by Cooper Jilly
‘Rory,’ said Finn, kicking a log on the fire, ‘has never done anything noble in his life. This little display of territorial imperative is sheer bloody-mindedness because he doesn’t want me to get you. It’s only me he’s jealous about. Did he ever give a damn when Calen Macdonald made a pass at you?’
‘No,’ I said, plunging back into the depths of gloom.
‘Why don’t you leave him? You know how much I want you to.’
‘The downward path is easy,’ I said, ‘but there’s no turning back. When your dear, scheming sister was telling me how mad Rory is about her, it hurt me so much I couldn’t speak, but when she started dropping dark hints about you and Doctor Barrett, it irritated me but it didn’t tear me in pieces at all… Q.E.D. I love Rory, not you.’ I suddenly felt a great sense of loss. ‘I’m wildly attracted to you, physically,’ I said, ‘I expect I always will be, but I’m stuck with loving Rory.’
‘Even if he doesn’t love you?’
I nodded. I played my last card: ‘The only way it might work is if we went away together, away from Irasa, and Rory and Marina, and all those associations — but that would mean your leaving the hospital.’
‘Darling, I can’t abandon it at this stage,’ said Finn. ‘You know I can’t.’
I could see the pain starting in his eyes. I went over and put my arms round his neck, breathing in his strong, male solidarity.
‘Oh Finn,’ I whispered, ‘I’m so sorry it’s not you.’
Chapter Thirty
All in all I didn’t feel in a very festive state for Coco’s party. Numb misery would have just about summed it up. Rory had noticed my red eyes when he got home, and demanded to know what was the matter. I’d refused to tell him, and he’d got extremely bad tempered.
I was wearing a very sexy red dress, but in my current condition I felt about as sexy as a pillar-box.
‘At least it matches your eyes,’ said Rory.
Coco’s party was the usual noisy success, but everyone seemed even more anxious to get drunk than usual.
‘My sister arrives later,’ Coco told me. ‘She says she is bringing me a surprise. I think I am too old to be surprised by anything, but perhaps it will be something that amuses Buster.’
Marina was wearing a beautiful white dress: everything about her shimmered and glimmered softly as though the material had been woven of candle beams. But inside it she looked like a stricken masquerader. Hamish was there, too, looking dreadfully old and ill. I hadn’t seen him since the night he told me Rory and Marina were brother and sister.
Rory was drinking steadily and talking to Buster about fishing — Buster was in a very good temper, having landed a huge salmon that afternoon.
I was being the death and soul of the party.
About ten o’clock, after supper, a crowd of us were in a little room off the hall, playing roulette. Rory was winning, Hamish was losing heavily. Buster was still talking about his salmon. ‘Amazing fish, the salmon,’ he said, placing four chips on Rouge. ‘They live for years in salt water, and then always come back to the same freshwater spot to breed.’
‘Not surprising,’ said Marina, and she looked at Rory and laughed. ‘As you’d know, Buster, if you’d ever suffered the agony of making love in salt water.’
‘I really thought the bugger had got away,’ said Buster, not listening at all.
‘Not surprising,’ said Rory, ‘if he saw you hauling on the other end of the line.’
Then, just as there was a pause in play, and Buster was raking in counters, Hamish looked at Rory.
‘I hope you’ve been keeping a pretty close guard on your wife lately,’ he said.
Rory stopped in the middle of lighting a cigarette.
‘Shut up, Hamish,’ I snapped.
‘Hush, darling,’ Rory put his hand on my arm. ‘Hamish is about to explain himself.’
‘All I’m saying,’ said Hamish, flashing his false teeth evilly, ‘is that patients often fall in love with their doctors, and it’s nice to know I’m not the only cuckold in Irasa.’
His words brought an uneasy silence.
‘Belt up, Hamish,’ said Buster. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘Oh, I do, Buster, old chap. All I’m saying to Rory is that next time he goes to Edinburgh, and my wife disappears to join him, he should realize that while he’s away, pretty Mrs Balniel will be amusing herself with Dr Maclean.’
‘That’s not true,’ I squeaked.
‘Are you going to take that back?’ said Rory through clenched teeth.
‘No, dear boy, I’m not. Your wife is as big a whore…’
He got no further. Rory had chucked his drink into Hamish’s face.
‘And that’s a waste of good whisky,’ he said.
Hamish, whisky dripping from his face, made a lunge at Rory.
Buster pulled him off.
The doorbell rang noisily, bringing us back to our senses.
‘Buster, Rory,’ shrieked Coco from the hall, ‘I think it must be Marcelle.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Buster, and hurried out.
Hamish wiped the whisky off his face. I dared not look at Rory or Marina.
The next minute, Coco swept into the room with her sister, Marcelle.
We all tried to act normally and everyone kissed everyone on both cheeks. Marcelle was not as pretty as Coco, younger and brassier, but pretty high voltage all the same.
She said, with a touch of malice: ‘I’ve brought you your surprise, chérie. He’s putting the car away and feeling a little shy, too.’
‘Why don’t you go and get him, Buster?’ said Coco.
Buster trotted out obediently.
‘Who can it be?’ said Coco excitedly. ‘I have so many skeletons in the wardrobe.’
I’d had my share of surprises, too. I was still shaking from Hamish’s accusations. I sat down on the sofa. The next moment Buster came through the door. For once he’d lost his superb indolence. He looked shattered. He went up to Coco.
‘Darling,’ he whispered. ‘This is going to be something of a shock.’
‘I hope it’s a nice one,’ said Coco, patting her curls and arranging her breasts in the low-cut black dress. Someone else stood behind Buster in the door, a tall thin figure.
Alerted by everyone’s faces, Buster swung round.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘I told you to wait.’
I watched, fascinated, as the man came through the door. He had unruly black hair streaked with grey, high cheek bones, formidable, contemptuous black eyes above grey pouches, and a haughty thin-lipped mouth. He was dressed theatrically in a black cloak with a gold earring hanging from one ear. He looked around slowly, taking everyone in. He must have been at least fifty — but he was still sensationally attractive. And I knew positively that I’d met him somewhere before.
There was a pause, then Coco turned as white as a sheet. ‘Alexei,’ she said in a frozen tone. Then she gave a strange little laugh that was almost a sob, and running towards him, flung her arms round his neck.
The odd thing was the silence. Everyone in the room looked stunned.
‘You’re still very beautiful, Coco,’ Alexei said softly. ‘How did I ever let you go?’
Coco seemed to recover herself.
‘I was not rich enough for you,’ she said unromantically.
‘You haven’t been properly introduced to my husband, have you, Alexei?’ said Coco. ‘Alexei was a great boyfriend of mine before I married Hector,’ she said.
‘So it seems,’ said Buster.
‘I seem to have stumbled on a little family gathering,’ said the stranger with amusement.
Oh, where had I seen that arrogant, equivocal smile before?
‘You must also meet my son, Rory,’ said Coco.
Rory got to his feet.
Very carefully, they looked each other up and down.
I looked from Rory to the stranger. The resemblance was unmistakable.
‘Did you say
Alexei was a boyfriend of yours before you married my father, or afterwards?’ Rory said softly.
Coco shrugged her shoulders, ‘Well, a bit of both, darling.’
Alexei turned to Rory. ‘Your mother and I were very much in love but, alas, we neither of us had any money. So she married Hector, and I, alas, martyred in the arms of…’
‘A fat American heiress,’ said Coco.
Then Rory started to laugh. He got a drink and raised it to Hector’s portrait, kilted and bristling, over the fire. ‘So the old bastard wasn’t my father after all,’ he said, and turning to Alexei, ‘I do hope you don’t expect me to call you Daddy?’
Coco smiled. ‘You do not mind, chérie?’
Rory shook his head. ‘As long as his references are all right.’
Alexei grinned in genuine amusement. ‘Oh, they’re extremely good, my dear. I’m Russian; white, of course, and can trace my ancestry back to centuries before Peter the Great.’
His glance wandered in my direction. He had exactly the same way of stripping off all one’s clothes that Rory had.
‘This is Rory’s wife,’ said Coco.
Alexei sighed and bowed over my hand. ‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘I suppose that puts her out of bounds?’
‘I wouldn’t let that worry you,’ I said in a shaking voice. ‘Incest has never deterred anyone in this house.’
I’ll never understand any of them, I thought hopelessly. Only Marina was beginning to generate a fitting amount of emotion.
The next moment she had rushed up to Rory and flung her arms round his neck.
‘Don’t you see, darling?’ she cried wildly. ‘That lets you and me off the hook.’
The room swam before me.
Chapter Thirty-one
The next moment I blacked out. I remember coming to and seeing a sea of faces and hearing Rory shouting at everyone to get out of the way and give me some air.
‘She looks terrible,’ said Coco. ‘Are you all right, mon ange?’
‘She got up too soon,’ said Buster.
‘She ought to see someone,’ said Coco.
‘I can see at least ten people already,’ I joked feebly.
‘Shall I call Finn?’ said Marina.
‘No,’ snapped Rory, ‘that’s the last thing she needs,’ and picking me up, he carried me upstairs.
‘You’ll rupture yourself,’ I grumbled, as he stumbled on the top step. Thank God I’d lost some weight in hospital.
Rory kicked the door of the best guest room open. A fire was blazing in the grate. The purple-flowered sheets of the bed were turned down. The scent of freesias filled the room.
‘But it’s all ready for Marcelle,’ I said feebly.
‘She can sleep somewhere else,’ said Rory, depositing me on the bed. He started to undo the zip of my dress.
‘I’ll do it,’ I stammered, leaping away. He looked at me, frowning.
‘Do you hate me so much you can’t even bear me to touch you?’
‘No — I mean…’
‘What do you mean?’ The tension was unbearable.
‘I can’t explain.’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘All right, if that’s the way you want it. I’ll get you a couple of my mother’s sleeping pills.’
I sat down on the bed, burying my face in my hands. I felt sick. How could I explain to him that I couldn’t bear him to touch me because if he did, I’d only collapse, gibbering with lust, telling him I couldn’t live without him, that I loved him — all the things he hated.
Coco’s sleeping pills must have been very strong. It was mid-day when I woke up. The sun was streaming through the curtains, everything was quiet, except for a persistent thrush, and the occasional click of Buster hitting a captive golf-ball in the garden.
The fire had been re-lit in the grate. The scent of freesias was stronger than ever. Walter Scott lay sprawled across my feet. It was such a pretty room. For a moment I wallowed in the voluptuous euphoria created by the sleeping pills, then, bit by bit, the events of the last night came filtering back. Coco’s sister arriving and then that glorious Russian turning out to be Rory’s father, and Rory not being Marina’s brother after all, and there being nothing now to stop them getting married — and having hordes of ravishing black-eyed, red-haired children or ravishing blue-eyed, black-haired children. Oh, God, God, God, I writhed on the pillow — a bad business paid only with agony.
What the hell was I to do next? The last month had been difficult certainly, Rory and I living together with no sex, but at least we’d had a few laughs, and I felt somehow that even if he didn’t love me in the white-hot way he loved Marina, he was making very real efforts to make a go of it. Then Marina’s words of yesterday came back to me: ‘If he weren’t my brother, he’d drop you like a hot coal.’
I lay feeling suicidal for a bit, then got up and drew back the curtains. It was a marvellous day, the sea sparkling, the larches waving their pale green branches against an angelically blue sky. I felt the sun warming my hair and smoothing away the marks of the sheets on my skin.
Buster, hearing the curtains draw, looked up. I moved out of range and examined my body in the mirror. The only advantage about being miserable is you do lose weight. For a minute I forgot my gloom and admired my flat stomach and my ribs, then I sucked in my cheeks, and putting on a haughty model’s face, stood up on my toes.
‘Very nice,’ said a voice at the door, ‘you’ll make the gatefold of Playboy yet.’ It was Rory. I gave a squeak of embarrassment and grabbed a towel to cover myself. ‘Don’t,’ he said, shutting the door. He looked extremely pleased with himself. I wondered, with a flash of despair, if he’d spent the night celebrating with Marina.
‘You look better,’ he said, coming towards me. I backed away.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Em, stop behaving like a frightened horse.’
He was wearing a dark blue sweater, and an old pair of paint-stained jeans; his hair was ruffled by the wind: he looked so unspeakably handsome, I felt my entrails go liquid. I lowered my eyes in case he read the absolutely blatant desire there. I wanted him so much I had to turn away and jump back into bed, pulling the sheets up to my neck.
‘That’s a good girl,’ said Rory. ‘It seems a pity to get up on such a lovely day.’
‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.
‘Wandering around the house in various stages of undress, groaning about their hangovers.’ He sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. ‘Do you still feel sick, does the smoke worry you?’
I shook my head in surprise, fancy Rory bothering to ask that.
‘How are you getting on, adjusting to your new — er — father?’ I baulked on the word.
Rory grinned. ‘I quite like him, but he’s an old phoney; he’s already tried to borrow money off me, but then my mother always did have frightful taste in men. I’m very glad he didn’t bring me up, I’d have been cooling my heels in Broadmoor by now.’
‘Is he as grand as he makes out?’ I said.
‘I don’t think so, he looks degenerate enough, but I don’t believe those claims about tracing his ancestry back to Peter the Great. It does appear in fact that I’ve been born on the wrong side of an awful lot of blankets. Do you mind having an illegitimate husband?’
‘Do you mind?’ I said cagily.
‘Not at all, I never understood how Hector could be related to me anyway. His favourite painter was Peter Scott. There’s only one slight problem now to tax the ingenuity of the family solicitor. Have I any right any more to Hector’s money?’
‘Are you worried about it?’
‘Not particularly, I quite like the thought of starving in a garret.’ He shot me a glance under his eyelashes. ‘How about you?’
‘I haven’t tried it,’ I said carefully. ‘How’s your mother taking it?’
‘Medium. I think she’s a bit put out. Buster and Alexei have taken to each other like drakes to water, great bounders think alike I suppose. Alexei, like all foreigners, has a great rever
ence for English upper-class institutions. His ambition, like Buster’s, is to murder as much wildlife as he can. He’s so heartbroken the grouse shooting season is over that Buster has promised to take him pigeon shooting this afternoon.’
‘Are you going?’ I said.
‘I might — for a laugh. So my mother is rather irritated about the whole thing. She’s not gaining an ex-lover, she’s losing a husband. Alexei is between marriages at the moment, I think he and Buster might do very well together.’
‘But he’s old enough to be Buster’s father,’ I said.
‘Probably is, if I know that lot,’ said Rory. I burst out laughing. Rory took my hand. ‘You haven’t laughed much lately, Em. I think we ought to have a talk.’
I snatched my hand away, ‘People always say that,’ I said in a trembling voice, ‘when they’re about to say something awful.’
‘I’ve made you very unhappy since I married you, haven’t I?’ said Rory. ‘I’m sorry, you must have had a pretty bloody six months.’
Panic swept over me. ‘Come on,’ he said in an exaggeratedly gentle voice, ‘come here.’ He held out his arms to me.
‘No,’ I said desperately, ‘no, no, no.’
I knew exactly what he was about to say, that he’d made me so unhappy I obviously didn’t want to stay married to him any longer, so why didn’t we have an amicable divorce? If he touched me, I knew I’d cry.
‘Is it that bad?’ he said.
I nodded, biting my lip.
‘I gather Finn Maclean was round to see you yesterday,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Are you still hooked on him — come on, I want the truth.’
I felt defeated, my eyes filled with tears. There was a knock on the door. ‘Go away,’ howled Rory. In walked Finn. ‘My God,’ exploded Rory, ‘why the hell can’t you ever leave us alone? What do you mean by barging in here, who the hell asked you?’
‘I’ve come to have a look at Emily,’ said Finn.
‘You’ve had a bloody sight too many looks at Emily recently,’ said Rory.
‘She happens to be a patient of mine.’