Emily Read online

  He nodded. ‘It’s in the studio.’

  ‘May I come and see it?’

  They went next door.

  Hamish looked dreadful now, grey and exhausted. He went off to the loo and I wandered into the studio to see the painting they were talking about.

  Suddenly, I froze with horror. They hadn’t bothered to turn on the studio light, and were standing near the window in the moonlight.

  Marina stood there vibrating, a foot away from Rory; her face glowed like a pale flame.

  ‘Why did you marry her?’ Her voice dropped an octave.

  ‘Oh come on,’ Rory said, ‘let’s say I wasn’t wanted any more.’

  ‘To punish me, to put me on the rack. You can’t believe I married Hamish for anything but his money, but she’s something entirely different.’

  She turned on her heel and was coming towards me; it was as though I was frozen in some terrible nightmare.

  ‘Marina, wait,’ I heard Rory say.

  ‘Oh go to hell,’ she said, but the longing and ache in her voice were quite unmistakable.

  She didn’t see me as she came into the drawing-room. ‘Hamish, I want to go home,’ she snapped.

  Her face was turned away from him, only I could see it was wet with tears. Rory didn’t even bother to come out and say goodbye to them. I went back into the studio, my legs hardly holding me up.

  ‘Rory,’ I said, ‘I think we ought to have things out.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to have out, nothing.’

  I realized he’d reached that pitch of drunkenness that was about to explode into violence, but I didn’t care.

  ‘What’s going on between you and Marina? Why was she hanging around when we arrived? It was she who sent the wreath, wasn’t it? And her whom you rang up the first night of our honeymoon? I want to know what it’s all about.’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. We were brought up together, that’s all. Anyway,’ he snarled, ‘you asked her to dinner. Now get out of my way.’ He pushed me aside. ‘I’m going to sleep in the spare room, and don’t come crawling into my bed in the middle of the night.’

  Chapter Eleven

  I didn’t sleep at all. I lay trembling with panic, clutching Walter Scott’s solid body, my mind reeling from possibility to possibility. At dawn I tried to be rational. Rory and Marina had probably been childhood sweethearts, and he’d been piqued when she married Hamish. After all, it was me he’d married.

  Next morning I came down, washed up, and tried to be brave about my hangover.

  What would please Rory most? I decided to clean out his studio.

  He came down at midday. He looked terrible. He must have been hungover down to his toes, but, glass in hand, he was making a nice recovery. I was standing on a ladder dusting a shelf.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ I said, brightly.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Dusting.’

  ‘Why the hell can’t Miss Mackie do that? You’ll only muddle everything up, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Please don’t let’s quarrel. I’m sorry for the things I said. I didn’t mean them. I couldn’t bear another night like last night.’

  ‘You can always leave,’ he said brutally.

  ‘I don’t want to leave. I love you.’

  His face softened. ‘Do you now? Well come down off that stupid ladder then,’ and, catching my ankles, he ran his hands slowly up my legs.

  ‘I’ll just dust this last folder,’ I said, steadying myself on the shelf.

  ‘Put that down,’ said Rory, his voice suddenly icy.

  Startled, I swayed on my high ladder.

  ‘I said put it down.’

  Purely out of nerves, I let the folder slip from my hands and crash to the floor. Hastily I scrambled down and knelt to pick it up.

  Rory reached it at the same time as me, his hand on my arm like a vice.

  ‘Ow!’ I yelped.

  ‘Leave it,’ he snarled, but it was too late.

  Spilling out of the folder were the most beautiful drawings. The naked model smiling that secret, comehither smile was unmistakably Marina.

  We looked at the paintings scattered round our feet. Marina in her lush beauty mocked me a hundred times over.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘It’s your fault. I told you not to touch that file.’

  ‘They’re very good, very life-like indeed,’ I said slowly, trying to keep my voice from trembling. ‘I’m sure you didn’t paint these from imagination.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. I wanted to do some nudes last summer, and there are only a limited number of people on the island who’ll take their clothes off. You can hardly see Buster or Hamish stripping down to the buff and sitting around for hours on end. Anyway, as I’ve said before, it’s damn all to do with you what I did before I was married.’

  ‘Or what you do after you’re married,’ I said bitterly.

  Rory drained his drink and poured himself another one.

  ‘Rory,’ I said slowly, ‘this is important. Do you love me at all?’

  Rory looked bored. ‘Depends how you define love.’

  How could I explain that he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, that my tongue suddenly got stuck in my throat when I saw the set of his shoulders, that I spent all day wanting him.

  ‘Oh Rory,’ I said, appalled. ‘Can’t you try and be a bit more loving?’

  ‘Why?’ he said, logically.

  ‘Why did you marry me then?’

  He looked at me reflectively, ‘I’m beginning to wonder.’

  I gave a gasp. God, he could be vicious.

  ‘What shall we do about it, then?’ I said.

  ‘Do?’ he exploded. ‘Do let me work, that’s enough for me.’

  ‘But not enough for me!’ I screamed, and brushed blindly past him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake come back in a less destructive mood.’

  And so our marriage began to deteriorate. It wasn’t helped by the rain which started to fall the next day, and continued for weeks. Rory passed the time in painting, I in sulking, then in trying to win Rory round, then in sulking again.

  I suppose I was pretty disagreeable myself, I complained steadily about the weather and how bored I was. At first I made an attempt to stop myself, then I didn’t try to stop myself, then I found I couldn’t. Emily — the fishwife.

  That crack about being lousy in bed had gone home too. I wrote off to London for a sexy black cut-out nightie, and a book on how to undress in front of your husband. It showed you how to swing your bra round like a football rattle, and slide your pants off in one go.

  I tried it on Rory one evening, but he merely raised his eyebrows and asked me if I’d been at the gin. As the weeks passed, he didn’t lay a finger on me. I was desperately unhappy and cried a great deal when he wasn’t around. I kept telling myself that when he’d assembled enough canvases for the exhibition we’d be like a couple of love birds, but I didn’t really believe it.

  I spent most of my time corrupting Walter Scott. Rory was a great believer that dogs should be treated like dogs and kept outside. I kept bringing him in and feeding him in between meals and cuddling him — I needed a few allies.

  Gradually Walter invaded the house. He started off sleeping in the kitchen, then moved to the foot of the stairs, then to the landing outside our bedroom. At dawn he would steal in and try to climb on our bed. Invariably Rory, who was a light sleeper, would wake up and throw him out.

  ‘Walter Scott suffers from being an only dog,’ he was fond of saying.

  ‘Blood is thicker than Walter,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing is thicker than Walter,’ said Rory.

  Chapter Twelve

  In November, later than expected, Coco and Buster came back.

  Buster brought his new private plane, which he landed perilously on the sward outside the castle, terrifying the life out of the islanders and the local sheep, and nearl
y depositing himself, three labradors, gun cases, rod boxes and several hundred tons of pigskin luggage, in the sea.

  ‘Pity,’ said Rory. ‘Never mind, there’ll be plenty of other opportunities. In the old days he used to come up by train from Euston and take the dogs to lamp-posts as the train waited interminably at Crewe.’

  Coco arrived in rip-roaring form and swept Rory and me into a round of gaiety, meeting people on the island and the mainland. It was a frightful strain trying to keep up the appearance that I was blissfully happy.

  A few days later, Marina and Hamish asked us back to dinner. I was amazed and irritated to discover she was a very good cook, and had decorated Hamish’s huge, stark house with a wild elegance I could never achieve in a million years of poring over House and Garden.

  The drawing-room had grey silk walls and flame-red curtains, and I felt sure, had been chosen to compliment Marina’s colouring.

  ‘Oh it’s lovely,’ I said wistfully, ‘you ought to go into interior decorating.’

  ‘Emily’s an inferior decorator,’ said Rory.

  In my attempt to make our bedroom more feminine, I’d started painting it but had got bored in the middle. The colour, too, was disastrous. It looked all right on the chart but once on the wall turned out an appalling E — K directory pink.

  I felt very overdressed that evening, too. Trying to compete with Marina, I’d put on a see-through blouse and a long skirt. Marina of course was wearing jeans.

  There was another couple to dinner — Deidre and Calen Macdonald. She was a commanding, big-boned woman with a ringing voice. He had a handsome, dissipated face, roving grey eyes, and had obviously married her for her money. He turned out to be a shooting friend of Buster’s and made an absolute dead set at me.

  ‘I can’t claim to be a gentleman, but I’ve always preferred blondes,’ he said cornering me on the sofa as soon as we were introduced, ‘and you really are gorgeous.’

  The intensity with which he gazed at my see-through blouse threw me off balance — I folded my arms firmly to cover up what I could.

  ‘Er — do you do anything for a living?’ I said, casting around for something to say.

  ‘Good God, no. I realized very early on that I was quite incapable of supporting myself, so I married old Deidre instead; she’s a pretty full time job, but I do get the odd afternoon off while she’s sitting on committees. How about you?’

  ‘I’ve only been married seven weeks,’ I said firmly.

  ‘So disillusion hasn’t set in yet. Pretty tricky customer Rory, I admire you if you can handle him. He runs rings round poor Buster. Is he still drinking too much?’

  ‘Hardly at all,’ I said, out of the corner of my eye watching Rory go to Marina’s sidetable, and help himself to a second very large glass of whisky.

  ‘Very loyal and proper,’ said Calen. ‘I must say you really are extremely attractive, I wish you’d stop sitting with your arms folded like a rugger player so I could appreciate you properly. Promise me that if you ever decide to be unfaithful to Rory, I can have first refusal.’

  I tried to look disapproving, but after Rory’s indifference of the past few weeks, it was such heaven to be chatted up. I was sure Marina had invited Calen on purpose. But although he flirted outrageously with me all evening, I felt terribly depressed that Rory wasn’t betraying a spark of jealousy.

  ‘So nice for you to find someone of your own mental age to play with, Emily,’ was all he said afterwards.

  As the weeks passed, we often encountered Marina and Hamish at parties. Marina and Rory so studiously avoided each other that I wondered if they were meeting on the sly.

  Occasionally I saw her loathsome brother, Finn Maclean, driving round the island, obviously far too preoccupied with building his beastly hospital to waste time on parties.

  In December, Coco slipped down some steps at the castle after a boozy evening and sprained her ankle. Next day she rang up, saying she was bored, would I come over and see her. On my way I drove into Penlorren to find her some nice escapist novel from the bookshop.

  Having parked my car in the main street, I started browsing through some romances. Oh dear, the lovely things that happened to those heroines. Why didn’t Rory feel like that about me?

  Finally, I heard a cough behind me. The owner wanting to shut up shop.

  Hastily I bought the book and wandered dreamily into the main street, through the mist and rain. A man was standing by my car. There was something heroic about the way he stood, the massive breadth of the shoulders, the hair curling over the collar of his battered sheepskin coat like Michelangelo’s David.

  Instinctively, I unhitched the long lock of hair from behind my ear and let it fall seductively over my eyes. Then I realized the man was Finn Maclean, and he was blazingly angry.

  ‘Is this your car?’

  ‘Yes… at least, it’s Rory’s.’

  ‘Can’t you read?’

  He seized my arm and swung me round to face a notice on a garage door. It said, Doctor’s car, please leave free.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, in London, people often put notices like that on their garage doors even if they’re not doctors, just to keep people away.’

  ‘This is not London,’ he snapped, and in terms of the most blistering invective, proceeded to tell me exactly what he thought of Londoners who came to live in the country, and me in particular, and didn’t I realize that people could be dying because people like me parked their cars in places like this. Finally I got fed up.

  ‘It strikes me,’ I said, ‘that while you’ve been rabbiting on and on and on about my criminal responsibility, at least twenty more people could have died. Admittedly, a few of them may have been Chinese. In fact, if all the people who died while people like you were blowing their cool all over the islands were laid end to end…’

  ‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snapped Finn. ‘There’s obviously no point in trying to get anything through to you. You’d better move your car.’

  Of course, the beastly thing wouldn’t start. Eventually I remembered to let out the clutch, and it shot forward in a series of agonizing jerks.

  ‘Louse, swine, monster,’ I muttered to myself, as I drove to the castle. No wonder Rory and he couldn’t stand each other.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I found Coco lying in bed looking beautiful as always, but very tired. Someone had brought her some lilies, and she’d buried her face in them. Her nose was bright yellow with pollen. She was obviously in considerable pain, but greeted me with her usual zest.

  ‘Help yourself to a drink, chérie, and get me one. Buster has gone shooting. Every day now he shoot, pop, pop, bang, bang. I find it very boring. I ’ave live in Scotland nearly thirty years, and still I do not find the plus-four sexy. Admittedly, Buster ’ave very good legs. A seagull excruciated on his coat just as he was leaving. He was very angry.’

  I giggled. Coco could always cheer me up. We gossiped for half an hour, then I reverted to the subject I could never ignore for long, even though it crucified me to talk about it.

  ‘Have you seen Marina?’ I asked.

  Coco raised her eyes to heaven.

  ‘Yes I ’ave. That’s a marriage going on the rocks. We had dinner with them the other night, she and Hamish. I gave her a lecture. I said “You are not making Hamish happy like Emily is making my Rory happy.”’ (I winced at that bit.) ‘And Marina laugh in my face. Sometimes I think she is a bit touchy in her head. She is so different from her brother, Finn. He’s so kind and down-to-earth, and such a wonderful doctor.’

  That moment a maid banged on the door.

  ‘Dr Maclean’s here, madam,’ she said.

  ‘Show him in,’ said Coco, excitedly.

  ‘Oh God, he was as mad as a boiled squirrel last time I saw him,’ I said.

  But Coco wasn’t listening, she was too busy combing her hair and spraying on scent.

  In marched Finn Maclean.

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ said Coco in delight. ‘I was just
singing your praises to Emily, telling her what a wonderful doctor you were — so kind and understanding. I shouldn’t think anything rattles you, does it, Finn?’

  ‘No,’ I said acidly, ‘I should think it’s always Dr Maclean who does the rattling.’

  Finn turned round and saw me. His face hardened slightly. ‘Oh it’s you,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew Emily,’ said Coco. ‘Isn’t she pretty? And so good for Rory.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re ideally matched,’ said Finn.

  The sarcasm was entirely lost on Coco, who beamed at us both.

  ‘Let’s have a look at your ankle,’ Finn said.

  Coco stretched out one of her beautiful, smooth, brown legs. The ankle was very black and swollen. Although Finn handled it with amazing delicacy, she drew her breath in.

  ‘Sore is it?’ he said gently.

  She nodded, catching her lip.

  ‘Poor old thing. Never mind, you’ve still got one perfect ankle,’ he said, getting up. ‘No reason why the other shouldn’t be as right as rain in a few weeks.’

  ‘What’s right about rain?’ I said gloomily, looking out of the window.

  ‘Still, I’d like to X-ray it,’ Finn went on, ignoring me. ‘I’ll send an ambulance to pick you up later. It’ll jolt you less than a car.’

  ‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to cook Rory’s supper.’

  ‘Finn will give you a lift,’ said Coco.

  ‘I’ve got a car,’ I said quickly.

  It was very cold outside and I shivered: I didn’t want to leave the cosy warmth of the castle for one of Rory’s black moods. Finn Maclean got something out of the pocket of his overcoat.

  ‘I should have thought it was a bit early on in your marriage to escape into tripe like this,’ he said, handing it to me. It was the romantic novel I’d intended to give Coco.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Coco’s ankle was X-rayed, bound up and she was ordered to rest it. Just before Christmas, however, Maisie Downleesh (one of Coco’s friends) decided to give a ball to celebrate her daughter Diney’s engagement. We were all invited.