Lew’s face unclenched. He beamed. ‘I knew you could be relied on to do the sensible thing, Harriet,’ he said.
I wondered what on earth had given him that idea.
The flight left Bordeaux in the early afternoon. Working backwards, I reckoned we could justifiably leave at about eleven thirty, and that if I lay in bed late, and then went into a huddle with Lew over Down Our Street, I could probably avoid seeing Kostaki that morning. Do not imagine, gentle reader, that I was loth to see him: I was simply loth to precipitate those events I knew would follow. Looked at it its most regrettable light, this prevarication could be seen as a kind of foreplay. It was only a matter of time.
By nature an early riser I remained determinedly in bed, sweating it out literally as the sun rose, and even the girls stumbled from their room and fell into the pool. At about ten I heard Lew moving about on the stairs and in the kitchen, and decided I’d better get up. I still didn’t venture out, but scuttled to the bathroom and spent a further twenty minutes in intensive washing, shampooing, depilation and creaming. It was the adulteress’s equivalent of putting on clean underpants, and the bus I hoped to get knocked down by was Kostaki.
When I was dressed I went to the kitchen to make myself coffee. The heat was already creeping up towards the pre-storm status quo. Clara and Naomi were outside working on their backs. When Lew leaned over the atelier balustrade and called me I nearly jumped out of my skin.
‘Harriet! Okay if I get the book together? Hey, I’m sorry, did I startle you?’
‘Yes – yes, you carry on. I’ll join you in a moment.’
I turned back to stir my coffee, and was met by the sight of Kostaki’s legs in all their lean, tanned splendour, at eye-level beyond the window. I hadn’t even had time to compose my features into an expression of leaden indifference when the legs bent, and the rest of him whooshed into view.
‘Morning!’
‘Morning.’ It was tricky sounding politely indifferent.
‘Weather back to normal.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
He was crouching, and must have been well aware that smile, crotch and legs were now nicely aligned and presented a prospect which few heterosexual females would have wished to resist.
‘This is a fantastic place,’ he remarked. ‘The best I’ve been to so far.’
‘Yes, we’re very pleased with it.’
He glanced this way and that in a leisurely manner and then trained the smile back on me. ‘I’m going to try and dry out the car. I’m afraid the soft top wasn’t designed to withstand the kind of downpour we had last night.’
‘No!’
He stood up, stretching. His face disappeared for a moment and then came back into view as he leaned down and said: ‘Royston’s very kindly said I can stay in the annexe while I cover this area, so perhaps we’ll be able to see something of each other.’
I had no doubt Royston would have filled him in on the details. ‘Yes.’
‘You look your old self this morning, by the way.’ My God, had it been that bad last night?
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten those little yellow jogging shorts of yours. Cheerio for now.’
He went. I stood my full cup of hot coffee in the sink and ran cold water into it. Little yellow jogging shorts? I myself had certainly forgotten about them till that moment. But by such simple means are old passions enflamed. Fancy him remembering … He who must have been through many such shorts since then … I joined Lew at the desk in the atelier. Actually, he was not at the desk when I got up there, but kneeling on the floor by the Building of Stonehenge.
‘Oh … Harriet. Sorry, I was waiting for you. They are shocking time-wasters these things, huh?’
He went to the desk and picked up Down Our Street, both the typed and handwritten sheets, and blocked them into shape with his hands.
‘I think I’ve got it all here. Are there any corrections or modifications you want to make before I take it away?’
There was no answer to this question. Or the answer was ‘yes’, but it would have taken too long to put everything right so it had to be: ‘No.’
‘Fine. Sonny will understand that it’s only a first draft. He’s nothing if not a pro …’
Lew’s voice tailed away as he followed my gaze to where Kostaki, just visible from this vantage point through the kitchen window, was wiping the inside of the MG with a towel. Small cars were no problem to Kostaki. I recalled all too vividly the bright green Fiat, and the contortions necessary to mutual pleasure in such a confined space. The MG would present a thrilling challenge …
‘Harriet?’
I realised I was in a trance. Lew was looking at me with an expression of anxious concern.
‘I was wondering when we should go.’
‘Quite right.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
I hung about at Bordeaux long after I’d said au revoir to Lew. I actually watched his plane take off. I felt a sort of superstitious dread about waving off the only copy extant of Down Our Street, and being sundered from these factors – Lew and the book – which might have offered some protection, or at least distraction, from what now awaited me at the Villa Almont. On the way back my driving was erratic. I had Jennifer Rush on the tape deck, and when she soared into ‘I am your lady’ and I allowed myself to think of Kostaki, I would hit a hundred. When the song finished and there was nothing but the hiss of the tape rewinding my spirits plummeted and I fell back to a matronly fifty m.p.h.
I had got so accustomed to the mental picture of Kostaki waiting for me on my return, with a smile on his face and a bulge in his shorts, that it was disconcerting to find no sign of him. But there was plenty of other activity at the villa. In fact there was quite a crowd in the drive, what with Royston and the girls, and the Count and Monica, both astride his motorbike and with Asti in the saddle bag.
‘Aha, there she is,’ cried Royston as I climbed out.
‘Can they stay for a bit?’ asked Clara, positively animated. It was the sort of request she hadn’t made since I’d met her at the school gate about a hundred years ago. But de Pellegale and Monica were not the tousle-haired moppets of Basset Magna C of E primary.
‘Harriet’s had a long drive,’ said Royston unctuously. ‘Why don’t you all go and make yourselves comfortable and I’ll do refreshments.’ It struck me that he wouldn’t have been out of place on the Magna Church Tower Fundraising Committee. He had the vocabulary.
The Count, unzipping his puce leathers with one hand, released Asti from the saddlebag with the other. The creature was on one of those extending leads which operate on a ratchet. As soon as it was placed on the ground it shot to the end of the lead, a distance of some six metres, and stood on its tiny hind legs, yapping frenziedly at Teazel who was taking his ease in the woodshed.
The Count reeled him in and tucked him under his arm. The leathers were obviously aids to dog-handling.
‘Tiens-toi tranquille,’ he admonished the foaming Asti, then said to me: ‘We wished to say how much we enjoyed your dinner.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ I said. ‘It was a pity about the storm.’
‘An adventure, I think,’ he replied. I remembered the heavy petting, and agreed that it had been.
We sat down on the verandah. The girls had gone to help Royston get the drinks. The Count stroked Asti, who now nestled like some luxuriant chest wig in the open zip of his leathers.
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Monica, ‘you fancy a swim? Because I’m dying for one.’
‘Please,’ I said, ‘feel free.’
By the time I emerged from my room in my bikini, Monica was already in the pool, starkers. She had an athletic figure and frighteningly little pubic hair. The minute I hit the water she did a motorised freestyle to my side and let me have it.
‘That man,’ she said, ‘is an animal.’
‘Who?’
‘That cunt de Pellegale,’ She obviously intended no
pun. ‘I reckoned it was quite fun to begin with. He’s a game old guy, I’ll give him that, but when he offered me work at his poxy club In Paris—!’ She rolled her eyes and smoothed back her wet hair. ‘Elbow time.’
‘What work was that?’
‘Oh, messing around for the punters. You know, sapphic delights, schoolgirl romps, that kind of thing.’
It wasn’t something of which I had much first-hand knowledge and I would have pressed her on the subject, only she continued at once: ‘I’m moving on tomorrow. But be warned. The old sod has developed a yen for your Greek boyfriend.’
At least here was someone who had no illusions about the nature of my relations with Kostaki. My pleasure in knowing that I was no longer a mere housewife of twenty years’ standing delayed my reaction to the rest of her remark.
‘You don’t seem too put out, I must say,’ she remarked. ‘And to think I had you down for a—’
I got there. ‘He has a what?’
‘A yen. And I’m not talking Nip currency here. He fancies the Greek.’
‘Kostaki?’
‘Is that what he’s called? Far out. I don’t mind saying if he was a touch younger I could go for him myself.’
This stung me. Younger? ‘Monica, for heaven’s sake, you were sleeping with the Count!’
‘But that wasn’t fancying. It was shared interests. Or so I thought. Anyway, watch out for your boyfriend.’
As the MG snarled up the drive, Monica threw her head back and did a reverse flip into the water, waggling her feet in the air and disappearing to surface after only seconds at the far end of the pool. I was left gasping.
I swam a couple of lengths and pulled myself up on to the edge. Royston had brought a tall jug of something and glasses on to the terrace.
‘Drinks, girls!’ he called.
I clambered out as Kostaki appeared from the direction of the annexe.
‘By the centre,’ he exclaimed, ‘gorgeous women and cool drinks. It beats working. What have you all been up to?’
Chapter Thirteen
‘A ttends! Attends!’
The Count, holding up one fleshy palm as if directing traffic, sprang from his seat. Asti dropped on to the floor and began to draw his lips back in a ferocious snarl. Monica, who had presumably achieved some kind of armed truce with the beast during her spell of shared interests with its master, scooped it up.
‘I wasn’t going anywhere,’ said Kostaki, removing his shirt and flopping down on the verandah step.
The Count waddled off in the direction of his car, trailing yards of unravelling dog lead. I would have said something, but Monica simply gave it a sharp tug which almost had the tea table over, and the Count’s pace quickened as though he’d been sprung from an elastic catapult.
‘So tell me about yourself,’ demanded Monica, sitting down by Kostaki. She held Asti’s vibrating muzzle clasped in one hand.
‘Was your friend’s flight on time?’ asked Royston.
‘He’s not a friend,’ I snapped. ‘At least, he’s only secondarily a friend. He’s my agent.’
‘Oops, sorry,’ said Royston. The girls giggled. It was curious and disobliging the way they seemed to like him. ‘I hadn’t realised the two were mutually exclusive.’
Fortunately I didn’t have to argue this one, because the Count came back round the corner carrying a posy of flowers, the blooms framed by a doily, their stalks stiffened with wire. I prepared myself to be suitably touched and delighted, but the Count strode past me, leapt down the steps like the Cookeen Fairy and spun through 180 degrees to face Kostaki.
‘For you, M’sieur,’ he said, executing a portly bow.
‘For me?’ Kostaki could be such a ham, but it stood him in good stead with eccentrics. I was stricken with dread. ‘But how delightful – what did I do to deserve these?’
‘You assisted the young ladies in their hour of need,’ declared the Count. He was utterly shameless. Monica gave me a speaking look as Kostaki buried his nose in the flowers and inhaled deeply.
‘I’m sure I did nothing,’ he said, ‘that wasn’t in the normal line of duty or common courtesy.’
Royston sucked his teeth and the girls smirked. I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t enjoying this charade.
‘You rescued them!’ trumpeted the Count. ‘You returned them, in the teeth of the storm!’
‘It was no more than anyone would have done,’ Kostaki assured him. Damn right it wasn’t. ‘But thank you anyway. It’s a charming thought.’
I was gripping my glass of lemonade so tightly I was in danger of crushing it. I had competition. How easy it would have been, I reflected, to offer some little cadeau of my own in recognition of Kostaki’s chivalry. But no – I had been too obsessed with my own reactions and now de Pellegale had outflanked me.
The Count relieved Monica of the dog, and returned to us, his face glowing with feeling.
‘Guy, you old rogue, what are you playing at?’ asked Royston, refreshing glasses. The girls made ‘ooh!’ faces at one another.
‘Comme il est charmant!’ rhapsodised the Count. He was a disgrace. I could even sympathise with Monica, who was now admiring Kostaki’s flowers. She didn’t seem to be issuing her dire warning. Perhaps she considered her duty done in that department, and that I would leap to protect my interests. I pressed my hand to my brow.
‘Poor Harriet,’ said Royston, ‘we’re giving her mal à la tête!.’
‘It’s not you,’ I said.
‘Chucking-out time!’ he cried. ‘Glasses, everyone!’
Monica and Kostaki got up and came over. The Count beamed.
From the safety of his master’s leathers, Asti gave a series of spluttering yaps.
‘You don’t have to go,’ I said. ‘I simply have a headache. You can stay here for as long as you like. I’m going for a lie-down.’
For once I didn’t dither. I went. As I walked to the bedroom I heard their voices start up again in a more muted vein as they discussed my plight.
I closed the door and cast myself down on the bed. The glint of the pool beyond the muslin curtain was like a mirage. There were a lot of mirages … the picture of Kostaki and me locked in each other’s arms, for one …
I heard the scrape of chairs, and the voices of my guests returning to normal as they prepared to leave: the Count’s oily chuckle, Monica’s abrasive whine, Royston’s unctuous patter … Someone knocked on the door.
‘Come.’
Clara put her head round. ‘Can we get you anything?’
‘No thanks, love.’ My weak voice sounded like Toad of Toad Hall in his malingering vein.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’ve just got a head, that’s all.’
She peered at me for a moment as if trying to work out whether I was telling the truth. I smiled faintly.
‘Right then,’ she said.
Next to appear was Monica. ‘Sony you’re crook, Harriet. Don’t mean to disturb you only I’ll be gone tomorrow.’
I leaned up on one elbow. ‘Well, good luck. Where are you heading?’
She shrugged, a true daughter of the jolly swagman. ‘See where I end up.’
‘Take care.’
‘And you. Look out for the Greek. See you, Harriet.’
Shortly after that I heard the motorscooter start up, and the long, stuttering diminuendo as it climbed the hill to the château. Glasses chinked together on a tray, the annexe door opened and closed. The glint of the pool fragmented as the girls went in for a swim.
He may have knocked, but I didn’t hear him. He was suddenly there, closing the door softly behind him with one hand, holding the Count’s posy in the other.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine.’ It was suddenly true.
‘This was a good wheeze. I told them I’d come and give you the once-over – in my medical capacity.’
‘Of course.’
He moved to the side of the bed. ‘I think you ought to have this.’ He laid the po
sy on the bedside table where it looked rather like one of those lizards which display an enormous ruff when on the attack. Or when courting.
He’d put his shirt back on, but it was undone, and now he shrugged out of it and slipped out of his shoes. As he unbuttoned his trousers he said conversationally: ‘I have to make an inspection of this property, you know.’
This was at least as plausible as most of Kostaki’s chat-up lines, and a good deal more romantic than some. And what did it matter? It was as though he’d never been away. I was swept up and churned vigorously in the familiar tumble-drier of his embrace. The earth didn’t merely move – it boogied furiously for a full fifteen minutes. Clara and Naomi could have been going down for the third time and I should not have noticed. In fact it was curious, as we surfaced, sweating and gasping, to hear them splashing in the pool as though nothing had happened.
‘We really shouldn’t be doing this,’ I murmured. Kostaki and I were still joined at the hip, and he responded to this observation by giving one of his famous corkscrew thrusts, a movement with a hint of whiplash like the jump of a bucking bronco, designed to restart a flagging motor.
‘Don’t do that,’ I begged.
He did it again. ‘I said don’t …’
‘I know …’
‘Then why …?’
‘That means you like it.’
He was right. As we started all over again I heard the girls’ music by the sous-sol and knew we were safe for the moment.
The Villa Almont had once been paradise; then purgatory; and now it was very heaven.
‘So,’ said Kostaki, ‘I shall be here for a few days yet.’
We’d been for a swim and were sitting in the evening sunshine by the pool. The girls were indoors making pancakes: an autumnal smell of burning floated from the house.
‘That’s wonderful,’ I said.
We sat in silence for a minute or two in contemplation of our good fortune. Then Kostaki said:
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