Jilly Cooper - Imogen

‘How are you getting on with Matt?’ said Nicky.

‘Oh, very well. He’s so nice.’

‘He is, isn’t he? She’s a funny girl.’

‘In what way?’ said Imogen carefully.

‘You never know what she’ll do next. Unlike you, my angel, who are totally predictable.’

‘I do love you,’ she murmured, like a child touching wood.

‘Well that’s nice, except that we seem to be frustrated at every turn. Never mind, we’ve got a whole fortnight ahead of us.’

He dropped a kiss on top of her head. The night was really very warm. Imogen tried to suppress the thought that back in June, when he’d been mad to pull her, he’d certainly have whipped her off to some discreet corner of a foreign field, and made passionate love to her, and not given a damn about the others.

‘I have observed a faint neglect of late,’ she thought sadly, then felt furious with herself. In Yorkshire she’d never stopped panicking and bellyaching because he was trying to pull her, now she was in a state because he wasn’t. Her father would be delighted by such circumspection anyway. Perhaps Nicky was playing a waiting game so as not to frighten her.

In front she could see Cable’s hips undulating languorously as she walked beside Matt. She wished she hadn’t eaten so much. She wished she was as tall and as slim as her shadow.

Outside the hotel, quite without self-consciousness, Matt had taken Cable into his arms and kissed her very thoroughly. Nicky had followed suit with Imogen but when she opened her eyes in the middle, he was gazing over her shoulder at Cable and Matt.

‘Sweet dreams, darling,’ said Matt, reluctantly, relinquishing her. ‘And I’d love to be away by ten — we’ve got a long drive.’

Up in their room, Imogen undressed quickly and jumped into bed. It was long after midnight, but she’d never known anyone take so long to get into bed as Cable, removing her make-up several times, massaging skin food into her face, brushing her hair, touching up her nail varnish, doing long, complicated exercises and chattering all the time.

‘Such a relief not to have Matt beefing at me to hurry up,’ she said, rubbing Vaseline into her eyelashes, and because there were no men present giving Imogen the benefit of her enchanting wicked smile. ‘In fact it’s rather a relief to have a night off sex as well.’

Imogen, snuggling down in the coarse sheets, fought sleep, tried to concentrate on Tristram Shandy and not stare at Cable too hard.

‘God the bed’s hard,’ said Cable, finally getting in beside her. ‘I hope you’re not finding this trip too alarming.’

‘No it’s lovely,’ said Imogen timidly, touched that Cable should be concerned.

Cable, however, immediately got the subject back to herself. ‘I remember the first time I came to France on an exchange scheme when I was fifteen. I was absolutely terrified. I travelled by train overnight, 3rd class can you believe it? And there was this repulsive man who had little finger nails longer than the rest, and put on a blue hair net after he got into his couchette. The moment we dimmed the lights, he tried to fiddle with me, and there were two nuns in the bottom couchettes. I bit him so hard, he nearly pulled the communication cord. What d’you think of that?’ She laughed to herself.

But before Imogen could think up a suitable answer, she realised Cable had fallen asleep like a cat. Having fought sleep for so long, Imogen now felt wide awake. Thank goodness Yvonne was not sharing the bed too, or she’d be a model sandwich. Every man in the hotel would give a million francs to be in my place, she thought as, petrified she’d touch Cable, she perched on the edge of her side of the bed. She hoped she’d dream of Nicky, but she didn’t.

Imogen went down to breakfast next morning and found Nicky and Matt dirty and unshaven like a couple of bandits.

Matt smiled at her and asked her if she had slept well.

‘Marvellously,’ lied Imogen.

‘I’m glad someone did,’ said Nicky sulkily. ‘The Royal Philharmonic of tomcats started caterwauling around five o’clock.’

‘We abandoned all hope of sleep and invented tortures for Mrs Edgworth,’ said Matt.

At that moment Yvonne bustled in wearing a dress and a pink headscarf.

‘Good morning,’ she said briskly. Matt and Nicky looked at her stonily.

‘I didn’t sleep a wink,’ she grumbled. ‘What with the cats and the clocks striking. Do remember to book rooms at the back in future, Matt. And the beds were awful.’

‘Surprised you didn’t use James as a mattress,’ said Matt.

‘Why are you all done up like a dog’s dinner?’ said Nicky.

Yvonne’s lips tightened as she pulled on white gloves. ‘I’m off to Mass, where you all should be!’ she said.

The next stage of the journey was a disaster. Cable took so long to pack and get ready that she and Matt had another blazing row.

‘They ought to hold sheepdog trials for people like me,’ said Matt as he finally rounded the three of them up into the car. James and Yvonne had already gone on ahead. Nicky and Imogen sat in the front, Cable and Matt in the back, Matt reading a French Sunday paper, Cable looking stonily out of the window.

Nicky, whose turn it was to drive, was determined to notch up more miles an hour than Matt had yesterday, but Imogen spoilt everything by reading the map all wrong. The countryside they passed through had been so beautiful — old mills covered in reddening Virginia creeper, tender green poplar groves rising out of lush grass, and huge golden chateaux at the end of long shining lakes. Then suddenly she realised to her horror that she’d missed an important turning. As a result Nicky had to spend the next three-quarters of an hour disentangling them from the tentacles of a large industrial town. He got more and more angry, which was not helped by Imogen out of sheer nerves telling him he could overtake three times when he couldn’t, directing him slap into oncoming traffic.

Cutting short her stream of apologies, Nicky had turned on the car wireless. They could still get Radio 3. Patricia Hughes was announcing a performance of Handel’s Little Organ Concerto.

‘I didn’t know Handel had a small prick,’ drawled Cable.

Nicky grinned round at her. ‘Probably couldn’t Handel it,’ he said.

They both giggled and started swapping more anecdotes about mutual acquaintances, ostentatiously excluding Matt and Imogen.

Imogen wished she could amuse Nicky like that. But we’ve only got my family and Homer in common, she thought dolefully, and we can’t really talk about them for a fortnight. She noticed that each time they reached the end of a village, its name was signposted with a diagonal red line through it. She had a gloomy vision of Nicky taking a ruler and calmly drawing a red line through her name to signify the affair was over.

Later, tempers were not improved by no one being able to decide on the right picnic place, which at 110 miles an hour on the motorway was admittedly quite hard to find. James, who had been obliged to stop for Yvonne several times, was driving just behind them now. Imogen could see his eager pink face, with Yvonne beside him, wearing dark glasses, her mouth opening and shutting in a constant stream of chat.

Cable meanwhile was driving Matt insane by sitting with a red Michelin Guide in her hand, saying every time they came to a village, ‘There’s a fabulous restaurant here. It’d be so much nicer to stop here than have a rotten picnic.’

‘And five times more expensive,’ snapped Matt. ‘I’m buggered if I’m going to fork out 100 francs for something you won’t eat. I’m fed up with providing expensive left-overs for restaurant cats all over England and France.’