Jilly Cooper: Prudence

Oh dear, I did adore kissing him — but suddenly everything got out of control. He was biting at my lips. His hands were everywhere, ripping off my clothes. He turned completely savage, and I was fighting to get away from him. Then, just as suddenly, he stopped and buried his face in my neck.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’ It was weird, as though he were talking to someone else. After a few seconds, he got up and took me home and he never made another pass at me.

In fact I was shattered when Pendle rang me the next day and asked me out, and from then on took me out two or three times a week. As a boyfriend, you couldn’t fault him. He always took me to nice places, he rang when he said he would, and was never more than five minutes late. But, somehow, he never opened up with me, and beyond the fact that he dressed well, had a beautiful flat and was already making a name for himself at the Bar, I knew nothing about him.

What I noticed most was his rigid self-control — or was it lack of appetite? He never ate much, pushing his plate aside after a few bites and lighting a cigarette; he never drank much, and always after an excellent dinner and a bottle of wine, when I was expansive, and ready for laughter and love, he would tip the waiter, exactly 10 per cent, gather up his change and take me home.

I tried everything to win him. I leant forward in low-cut dresses, and backward in high-neck sweaters. I put my hair in bunches, in case he was on the Lolita kick. I put my hair up, in case he liked sophisticates. I even faked flu, and wore a see-through nightie when he came to see me. Not a pass was made, not a lecherous grab.

And yet I found this icy reserve ridiculously seductive. Every time I made him laugh I felt I’d conquered Everest. I had also seen him moved to tears by a Beethoven Quintet. The whole time I was aware of the banked fires beneath the icy reserve, of a tension just this side of menace. As the weeks passed I found myself getting more and more hooked on him.

Jane and I discussed it interminably.

‘Perhaps he’s a pouf,’ said Jane.

‘That was no pouf who attacked me the first night.’

‘Perhaps he’s married and doesn’t want to compromise you.’

‘That’s never deterred any married man I know.’

‘Perhaps he’s shy.’

‘Shy? He’s the coolest thing this side of an iceberg.’

‘So — perhaps he’s serious and doesn’t want to muck it up after the first night’s fiasco.’

‘Wouldn’t that be lovely?’ I sighed. ‘I’ll ask him to dinner and you can tell me what you think.’

Dinner was a catastrophe. Usually I love cooking, but the evening Pendle came round I tried too hard. I asked Rodney, my boss, who’s a bit finger-snapping and aggressively trendy, but a giggle when he gets tanked up, and another smashing zany girl copywriter from the agency called Dahlia, who can be guaranteed to make any party go. Jane had asked a man she fancied in her office, who was very witty as well as being a Liberal MP. All week I had fantasies of Jane and I sitting round looking radiant by candlelight, and contributing the odd remark as the conversational ball bounced scintillatingly along.

Usually when people came to dinner, we ate lounging on cushions in front of the fire, and Jane made jokes about having to lay the floor, but that night I polished up the gateleg table, and laid it with candles and flowers. When Jane arrived home I was rolling out pastry with a milk bottle.

‘How’s it going?’

‘All right, except I’ve made too much.’

‘Never mind. Henry can’t come, so I’ve asked this fantastic guy I met at a party last night. He’s called Tiger Millfield. Isn’t that great? And he plays rugger for England, so I’m sure he’ll eat for at least fifteen.’

‘Oh dear, I hope he and Pendle get on.’

‘What’s in here?’ said Jane, tripping over a casserole on the floor. There was so little room in our kitchen.

‘The filet for the boeuf en croute, mopping up a vat of Nuits St Georges,’ I said airily. ‘Now everyone can say I marinaded beneath me.’

Jane groaned. ‘You have got him bad. Candles, flowers, gin, whisky. Jolly good thing it’s the beginning of the month. What else are we having?’

‘Pâté and tomato salad to start with, then the beef, and peaches soaked in white wine to finish up with.’

Jane’s mouth watered. ‘What about the finger bowls and the waterlily napkins?’ she said. ‘I’m surprised you aren’t dressing Rodney up as a butler.’

I ignored her and went into the drawing-room to give the gate leg table a last polish with my skirt.

‘Do you think I ought to put Pendle or Rodney on my right?’ I shouted. ‘Rodney’s been married. Does that take precedence over a bachelor?’

‘I really don’t know. I’d better go and change into something suitably gracious.’

‘There’s still masses to do,’ I wailed.

‘Well I’d better not distract you then.’

Somehow at five to eight I was ready. I’d even bought a new dress for the occasion, long and medieval looking, in rust-coloured velvet, with an embroidered panel at the front, and long trumpet sleeves. I kept having another fantasy about Pendle staying long after everyone else, drawing me into his arms and saying, ‘Really, there’s no end to your achievements.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Jane, admiring the dress. ‘The Lady of Shallot! Appropriate too, after all those onions you’ve been chopping. You’d better take the price off.’

Jane was wearing very tight jeans, no bra, and a blue T-shirt, which matched her blue eyes, and made her nipples stand out like acorns. She looked far better than me. My beastly face kept flushing up and clashing with the rust.

Bang on the dot of eight, the doorbell rang. Jane picked up the answer-phone.

‘It’s Pendle,’ she said, ‘raring to get at you.’

With shaking hands, I put a new Purcell record on the gramophone.

Jane giggled. ‘Are we all going to dance the Gavotte?’

Initially I could see Jane was impressed by Pendle. He was wearing a grey pinstriped suit which fitted his long greyhound figure to perfection, and his cold seagull’s eyes looked at her without any of the enthusiasm she was accustomed to from men. Here was a challenge. I made a lot of fuss pouring his whisky, running back and forth for water and ice. Usually Jane and I talked ninety to the dozen, but his presence seemed immediately to shut us up.

‘Do you think you’ll win the Westbury case?’ I said, after a long pause. I had been following it in The Times.

‘We might,’ said Pendle, ‘if Lady Westbury can be persuaded to go into the box.’

‘Sounds like a horse,’ said Jane.

‘Why?’ said Pendle.

‘Well some horses are difficult to get into horse boxes, or loose boxes,’ she added, brightening. ‘Do you ride?’

‘Yes,’ said Pendle.

‘Well you must know it’s called a box. Oh, forget it. Pru says you’ve got a gorgeous flat in Westminster.’

‘Yes.’

‘That must be fun. Lots of MPs smuggling in their mistresses. Did you ever meet John Stonehouse?’

‘No,’ said Pendle.

‘Don’t they invite you to orgies?’

Pendle in fact didn’t respond at all and made no attempt to chat her up. The pauses in the conversation became longer and longer. It was with passionate relief that we heard the doodle bug tick tick of a taxi arriving, and an explosion of voices and car doors slamming in the street below. It must be Rodney.

‘He’s bringing Dahlia,’ I said. ‘She’s lovely.’

Rodney arrived with two litres of Pedrotti and no Dahlia. She had evidently got flu. Instead he had brought a beautiful but unbelievably dreary girl from the Publicity Department called Ariadne who lived on weed salads and yoghurt and was permanently talking about diets.