Seven Week Itch

by Victoria Corby

  ‘It’s easy to control children if you’re an uncle who doesn’t have to see them every day,’ said Gina cynically. ‘And I doubt even Hamish could persuade the average eight-year-old that a pony is more fun than causing mayhem with a penknife. You don’t tend to find ponies in churches either. They eat the flower arrangements. Not to mention making messes that do nothing for the bride’s train.’ She finally managed to get the knot untied, cursing slightly. ‘It’s not surprising I can never manage to keep my nails,’ she grumbled, as she opened up the folio. ‘These are what I do for myself, pleasure work, you might say, all the non-commercial stuff and odd sketches of what interests me.’

  I began to leaf through them. They were of a varied bunch of subjects, from a lovingly detailed study of the spire of Lincoln Cathedral, to a frog half submerged in a pond, to Gina’s mother weeding a herbaceous border and wearing one of the most disreputable gardening hats I’d ever seen, and they are by nature a disreputable species. I turned a drawing over, and Gina reached over and whipped the one underneath away before I could get more than a glimpse at it. ‘Oops! I forgot that one was in there.’

  I giggled. ‘Tony’s got a very nice figure, I must say.’

  ‘It wasn’t his figure I was worried about you seeing,’ she retorted.

  The next picture was also of Tony, but safely attired and leaning on a gate, rather than against a pile of pillows. The one after was of Hamish, a quick study of his head as he smiled at something in the distance. ‘When did you do this?’ I asked curiously, thinking how relaxed he looked.

  Gina looked at it thoughtfully, screwing up her face. ‘The summer before last maybe. No, three years ago.’ Three years ago? I picked up the sketch and examined it. Unless she was the artistic equivalent of those society photographers who airbrush out all the lines and several double chins from their subjects, Hamish had aged about ten years since this was drawn.

  ‘It was before he got tangled up with Bettina.’ Gina looked towards me and smiled. ‘He seems to be getting over all that at last. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see you weren’t a tiny little brunette.’

  ‘Bettina?’ I asked blankly.

  ‘You don’t know about her?’ Gina asked in surprise. ‘God, Hamish likes to keep things close to his chest.’ She looked at me, obviously weighing up how much the bounds of discretion allowed her to tell me, now that she’d let a small part of the cat out of the bag. ‘She was a married woman he got involved with, but she decided to go back to her husband. Hamish was very cut up about it.’

  I looked again at the drawing. You’d need to be more than very cut up about something to change that much. ‘Is she why he left London?’ I asked.

  Her eyes flickered my way. She hesitated and sighed. ‘Indirectly. Her husband was one of the firm’s clients. He complained to the Law Society, and Hamish ended up nearly being struck off. Solicitors are like doctors, can’t lay a finger on their own clients. Obviously he couldn’t stay with the same firm, so he moved to where he is now.’

  So that’s what he’d meant when he’d said he’d blown it, but not in the way I’d imagined. That was certainly true enough. I would never have believed that controlled Hamish could endanger every­thing for passion, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? And at one time I’d believed he was cold… What was this Bettina like? Tiny and dark, from what Rose said about Hamish’s tastes, and stunning too, presumably. A mousy little woman might have made him forget all his professional rules about relationships with clients, but it seemed unlikely somehow.

  There must be more to the story than this. For instance, why hadn’t he simply moved to another firm in London? It wasn’t as if he’d been embezzling his clients’ trust funds, and it would be reasonable to assume he’d learnt his lesson about affairs in unwise places. I was about to try more probing, but Gina signalled the topic was closed by pointing to a sketch of the village cricket team. ‘While I was doing that their star batsman scored a six - right through the pub landlords bedroom window!’ I smiled dutifully, accepting this forced change of subject.

  I was helping her put everything back in their places when I knocked my elbow hard against a tall easel folded up against the wall. ‘Blast it,’ I said, rubbing it gingerly. ‘The one thing I don’t need to do is muck up my other arm as well.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Gina asked as she packed away her drawings and tied them up safely. ‘Didn’t Hamish say something about a car accident? I hope he wasn’t driving.’

  I hadn’t even got to Houdini and his appearance in the middle of the road when she let the portfolio fall back on its side as she turned around to stare at me in blank astonishment. ‘Luke? Luke Dillon?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘You’re going out with him and Hamish at the same time?’

  I was about to tell her that, whatever she might think, I wasn’t going out with Hamish, or with Luke, for that matter when she asked abruptly, with a lot less friendliness in her voice than had been there previously, ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Who?’ I asked stupidly. ‘Oh, Hamish, about Luke. Yes, of course he does. And I was only having dinner with him,’ I added defensively, realising with a district sense of déjà vu it wasn’t the first time I’d made this excuse to a member of the Laing family. ‘Anyway, what’s wrong with Luke, apart from him not having a regular job?’

  Gina looked at me thoughtfully, as if she were a barrister and I an unfriendly witness, then turned away. ‘He’s a bit of a cokehead, isn’t he?’ she said at last. ‘It’s not surprising he put you in the ditch.’

  That hadn’t been what she was going to say, I was sure of it, even if I suspected there was more than a grain of truth in what she’d just said. Maybe I was imagining it, I thought uneasily. She was probably just getting on her high horse about her brother’s supposed new girlfriend playing fast and loose with another man. Whatever, she continued to treat me with a degree of reserve for the rest of the time we were there.

  Inevitably, Hamish noticed the lack of any warm invitations from his sister for me to return at some later date, though Tony obliviously told me repeatedly how nice it had been to meet me and I was welcome at any time. ‘Did you say something rude to Gina about one of her paintings?’ he asked curiously as we were driving home.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘She thinks I’m two-timing you with Luke.’

  He glanced over quickly with raised eyebrows, then returned his eyes to the road. ‘Whatever gave her that impression?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘Not me!’ I said promptly, and probably not very flatteringly.

  He chuckled. ‘It’s a good thing she doesn’t know about your Frenchman then. Gina’s surprisingly conventional. She’d be appalled at the idea of me being three-timed.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Next Saturday afternoon I was doing last-minute clearing and tidying up before I had to leave to collect Arnaud from the station. Actually, I was just polishing the same bits again and again to work off my nervous energy. It didn’t take long even for the most meticulous and houseproud person to spring clean a space as small as this and Arnaud may have had his faults, but running his finger along the picture frames to check for dust had never been one of them. Getting out of bed early in the morning wasn’t one of his virtues either. He’d said firmly he couldn’t possibly get a flight before midday, he worked hard during the week and needed a lie-in on Saturdays. I’d noted before that he appeared to have no problem with getting up early when it involved doing something like going out on a friend’s boat. So he wouldn’t be here before about six o’clock. At least it meant I could spring our evening supporting charity on him at the last moment and give him less chance to come up with a reason why he shouldn’t go. I was sure he’d still try though.

  I checked my watch. Time to go. Arnaud had intended to hire a car and drive, but I, who had endured many white-knuckle rides with him, told him at imaginative length how terrible the M25 was, especially on a Saturday afternoon, much worse than the Péripherique, and as for the M1, well, you moved along
quicker in your average NCP. I assured him that though naturally InterCity services couldn’t match up to the TGV, the trains to Leicester were fast, punctual and very frequent. I thought it more tactful not to say that at least in a train I could be sure he was keeping on the right side of the tracks.

  I was strangely nervous. Maybe because it was such a long time since we’d seen each other, nearly six months; it didn’t seem that long and yet in some ways it seemed much longer. Normally we picked up exactly where we’d left off before, which was a major reason why our affair had gone on for such a long time - we were good friends as well as lovers. But now, as I drove towards the station, trying and failing to overtake a caravan that was ambling along at sightseer’s pace, I found myself wondering what we were going to talk about. Our paths had diverged so much in the last few months; I was absolutely certain that he wasn’t going to find the minutiae of life in the country thrilling, especially since there was so much I couldn’t very well rabbit on about. My social life, for one thing. He cordially disliked Rose and wouldn’t want to hear about what I got up to with her, and though Arnaud reckoned he was perfectly entitled to play away from home and paid lip-service to my right to do the same, if there was any actual hint I might be taking advantage of it he got stuffy. So, no talking about Luke. Not that there was any playing at home or away going on with Luke just now. He’d been completely hectic with something or other, so apart from when he’d dropped round on Sunday with a huge bunch of flowers and fulsome apologies about not taking me home himself I hadn’t seen him this last week, though we’d chatted a couple of times on the phone. Frankly, I’d been rather relieved. My life had become unnervingly complicated enough without adding the possibility of things with a new boyfriend going a stage further days before the current model arrived for the weekend.

  I’d have to keep quiet about Hamish too, there hadn’t been any playing going on there either, but Arnaud would never believe a man could take a woman to visit his sister’s studio without an ulterior motive. Especially after she’d spent the night in his bed, but Arnaud certainly wasn’t going to know about that. Neither was anyone else. Rose had been most curious about what had happened, she’d rung several times last Saturday to check I’d got home safely and had only got the answerphone. I’d muttered some excuse about switching the bell on the phone off so I could sleep and then going out to lunch with people in the village, and she’d been so wracked with guilt over the equivalent of slipping me a Mickey Finn that she’d failed entirely to see the holes in my story.

  Thanks to the caravan and the driver’s dozy habit of wandering into the middle of the road whenever a good overtaking opportunity came up, I was late. Only a minute and a half late and the train was only just beginning to draw out, but all the same Arnaud was standing on the platform looking around with all the forlorn reproach of a child who’s afraid he’s not going to be picked up at the end of term. For a moment I felt as if I was looking at a stranger; this neat man with the short brown hair and the sharp features, in his impeccably cut beige linen jacket and navy trousers, didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. A passing woman turned and gave him a second look and I still felt so distant that it didn’t arouse anything in me, not vicarious pride he was here for me, nor a pang of jealousy that he’d returned the look with interest. Then he put his hand up to smooth down some imagined ruffled lock of hair in such a familiar gesture - I must have seen it literally thousands of times before - that my heart skipped involuntarily with remembered pleasure and I ran towards him, full of apologies.

  ‘You have lost weight,’ he told me, giving me an immediate and automatic once-over. ‘I think I laike it-’ all my efforts to get him to pronounce his i’s in the English way had failed - ‘but do not lose any more. That,’ his eyes rested appreciatively on my bosom - ‘is one of your better features.’

  ‘I’d have to lose one hell of a lot of weight before I became flat-chested,’ I pointed out reasonably and hugged him, that awkward feeling of not really knowing him finally being pushed away under an enthusiastic and expert kiss.

  We chatted in a fairly desultory manner as we drove back to the cottage; about his flight, the inadequacies of the Tube as compared to the Metro – naturally - and the surprising fact that he’d been quite impressed with the train. Arnaud seemed to be on his best behaviour. He praised the scenery, it was an attractive route to Little Dearsley, admittedly, but nothing stunning, admired the lushness of the grass and hedges - Arnaud had never been a nature freak before, to my knowledge, and forbore to comment on the cruel way I’d left him standing for ages on the platform at Leicester station. He was even polite about the cottage, saying he could see it suited me perfectly and it looked like I was living in a nice village. After he greeted the news that instead of having dinner in a Michelin-recommended restaurant we were going to be tasting Chilean wine and eating rice salad amongst a crowd of local worthies with something approaching equanimity, I began to wonder uneasily if he’d got religion.

  He even said he’d enjoy the chance to have a look at a proper English country house. I warned him Moor End Hall wasn’t exactly in the top echelons of architectural grandeur, but he didn’t appear to mind, saying that it was le style Anglais that he wanted to see, all chintz and gundogs. This wasn’t the normal cheerful selfishness that I’d come to expect from the man I knew and loved. That wasn’t to say I wouldn’t take as much advantage of this unusual magnanimity as I could.

  ‘We should be changing, I promised Rose we’d be there early in case she needs our help,’ I said. Arnaud put his still-half-full glass of wine down on the side table and began to get up, so I added quickly, ‘Why don’t you stay down here and finish that while I get ready? The bedroom’s so small we’ll just get in each other’s way if we’re there at the same time.’

  He nodded equably, probably thinking that if I took my usual amount of time he’d have a chance to have another glass as well. I went upstairs, realising guiltily that lack of space wasn’t why I felt strangely awkward about the idea of getting undressed in front of him. It must be something to do with the length of time since I’d taken off my clothes while he was in the same room, I thought uneasily, as I stripped off my tee shirt and skirt and reached for my dressing-gown. It had to be a female thing, for I was sure that he’d have no objection to my seeing him in his skimpy Homs, in fact, he’d enjoy it. He was proud of his figure. With reason too.

  As usual, the weather had done exactly what Rose wanted. This morning when it clouded over briefly she had rung me wailing she’d planned to have the tasting on the terrace so everyone could wander around the gardens and now everything was threatened with being rained out at any moment. I looked out of my window, saw a single cloud in an expanse of blue, and said that in the event of an unexpected deluge they had plenty of room indoors. With eminent practicality, she said if the guests had something to do, rather than just stand around, they’d drink less and there’d be more profit for the charity. I could see she was going to make a formidable fundraiser, though her real worry had been that she was going to suffer a barrage of ‘I told you so’s’ from Flavia, who had stated emphatically from the moment the plan was mentioned that it was quite ridiculous to even think of holding something out of doors in this country. But the cloud that had occluded the sun at eleven o’clock had drifted away, the day had been gloriously hot and was turning into a warm and balmy evening, absolutely perfect for tasting wine on a terrace.

  It meant I could wear the new dress I’d bought on a strictly window-shopping expedition with Amanda earlier in the week. She’d demanded I try it on and, over my nervous objections that I wasn’t used to wearing things that skimpy, insisted that I bought it. It was the sort of garment that would make my father snort in an old-codgerish way and say with laboured humour that it must have handmade by twenty skilled seamstresses, since he couldn’t believe much of the purchase price had been accounted for by the cost of such a small amount of fabric. It certainly showed rather a lot of me, and t
he strapless bra made essential by the narrow shoulder straps had the unnerving effect of making my bust look even larger than usual. Though, judging by Arnaud’s look when I came back downstairs again, the only person who objected to that was me. I sent him up before he could demonstrate his interest in the subject - we didn’t want to be late - and went to put on my make-up in front of a mirror balanced on the kitchen table. I doubted he was a reformed enough soul not to fight me for a place at the mirror in the bedroom.

  Despite my best efforts, the drive at Moor End Hall was already half full of cars when we arrived. I’d have like it to have blamed Arnaud and the length of time it took him to put on an outfit that would have been perfect for a yacht at Cannes - navy-blue silk jacket, white slub trousers, yellow shirt of cotton so fine it could have gone through a wedding ring - but in fact it was me getting cold feet over whether my barmaid’s figure was too much of a good thing in this dress. In the end the reflection that I didn’t have anything else clean and ironed, not to say the thought of Rose’s reaction when we turned up hours late, propelled me out of the door, to Arnaud’s loudly expressed relief.

  The matronly woman dressed in an alarming shade of puce who was taking the entrance money had a pleasing pile of five- and ten-pound notes stacked up in her cash box. She obviously knew me, though I couldn’t remember ever seeing her- surely I would have noticed the matching hair, for she said with a reproachful look that I’d been expected quite half an hour ago and it was so important to get on with the money-making activities early at events like this. She handed over sheets with prices and tasting notes for each of the twelve wines and spaces for the really earnest to write down their own comments, saying we did realise our entrance ticket only allowed us to have a single tasting of each wine, didn’t we? She looked at me in a meaningful way while saying this. For a guilty moment I wondered if she’d been having cocktails in a certain bar in Leicester on Friday last week and was speculating how long it was going to be before the raffle-ticket seller was laid out peacefully snoring it off under one of the tasting tables.