Cooper Jilly: Emily

‘I’m thinking of growing a beard,’ Hamish said.

‘I don’t like beards on boys or girls,’ said Marina.

‘Are you still taking singing lessons?’ Rory asked Marina.

‘I drive over to Edinburgh once a fortnight. It’s a long way, but worth it. I usually stay the night. It gives Hamish a break.’

‘To get up to mischief,’ said Hamish, giving me a wink that nearly dislocated his eyelid.

No one really noticed the dinner, not even when one of my false eyelashes fell in the soup. Marina ate nothing; Hamish was obviously frightened his trousers were going to split. Rory never ate much, anyway. I cleared the plates and served each course; I might have been a waitress. Walter Scott was having a field day finishing up in the kitchen.

There were strange undercurrents. I felt as though I was watching a suspense story on television where I’d missed the beginning and couldn’t quite work out what was going on. Hamish rubbed his skinny leg against mine. Any moment he’d get a fork stuck into it.

After dinner Marina turned on the gramophone. She and Hamish danced. Hamish looked absurd, flailing about like a scarecrow in a gale. Marina moved like a maenad, her red hair flying, her face transformed by the soft light.

Rory sat watching her, his face expressionless. He had been drinking heavily all evening.

Finally she flopped down beside him on the sofa.

‘Did you ever finish that water-colour of the harbour?’

He nodded. ‘It’s in the studio.’

‘May I come and see it?’

They went next door.

Hamish looked dreadful now, grey and exhausted. He went off to the loo and I wandered into the studio to see the painting they were talking about.

Suddenly, I froze with horror. They hadn’t bothered to turn on the studio light, and were standing near the window in the moonlight.

Marina stood there vibrating, a foot away from Rory; her face glowed like a pale flame.

‘Why did you marry her?’ Her voice dropped an octave.

‘Oh come on,’ Rory said, ‘let’s say I wasn’t wanted any more.’

‘To punish me, to put me on the rack. You can’t believe I married Hamish for anything but his money, but she’s something entirely different.’

She turned on her heel and was coming towards me; it was as though I was frozen in some terrible nightmare.

‘Marina, wait,’ I heard Rory say.

‘Oh go to hell,’ she said, but the longing and ache in her voice were quite unmistakable.

She didn’t see me as she came into the drawing-room. ‘Hamish, I want to go home,’ she snapped.

Her face was turned away from him, only I could see it was wet with tears. Rory didn’t even bother to come out and say goodbye to them. I went back into the studio, my legs hardly holding me up.

‘Rory,’ I said, ‘I think we ought to have things out.’

‘I’ve nothing to have out, nothing.’

I realized he’d reached that pitch of drunkenness that was about to explode into violence, but I didn’t care.

‘What’s going on between you and Marina? Why was she hanging around when we arrived? It was she who sent the wreath, wasn’t it? And her whom you rang up the first night of our honeymoon? I want to know what it’s all about.’

‘Nothing, nothing. We were brought up together, that’s all. Anyway,’ he snarled, ‘you asked her to dinner. Now get out of my way.’ He pushed me aside. ‘I’m going to sleep in the spare room, and don’t come crawling into my bed in the middle of the night.’

I didn’t sleep at all. I lay trembling with panic, clutching Walter Scott’s solid body, my mind reeling from possibility to possibility. At dawn I tried to be rational. Rory and Marina had probably been childhood sweethearts, and he’d been piqued when she married Hamish. After all, it was me he’d married.

Next morning I came down, washed up, and tried to be brave about my hangover.

What would please Rory most? I decided to clean out his studio.

He came down at midday. He looked terrible. He must have been hungover down to his toes, but, glass in hand, he was making a nice recovery. I was standing on a ladder dusting a shelf.

‘Hello, darling,’ I said, brightly.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Dusting.’

‘Why the hell can’t Miss Mackie do that? You’ll only muddle everything up, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Please don’t let’s quarrel. I’m sorry for the things I said. I didn’t mean them. I couldn’t bear another night like last night.’

‘You can always leave,’ he said brutally.

‘I don’t want to leave. I love you.’

His face softened. ‘Do you now? Well come down off that stupid ladder then,’ and, catching my ankles, he ran his hands slowly up my legs.

‘I’ll just dust this last folder,’ I said, steadying myself on the shelf.

‘Put that down,’ said Rory, his voice suddenly icy.

Startled, I swayed on my high ladder.

‘I said put it down.’

Purely out of nerves, I let the folder slip from my hands and crash to the floor. Hastily I scrambled down and knelt to pick it up.

Rory reached it at the same time as me, his hand on my arm like a vice.

‘Ow!’ I yelped.

‘Leave it,’ he snarled, but it was too late.

Spilling out of the folder were the most beautiful drawings. The naked model smiling that secret, comehither smile was unmistakably Marina.

We looked at the paintings scattered round our feet. Marina in her lush beauty mocked me a hundred times over.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘It’s your fault. I told you not to touch that file.’

‘They’re very good, very life-like indeed,’ I said slowly, trying to keep my voice from trembling. ‘I’m sure you didn’t paint these from imagination.’

‘Of course I didn’t. I wanted to do some nudes last summer, and there are only a limited number of people on the island who’ll take their clothes off. You can hardly see Buster or Hamish stripping down to the buff and sitting around for hours on end. Anyway, as I’ve said before, it’s damn all to do with you what I did before I was married.’

‘Or what you do after you’re married,’ I said bitterly.

Rory drained his drink and poured himself another one.

‘Rory,’ I said slowly, ‘this is important. Do you love me at all?’

Rory looked bored. ‘Depends how you define love.’

How could I explain that he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, that my tongue suddenly got stuck in my throat when I saw the set of his shoulders, that I spent all day wanting him.

‘Oh Rory,’ I said, appalled. ‘Can’t you try and be a bit more loving?’

‘Why?’ he said, logically.

‘Why did you marry me then?’

He looked at me reflectively, ‘I’m beginning to wonder.’

I gave a gasp. God, he could be vicious.

‘What shall we do about it, then?’ I said.

‘Do?’ he exploded. ‘Do let me work, that’s enough for me.’

‘But not enough for me!’ I screamed, and brushed blindly past him.

‘Where are you going?’ he said.

‘Out.’

‘Well, for God’s sake come back in a less destructive mood.’

And so our marriage began to deteriorate. It wasn’t helped by the rain which started to fall the next day, and continued for weeks. Rory passed the time in painting, I in sulking, then in trying to win Rory round, then in sulking again.

I suppose I was pretty disagreeable myself, I complained steadily about the weather and how bored I was. At first I made an attempt to stop myself, then I didn’t try to stop myself, then I found I couldn’t. Emily — the fishwife.

That crack about being lousy in bed had gone home too. I wrote off to London for a sexy black cut-out nightie, and a book on how to undress in front of your husband. It showed you how to swing your bra round like a football rattle, and slide your pants off in one go.