Oh God! Yet another black mark chalked up to my account. I swallowed nervously. ‘Um, did he re-inherit you later?’
‘No,’ Robert said flatly. My heart sank even further. ‘He didn’t believe in going back on his word, but it didn’t actually make much difference. He’d always intended to leave nearly everything to my mother. The only thing which had been earmarked for me were the Winwood spoons - great bulbous things from the sixteenth century and they went to my eldest sister as she was deemed to be a more fitting custodian of family treasures. Frankly she’s welcome to them. They’re hideous, cost a fortune to insure and she can’t even get rid of them. Family legend has it that whoever sells the spoons will see their teeth go green and their nails go yellow, or something of the sort. No one’s dared put it to the test yet. So I didn’t miss out on much.’
‘It can’t have been very nice for you though,’ I said.
I got a very hard look from under his eyelashes. ‘None of what happened around then was very nice,’ he said with emphasis.
Ouch! I was wishing the flagstones under my feet would open and swallow me up when my persecutor looked at me, and murmured, completely unapologetically, ‘Sorry. I forgot I wasn’t supposed to say that sort of thing any more.’
I glared at him, but before I could reply my attention was distracted by the glass of wine that was being thrust at me. Hugh had managed at last to tear himself away from Maggie’s charms. ‘Afraid I took a bit longer than I meant to,’ he mumbled, looking surprised at the way I almost snatched it from him and took a large gulp.
Robert looked on the point of making his escape when he was forestalled by Hugh who turned to him with an amiable smile. ‘I heard about your knee - bad luck. Shame you won’t be able to play in the match on Sunday.’
Robert shrugged. ‘I’m not a brilliant player so I won’t be any great loss, but I’m going to umpire instead. Tom’s dug me out a few old copies of Wisden to refresh my memory and Janey’s trying to find me a white coat. The best she’s come up with so far is an old lab coat Delphine used for chemistry, which is so tight that I can’t move my arms.’
‘I thought it was only the refs in football who needed to wave their arms around,’ I said, gaining myself a pitying stare from all three males for my abysmal ignorance. ‘What about one of Janey’s big white cook’s aprons? I’m sure she can spare you one and it wouldn’t restrict your arm movements at all, would it?’
‘Really, Nella! We can’t have the umpire looking as if he’s come off the lunch shift at the local restaurant,’ George said in a repressive voice.
‘Can’t think why that should make a cricket match played in the middle of a vineyard for a stuffed boar’s head seem any more eccentric,’ I said sweetly.
George frowned at me. Cricket was not a subject for levity in his opinion.
‘If you’re worried about not remembering all the rules, you don’t have to bother with Wisden, Robert,’ I went on. ‘All you have to do is ask George here. He knows everything about cricket. I’m sure that he can give you lots of advice.’
‘Glad to,’ my ex said genially. ‘Any time you want.’
‘Thank you,’ Robert said through gritted teeth, looking at me in a way that promised retribution later. I smiled blandly at him and, thinking that it would be wiser to get away while I was still on a winning streak, muttered that I’d go and see if I could help Janey. Twenty minutes later when Janey asked me to go around telling all the stragglers that they should come to the table I was delighted to hear George still explaining some of the more arcane rules of cricket to a stony-faced Robert.
To seat all of us, Janey had pushed three of her teak tables together, covering the joins with a long piece of yellow and white cotton, to make one enormously long table. ‘The seating’s been absolute hell,’ she grumbled in an undertone as she wandered up the length of the table placing slips of paper with names on at each place, ‘and it’s mostly been your fault.’
‘Mine?’ I exclaimed.
‘You appear to be on non-speaks with half the men here,’ she said unfairly. ‘I’ve got a few ex-boyfriends myself, but I’ve always had the sense not to gather them together in one place. First I had to move George from next to you, then I was going to put Phil next to Solange, they’re two of a kind and deserve each other, but that meant having Oscar on your left. I thought that in your present mood you’d probably kill him, so what about Rob? You two are getting on better now...’
‘It’d probably be wiser to let him recover from his intensive cricket instruction before he comes in close contact with me again,’ I said and explained what I meant.
‘And I was thinking of putting George on his other side too!’ she said with a giggle. ‘ Oh well, Rob can sit next to Solange. He’ll be quite safe from being lectured about cricket there. She pretends she knows nothing about it and likes to say it’s all some Anglo-Saxon madness of her husband’s.’
Solange must have been one of the few people around the table who wasn’t talking about cricket. Actually Hugh wasn’t talking cricket either, but that was because he was next to Maggie and her bosomy presence seemed to have robbed him of the powers of speech. It was a bit unfair on the poor man to keep on leaning forward and pressing her arms together like that. But otherwise I could hear batting averages being discussed all around the table, even between Tom and Maggie. Maggie was surprisingly knowledgeable; she took a party of her more cricket-mad clients to Lord’s a couple of times a year, and had offered to be scorer for the match.
‘Janey tells me that Oscar’s quite a useful batsman,’ said Tom, turning to me, when Hugh had at last managed to find enough voice to grab Maggie’s attention for a few minutes. ‘What number does he go in at, do you know?’
‘Afraid I don’t,’ I said guiltily. The only way I’d managed to get through being taken to a cricket match virtually every weekend last summer was by setting myself War and Peace as match reading. I was on the last chapter when George got a hat trick in the final game of the season. He hadn’t been pleased that I had been so absorbed in what was happening to Pierre and Natasha that I hadn’t noticed he’d just saved the match. It was probably around then that it began to occur to him that we didn’t have very much in common.
Tom glanced quickly at Hugh as if checking he was still so mesmerised by Maggie’s curves that he couldn’t pay attention to anything else, and leaned forward. ‘Tell me,’ he hissed. ‘You know George, don’t you? Napier says he’s a reasonable player, was in his school First Eleven. He’s a bowler, isn’t he? Is he any good? Napier’s pretty keen to get the sanglier back, it hasn’t seen the inside of Château Vielleroche for some years I can tell you,’ he smirked slightly, ‘and I was wondering if maybe Napier’s hoping to take me unawares by boosting his team with a really good player or two.’
‘He’s done that all right,’ I said without thinking. Damn your big mouth, Nella, I thought in dismay as Tom jerked to full attention. There are certain things you ought to keep until someone has finished eating - that is, if you don’t want him to have indigestion. This was one of them. It was too late now. I sighed and said, ‘I don’t know about the First Eleven though he probably was in that, but I do know George had a trial for the county.’
Tom looked as if he was about to choke on his marinated trout salad. ‘What happened?’ he asked hoarsely.
According to George, he’d decided his future lay in making a packet in the City and not in making runs at Lord’s, but I suspected he’d thought he might not be quite good enough to make it to the first rank and had decided that if he wasn’t going to the top it wasn’t worth making it his career. All the same, a near professional cricketer was going to be a formidable addition to Napier’s team.
Tom sat in silence for a moment. ‘I’d never have expected Napier to possess that degree of low cunning. Well, well, well. The crafty bastard! I wonder how long he’s been setting this up. So your George,’ I hastily denied he was my George but Tom ignored me, ‘is a ringer. Quite a u
seful player indeed!’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘Let’s keep this to ourselves for the moment. Napier thinks he’s going to wipe the field on Sunday, but now his star player has been outed, he’s lost the surprise factor, hasn’t he?’
He steepled his fingers together and rested his chin on them, deep in thought. ‘We’ve still got time to prepare ourselves. We’re going to have a real fight for the sanglier this year, aren’t we?’ he asked in a voice full of gleeful anticipation. ‘I wonder what surprises we can spring on Napier next Sunday...’
CHAPTER 11
Janey’s impromptu dinner party had turned into a rip-roaring success. At one time it seemed as if the sole topic of conversation was going to be cricket but fortunately, round about the time the fruits of Jed’s labours were brought to the table, even Tom and Napier had run out of things to say about bats, balls and stuffed sangliers’ heads and had turned to subjects more congenial to their neighbours. Napier was too far down the other end of the table for me to be able to hear what he was talking about, but judging by the rapt expression on Venetia’s face, he wasn’t wittering on about batting averages any longer either. Solange, who had been distinctly sulky about not sitting next to her host, had recovered no end when she discovered that Oscar could and would match all her most flirtatious moves. She was now practising every one of her wiles on Robert who was lapping them all up, one by one.
George and Sally seemed to have hit it off too. I’d never heard Sally so giggly. When George looked up and saw me glancing at him, he smirked slightly. Damn it! I was prepared to bet he reckoned all he had to do to resume our relationship was decide if he could be bothered with a female who wouldn’t sort his socks. The last thing I wanted was for George to get diverted when he was getting on so well with Sally. Even Oscar would have to shut up if George started going out with someone else, and Sally would suit him so much better than I ever had. She was a far more disciplined country type than me. I was sure she wouldn’t jib at doing cricket teas and she’d leave the men to enjoy their port alone after dinner without insisting on having some, too. She probably even knew how to pluck a pheasant - another of my rank failures. You never know, she might even be prepared to do laundry. Or maybe that was going too far. Sally wasn’t a complete push-over. I glanced towards Oscar, hoping he had noticed how well George and Sally were getting on, but he had his head turned away and was talking to Janey and Charlie at the end of the table.
That was a problem. What a shame Sally was already going out with Charlie, especially as they didn’t seem a particularly well-matched pair. They didn’t argue or anything, there just wasn’t that spark there usually is between lovers. For instance, he never bent towards her when he was saying something in the way he was doing now with Janey. Her eyes widened, then she giggled, made some quick retort and he threw his head back, laughing with an abandonment that made everyone around him smile as well. He didn’t do that with Sally either. He was certainly on good form tonight. Had he just heard he had won the lottery or was this the real Charlie that he kept hidden for some reason under the rather quiet persona he usually presented to the world? I’d already realised that with Charlie, quiet didn’t necessarily mean spineless or dull. He had a nicely subversive sense of humour which I appreciated, particularly when it was aimed at Maggie, but I hadn’t seen him being as outgoing as this. I like men who laugh so wholeheartedly.
The only people around the table who didn’t appear to be having a good time were Jed and me. Jed, because he was sitting between Hugh, who didn’t find him nearly as attractive as Maggie, and Sally, who couldn’t take her eyes off George, so the conversation wasn’t exactly flowing around him. To add insult to injury, it was obvious that he really wanted to be next to his hostess. Judging from the way his eyes narrowed jealously as Janey capped one of Oscar’s jokes, Venetia hadn’t been exaggerating about his feelings for her stepmother. Tom noticed, too. I saw him glance at Jed, follow his look and frown slightly before returning to talk to Maggie and Hugh.
And I wasn’t having such a good time because, lacking better quarry, Phil was playing footsie with me, ‘accidentally’ putting his hand on my thigh, dropping his napkin and managing to stroke the length of my leg as he picked it up and so on. I felt sure that it was almost a reflex action whenever he had a female next to him, whatever her age, and was prepared to bet he’d even have stroked my granny’s knee if she were in my place.
I don’t appreciate uninvited strokes at the best of times, particularly not when the stroker’s girlfriend is sitting dead opposite. Sooner or later Maggie was going to notice something - and guess who was going to get blamed?
‘Stop it!’ I hissed as his hand found its way to my thigh yet again. ‘If you do that once more I’ll jab you with this.’ I waved my fork menacingly in the air.
Phil looked at it and then at me as if I couldn’t possibly be serious and stroked my knee again. I let the fork fall into my lap and while picking it up jabbed his thigh, not as hard as I would have liked. He bit his lip, more from shock than from pain, it hadn’t been that hard, but didn’t make a sound. I suspected he was as keen as I to make sure Maggie didn’t discover what he’d been up to. ‘You’re a hard woman, Nella, but it’s your loss,’ he gasped.
‘In your opinion!’ I retorted, and in an ostentatious display of virtue he put both hands on the table where I could see them. He was actually okay once he dropped the Phil the Philanderer act. I was quite enjoying myself until I intercepted a venomous glare from the other side of the table and I realised that Maggie was no keener on me talking to her man than she would have been on me performing acts that were considerably more intimate. A few minutes later I felt something warm stroking my thigh through my skirt yet again. I jumped and said sharply through gritted teeth, ‘Phil! I won’t warn you again. It’ll really hurt next time.’ He held up both hands with an innocent expression and I looked down to see Lily’s head resting on my lap. She fixed her eyes on mine and told me as clearly as she could that the one thing missing in her life was cheese. Like the bit on my plate.
Long after darkness had fallen and Janey had lit fat candles that threw flattering flickering lights on everyone’s faces, we were still sitting around the table, finishing coffees and last glasses of wine and gossiping. Even though the stars were glittering out of a cloudless inky sky, the air was so warm it was like sitting in a thermal bath, just the right temperature to make you feel that you would really rather not move, thank you. Then Solange came back from the loo and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure you will not mind if I change places with you, er... Nettie. I ‘ave barely spoken to Tom.’ The smile she flashed was certainly not aimed at me.
Oh hell! That meant I was going to end up next to Robert and directly opposite George. The only way I could avoid catching the wrong eye would be to spend the rest of the evening gazing at my lap. But what else could I do? Hang on to my chair seat with both hands and refuse to move? The idea was tempting. But like the nice girl I am, I smiled mechanically, and said, ‘Of course - Salomé.’
I got a very old-fashioned look as she sat down. I didn’t feel that I’d made a friend.
‘Ah, musical chairs, is it?’ murmured Robert as I took my place beside him. ‘But you’ve ended up next to the wrong person. I’d offer to swap with your George but Sally might protest. She appears to be enjoying herself.’
Under the cover of a peal of laughter from Sally I muttered, ‘He isn’t my George.’
‘But he might be again. You told me so yourself,’ he reminded me.
So I had, I remembered ruefully and resolved never, ever to tell a face-saving half-truth again. Not to Robert anyway. Well, at least, not again tonight.
‘What is it with that man that he has both you and Sally eating out of his hand?’ he said thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair and glancing across the table. ‘It must be something in his aftershave for I certainly can’t think of anything else. Maybe I should ask him what he’s using.’
‘What
, you mean that you want to have Sally and me eating out of your hand?’ I asked before I could stop myself.
He looked at me measuringly. ‘Not really.’
I’d laid myself wide open to that, I thought in resignation. Didn’t make it any nicer though.
‘Sorry, Nella, didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,’ he said with patent insincerity. ‘Shall I make it up to you by incurring Sally’s displeasure and changing places with George?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard enough about cricket tonight to last me a lifetime.’
‘And you think I haven’t?’ Oops. I’d forgotten about that. To my relief I thought I could just see the faintest twitch at the comers of his mouth. ‘That’s another score I’m going to have to settle with you one of these days, Nella. The tally sheet seems to be growing day by day.’
‘A tally sheet?’ I asked, startled. ‘I thought we’d agreed that all scores had been settled already.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Well, when you said it was unfair on Janey...’
‘I said it was unfair on Janey for us to keep sniping at each other, and it is. But if you’ve got some idea that we can just become kissy kissy ex-lovers and friends, I have to warn you there’s a lot of unfinished business to be sorted out first.’
His eyes locked onto mine and I felt a shiver go down my spine as I tried to work out what he meant. I could only assume that he felt that my disastrous exit from his life hadn’t been properly explained. I hadn’t been that long on detail, true, but what more did he want? He already knew how sorry I was. Did he want to know if I’d bounced back from losing him as easily as he’d apparently done with me? I hadn’t. Or how long it had been before I stopped crying about it every night? Months. Or when I began to find other men attractive again? A long time. Or when I felt I’d finally got over him? I was taking the Fifth on that. No matter how guilty I felt, and frankly my guilt was beginning to wear thin with all the hoops he was gleefully putting me through, I didn’t feel guilty enough to bare myself like that.
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