The time to bow out was now.
She was going to quit just as soon as this godawful week’s gig was over. She was going to drive to the coast and find a high cliff – and then she was going to throw herself from the top of it.
Instead of it being the kind of wild, rash decision that was soon forgotten about, it was one that took deep root.
When she strutted on stage the following night wearing disco diva shoes with high Perspex heels studded with rhinestones, prepared to yet again give it all she’d got, the applause was embarrassingly thin.
Not for the first time in her life she hated an audience. Feeling as if she was on a treadmill she belted out all her old hits and near hits.
And then came the ultimate nightmare. Then came the moment she had never, in a million years, thought she would ever have to endure. Impatient for the headlining band to make an appearance, part of the audience began to slow handclap her – and within seconds the rest of the audience joined in with them.
Though her backing band continued playing, she stopped singing. Tears stung the backs of her eyes. This was it, then. This was what it felt like to die on stage. Well, she bloody well was never going to do it again. She was going to drive to the only part of the country she knew that had high cliffs. She was going to drive to Cornwall and put an end to the miserable charade that was now her life. She was going to drive to Cornwall, because in Cornwall there was someone to say goodbye to.
In Cornwall, there was Primmie.
Chapter Twenty-One
July 2003
Following a steward’s directions, Artemis drove her Volvo over rough grass to the far corner of a huge field. As she parked between a Range Rover and a Mini Cooper, she was nervous. She’d never felt comfortable at polo matches, not even in the early days of her marriage when she’d been thrilled at incorporating such an upper-class, elitist activity into her life. The rules of the game had always been beyond her and when the wives and girlfriends of Rupert’s fellow players realized she didn’t have a clue as to what was going on – and worse, that she didn’t even ride – they’d ceased treating her as a member of their privileged circle.
She slipped her feet out of her driving shoes, exchanging them for a pair of high-heeled, opentoed court shoes. She’d put on so much weight that if she didn’t wear high heels she looked as broad as she was tall. It wasn’t a figure fault that would be troubling many of the other female spectators. From bitter experience she knew they would all be slender and supple – and young.
Slamming the car door behind her, she began walking with difficulty over the uneven ground. Nearly every one of Rupert’s friends had dispensed with the wife they’d been married to when she had first met them and opted for a newer, slimmer model with an age range of early twenties to late twenties. It didn’t make for peace of mind when you were fifty-two and a size eighteen. Not that anyone knew she was a size eighteen, because she religiously cut all sizing labels from her clothes and sewed size fourteen labels in their place.
Rupert hated her being plump – though he didn’t call her plump. He called her fat. The problem was that the unhappier he made her about her weight, the more she sought comfort in chocolates and cakes. It was all a hideous vicious circle and it wasn’t as if she’d ever naturally been slim. She’d been plump as a child. The only time she hadn’t been plump was when she was at Lucie Clayton and the short period afterwards, when she was modelling.
She reached the end of the field that had been set aside for surplus cars and saw, ahead of her, that a chukka was in progress. With increasing nervousness she smoothed the skirt of her white polka-dotted navy silk dress and checked that her pearls were lying at the right depth in the V of her neckline.
Rupert would most definitely not be expecting to see her – not after their row of the previous evening. She’d been right to object to his plans, though. A month away, playing polo in Brazil, was absolutely out of order when they hadn’t, this year, spent any time at their holiday home in Corfu.
She was nearing the first of the jeeps and horseboxes parked round the edge of the ground and she pulled her tummy in as far as it would go, plastering a falsely bright smile on her face. Dozens of casually dressed girls were draped over the bonnets of the jeeps, their dark glasses making it difficult for her to know if she knew any of them or not. She couldn’t see anyone dressed stylishly, as she was, and realized too late that she’d committed a fashion wobbly by dressing for a casual match as if for Hurlingham.
A couple of the girls turned at her approach and one or two of them gave her a laconic wave. She smiled brightly back at them, desperately wishing she’d worn something a little less garden-partyish. No one else was wearing high heels. Absolutely no one.
She scanned the players. Rupert’s team was wearing pink shirts and his lean, still muscular figure was immediately identifiable.
‘Have you only just arrived?’ a middle-aged woman standing a few feet away from her said, lowering her binoculars. ‘Because if you have you’ve missed a brilliant first couple of chukkas.’
‘Yes, and have I?’ Artemis moved nearer to her, grateful at no longer standing so conspicuously alone.
‘And have you seen the rogue player?’ the woman continued, amusement in her voice. ‘It’s not often you see a woman playing, but Serena really is something special, isn’t she?’
Artemis’s carefully shaped eyebrows rose. There were women’s polo teams, of course, but she’d never known Rupert play against one – or with a female team member.
She raised a hand to shield her eyes, squinting into the sun to where Rupert was playing with flamboyance, throwing himself out of the saddle in an impressive display of gung-ho horsemanship. As he bent low, thwacking the ball, she saw that he was passing it to a fellow player who was, most definitely, female.
‘Who is she?’ she asked, as the girl galloped unmarked down the field.
‘Serena Campbell-Thynne – her father is a former chairman of the Guards Polo Club. Oh, golly! Look! She’s going to score! Go for goal, Serena! Go for goal!‘
To Artemis it suddenly seemed that everyone was shrieking Serena’s name. As Serena whacked the ball straight through the posts there were screams of near hysterical delight from the girls clustered round the jeeps.
Artemis wasn’t looking at the girls, though – or at Serena Campbell-Thynne. She was looking at her husband. He was standing in the stirrups, his polo shirt soaking wet, whooping like a schoolboy. She tried to remember when she’d last seen him looking so vividly alive and couldn’t. Was it because he was where he liked to be best – on a polo field? Or was it something else?
The chukka ended and the players began cantering off the field to change their lathered ponies for fresh ones. ‘Brilliant, Serry!’ she heard Rupert shout as, both of them still mounted, he pulled her towards him, giving her a smacking kiss. ‘Absolutely top-hole!’
‘They make a wonderful pair, don’t they?’ the woman at her side said fondly.
Artemis didn’t make any response. She couldn’t. She was too busy fighting a hideously familiar, sickening sensation deep in the pit of her stomach. Serena Campbell-Thynne was laughing across at Rupert, tugging off her riding hat. A sheaf of pale blond hair, tied into a ponytail, tumbled free. She said something to him, but what it was she couldn’t hear. Then, as Serena dismounted, Artemis heard her call across to Rupert: ‘Don’t get too complacent, Ru. There are still three chukkas to go!‘
Ru? Ru? In all the years she’d known him, she had never known anyone to shorten Rupert’s name. Nor had she ever known him to affectionately shorten her name. He’d never called her Tem or Temmie. He’d always called her Artemis. But he’d called Serena Campbell-Thynne Serry and he’d kissed her in full view of everyone.
‘I first saw them playing in the same team a couple of months ago and was struck then by how beautifully they pass the ball between each other,’ the woman was saying informatively. ‘It’s not surprising they’ve both been chosen for the team that
’s off to Brazil next month, is it? Perhaps they intend having a beach wedding out there. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’
‘No,’ she said, through lips that felt frozen. ‘I don’t think so. He’s married. He’s been married for thirty-two years.’
‘So long? He must have married very young. He only looks to be in his late forties.’
The two teams of four were cantering back on to the ground, Rupert and Serena’s ponies shoulder to shoulder.
‘He’s fifty-six,’ Artemis heard herself say, her voice sounding as if it were coming from a great distance. How many other spectators were assuming that her husband and Serena Campbell-Thynne were an item? And how long had their behaviour led to such an assumption being made?
She looked at the small groups of people nearest to her. Were they not coming up to her, acknowledging her presence and greeting her because they were embarrassed at her having put in an appearance when Rupert and Serena were playing together? Or, like the woman still standing by her side, were they completely oblivious to her identity? She hadn’t, after all, attended a polo match in years. She’d never set eyes on Serena Campbell-Thynne before. And Serena Campbell-Thynne hadn’t, as yet, set eyes on her.
In the fourth chukka Rupert’s team failed to score and the opposing team scored twice.
In the fifth they were lagging behind by two goals.
Artemis didn’t know why she was still standing watching Rupert and Serena shout frenzied encouragement to each other as they galloped and turned at dizzying speed. It was as if she were rooted to the spot. As if she couldn’t turn away no matter how much she wanted to.
Why did she always think that it wouldn’t happen again? Why was she always taken by hideous, ghastly surprise? His first affair had taken place only months after Destiny’s death. His last – and most serious – had ended three years ago. It had been with Lydia Gerard, the wife of one of Francis Sheringham’s old friends. Lydia was the daughter of a duke and, knowing Rupert as she did, she had been convinced that if James Gerard had divorced Lydia, she, too, would have found herself in the divorce courts. The prospect of having a duke for a father-in-law, rather than a construction magnate, would have been more than Rupert could have resisted.
The eight players were cantering off the field again for a brief respite before the final chukka. Artemis had lost track of the score. Rupert’s team could be winning, she didn’t know. She only knew that if, as well as being a superb horsewoman, Serena Campbell-Thynne was listed in Burke’s Peerage, then she, Artemis, could well be facing another huge threat to her marriage.
Her family background had always mortified Rupert. In their early days together he had managed to gloss over it, but as time had gone on he had found it a social liability to have a father-in-law whose name was synonymous with building sites. And though her not being keen on horses and riding hadn’t been an issue in the years when he’d thought her the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, they’d soon became an issue when she began putting on weight.
‘Here we go again,’ the woman at her side said, with satisfaction. ‘Last chukka and the pinks are going to have to score twice to win.’
Dimly, through her misery, Artemis was aware that as the riders rode back on to the field the atmosphere was electric. Why, when all that was happening was that eight players, on eight ponies, were whacking a ball about, she couldn’t begin to imagine.
‘Oh! Shame!’ the woman cried out passionately. ‘Did you see how Serena was ridden-off then?’
Artemis had seen a member of the opposing team barge his pony against Serena’s, drastically altering the direction in which she was galloping. She hadn’t known the technical term for what he’d done, but she had fiercely hoped he would send her flying out of the saddle.
Seconds later Rupert was hooking mallets with the offending rider, shouting insults at him as he did so.
Another four or five minutes and the chukka – and the match – was going to be over. What was she going to do then? Walk back to her car and drive home, pretending that nothing had been said to her? Or was she going to walk over to Rupert and remind Serena Campbell-Thynne – and anyone else who might be watching – that Rupert was a married man?
‘To your left, Serry!’ she suddenly heard Rupert shout.
‘He’s got a clear ride to goal,’ the woman beside her said, informative as ever. ‘Is she going to pass to him? Oh, yes! Good girl! I said they made a brilliant team, didn’t I?’
Everyone else watching seemed to think the same. No one was lounging against the bonnets of cars or jeeps now. Everyone was on their feet and as Serena passed the ball to him and Rupert cantered after it, there was a roar of approval.
From the urgency of it, Artemis gathered that there must have been goals that she hadn’t registered and that, if Rupert scored now, his team would have won.
She saw him raise his mallet, hitting the ball with every ounce of his strength. As it went flying between the posts and as the whistle blew to end the match, there was a storm of cheering.
‘Well, that was a spectacular finish, wasn’t it?’ the woman said, beaming across at her. ‘My name is Olwyn Kent, by the way. My son, Lance, was in Rupert Gower’s team.’
‘And mine is Artemis Gower,’ Artemis said, her eyes on Rupert as he cantered triumphantly up to Serena, leaning across so that he could hug her shoulders, her mind made up as to what it was she was going to do. ‘I’m Rupert’s wife.’
Olwyn Kent’s jaw dropped in appalled horror.
Artemis didn’t wait to hear any clumsy attempts at damage limitation. She began walking away, towards where the presentation to the winning team was to take place, aware that, even though she stood out like a sore thumb in her polka-dotted navy silk dress, Rupert still hadn’t registered her presence.
He’d dismounted and, in his pink shirt, white jodhpurs and riding boots, he looked spectacularly handsome. Olwyn Kent had been right. He did look to be in his mid-forties, not his midfifties. True, there was a flash of silver at his temples, but the rest of his hair was still raven dark and constant sporting activity had kept him lean and supple. She could well understand why young women kept falling for him.
There was a fresh burst of applause as he walked across to accept the trophy. Artemis watched, as if watching a stranger. This was a side of his life she had excluded herself from years ago when they had adopted Orlando and Sholto and she’d again become a full-time mother. Because of Rupert’s position as a merchant banker, they had always entertained on a massive scale and, because she had wanted to do so, she had always done the cooking herself, just as she had always looked after Orlando and Sholto herself. It had been a way of life she’d found great satisfaction in, but the debit side had been that she hadn’t had the time or inclination to be an adoring supporter at polo matches.
Over the years there had been numerous young women who, where Rupert was concerned, had fulfilled that role for her. Finding out about them had always caused her intense misery, but none of them had proved to be a serious threat to her marriage. Only Lydia Gerard, with her near royal family links, had achieved that.
And now there was Serena Campbell-Thynne, whose father was a former chairman of the Guards Polo Club – and whether Serena would be a major grief to her or not was impossible to tell.
For the moment, though, she was going to behave as if Serena didn’t exist. Avoiding emotional showdowns where Rupert might be pushed to make a choice between her and the girlfriend of the moment was how she had survived. It had kept her thirty-two-year marriage intact when the marriages of nearly every other woman she knew of her age, had long ago ended in divorce.
As Rupert lowered the trophy he’d been holding high, she took a deep, steadying breath and stepped directly into his line of vision.
If he was appalled or embarrassed at realizing she must have seen his over friendly behaviour towards Serena, he did a spectacular job of not showing it.
‘Just what the hell,’ he said through gritted teeth,
as she walked up to him, ‘are you doing here?’
‘It’s so long since I saw you play and … and I wanted to make up for our having such a nasty row last night,’ she said, uncomfortably aware that if she’d known last night that one of his reasons for wanting to go to Brazil was so that he could spend time with Serena Campbell-Thynne she would have been even more adamant that he should, instead, be spending his month’s holiday with her, in Corfu.
A youth walked a lathered pony between the two of them. Artemis, who had never been able to come to terms with just how big a pony could be, stepped back quickly, going over on the same ankle that had let her down earlier.
Holding the trophy with one hand, he hooked the thumb of his other hand into the waistband of his very snug-fitting jodhpurs, saying exasperatedly, ‘You’d have done better to have worn boots or trainers, Artemis. This isn’t Windsor Park or Hurlingham.’
‘Yes.’ She was well aware of her fashion faux pas. ‘So I’d noticed.’
The pony no longer separated them, but he didn’t make a move towards her. The gap between them was only three or four feet, but to Artemis it was a chasm she felt completely unable to bridge.
Why couldn’t he be nice to her? Why did she always have to try to please him and placate him? When she’d first fallen in love with him, she’d thought his olive-skinned good looks and offhand, saturnine manner very Heathcliff and romantic. Now, at moments like this, she found his manner both confusing and intimidating.
‘I thought perhaps we could spend the rest of the day together,’ she said, trying to sound happy and unconcerned. Trying to sound normal.
He looked vaguely amused. ‘At the stables?’ his eyes flicked over her fussily stylish dress. ‘I don’t think so, Artemis, do you?’
As she struggled to find an answer that might lighten the atmosphere between them, she saw, out of the corner of her eyes, that a tall, lithe, blond-haired, jodhpured figure was strolling towards them.
The Four of Us Page 28