Jilly Cooper - Harriet

Trees rattled against her bedroom window. She looked at the yellow daffodils on the curtains round her bed and felt curiously happy. William was getting more gorgeous every day. She was getting fonder and fonder of Chattie and Jonah. Sevenoaks lay snoring across her feet. She felt her wounded heart gingerly; she was not yet deliriously happy but she was content.

‘Happy Birthday to you,’ sang a voice tunelessly, ‘Happy Birthday, dear Harriet, Happy Birthday to you.’

And Chattie staggered in with a breakfast tray consisting of a bunch of wild daffodils, a brown boiled egg, toast and coffee.

‘Oh how lovely!’ said Harriet. ‘Shall I take the coffee off?’ She put it on the table beside her bed.

‘Daddy’s just finished feeding William,’ said Chattie. ‘And he’s coming up with all your presents. Oh, why are you crying, Harriet?’

‘Harriet’s crying, Daddy,’ she said to Cory, followed by Mrs Bottomley, as he came in and dumped William on the floor.

Cory saw Harriet’s brimming eyes.

‘She’s entitled to do what she bloody well likes on her birthday,’ he said. ‘Get off the bed, Sevenoaks.’

‘She’d better put on her dressing gown,’ said Mrs Bottomley, looking at Harriet’s see-through nightgown. ‘Happy Birthday, love.’

Harriet couldn’t believe her eyes when she opened her presents. Ambrose and Tadpole had given her a rust silk shirt. Sevenoaks was broke and had only given her a pencil sharpener. Chattie gave her a box of chocolates, several of which had already been eaten.

‘I just had to test they were all right,’ said Chattie.

There was also a maroon cineraria from Jonah, which he had chosen himself and bought with his own pocket money, and a vast cochineal pink mohair stole from Mrs Bottomley, which she’d knitted herself, because Harriet never wore enough clothes. Cory gave her a grey and black velvet blazer, and a pale grey angora dress.

‘But they’re beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve never seen anything so lovely.’

‘Sick of seeing you in that old duffle coat,’ said Cory.

‘Daddy loves giving presents,’ said Chattie, ‘and he hasn’t got Mummy to give them to any more.’

When she’d eaten her breakfast, she got up and went to look for Cory. She found him in his study flipping through the pages of the script he’d written yesterday.

Harriet cleared her throat.

‘I just want to thank you for everything,’ she said, blushing scarlet. ‘For making me feel so happy here, and for all those heavenly presents. I really don’t deserve either, what with Sevenoaks and all the messages I forget to pass on and all that.’

And, reaching up, she gave him a very quick kiss on the cheek and scuttled out of the room.

‘Sexy,’ said Chattie, from the passage.

As the hour for Arabella’s party approached, Harriet grew more and more nervous. She’d been a disaster in the singles bar. What likelihood was there that she’d be any better with the hunting set? She must remember to say hounds instead of dogs.

She was sitting wrapped in a towel, putting her make-up on, when Chattie banged on her door.

‘Come on. I want to show you something. Keep your eyes shut.’

‘It can’t be another present,’ thought Harriet, feeling the thick carpet under her feet as Chattie led her towards the stairs, then turned sharp right into Jonah’s bedroom. She shivered as a blast of icy air hit her.

‘Don’t look yet,’ said Chattie pushing her forward, ‘Now you can.’

Through the open window above the elm trees, at the bottom of the garden, Harriet could see a tiny cuticle of new silver moon.

‘Now wish,’ said Chattie. ‘It doesn’t work if you see it through glass. Wish for the thing you most want in your life. I’ve already wished for some bubble gum.’

Harriet, listening to the mournful cawing of the rooks, suddenly felt confused.

For the first time in months, she didn’t automatically wish she could have Simon back. He was the fix, the first drink, that would trigger off the whole earth-shattering addiction all over again. She didn’t want her life disrupted. Her thoughts flickered towards Cory for a second, then turned resolutely away. Please give William and me happiness and security whatever form it takes, she wished.

She turned round and found Cory standing in the doorway watching her. She couldn’t read the expression on his face.

‘I hope it’s a sensible wish,’ he said acidly. ‘Like making your dear friend Sevenoaks less of a nuisance. He’s just eaten the back off my only pair of dress shoes.’

He kicked Sevenoaks who slunk towards Harriet, rolling his eyes and looking chastened at the front, but waving his tail at the back.

Chattie flung her arms round him.

‘He’s so clever, Sevenoaks,’ she said. ‘He’s eaten your shoes because he doesn’t want you to go out.’

‘He’s definitely an asset, Daddy,’ said Jonah, who’d just arrived for the weekend.

‘He’s a very silly asset,’ said Cory.

‘Ryder Cock Ross to Banbury Cross,’ said Chattie.

The Ryder-Ross’s house was large, Georgian and set back from the road at the end of a long drive.

Women were clashing jaw bones, exchanging scented kisses in the hall. One of them, in plunging black and wearing so many diamonds she put the chandeliers to shame, was Sammy’s boss, Elizabeth.

When Harriet went upstairs to take off her coat, the bed was smothered in fur coats.

She was wearing the dress Cory had given her for her birthday. She examined herself in Arabella’s long gilt mirror. It did suit her; it was demure, yet, in the subtle way it hugged her figure, very seductive. Oh please, she prayed as she went downstairs, make someone talk to me, so I’m not a drag on Cory.

He was waiting for her in the hall — tall, thin, remote, the pale, patrician face as expressionless as marble.

As they entered the drawing room, everyone turned and stared. A figure, squawking with delight, came over to meet them. It was Arabella, wearing a sort of horse blanket long skirt, a pink blouse, and her hair drawn back from her forehead by a bow.

‘Cory, darling, I thought you were never coming!’

She seized Harriet’s arm in a vice-like grip. ‘I’m going to introduce Nanny to some people her own age.’

Whisking Harriet into the next room, she took her over to meet a fat German girl, saying, ‘Helga, this is Mr Erskine’s nanny. Helga looks after my brother’s children. I thought you might be able to compare notes.’

Harriet couldn’t help giggling to herself. Nothing could have reduced her to servant status more quickly. It was not long, however, before two tall chinless wonders came over and started to tell her about the abortive hunting season they’d had.

Half-an-hour later they were still talking foxiana, and Harriet allowed her eyes to wander into the next room to where Cory was standing. Three women — the sort who should have been permanently eating wafer-thin mints on candlelit terraces — were vying for his attention.

He’s an attractive man, thought Harriet, with a stab of jealousy. I wonder it never hit me before.

Suddenly he looked up, half smiled at her, and mouthed: ‘All right?’ She nodded, the tinge of jealousy gone.

‘A brace of foxes were accounted for on Wednesday,’ said the better-looking of the two chinless wonders. ‘I say,’ he said to Harriet, ‘would you like to come and dance?’

He had long light brown hair, very blue eyes, and a pink and white complexion.

‘Yes please,’ said Harriet.

There was no-one else in the darkened room as they shambled round the floor to the Supremes, but he was much too straight to lunge at her during a first dance, thought Harriet with relief.