Jilly Cooper - Imogen

‘She is nice,’ said Imogen. ‘In fact it’s been so much better all round since you and she arrived last night. Will it be frightfully grand this evening?’

‘It’ll be ludicrous,’ said Larry, tucking his arm through hers. ‘But we might get a few laughs.’

They turned into the first bar on the front, and sat idly drinking and watching the people coming back from the beach.

‘That girl oughtn’t to wear a bikini,’ said Larry, as a fat brunette wobbled past them, ‘she ought to wear an overcoat.’

‘You should have seen the sensation Tracey caused on the beach this morning,’ said Imogen. ‘It was a bit like the Pied Piper drawing all the rats into the water when she went down to bathe.’

Larry didn’t answer, and, suddenly turning round, Imogen saw he’d gone as white as a sheet and was gazing mesmerised with horror at a beautiful woman with short light brown hair, and very high cheek bones, who was walking hand in hand with a much younger, athletic-looking man down to the sea.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Imogen.

He took a slug of his drink with a shaking hand.

‘Please tell me,’ she urged. ‘I know something’s wrong. You seem so — well — cheerful, but underneath I’m sure you’re not.’

For a minute he was silent, his thin face dark and bitter, and she could feel the struggle going on inside him. Then he took a deep breath and said:

‘That woman. For a minute I thought she was Bambi.’

‘But she’s in Islington.’

‘No she isn’t. She’s down here somewhere with her lover. She left me about a fortnight ago.’

‘Oh,’ said Imogen with embarrassment. ‘I can’t bear it. You poor thing.’

‘I didn’t want everyone pitying me. It was my fault. I suppose I neglected her. I’ve been working so hard the last two years just to survive and pay the school fees. Every night I’d come home and collapse in front of the telly with a double whisky, far too zonked out with my own problems to realise she was unhappy.’

‘But when did she start seeing this other man?’ asked Imogen.

‘Oh, last year sometime. Suddenly she started finding fault with everything I did. If the washing machine had broken it was my fault. Going home at night was like being parachuted into a fucking minefield. In retrospect I realise now she was picking fights with me to justify falling for this other bloke.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘Silly, really. She used to go out every Wednesday to pottery classes. I used to babysit. She was quite often late back, said she and the rest of the class had been to the pub. Then one day I met her pottery teacher in the High Street, and he said what a pity it was she didn’t come to classes any more when she was so talented. I went straight home and she admitted everything. In the old days I suppose I’d have blacked her eye, but I was buggered if I was going to be accused of being a male chauvinist pig, so I just got bombed out of my skull every night.’

‘And what about Tracey?’

‘She’s just window dressing. She’s a nice girl, but with me putting back the amount I’m putting back at the moment I’m not much use to her in the sack anyway. Best thing for her is to get off with Nicky. They’re well matched intellectually!’

He took her hand. ‘Look, I’m really sorry to dump on you like this.’

‘I like it,’ said Imogen. ‘I’ve felt so useless this holiday. But aren’t you likely to bump into Bambi any minute?’

He shrugged. ‘I know she and loverboy are staying somewhere on the Riviera. He’s frightfully rich, so it’s bound to be expensive.’

‘Does Matt know?’

‘Of course,’ said Larry. ‘He rumbled it last night.’

Back at the hotel they found Cable and Yvonne both with sleek newly washed hair drinking lemon tea with Nicky and James.

‘I suppose I’d better ring the paper to see if that film’s arrived,’ said Larry.

‘What time have we got to be on parade?’ asked Imogen.

‘Well it starts at eight, but I don’t think we need roll up much before nine or nine-thirty,’ said Yvonne.

‘Must make an entrance,’ muttered Nicky.

James looked at his watch. ‘Five o’clock. I’ve just got time to ring the office to see if everything’s OK.’

After that Nicky decided he ought to go and ring his agent, and Cable and Yvonne suddenly came to the conclusion they ought to ring theirs as well.

Imogen wondered if she ought to keep her end up by ringing the library, but what could she ask them? Had the Mayor returned The Hite Report at last? Was Lady Jacintha still clinging on to Dick Francis? She decided to go upstairs and wash her hair.

She met Cable coming downstairs looking bootfaced. ‘Matt’s lost his sense of humour. He simply can’t get his dreary piece together. He’s just bitten my head off simply because I asked for some change to telephone. I’ll have to borrow from Gilmore.’

Imogen turned around and went out to a nearby café and bought six cans of iced beer and a couple of large sandwiches made of French bread and garlic sausage. She could see Cable safely squawking in the telephone box as she went through reception, so she went upstairs and knocked timidly on Matt’s door.

There was no answer.

She knocked again.

‘Come in,’ shouted a voice. ‘What the bloody hell do you want this time?’

Inside she found him sitting on a chair that was too small, bashing away at a typewriter on a tiny table that shuddered and trembled under the pressure. His blue denim shirt was drenched with sweat; he looked like a giant trying to ride a Shetland pony. His shoulders were rigid with tension and exasperation; there were scrumpled-up bits of paper all over the floor.

‘Can’t you leave me alone for five minutes?’ he said through gritted teeth. Then he looked round, blinked and realised it was her.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

‘I thought you might need something to eat — and drink — not now but later,’ she said nervously. ‘You didn’t have any lunch. You ought to eat.’

He looked slightly less bootfaced. ‘That was very kind of you, sweetheart.’

‘Is it going any better?’

‘Nope.’ He pushed his damp hair back from his forehead. ‘It’s going backwards. I’ve got a total brainfreeze. I can’t think how to do it. It’ll break soon, it’s got to. I’ve got to show it to Braganzi before midnight. The bugger is him having to see it; it’s like having to adapt de Sade for the parish mag.’

His eyes were just hollows in his suntanned face. He flexed his aching back. Suddenly he looked so tired and lost and defeated, she wanted to cradle his head against her and stroke all the tension out of him.

‘I wouldn’t bother about what they’re going to think,’ she said. ‘I’m sure if you get across how much they adore each other, and what a sacrifice they had to make, and how the relationship does work, and how he’s not just a cheap hood, they won’t mind what else you say. They’re just panicking that someone might write something that might prejudice her chances of seeing the children again. . but you know all that anyway. I used to get panicky about essays in exams,’ she said, tumbling over her words in her shyness.

Matt reached over and opened one of the cans of beer. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘So I used to pretend I wasn’t doing an essay at all, just writing a letter about the subject home to Juliet, trying to make it as amusing for her as possible.’

Matt grinned for the first time. ‘You think I should pretend I’m writing to Basil?’

Imogen giggled. ‘Well, maybe something of the sort.’

‘Are you going to the Blaker-Harrises?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘Well, for God’s sake wear a chastity belt and a bullet-proof vest. It’s bound to turn into an orgy.’