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Wild Grapes

Page 9

by Elizabeth Aston


  “Easily,” said Harry. “All she ever thinks about is sex. No, I wrong her,” he added in fairness. “Love is what Aimee’s about. Overwhelming, passionate, all-absorbing love. Plenty of action, too, but it’s never simple lust, she’d think that very crude. No, she enslaves men, makes them fall desperately in love with her. Then it’s off to someone new.” He crumbled a little roll from the basket of bread which the waiter had thoughtfully placed on the table. “Trouble is, it’s catching. Spend ten minutes with Aimee and you’ll find yourself thinking about nothing else but the delights of love.”

  “She’s lovely,” said Gina.

  “There you are, another one succumbing to her wiles. Watch it, or you’ll find yourself wrapped round one of her cast-offs before you know where you are. When she’s finished with them, she finds them new soulmates; she’s always matchmaking. She goes to weddings every weekend.”

  “Thank you,” Gina said to the waiter who handed them a small hand-written menu.

  “Also today we have monkfish, fresh, very delicious. And, when it comes to dessert, I will recommend the clafoutis with mixed fruit; very special, for today.”

  Harry looked appreciative. “Good. We’ll have that. You’ll like that, Gina.”

  Gina opened her mouth to protest that she would rather choose her own meal, admitted to herself that it was what she would have chosen in any case, and shut it again.

  They had coffee in the tiny garden outside, which overlooked the dark, restless sea. Little ripples of surf caught the light, then tumbled back into the waves. The restaurant was down a narrow track, which led nowhere else, so the only sounds were the clink of diners still eating in the dining-room, murmurs of staff in the kitchens and the slow suck and gentle slap of the sea. The air was salty and warm, with drifts of honeysuckle and jasmine from the plants in tubs round the patch of green where they sat.

  Gina had wanted to find out more about Harry and what he did, but he was like quicksilver, darting and sliding away from all her artful questions. He laughed at her. “No, I’m not going to tell you anything more about me, you’ll just have to find out as you go along.”

  “Why so secretive?”

  “I like secrets. Besides, you know quite a lot about me.”

  “Esme told me that you own and run a courier service in London, and that you have a company based in Bath to do with optics - the communicative kind, not prisms. I also know that you’re the youngest of the family. And that you say you’re gay, but you want to get married. That’s about it.”

  “That’s all there is.”

  “No,” said Gina, stretching her legs out lazily, enjoying the light wind on her bare flesh. “That’s half a portrait. Tell me more. What about particular friends? What kind of person do you fall in love with?”

  Harry moved his chair round, so that he was looking out to sea. “That’s exactly it. I’ve never been in love.”

  “With a woman, you mean?”

  “No, not with a man or a woman. Sex, yes. I like sex better with women, it’s more intriguing. But I like men better for their company, I understand how their minds and hearts work, I can get closer to them. I’ve had crushes on men, ever since I was at school, and I’ve had what you would call extremely close friendships. But, as far as I know, I’ve never been in love.”

  “Perhaps you have, only you don’t realize it.”

  Harry was certain on that one. “No. Whatever it is that happens with Aimee, the way men feel about her, I’ve never felt that. And what’s so infuriating is that once they’ve fallen in love with her, it’s as though they’ve been touched, they know how to do it, and bugger me, they go off and fall in love with other women. It’s a whole new world, and I want to be part of it.”

  “What’s this to do with getting married?”

  “Getting married is practical. I’ll explain it to you, because I don’t suppose Georgie did, or if she did, she’ll have got it wrong. My pa, Victor, doesn’t own Heartsease.”

  Gina sat straight up in her chair with surprise. “He doesn’t? Then who does?”

  “My grandfather.”

  “Victor’s father?”

  “Yes. Conrad Cordovan. A younger son of a younger son, as it happens. Connected to the Hart-Cordovans, who are our grander cousins. The main branch of the family lived at Heartsease until the seventeenth century. They’d done very well for themselves, places at court, all that. So they moved out, built themselves a big new pile on the other side of the county.”

  “Yes, Hester told me.”

  “After the Second World War, the house wasn’t used much, and it was an expensive second house to look after. A drain even on my rich cousins’ resources. And after the last war, it was finally put up for sale. The main family must have been a bit strapped for cash, or just didn’t want to be bothered with it. You could hardly give away old houses then, and the land wasn’t worth much.”

  “And your grandfather bought it.”

  “Indeed he did. The week before the news filtered through that his distant cousins were looking for a buyer - all very discreet in those days, no glossy ads in the posh mags - well, just before then, my grandpa had been in Ireland and had bought a ticket on the Irish Sweepstake.”

  “And he won?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heaps?”

  “Not heaps, no, but enough, so he bought Heartsease and the land with it, and moved in.”

  “What a lovely story,” said Gina.

  “With a sting in the tail. The old man didn’t bother with looking after the house or the land. He’d bought it from some atavistic whim; it was the family home. All he wanted to do was hunt and shoot and fish. Anything else was a boring waste of time.”

  “And so?”

  “And so, Victor started to grow up and he saw everything going to rack and ruin. He realized that if something didn’t happen, he wouldn’t ever inherit Heartsease.”

  “How old was he when this dawned on him?”

  “Knowing Pa, about nine, I should think. He waited until he was seventeen, and then, with the help of his brothers and sisters, all of whom also wanted the Hall to stay in the family, he booted Grandpa - and Grandma - out. Ultimatum time. I’m not sure what means he used, but I don’t suppose he was very scrupulous about it. He took over, banished them to a perfectly nice house in the north where Grandpa could carry on killing things, and took up business to restore the family fortunes. And to buy more land.”

  “But he never owned the house?”

  “No, that was part of the deal.”

  “But he will when his father dies?”

  “Not necessarily. It might not be wise, taxes and so on. No, the plan is to leave it to one of us.”

  “You’re the youngest.”

  “True. But look at the others. Victor doesn’t want either of his and Julia’s sons to take over, because he can’t stand them. He thinks Marcus is extremely dangerous, which he is, and that Charles is a fool, which he isn’t. If either of them had some delightful grandchildren pattering about, it might be different, but they don’t.

  “The next son is Alastor. One of Hermione’s twins. He’s into the arts in a big way, which means he needs to live in London. He’s also hopelessly in love with a woman who has no time for him. He won’t look at anyone else, let alone marry them. He likes Heartsease, but he’s not going to let it dictate what he does with his life. His words, not mine.”

  “What about your other brother?” Gina was so fascinated that she had forgotten to drink her coffee. She took a sip.

  “Must be cold,” said Harry. “I’ll order some more.” He made a movement to get up, but Gina wasn’t having that.

  “No, no, go on. You were saying about Don.”

  “Yes, you haven’t met Don. He’s a good guy. Pa’s been trying to marry him off for ages, but the trouble is, he’s always having affairs with married women. He also has a wild side, and from time to time lets rip with some fairly uninhibited young women. A good time is had by all, I understa
nd, but it doesn’t add to his desirability as a husband.”

  “Your sisters?”

  “Olivia isn’t interested in Heartsease. Not abstract or abstruse enough. Anyway, although she’s Victor’s daughter all right, there is this slight cloud of mystery about her mother. She turned up in the nurseries here as a baby, and that’s all anyone knows. Except for Victor, and he’s not telling.

  “Then there’s Aimee, need I say more? Can you see her managing the estate? What a joke. And Dinah, that’s Alastor’s twin sister, well, Dinah could run anything. The trouble is, she won’t ever marry. She loathes men.”

  “How old is she? Is she afraid of men? Won’t she get over her dislike of them?”

  “No way. She’s twenty-nine, currently shacked up with a bint from Scotland, and she isn’t remotely interested in men. She’s very attractive, so men are drawn to her, but she swats them away like flies. No hopes for a dynasty there.”

  “You’re gay, too. Victor’s got a problem.”

  “I’m not so committed that I won’t consider getting married.”

  “For the sake of the house and land.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Very cold-blooded.”

  “No, it isn’t. I see it as a business arrangement, because that’s what’s left to me. If I fell in love, then I wouldn’t be doing this, but I reckon I lack some vital chemical or gene in my make-up. Passion, yes. Sex, yes. Love, in its most romantic sense, no. That’s why I jumped at it when Georgie told me about you. You need to get married in the same way as I need to get married - for practical reasons. And Heartsease is worth it, don’t you agree?”

  “This is absurd,” said Gina.

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Are you in love with anyone now?”

  Gina was silent. It was her turn to look out to sea. Gina didn’t like personal questions, especially about her emotional life. She had thought she was in love with Alwyn. But she hadn’t thought about him since she had arrived at Heartsease. Hardly surprising, considering everything else she’d had to think about.

  Crush, she said to herself bitterly. That’s what she’d felt for Alwyn. Entirely unreciprocated, he had clearly never given her a thought of an amorous kind, and he hadn’t even turned out to be a good friend. Yes, he was sorry to lose a research assistant, but it was obvious that he regarded her departure as a nuisance, not in any way a personal loss. More fool her to trust him, just because he was an older man whose mind and work she admired. He’d taken great care to keep her at arm’s length, now she came to think about it; he knew how I felt, Gina realized, flushing at the thought. How humiliating. Perhaps he laughed about it with Angela...

  “No,” she said, making her voice sound cool and controlled. “No, I’m not in love with anyone right now.”

  “Watch those Americanisms,” said Harry lightly. “We don’t want to give the show away.”

  “Couldn’t you have married Georgie?”

  A look of revulsion came over Harry’s face. “Georgie’s vulgar,” he said shortly. “Vulgar mind, vulgar ways. And she has a streak of malice in her which doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’m grateful to her for suggesting you; I just hope the idea sprang from her love of interfering with other people’s lives and getting them organized, as she put it, and not from any evil plan that we don’t know about.”

  Harry leant back in his chair and raised his arm to summon the waiter.

  “So have we got a deal?”

  I won’t be cornered like this, thought Gina. “Not yet,” she said. “I need more time to sort everything out in my head.”

  “Be my guest,” said Harry courteously. “But then you are, aren’t you.” Touche, thought Gina, with a last glance at the sea.

  CHAPTER 8

  Zoe knew it was going to be a bad day before she even opened her eyes. She had a headache, for a start. One of the headaches she got on heavy Oxford days when there was thunder in the air.

  The milk was off. This she discovered after she had poured some into her coffee.

  The post brought an outrageous tax bill, an ecstatic postcard from a friend staying with her current lover in his villa on a private island off Sicily: “Heaven on Earth!”, a reminder from the dentist and a letter from her brother asking if she’d like to look after his three small children for a week while he and Fiona went away. “Since we know you aren’t planning to have a holiday this year, we thought it would be a nice change for you.”

  In a fit of pique, Zoe deposited the post in the bin, poured the solidified cup of coffee down the sink, and set off for the station.

  At least, she told herself, trying to look on the bright side, at least she had taken the day off work. Work was becoming increasingly irksome. She didn’t find her colleagues interesting, she loathed her new boss, and she knew perfectly well that it was a job which was taking her nowhere. However, work wasn’t so easy to find, particularly in Oxford, with hordes of keen young graduates jostling for positions. Work paid the bills. Work meant security and a pension.

  Security, Zoe said to herself in disgust, as she got on to the train. Pension! What was the matter with her? She should make an effort, get another job. Perhaps move to the country, but what job could she do there? She was fed up with living in towns, though.

  True, she liked Oxford, but not as much as she had done once. Oxford belonged to the incredibly young-looking undergraduates, not people like her, who had finished at the University three years ago. When she was older, she might like to come back, but now, she felt a has-been.

  But such an effort to change jobs, and for what? Another office, another set of people talking about mortgages and holidays and the car. Interesting for a few months, with new work and getting to know new people, and then the same stale round.

  The journey to Bath only took about an hour, but it seemed endless to Zoe. She changed at Didcot, in her mind adding giant toadstool caps to the cooling towers of the power station as the train pulled out of the station. Then into Bath, the station seething as the London train came in, delivering arty and musical types for the festival. I hate festivals, thought Zoe.

  She was meeting Gina at midday.

  “At Waterstones, by interesting travel books,” Gina had hissed down the line before ringing off abruptly.

  There’s another person whose life is a muddle, thought Zoe as she walked up Pierrepont Street. Hankering after that rather tiresome Alwyn, getting into a fix with her visa. Why isn’t life simple? Why did I find Tim so boring that I had to give the only man around at present the heave-ho just at the time of year when one most needs an escort?

  Zoe turned several heads on her melancholy progress through the centre of town. She didn’t care for her type of looks, longing to be dark and exotic, but there were plenty who found her wide blue gaze and oval face very fetching. She was tall, too, which made it easy for Mr Popplewell to follow her; he just had to look out for her shoulder-length silver-blonde hair.

  Zoe reached the bottom of Milsom Street, and balanced on the edge of the kerb, waiting to nip over the road and dive into Waterstones. She watched for a gap in the traffic and then, among the crowds waiting to cross further down, she spotted Popplewell. Being so tall and thin, with squarish specs, he was as noticeable as Zoe in his own way.

  Zoe shot across the road, narrowly avoiding the screeching and hooting cars and ran into Jolly’s, praying that Gina was safely inside Waterstones. Once inside the store, she resisted her first instinct to fly, and instead slowed down to saunter through the lingerie department. That will embarrass him, she thought.

  Not so. Nothing embarrassed a Popplewell in pursuit of his prey. He skulked behind the carousel of lacy bras and matching panties, looking absurd, in Zoe’s view; from his own viewpoint, he was simply a man doing his duty.

  Deliberately not looking in his direction, Zoe headed for the stairs. She went through the kitchen department and into the cafe, took a tray, carefully inspected the cake
s and pastries, took two, asked for a large coffee, and threaded her way to a table on the other side. Next to the other exit.

  She put everything on to a table, and then went back to the till to get a spoon, sending Popplewell hurtling back behind a wall of kitchen gadgets. Then, having sat down, she got up once again; back to the till, this time to get a napkin.

  Popplewell was thrown off his stride by this to-ing and fro-ing, so he retreated a little further away, still keeping a close eye on Zoe. She was obviously settling down for a while; she had opened a book and was slowly nibbling round the edges of her first pastry.

  Greed, thought Popplewell disapprovingly. Popplewell ate a wholesome diet, based on nuts and organic vegetables.

  Inevitably, a shop assistant approached him, inviting him to attend the demonstration of a new grater. Momentarily, his attention was caught.

  “...thus preserving all the vitamins and minerals in raw vegetables such as the carrot and turnip,” the assistant was saying.

  Fatal lapse. He could have sworn it was only half a minute that his eye had been off Zoe. Leaving the indignant assistant in mid-sentence, he galloped through the restaurant and through the swing doors which Zoe had been sitting beside.

  Zoe stepped out from a corner by the till, listened with satisfaction to the sound of clattering feet on stone stairs fading into the distance, and headed for the other stairs.

  Gina was browsing among the travel books, wondering who could want to buy a guide to holiday breaks in Düsseldorf, when Zoe arrived breathless beside her.

  “Quick,” she said. “Popplewell!”

  Gina stood rooted to the spot. “Popplewell?” she repeated. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s here,” Zoe said urgently. “In Bath. He must have followed me, horrible man. On the train, how dare he!”

  “Where? In this shop?”

  “No, he went whizzing out of Jolly’s because he thought I had gone that way, oh, there’s no time to explain. He’ll probably come in here, he was always following you into bookshops, wasn’t he? In Oxford?”

 

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