Lucy breathed in and out. Then she tried to be tactful. ‘Anyway, since we would have to look after official visitors when you and the Ambassador are on home leave, maybe having Mr Jamison-Smith to stay will be good practice for me.’
Helena sniffed again. ‘Well, at least you have a well-trained maid, thanks to your predecessor. I suppose I shall just have to let you carry on, but please come to me if you have any problems.’
As Lucy walked home across the compound, she was aware of having won some sort of minor victory in the battle of life. She had asserted herself and Helena had capitulated, even tried to help.
*
Despite her brave words, she did become rather nervous during the weeks leading up to Jazzer’s arrival. Martin came back every day with a new version of the Minister’s programme, neatly printed out on pale azure crested stationery.
‘He’ll be having most of his meals at the Residence or out, Lucy, so you will only have to do one dinner party and a working breakfast.’
‘Entertaining people to breakfast? Oh goodness, Nee is hopeless at cooking eggs and things, she fries everything in smelly oil. I mean, her idea of a hot breakfast is fish soup with chillies. I suppose I could get some of that local bacon, but it’s so fatty. And there hasn’t been any cereal in the shops for weeks apart from soggy out-of-date American cornflakes. Are you sure Jazzer will approve of the working brekky idea? I don’t think he’s the sort of chap to eat much in the morning and you have made such busy days for him he won’t have any spare time at all.’
‘Don’t be silly, darling. He’s not meant to have much spare time. It’s not a holiday, though I admit he is going on to Bali afterwards. This whole programme is agreed with his office in London in advance. If the Minister doesn’t like any of the arrangements, his Private Secretary will let us know.’
*
Jazzer was very short, about Lucy’s height, with thin mousy hair slicked straight back. His face was round and unlined and his bright blue eyes confident, his manner extremely friendly. He wore a smart pale grey tropical suit and pungent aftershave. One could almost touch the charm he exuded, a charm which could be turned up and up to an exceedingly warm glow.
When he was settled in the corner of the drawing room sofa, drinking Earl Grey out of one of Lucy’s best wedding-present cups, she remembered that she did not like him very much. He was one of those men who stared at her chest in a not particularly nice way.
‘Dear old Luce, Porky sends you lots and lots of hugs and kisses. Can’t wait till we’re alone so I can deliver them direct, straight from the stallion’s mouth, as they say.’ Lucy decided to ignore the stallion aspect. ‘How is Porky?’
‘Oh, she’s a bit bogged down by the sprogs. Jolly tricky when they’re at different schools.’
‘Do tell me about them, what are they all up to?’ She hoped that by concentrating on his children, she would deflect Jazzer’s attention from the top button of her blouse.
‘Well, Henry has just started at prep school, poor little chap. It was rather a wrench for Porky. One knows in theory that one’s sons are going away at eight, just as one did oneself, but when the time comes it’s quite a blow.’
‘Poor Porky.’
‘Yes, and Nanny was frightfully cut up too.’
‘But Sophie and Persephone are still at home?’
‘Yes, Soso’s going to the village primary school at the moment. Porky wasn’t keen on the idea, but it’s good for the image to be democratic in these matters.’
‘And is she going to the local comprehensive after that?’
‘Oh, no, Porky wouldn’t wear that. We thought Godolphin, just like you and Porkers. I’m sure you approve, even if my cabinet colleagues don’t.’
‘And the baby?’
‘Yes, darling little Persie. Not really a baby now – goes to some sort of nursery school run by one of Porky’s chums. Haven’t seen much of any of the kids lately. You know old Porks prefers to stick in the country. She loathes my pad in Westminster and everything to do with politics. Can’t blame her . . . Oh, damn the fellow, there’s young Simon making signals.’
The Private Secretary, serious and shining, knocked on the glass door and wafted in. ‘Do excuse me. Minister, there are some urgent messages from the Office.’
‘Sorry, Luce my love, no peace for the wicked, duty calls and all that.’
*
The working breakfast, for men only, was not as difficult to organize as Lucy had feared since no foreign dignitaries attended, but the dinner for Jazzer was another matter. As well as the Ambassador and some important local British businessmen, a member of the royal family and the Chief Transport Minister of Maising were invited, plus their wives, who didn’t really count, Martin said, but one had to invite them.
Lucy changed her mind about the menu so many times that Nee, the fat old cook, became confused. Then Lucy had to ask Somjit to reorder the food to be on the safe side.
When the great day of the party came, even Somjit became nervous and kept ordering Boo, the number two maid, to dust and redust all the furniture, arrange and rearrange all the flowers, sweep and resweep the floors, lay and relay the table. She made beautiful water lilies with the table napkins and then Boo was forced to re-iron some of them because a crease was found in the wrong place. Lucy watched all this, just as she watched Nee waddle backwards and forwards to the shops for items she had forgotten, her fat face running with sweat. Lucy did not dare to intervene amongst her three servants in case she made matters worse, so she just paced about in the drawing room becoming more and more edgy.
Martin spent hours working out the placement at the dinner table. All very complicated, he said, because of the seniority of the people present.
‘Please don’t put me next to the Prince or the Maising Minister – I won’t know what to say to them,’ begged Lucy.
‘But you’re the hostess. Actually, I might put Jazzer and the Ambo in the middle, then we can have some guests of honour in the middle and some at the end. Of course, Jazzer has got to have a chance to talk to the Trade Minister, so I’ll put him in the middle too. It’s terribly difficult. I’ll have to check the book.’
To calm her nerves, Lucy had two gins and the party itself passed like a not particularly pleasant dream. Before dinner the women huddled in a group and whispered to each other while the men exchanged views in loud voices. It was clear that none of the guests noticed the food, let alone the flowers, except that one wife was semi-vegetarian and had to have an omelette instead of the overcooked beef. This caused such confusion amongst the maids that they forgot to serve the special sauce which Lucy had spent hours making the day before. But the efficient wine waiter hired for the night kept all the glasses topped up.
During the dinner, the Prince on Lucy’s right said nothing at all, and the dignitary on her left talked almost exclusively to the pretty Maising woman sitting next to him. Even if Lucy had wanted to join in their conversation she could not, for they spoke in their own language. Still, the meal was passable and everyone except Lucy and the Prince appeared to be having a good time. As was normal in Maising society, they all left immediately after coffee had been served, an excellent custom in Lucy’s view.
When they were alone in their bedroom afterwards, Martin congratulated her, saying it had all gone extremely well and Jazzer had told the Ambassador what an excellent job Martin was doing and if British Coachworks did get the contract to supply Maising with new buses then much of the credit should go to him.
Lucy decided not to say how much she had hated the party. Now it was over, she felt enormously relieved and happy that her husband was so happy. He took her into his arms and kissed her passionately. ‘Come to bed, my darling.’
Lucy hesitated. She said she had to fetch something from downstairs. She didn’t say what. She was feeling distinctly amorous herself, so it must be the right night to take the blue fertility potion that was sitting at the back of her desk drawer.
The potion was revolt
ing, like stale fish laced with chilli, and she was obliged to drink some juice to take the taste away. As she was replacing the juice in the refrigerator, she noticed that Nee had failed to cover some of the leftover food, so Lucy fetched the foil and completed the task herself. By the time she returned to bed, Martin was already asleep.
Poor lamb, he’s exhausted, she thought tenderly. Never mind, there’s always tomorrow. She lay down beside him. But all of a sudden she felt restless, as if she wanted to go for a long walk, hardly possible in Maising in the middle of the night. After tossing and turning for a while, she crept downstairs again to find some brandy to soothe her nerves.
In the neat but still smoky dining room, she opened the sideboard and took out a bottle of Rémy Martin and a brandy glass. As she unscrewed the cap of the bottle and poured herself a small tot, the verandah door opened.
‘Secret drinking, eh, Luce,’ boomed Jazzer. ‘Better watch it.’
‘Oh, Jazzer, er, would you like some brandy too?’
‘Yes, please, old thing. A large one. Must say, you look rather luscious in your negligee.’
‘It’s just a cotton dressing gown, nothing fancy.’
‘Maybe it’s the shape inside that makes it look so pretty,’ he said with a leer. Lucy did not want to ruin a successful evening by being rude, so she sought to change the subject. As she had used up all her questions about Porky and the children, she asked him about the House of Commons. This was an excellent choice as Jazzer found plenty to say on what a den of intrigue it was. Once in full flow, he talked well and she found him rather amusing. They both had another brandy.
‘I say, Luce,’ said Jazzer eventually, ‘I’ve still got some files to read and I can’t get my bedside light to work.’
‘Oh dear, I am sorry. What a bad hostess I am! The electrical layout in this old house is very weird. You have to switch it on behind the curtain as well – the maid must have failed to check.’
‘Which curtain?’
‘The right-hand curtain near the bed, you know.’
He smiled innocently. ‘There are so many curtains and doors in that room. Could you just come up and fix it for me? I do have to get the work finished tonight so Simon can send a telegram back to London first thing in the morning.’
They climbed the wide stairs together and went along to the end of the house to the guest bedroom which now smelt strongly of Jazzer’s aftershave. In order to reach the switch behind the curtain, Lucy was obliged to stand on the edge of the bed. She had drunk rather too much that evening, however, to be entirely steady on her feet. Jazzer caught her as she was about to fall.
But he didn’t let go. She started to pull away, laughing a little, but he pushed her back on to the bed laughing too. When he put his hand on her stomach and stroked it downwards, a normal Lucy would have slapped his face, but instead she gasped and lay still. Clearly encouraged by her passivity, Jazzer pressed on. And on.
It must have been three in the morning when Lucy opened her eyes. Due to the security lighting outside, the bedrooms in her house were never very dark so she could see quite clearly that she was not in her own room and that the man lying naked beside her, his hand on her left breast, was not her husband but Jazzer, Her Majesty’s Minister for Export Trade.
He did not stir when she wriggled away from him. She gathered up her nightwear and slipped out of the room and along the balcony to her bathroom. Shaking with misery, she thanked God for the fact that the air-conditioning would drown the noise of the water and any other noises that had occurred in the night. Everything she’d worn smelt of Jazzer and his vile aftershave. When she had washed herself she flung her nightdress into the bath so that the maids wouldn’t notice the unfamiliar scent.
She was angry and confused. Though he’d murmured something about droit de seigneur, Jazzer hadn’t raped her. When it came to the point to say no, she’d just lain there in a trance. If she had screamed or torn his hair, he might have stopped, but she had kept silent, yielding. Why, oh why? She didn’t like him, he wasn’t attractive, she had been a little merry but certainly not blind drunk. She blew her nose and threw the tissue into the waste-paper basket. It landed next to the empty blue phial.
Oh God, the fertility potion – it must have caused her crazy behaviour. What if it also did what it was supposed to? What if she became pregnant with Jazzer’s child? Weak and nauseated, she crept into her bedroom and lay down beside Martin who continued to snore contentedly.
Nineteen
Deborah had noticed the large silver Embassy Jaguar waiting beside the dusty pavement, but when she entered Maising’s smartest gift shop she was surprised to see Lucy rather than the Ambassador or his wife. Lucy, looking pale and strained, was accompanied by a small, fat young-to-middle-aged man who was talking a great deal. Deborah could see from the expression on her face that Lucy disliked this small, fat man.
‘Hi, Lucy,’ she called.
Lucy made the introductions. ‘Er, Mr Jamison-Smith is a visitor from England. He’s trying to buy a china or bronze cat for his wife who collects them. Do you think this is a good place?’
‘Sure, a great selection, but did you try Jata’s? They have more antique things there.’
‘Doesn’t have to be antique,’ said Mr Smith. ‘Just authentic Maising stuff. Poor Lucy, she has already taken me to at least five shops and now we’ve come back to look at the first cat I saw. What a marvellously patient hostess she is, a perfect FO wife.’ He smiled at Deborah appraisingly. ‘I must say, there are some stunning women in this country. Would you care to join us for a drink, Mrs Case? How about the Hilton just across the road?’
‘Jazzer, we have to buy the cats and get back or you’ll miss your plane,’ said Lucy.
‘Oh dear, well, if you come to London, get my address from Lucy, Mrs Case, or may I call you Deborah? I’d be so pleased to show you around the Houses of Parliament.’ He gave Deborah another meaningful stare.
With maximum drama and confusion, he purchased three life-sized china cats and arranged for them to be sent to England. She noticed that as they left the shop, he was attempting to massage his hostess’s bottom.
Deborah turned her mind to her mother-in-law’s birthday present. She looked around at the display of brassware, china ornaments, silver filigree, woodcarving and wickerwork – goods and souvenirs that were exactly the same as in all the other stores in the town. She sighed. Muriel had everything that could possibly be purchased in Maising. She would wait and suggest that Johnny buy his mother something suitable in Hong Kong next week.
Nowadays Deborah found herself longing for her husband to go away. Every time he left the house in the morning, she mentally sighed with relief, and every time his key turned in the lock at night her heart sank. And when he left the country for a few days, she felt liberated and happy – not just because his departure left her free to spend more time with Alex, but because she had begun to detest Johnny.
Perhaps she had never liked him much in the first place, and now that the sexual attraction between them was dying, there did not seem to be much remaining to hold them together. Apart from the children.
If she took the children and left, where would she go and what would she do? Could she support them and herself by teaching English or French? Probably not, not without a home to live in. She didn’t have the courage to leave her comfortable expatriate existence and return to Europe or the States to live alone in poverty with two small children. Nor could she go back to her parents and admit the failure of the marriage they had been so against. She wondered how other couples survived and compromised once they fell out of love. Maybe some perfect marriages existed, but then some must be more imperfect than her own.
For instance, if her poor cowed father-in-law could endure Muriel, she could put up with Johnny – at least for now.
*
Deborah was dismayed to find herself sitting next to Jock at Muriel’s birthday dinner. She had always tended to avoid Poppy’s husband. He was a difficult
man to talk to, never initiating a subject of conversation and always giving monosyllabic answers to attempts at small talk from females. He could become quite eloquent on the subject of money, but that was not a topic that interested her. Now that she was sleeping with his teenage son, she found it difficult to meet his eye, let alone make polite party conversation.
Fortunately Muriel claimed his attention during most of the meal. She was at her most flirtatious in a black lace gown which showed rather too much of her crumpled breasts. Now in her mid-sixties, she never forgot the fact that she had once been a beauty. Indeed her eyes were still round and fine, but her thin brows were redrawn into an exaggerated arch of surprise and her leathery cheeks over-rouged, giving her the air of an elderly doll. Her hair, newly tinted by Maising’s premier hair salon, was now the colour of Victoria plums and she had applied matching purple-red lipstick which ran into tiny rivulets around her pursed mouth.
‘Have some more, Debbie dear,’ she said as the servants appeared with a second dish of fried duck.
‘No, thanks very much, Muriel.’
‘I understand – we girlies have to watch our weight, don’t we? Mind you, Jock, when I was Deb’s age I was ever so thin. My admirers used to be able to span my tiny waist with their hands – and even when I had my little Johnny, I was slim as a reed only six weeks after.’
As Muriel continued to entertain them with stories about herself, Deborah was able to remain silent. From time to time she glanced at Jock’s tombstone face, wondering how he came to father the sensitive, artistic Alex. Alex never mentioned his mother, and even Poppy was relatively reticent on the subject of her predecessor. She recalled Poppy’s résumé of Alex’s mother – ‘A large cushion of a woman, messy and maternal, a painter of watery watercolours.’
Perhaps that’s why he likes me, thought Deborah. He has an infant memory of cosy cushions of flesh.
‘You’re like a woman from an Old Master painting,’ he’d remarked one day after they’d made love. ‘No, I don’t mean Rubenesque – more those women who picnicked naked on the grass, you know. Wonderful paintable powerful thighs and a delicious rounded stomach.’ She had been immensely flattered that he had managed to make a virtue of her pear-shaped figure.
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