Jilly Cooper - Octavia

‘Why do you keep bullying me?’ I whispered.

I’d done that trick before, letting my breasts rise and fall very fast in simulated emotion, but now I found I couldn’t stop myself.

Gareth put his hand under my chin and forced it upwards. For an insane, panicky moment, I wondered whether to bite him, anything to drive him away, to destroy this suffocating nearness. Then he let go of me, and handed me back my dark glasses.

‘You can actually look ugly,’ he said, in surprise. ‘I don’t know why, but I find that very encouraging.’

‘Gareth,’ shouted Jeremy, ‘can you come and open the lock gates?’

‘Just coming,’ Gareth shouted. He turned as he went up the steps. ‘Don’t forget it’s your turn to put on the chef’s hat and cook us lunch.’

That was all I needed. I opened the door of the fridge and the baleful eye of a huge chicken peered out at me. How the hell did one cook the beastly thing?

Gussie popped her head through the door.

‘Gareth says you’re going to cook lunch. How lovely. I’ll truss the chicken for you if you like, and then you can make that thing you made us the other night. There’s masses of cream and lemon juice in the fridge.’

She’d only just had breakfast and her mouth was watering already.

‘Thank you,’ I said weakly. Why, oh why, had I been so foolish as to pass Luigi’s haute cuisine off as my own last week?

I go hot and cold every time I remember that lunch. I got in such a muddle that we didn’t eat until three o’clock, by which time the others were absolutely starving. I shall never forget their hungry flushed faces turning gradually to dismay as they sat down to eat and realized the chicken was burnt to a frazzle, the sauce was curdled past redemption and the spinach boiled away to a few gritty stalks. But the potatoes were the worst disaster. Because I hadn’t realized you had to roast them longer than twenty minutes, they were hard as bullets.

‘It’s a pity we haven’t got a twelve bore on board,’ said Gareth. ‘Then we could have spent the afternoon shooting pigeons with them.’

‘It’s absolutely delicious,’ said Gussie, chewing valiantly away at a piece of impossibly dry chicken.

Jeremy said nothing. Gareth laughed himself sick. He didn’t even make any attempt to eat, just lit a cigar, blew smoke over everyone, and said at last he understood why Gussie was always going on about the importance of having a good breakfast.

I escaped on deck and sat there gazing at the pink rose petals drifting across the khaki water. The panic and terror of the morning were fast hardening into hatred against Gareth. Once and for all I was going to get even with him.

Jeremy came and sat down beside me.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I get these blinding migraines sometimes, they make me completely stupid. I’m sorry I loused up lunch.’

‘Hell, that doesn’t matter. We should never have let you do all the cooking. Why didn’t you tell us you were feeling awful?’

I smiled up at him. ‘It’ll go soon. Do we have to go to this party tonight?’

‘Of course not, if you don’t want to. I rather fancy going, just for the sake of going into a room with you, and everyone thinking you belong to me.’

‘You win,’ I said.

He took my hand. ‘Do you still dislike Gareth that much?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

He nodded. ‘A bit.’

He caught at a leaf of an overhanging tree. ‘Gus gets some funny ideas. She thinks you’re very mixed up beneath the panache and the sophistication. She says you need someone like Gareth to sort you out.’

‘How kind of Gussie to be so concerned with my welfare,’ I said, trying to keep the tremble of anger out of my voice.

There was a burst of laughter from the other end of the boat. Such was my paranoia, I was convinced Gussie and Gareth were talking about me.

‘Would you make me any different?’ I asked, looking deep into Jeremy’s eyes.

‘I’d just like to make you,’ he said. ‘Let’s not bother about irrelevancies.’

It’s the same old story, I thought, as I did my face before we went ashore. Now he’s really pursuing me, I don’t want him so much. The intensity and lust in his eyes had me frightened. I had a feeling I might have got a tiger by the tail.

My thoughts turned to Gussie and Gareth.

‘Insecure, unhappy, mixed-up, frigid, hard enough to cut a diamond on.’ They were having a field-day passing judgements on me. How dare that fat slob Gussie patronize me, how dare Gareth take it upon himself to tell me so many home truths? The chips were down. If they thought I was a bitch, all right, I was going to behave like one.

Later in the afternoon as we went across water meadows into a large orchard, we could see a Queen Anne house through the trees.

‘What are these people called?’ asked Gussie.

‘Hamilton,’ said Gareth. ‘Hesketh and Bridget. They’ve got hordes of children, but I don’t know if any of them are at home.’

Gussie picked a scarlet cherry up from the long grass. ‘And they’re nice?’

‘Nice, but perfectly crazy,’ said Gareth. ‘Hesketh has madness on one side of the family and a Rumanian grandmother on the other, so you never know what to expect.’

‘I bet they’re hell,’ I whispered to Jeremy.

But they weren’t hell. They were a gently unworldly middle-aged couple. Hesketh Hamilton was tall and thin with spectacles on the end of his nose. He had been gardening and was wearing faded blue dungarees and a kind of mauve and white striped baseball cap on his head to keep off the sun. His wife had straggly pepper and salt hair, drawn back into a bun, and eyes the colour of faded denim. She was wearing odd shoes and an old felt skirt covered in dog hairs. They were both obviously delighted to see Gareth.

The house was beautiful but terribly untidy, with books and papers everywhere. It didn’t look as though anyone could possibly be giving a party that night. The afternoon sun slanting through the drawing-room window showed thick layers of dust on everything. Assorted dogs lay on the carpet panting from the heat.

‘We’ll have tea in the garden,’ said Bridget Hamilton. ‘You can come into the kitchen and help me carry the tray, Gareth. I want you to tell me if Hesketh’s got enough drink for this evening. We seem to have asked rather a lot of people.’

Out in the garden the lawn sloped down to a magnificent herbaceous border. Through an iron archway swarming with red roses, deckchairs and a table were set out under a walnut tree.

Gussie as usual went berserk, gushing like an oil well.

‘What a fantastic garden! My mother would be green with envy! Look at those roses and those fabulous blue hollyhocks!’

‘They’re delphiniums,’ said Hesketh Hamilton gently.

‘Oh yes,’ said Gussie unabashed. ‘And that heavenly catmint. I love the smell.’

‘It always reminds me of oversexed tomcats,’ Hesketh said, smiling.

‘It’s so kind of you to let us all come to your party,’ said Gussie, sitting down and putting a very severe strain on a deckchair.

She ought to be re-christened Gushie, I thought savagely.

Gareth came across the lawn carrying a tray, his eyes slanting away from the smoke of his cigar.

‘You’ve got enough drink in, Hesketh, to float the QE2,’ he said.

Bridget Hamilton, her hands still covered in earth from gardening, poured black tea into chipped mugs and handed sandwiches round.

‘How many of the children are home?’ asked Gareth.

‘Only Lorna, and she doesn’t know you’re all coming. She’s taken her new horse out. Absolute madness in this heat. She’s not such a child now you know, Gareth. She’ll be eighteen in August.’