Jilly Cooper - Harriet

‘I must think of a name for you,’ she said, as they got home. She opened the AA book and plonked her finger down blindly. It landed on Sevenoaks.

‘Hullo, Sevenoaks,’ said Harriet. ‘You’ve got a cattle market on Monday, two three star hotels and you’re twenty-five miles from London.’

‘Harriet,’ said Cory, as Sevenoaks charged round the drawing room, trailing standard lamp wires like goose grass, ‘That is not a puppy — nor is it a setter.’

‘Come here,’ said Harriet, trying to catch him as he whisked past.

‘He’s fully grown,’ said Cory. ‘At least two and virtually untrainable.’

Sevenoaks rolled his eyes, charged past Cory, and shot upstairs, followed by Tadpole, who was thoroughly overexcited. Sevenoaks had already received a bloody nose from Ambrose, a very frosty response from Mrs Bottomley, and tried to eat one of Cory’s riding boots. Now he could be heard drinking out of the lavatory. Next he came crashing downstairs, followed once more by Tadpole, and collapsed panting frenziedly at Harriet’s feet. She looked up at Cory with starry eyes.

‘Look how he’s settled down,’ she said. ‘He knows he’s going to be really happy here.’

All in all, however, Sevenoaks couldn’t be described as one hundred per cent a success. Whenever he wasn’t trying to escape to the bitches in the village, he was fornicating with Tadpole in the front garden, digging holes in the lawn, chewing everything in sight, or stretching out on sofas and beds with huge muddy paws.

The great love of his life, however, was Harriet. He seemed to realize that she had rescued him from death’s door. He welcomed her noisily whenever she returned, howled the house down if she went out and had a growling match with Cory every night because Cory refused to let him sleep on Harriet’s bed.

The following Wednesday was another day of disasters. Cory was having trouble with his script and was not in the best temper anyway, particularly as William was teething and spent the day screaming his head off, and Sevenoaks had chewed up Cory’s only French dictionary. Harriet botched up Chattie’s lamb chops by burning them under the grill while she was filling in a How Seductive Are You quiz in a women’s magazine, and she’d just finished pouring milk into William and Tarbaby’s bottles when Ambrose came weaving along and knocked the whole lot onto the floor. She was also in a highly nervous state, having at last promised Sammy she would accompany her to the Loose Box that evening.

It was half past seven by the time she’d cleared up and got everyone to bed. There was no time to have a bath; she only managed to scrape a flannel over her face and under her armpits, pour on a great deal of scent and rub in cologne in an attempt to resuscitate her dirty hair.

At five minutes to eight the doorbell went. Sammy was early. Harriet rushed downstairs with only one eye made up, aware that she looked terrible. Cory met her on the landing.

‘Going out?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s my night off.’

She opened the front door to two earnest-looking women with wind-swept grey hair. One was clutching a notebook, the other a rather ancient camera.

‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ said the woman with a notebook. ‘It’s a very difficult place to find at night.’

Chattie wandered down the stairs in her nightgown. Visitors always meant a possibility of staying up late.

‘And who are you, young lady?’ said the woman with the camera.

‘I’m Chattie. I had a pretty dress on today.’

‘And I’m Carol Chamberlain,’ said the woman with the notebook. ‘We’ve come all the way from London to interview your Daddy.’

‘Come into the drawing room and I’ll get you a whisky and tonic,’ said Chattie.

Harriet went green, fled upstairs and knocked on Cory’s door.

He didn’t answer. She knocked again.

‘Yes,’ he said, looking up, drumming his fingers with irritation.

‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’

‘Oh God,’ he said, with infinite weariness. ‘What the hell have you done now? Have all Sevenoaks’ relations arrived?’

Harriet turned pale.

‘I-um-I’m afraid I forgot to put off Woman’s Monthly . They’ve come all the way from London. They’re waiting downstairs.’

‘Was he absolutely insane with rage?’ said Sammy, who always enjoyed stories of other people’s disasters. It was a source of slight irritation to her that Harriet got on so well with Cory.

‘Absolutely insane,’ said Harriet miserably. ‘I may well have joined the great unemployed by tomorrow.’

They were tarting up in the Ladies of the Loose Box. Crowds of girls around them were back-combing like maniacs. One girl was rouging her navel.

Harriet was fiddling with her sweater.

‘Do you think it looks better outside my jeans?’ she said to Sammy.

‘No,’ said Sammy. ‘Doesn’t give you any shape. Let’s see what it looks like tucked in. No, that looks even worse. Leave it hanging out. You look absolutely fantastic,’ she added with all the complacency of someone looking infinitely better.

She was poured into black velvet trousers and a low-cut black sweater, her splendid white bosom spilled over the top like an ice-cream over a cone. She was also wearing black polish on her toes and fingernails, and a black rose in her newly dyed mahogany curls.

No-one’s going to want to talk to me, thought Harriet as they went into the arena. All around her people were circling and picking each other up. Some of the girls were ravishingly pretty. It could only have been a spirit of adventure, not a shortage of men, that led them to this place.

Sammy was already leering at a handsome blond German in a blue suit.

‘I’d just love a sweet Cinzano,’ she said fluttering long green eyelashes at him.

The German fought his way to the bar to get her one. The next moment a pallid youth had sidled up to her.

‘I work in films,’ he said, which he patently didn’t.

‘Really,’ said Sammy. ‘I’m a model actually.’

Harriet had completely forgotten the hassle of hunting for men. She kept trying to meet men’s eyes, but hers kept slithering away. Don’t leave me, she pleaded silently to Sammy. But Sammy was on the hunt like Sevenoaks after a bitch, and nothing could deter her from her quarry.

‘It’s always been my ambition to go to Bayreuth,’ she was saying to the handsome German.

The worst part of the evening for Harriet was that she wasn’t a free agent. She couldn’t split because Sammy was driving and she hadn’t brought enough money for a taxi.

Sammy having downed eight sweet Cinzanos was well away with the German, and seemed to be having an equally devastating effect on his friend, who had spectacles, a nudging grin and a pot belly.

‘Come over here, Harriet,’ said Sammy. ‘You must meet Claus.’

She pushed the fat, nudging grinning German forward.

‘Harriet’s frightfully clever and amusing,’ she added.

Harriet became completely paralysed and could think of nothing to say except that the weather had been very cold lately.

‘Ah but the freezing North brings forth the most lovely ladies,’ said the fat little German with heavy gallantry. He was in Yorkshire, he told Harriet, for a textile conference and had lost 10 kilos since Christmas. Harriet didn’t know if that were good or bad.

‘Isn’t he a scream?’ said Sammy.

She pulled Harriet aside.

‘They want to take us to The Black Tulip,’ she said. ‘It’s a fantastic place; you have dinner and dance, and there’s a terrific group playing.’

‘It’s going to make us frightfully late, isn’t it?’ said Harriet dubiously.

‘Oh come on,’ said Sammy, drink beginning to make her punchy. ‘No-one’s ever taken me to a place like that before. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’