Jilly Cooper: Octavia

‘I’ve had enough, I’m leaving you, and I’m taking Xander with me.’

Then my father started shouting back that she’d take Xander over his dead body. Then my mother screaming, ‘Well you can keep Octavia then.’ And my father saying, ‘I don’t want Octavia. Why the bloody hell should anyone want Octavia when you’ve completely ruined her?’

‘Someone’s got to have her,’ yelled my mother.

‘Well, it’s not going to be me.’

Then I started to scream, pushed open the door, and there was my mother, her beauty all gone, because she was drunk and red in the face. She and my father were both looking at me in guilt and horror, wondering how much of the conversation I’d heard. Then suddenly my father turned into Jeremy, shouting, ‘I don’t care how much she heard, I still don’t want her.’

I woke up screaming my head off, the sheets were drenched with sweat. For a few minutes I lay with my eyes open, gulping with relief, listening to the diminishing drumbeats of my heart, feeling the horror receding. Then I got up, took a couple of Valium and lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. I had to talk to someone, just to prove that someone wanted me. If only I could ring Jeremy, but it was too early in the relationship to show him how vulnerable I was. Nor could I talk to Charlie. It would only start the whole thing up again. I caught sight of the silver framed photograph on the dressing table and realized with relief that Xander must be back from Bangkok. At that time Xander was the only person in the world I really loved and trusted; not that I trusted him to behave himself or not do the most disgraceful things, but because I knew he loved me and that that love was intensified by guilt because he realized our parents had adored him and never loved me. Xander, four years older than me, had always fought my battles in the nursery. He had protected me from the succession of nannies that my mother never got on with, and later from the succession of potential and actual stepfathers who thundered through the house.

I looked at my watch; it was 10.45. Even Xander — not famous for getting to the office on time — might just be in. I dialled Seaford-Brennen’s number.

‘Can I speak to Alexander Brennen please?’

Xander’s secretary was a dragon, trained to keep the multitudes at bay, but she always put me through. Xander answered.

‘Octavia darling, I was going to ring you today,’ he said, in the light, flat drawling voice, which I always liked to think became gentler and less defensive when he talked to me.

‘How was Bangkok?’ I asked.

‘Like a fairy tale — literally — I stayed in Pat Pong Street which was nothing but gay bars and massage parlours.’

I giggled.

‘Do you want something,’ said Xander, ‘or are you just lonely?’

‘I wanted a chat,’ I said.

‘A chap?’

‘No, silly, just to talk to you.’

‘Listen, I don’t want to be unfriendly darling, but I’m a bit tied up at the moment. I’ve just got in and several people are trying to hold a meeting in my office. What are you doing for lunch?’

‘Nothing.’

‘OK, I’ll meet you at Freddy’s at one o’clock.’

I lay back feeling better; the Valium were beginning to work. Soon I should feel strong enough to get down to the daily pastime of washing my hair.

Because of my grandfather, Henry Brennen, I didn’t have to work for a living. After the First World War he came out of a fashionable regiment and, realizing he had no money left to support a wife and three children, the eldest of which was my father, joined forces with a fellow officer, William Seaford, to form a company, Seaford-Brennen, in the unfashionable field of electrical engineering. Both men were tough, astute and ambitious, and by dint of hard work and good luck, soon had factories turning out transformers, switchgear, generators and electric motors. Business prospered and survived the next war. After that, two rival heirs apparent joined the company — my father, who’d covered himself in glory as a Battle of Britain pilot, and William Seaford’s far less dashing son Ricky, who’d spent most of the war in a routine staff job. My father had the additional kudos of having a new and ravishingly beautiful actress wife who promptly gave up work and produced a Brennen heir, while poor Ricky Seaford married a plain, domineering Yorkshire girl who, despite her capabilities on local committees and the golf course, only provided him with daughters.

My father, however, while appearing to hold all the cards, found it extremely difficult to settle down to a nine-to-five job after the excitement of the war. His restlessness increased as the years passed, and he discovered that my mother — who found him far less glamorous out of uniform — had started drinking too much, and launched herself on a succession of very indiscreet affairs.

By the time I was born in 1950, the marriage was well into injury time and my father even expressed grave doubts that I was his child which, I used to fantasize, explained his indifference to me. Despite such setbacks, he and my mother staggered on together for another six years, by which time old Henry Brennen had died of a heart attack and William Seaford had retired, having made his pile, leaving my father as chairman and Ricky as managing director. Ricky, meanwhile, the tortoise to my father’s hare, had put his head down and spent the postwar years building up Seaford International, a vast empire of which Seaford-Brennen soon became only a subsidiary.

In 1956, my mother left home with my brother Xander and one of her lovers. A few months later she had a pang of guilt and sent for me and the nanny to live with her in France. My father was disconsolate for a short time, then moved in with his secretary whom he married as soon as he could divorce my mother. The marriage was extremely happy, and enabled my father to concentrate on work, and when he died, very young, of throat cancer, in 1971, he was able to leave huge blocks of Seaford-Brennen shares to Xander and me, which should have guaranteed us private incomes for life.

Alas, no income would have been enough for my brother Xander. Sacked from school for smoking grass and seducing too many new boys, he was also sent down from Cambridge after two terms for riotous living. Being artistically inclined, he would have been happier editing an art magazine or working in a gallery, but as the only existing Seaford-Brennen heir, he automatically went into the family firm. Here he survived — after my father was no longer alive to protect him — by the skin of his beautifully capped teeth, and by his immense personal charm. Three years ago, when Ricky Seaford was on the brink of sacking him, Xander redeemed himself by selling an Arab a power station worth millions of pounds in a deal carried out across the roulette table. Eighteen months later when things had again looked really dicey, Xander had played his trump card by running off with Ricky’s elder daughter, Pamela, to the horror of both her parents. Even Ricky, however, didn’t want to have the reputation in the city as the man who’d booted out his son-in-law. Xander was made export sales manager, which gave him access to vast expenses.

In his new, exalted position Xander had managed to fiddle the renting and re-decorating of my flat on the firm. After all, he said, one must have somewhere nice to take overseas clients. The firm also paid my rates, telephone, electricity and gas, and provided me with a car which I’d just smashed up. On the whole Xander and I did pretty well out of Seaford-Brennen.

While I was waiting for the conditioner to soak into my hair, I flipped through my wardrobe deciding what to take on the weekend. I’d bought so many new clothes this week, my cheque book had run out, but after the nasty letter I’d got from my bank manager, I didn’t dare order another one. American Express and Access had also cut off their supplies. I still had to get another bikini and a glamorous dress to float around on deck. I’d have to borrow from Xander.