken away as he roared out of the courtyard and up the drive before turning out on to the road that led to the village. The seat was so low to the ground, her legs straight out in front of her, that the tarmac seemed to rush by only inches from her elbow. She could feel every manoeuvre, every bump, every gear change, filling her with a mixture of terror and excitement, and had to bite on her lip to stop herself begging him to slow down. When she dared to look at the speedo, she was amazed to find that they were only just nudging sixty miles an hour. Nevertheless, she felt herself pushing her feet on an imaginary brake as they took each corner, feeling sure they’d never make it, that they would leave the road and be found in a tangled mass of flesh and steel. She prayed that Olivier wasn’t showing off for her benefit; that he knew what he was doing and that he respected the Bugatti’s capabilities. It was like being on a racehorse: you could feel the power, you knew that it could give you much, much more if you only dared to ask, but at the same time you were only in control for as long as it wanted you to be. No wonder its slogan had been ‘le pur sang des automobiles’: the thoroughbred amongst cars.

  In record time they were passing the sign she had noticed on her way in, the one that entreated visitors to drive carefully through the village, and to her relief Olivier obediently dropped his speed before finally dawdling to a halt by the village green.

  ‘Better than sex, eh?’ Olivier grinned at her.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Jamie carefully. ‘But it was fun.’

  And when she got out of the car, she found that her heart was beating ten to the dozen, she could barely walk from pressing her foot on the floor, and she couldn’t wait to get in again. As comparisons went, it wasn’t a bad one, she mused, as she watched Olivier whizz off through the village. She couldn’t help notice the longing glances he got as he tanked past the pub: the men clearly lusting after the car, the women, no doubt, after him as his tousled locks blew in the breeze.

  Of Lower and Upper Faviell, the latter was the smart address, where rows of black-and-white terraced cottages formed two sides of a triangle round the village green, with a tiny pond and ducks and a thatched bus stop. The bus stopped there dutifully en route to Ludlow twice a week, but it was rare that anyone got on as everyone in Upper Faviell had their own transport. The church and adjoining idyllic vicarage – no longer lived in by the vicar, but where the village fête was still held – made up the third side. At the bottom right-hand corner stood the Royal Oak, from where a road led off to Lower Faviell half a mile away. Here clustered a semicircle of council houses, the village school and the ancient garage where Olivier was heading that, as well as petrol, sold string, dog biscuits and the Daily Mirror. With two working farms, the road through was generally caked with mud and the smell of silage and muck often hung heavy in the air.

  Jamie made her way up the top end of the green towards the post office. It was easy to miss, as it blended in perfectly with the houses on either side, only the red pillar box outside giving its presence away. Inside, Hilly the postmistress greeted her effusively. Hilly was broader than she was tall, with a severe iron-grey bob that detracted from the kindness in her round face. She’d taken over the post office five years ago when her husband had died, rescuing it from the brink of closure and turning it from a purveyor of dented tins of soup and faded cereal packets into a destination post office with a daily delivery of organic bread, free-range eggs, a trencherman’s cheese counter and a selection of decent wine, not nasty, dubiously labelled gutrot that wasn’t even fit to cook with. She’d also pioneered an organic vegetable box scheme, and spent much of her time dividing up leafy green brassicas and rhubarb and beetroot into boxes for collection by her flavour-conscious customers. People from far afield went there to top up on their weekly shop if they couldn’t be bothered to go into town. The villagers found it a double-edged sword – it was wonderful to have it on your doorstep, but it could make parking a nightmare.

  Jamie wandered round the shop, revelling in the produce on offer that was like manna from heaven after the scanty and somewhat repetitive fare of the last few months. She filled her basket with a squidgy white bloomer, farmhouse butter and a selection from the deli counter – Parma ham, anchovies, a craggy wedge of cheddar. And a big, round, toffee-encrusted lardy cake. She’d soon put back on all the weight she’d lost at this rate. She took her basket to the counter.

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on your father,’ Hilly informed her. ‘I knew he’d turned the corner when he came in to ask for the Racing Post to be kept for him.’

  Hilly omitted to mention that a further clue had been when he stopped buying a bottle of Jack Daniel’s every other day, and started buying milk instead. And Jamie was grateful that there was no hint of recrimination in her voice – she’d been anxious that people would regard her as the prodigal daughter, and hint that it was about time that she’d put in a reappea
rance.

  Hilly started totting up her purchases.

  ‘I see you’ve met your lodger, then?’

  Jamie smiled warily.

  ‘Briefly. He’s the son of some old friends of ours.’

  ‘Fit as a butcher’s dog.’ Hilly had a comical way of delivering working-class aphorisms in cut-glass Roedean vowels.

  Jamie tried to look non-committal, but it was hard to deny that Olivier was an attractive proposition, no matter how you looked at him.

  ‘It’s the one thing that pisses me off about being old.’ Hilly pronounced ‘off’ to rhyme with ‘dwarf’. ‘He wouldn’t look twice at an old boiler like me. Anyway, he probably thinks I’m a lez.’

  Jamie didn’t like to say that it wasn’t surprising, given her penchant for wearing her deceased husband’s clothes. Hilly argued that they were perfectly good, far too good for the charity shop, so she might as well get some wear out of them. Most days she was seen sporting his cavalry twills and a dark-green oiled sweater with leather patches on the elbows, and more often than not his tweed fishing cap too.

  She bid Hilly farewell, promising to bring the photos of her trip next time she came in. Hilly lived her life vicariously through her customers, as running a post office was a huge commitment and she rarely liked to leave it in the hands of a relief manager, who wouldn’t understand the foibles of her clientele.

  As Jamie loitered on the pavement waiting for Olivier’s return, she was assailed by the Reverend Huxtable, whose face lit up when he saw her.

  ‘Jamie!’

  ‘Vicar.’

  She smiled warmly. The Reverend was a popular figure in the village. At her mother’s funeral, he’d done his very best to make a good job of what must have been an awful task. Jamie felt guilty that she hadn’t been more grateful to him at the time for his support, but then he must be used to it. People didn’t always behave terribly well when they were grieving.