Cooper Jilly: Emily

Suddenly he summoned a waiter:

‘I want my bill,’ he said, adding to me, ‘finish up that revolting pudding, we’re going home tonight.’

‘But we’re booked in here,’ I protested.

‘Doesn’t matter. If we hurry, we can catch the sleeper.’

‘But it’s Friday night,’ I said, ‘we’ll never get a bed.’

‘Want to bet?’ said Rory.

We tore across London in a taxi, fortunately the streets were deserted, and reached Euston station just five minutes before the train was due to pull out.

‘You’ll never get on,’ said the man at the booking office, ‘it’s fully booked.’

‘What did I tell you,’ I grumbled. ‘We’ll have to sleep in a cattle truck.’

‘Stop whining,’ said Rory. His eyes roved round the station. Suddenly they lit on one of those motorized trolleys that carry parcels round stations and are always running one over on the platform. It was coming towards us. Stepping forward, Rory flagged it down.

The driver was so surprised he screeched to a halt and watched in amazement as Rory piled our suitcases on.

‘What the bleeding hell do you think you’re doing, mate?’ he said.

‘Drive us up Platform 5 to the first-class sleeper for Glasgow,’ said Rory.

‘You want me to do what?’ asked the driver.

‘Go on,’ said Rory icily, ‘we’ll miss the train if you don’t hurry.’

He climbed on and pulled me up beside him.

‘We can’t,’ I whispered in horror, ‘we’ll get arrested.’

‘Shut up,’ snarled Rory. ‘Go on,’ he added to the driver, ‘we haven’t got all bloody day.’

There was something about Rory’s manner, a combination of arrogance and an expectation that everyone was going to do exactly what he wanted, that made it almost impossible to oppose him. Grumbling that he’d get the sack for this, the driver set off.

‘Can’t you go any faster?’ asked Rory coldly.

The driver eyed the fiver in Rory’s hand.

‘You won’t get a penny of this,’ said Rory, ‘unless we catch that train.’

We gathered speed and amazingly stormed through the barrier unopposed and up the platform. Train doors were being slammed as we reached the sleeper.

‘Put the luggage on the train,’ said Rory to the driver, and strolled over to the attendant who was giving his lists a last-minute check.

I edged away, terrified there was going to be a scene.

‘I’m afraid we’re booked solid, sir,’ I heard the attendant say.

‘Didn’t the Ritz ring through?’ said Rory, his voice taking on that carrying, bitchy, upper-class ring.

‘Afraid not, sir,’ said the attendant.

‘Bloody disgrace. Can’t rely on anyone these days. Expect your side slipped up, one of your staff must have forgotten to pass on the message.’

The attendant quailed before Rory’s steely gaze. He took off his peak cap and scratched his head.

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ said Rory. ‘I’m on my way back from my honeymoon, my wife is quite exhausted. We booked a sleeper and now you’re trying to tell me you’ve given it away.’

As the attendant looked in my direction, I edged further away, trying to merge into a slot machine.

‘I really don’t know what to say, sir.’

‘If you value your job,’ said Rory, ‘you’d better do something about it.’

Two minutes later an enraged middle-aged couple in pyjamas were being shunted into a carriage down the train.

‘I’m awfully sorry, sir,’ the attendant was saying.

‘You might have thanked him,’ I said, sitting down on the bed, and admiring the splendour of our first-class compartment.

‘One doesn’t thank peasants,’ said Rory, pulling off his tie.

We drove towards the ferry which was to carry us to Irasa. I glanced at Rory hunched over the wheel, demons at his back, the beautiful face sullen with bad temper. His black mood had been coming on for several hours now.

At last we reached the ferry. Under a grey and black sky a mountainous sea came hurtling towards us, thundering, moaning and screaming, and dirty with flying foam.

‘Hello, Mr Balniel,’ said the man on the gate. ‘I wish you’d brought some better weather. It’s been raining six weeks in Irasa, even the seagulls are wearing sou’westers.’

On the boat the sky darkened noticeably, the temperature dropped and the gulls were blown sideways like pieces of rag in the wind.

I’m not sure Scotland’s quite me, I later thought disloyally, as we bumped along one-track roads with occasional glimpses of sulky-looking sea.

On our left a huge forbidding castle lowered out of the mist.

‘Nice little weekend cottage,’ I said.

‘That’s where Buster and Coco live,’ said Rory. ‘This is us.’

I suppose it had once been a rather large lodge to the castle — a grey stone two-storey house, hung with creeper, surrounded by a wild, forsaken garden.

I started to quote Swinburne, but Rory shot me such a look.

I shut up.

I decided not to make any flash remarks, either, about being carried over the threshold. Rory was extraordinarily tense, as though he was expecting something horrible.

He certainly got it. I’ve never seen such shambles inside a house; broken bottles, knocked-down lamps and tables, glasses strewn all over the floor, dust everywhere, thick cobwebs. The bedrooms looked as though someone had used them as ashtrays, the fridge like a primeval forest, and someone had written ‘Goodbye forever’ in lipstick on the mirror.

The house consisted of a huge studio, a drawing-room almost entirely lined with books, two bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen and a bathroom; all were in absolute chaos.

‘Oh God,’ said Rory. ‘I left a message with my mother to get someone to clean the place up.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said faintly, ‘it’ll only take a few hundred years to put to rights.’

‘I’m not having you whisking around like Snow White,’ snapped Rory. ‘We’ll sleep at the castle tonight. I’ll get someone to come in tomorrow.’

I looked out of the bedroom window. The view was sensational. The house grew out of a two hundred and fifty foot cliff which dropped straight down to the sea.

‘I hope we don’t fall out too often,’ I joked weakly, then I saw a cellophane packet of flowers on the bed. ‘Oh look,’ I said, ‘someone remembered us.’ Then I shivered with horror as I realized it was a funeral wreath of lilies. Inside the envelope, on a black-edged card, was written ‘Welcome home, darlings’. ‘How beastly,’ I said in a trembling voice. ‘Who could have done that?’

Rory picked up the card. ‘Some joker who’s got it in for me.’

‘But that’s horrible.’

‘And quite unimportant,’ he said, tearing up the card. He opened the window and threw the wreath out, so it spun round and round and crashed on the rocks below.

Startled I looked into his face, which glowed suddenly with some malice I couldn’t place.

‘Come here,’ he said softly.

He pulled me against him, pushing my head down on his shoulder, one hand tracing my arm, the other moving over my body. Then he smiled and closed his long fingers round my wrist where the pulse pounded.

‘Poor little baby,’ he whispered. He could always do this to me. ‘Let’s go next door,’ and he pulled me into the dusty spare room with the huge window on to the road and began to kiss me.

‘Shouldn’t we draw the curtains?’ I muttered. ‘They can see us from the road.’

‘So what?’ he murmured.

Suddenly I heard a scrunch of wheels on the road outside. Swinging round I saw a blue Porsche flash by. In the driving seat was a red-headed girl who gazed in at us, a mixture of despair and hatred in her huge, haunted eyes.