Emily Read online

  There is something about the idea of a ball that lifts the spirits, however low one is. I suppose it’s the excitement; buying a new dress, new make-up, a new hairstyle and settling down in front of the mirror in an attempt to magic oneself into the most glamorous girl in the room. In the past, a ball had offered all the excitement of the unknown, opportunity knocking. This time, I hoped, it would be a chance to make myself beautiful enough to win back Rory.

  The ball was being held at the Downleeshes’ castle on the mainland. Coco, Buster, Rory and I were all to stay there. In the morning I took the car across the ferry and drove to Edinburgh to buy a new dress. In the afternoon I had to pick up a couple who were coming to the dance from London, then drive back and pick up Rory from the Irasa Ferry, and then drive on to the Downleeshes’.

  I was determined that a new me was going to emerge, so gorgeous that every Laird would be mad with desire for me. I spent a frenzied morning rushing from shop to shop. Eventually in a back street I tracked down a gloriously tarty, pale pink dress, skin tight over the bottom, slashed at the front and plunging back and front.

  It had been reduced in a sale because there was a slight mark on the navel, and because, the assistant said with a sniff, there was no call for that sort of garment in Edinburgh.

  I tried it on; it was wildly sexy.

  ‘A little tight over the barkside, don’t ye thenk,’ said the assistant, who was keen to steer me into black velvet at three times the price.

  ‘That’s just how I like it,’ I said.

  It was a bit long too, so I went and bought new six-inch high shoes, and then went to the hairdressers and had a pink rinse put on my hair. I never do things by three-quarters. All in all it was a bit of a rush getting to the airport.

  The Frayns were waiting when I arrived — I recognized them a mile off. He was one of those braying chinless telegraph poles in a dung-coloured tweed jacket. She was a typical ex-deb, with flat ears from permanently wearing a headscarf, and a very long right arm from lugging suitcases to Paddington every weekend to go home to Mummy. She had blue eyes, mouse hair and one of those pink and white complexions that nothing, not rough winds nor drinking and dancing till dawn, can destroy. They were also nauseatingly besotted with one another. Every sentence began ‘Charles thinks’ or ‘Fiona thinks’. And they kept roaring with laughter at each other’s jokes, like hyenas. She also had that terrible complacency that often overtakes newly married women and stems from relief at having hooked a man, and being uncritically adored by him.

  She was quite nice about me being late, but there was a lot of talk about stopping at a telephone box on the dot of 6.30 to ring up Nanny and find out how little Caroline was getting on; and did I think we’d get there in time to change?

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve been separated from Caroline,’ she said. ‘I do hope Nanny can cope.’

  She sat in the front beside me, he sat in the back; they held hands all the time. Why didn’t they both get in the back and neck?

  It was a bitterly cold day. Stripped, black trees were etched on the skyline. The heavy brown sky was full of snow. Shaggy forelocked heads of the cows tossed in the gloom as they cropped the sparse turf. Just before we reached the ferry to pick up Rory and Walter Scott, it started snowing in earnest. I had hoped Rory and I could have a truce for the evening — but I was an hour late which didn’t improve his temper.

  Fiona, who had evidently known Rory as a child, went into a flurry of what’s happened to old so and so, and who did so and so marry.

  Rory answered her in monosyllables; he had snow melting in his hair and paint on his hands.

  ‘Too awful,’ she went on. ‘Did you know Annie Richmond’s father threw himself under a taxi in the rush hour in Knightsbridge?’

  ‘Lucky to find one at that hour,’ said Rory, looking broodingly at the snowflakes swarming like great bees on the windscreen.

  I giggled. Rory looked at me, and then noticed my hair.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘Do you like it?’ I said nervously.

  ‘No,’ he said and turned up the wireless full blast to drown Fiona’s chatter.

  Suddenly she gave a scream.

  ‘Oh look, there’s a telephone box. Could you stop a minute, Rory, so I can telephone Nanny.’

  Rory raised his eyes to heaven.

  She got out of the car and, giving little shrieks, ran through the snow. Through the glass of the telephone box I could see her smiling fatuously, forcing l0p pieces into the telephone box. Rory didn’t reply to Charles’ desultory questions about shooting. His nails were so bitten that his drumming fingers made little sound on the dashboard.

  A quarter of an hour later, Fiona returned.

  ‘Well?’ said Charles.

  ‘She’s fine, but she’s missing us,’ she said. ‘She brought up most of her lunch but she’s just had two rusks and finished all her bottle, so Nanny thinks she’s recovered.’

  Rory scurled off through the snow, his hands clenched on the wheel.

  ‘What b-awful weather,’ said Fiona, looking out of the window. ‘You really must start a family very soon, Emily,’ she went on. ‘It gives a completely new dimension to one’s life. I think one’s awfully selfish really until one has children.’

  ‘Parents,’ said Rory, ‘should always be seen and not heard.’

  Punctuated by giggles and murmurs of ‘Oh Charles’ from the back, we finally reached the turrets and gables and great blackened keep of Downleesh Castle. The windows threw shafts of light on to the snow which was gathering thickly on the surrounding fir trees and yews. The usual cavalcade of terriers and labradors came pounding out of the house to welcome us. Walter Scott was dragged off protesting by a footman to be given his dinner in the kitchen.

  In the dark panelled hall, great banks of holly were piled round the suits of armour, the spears and the banners. We had a drink before going upstairs. Diney, Lady Downleesh’s daughter, who’d just got engaged, fell on Fiona’s neck and they both started yapping about weddings and babies.

  We were taken to our bedroom down long, draughty passages to the West Tower. In spite of a fire in the grate, it was bitterly cold.

  I found when I got there that my suitcase had been unpacked and all my clothes laid out neatly on the mildewed fourposter, including an old bone of Walter Scott’s and a half-eaten bar of chocolate I had stuffed into my suitcase at the last moment. On the walls were pictures of gun-dogs coming out of the bracken, their mouths full of feathers.

  I missed Walter. Sometimes in those awful long silences I had with Rory I found it a relief to jabber away to him.

  ‘Can he come upstairs?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Rory.

  In the bookshelves was a book called A Modern Guide to Pig Husbandry. ‘Perhaps I should read it,’ I said, ‘it might give me some advice about being married to a pig,’

  Across the passage were the unspeakable Frayns. They had already hogged the bathroom, and judging from the sound of splashing and giggling, it wasn’t just a bath they were having. I realized I was jealous of their happiness and involvement. I wanted Rory to start every sentence ‘Emily says’ and roar with laughter at my jokes.

  I took ages over dressing, painting my face as carefully as Rory painted any of his pictures. My pink dress looked pretty sensational; I put a ruby brooch Coco had given me over the mark on the navel. It was certainly tight, too, everyone would be able to see my goose-pimples, but on the whole I was pleased with the result — it was definitely one of my on days. The only problem was that when I put on my new tights, the crotch only came up to the middle of my thighs. I gave them a tug and they split irrevocably, leaving a large hole, so I had to make do with bare legs.

  I was just trying to give myself a better cleavage with Sellotape when Rory announced that he was ready. Even I, though, was unprepared for his beauty, dressed up in a dark green velvet doublet with white lace at the throat and wrists and the dark green and blue kilt of the B
alniels. Pale and haughty, his eyes glittering with bad temper, he looked like something out of Kidnapped; Alan Breck Stuart or young Lochinvar coming out of the West.

  ‘Oh,’ I sighed. ‘You do look lovely.’

  Rory grimaced and tugged at the frills at his neck.

  ‘I feel like Kenneth McKellar,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind, you’ve got exactly the right hips to wear a pleated skirt,’ I said.

  Rory put a long tartan muffler thing on the dressing-table. ‘This is for you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not thinking of going out in this weather,’ I said.

  ‘You wear it indoors,’ he said, draping it diagonally across my shoulders, ‘like this, and pin it here.’

  ‘But whatever for?’ I moaned.

  ‘It’s the Balniel tartan,’ he said evenly. ‘Married women are supposed to wear their husband’s tartan.’

  ‘But it completely covers up my cleavage.’

  ‘Just as well, you’re not at some orgy in Chelsea now,’ said Rory.

  ‘Do I really have to, it’s a bit Hooray for me.’

  Very sulkily I arranged it; somehow tartan didn’t go with skintight pink satin, and brooches on the navel.

  I wanted to fiddle with my hair and make-up a few minutes longer, but Rory was sitting on the bed, staring at me coldly, making me nervous.

  ‘Why don’t you go on down?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ he said.

  I combed a few pink tendrils over my shoulders.

  ‘What made you go crazy with the cochineal?’ said Rory.

  ‘I thought I ought to change my image,’ I said, sourly. ‘My old one didn’t seem to be getting me very far.’

  Downstairs in the huge drawing-room people were having drinks. The host and hostess stood near the door repeating the same words of welcome to new arrivals. Looking round I realized I looked better than most of the women but infinitely more tarty. Most of them were big, raw-boned deb types in very covered-up clothes, the occasional mottled purple arms were the nearest they got to décolletage. Very tall, aristocratic men in kilts stood talking in haw haw voices about getting their lochs drained and burning their grouse moors. Fishes in glass cases and mounted stags’ heads stared glassily down from the walls.

  Fiona and Charles were standing near the door. She was wearing a blue dress and absolutely no eye make-up.

  ‘What a pretty dress,’ I said, with desperate insincerity.

  ‘Yes, everyone likes it,’ she said, ‘blue is Charles’ favourite colour.’

  Charles was gaping at my pink hair, his mouth even more open than usual. Fiona started trying to bring Rory out about his painting.

  ‘Do you do all that funny abstract stuff?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Rory.

  ‘Some young man — he had a beard actually — painted my sister Sarah. She sat for two hours and all he had drawn after all that time were three figs and a milk bottle.’

  She gave a tinkle of laughter, Rory looked at her stonily.

  ‘Charles paints quite beautifully too, I feel it’s such a shame his job in the City is so demanding he doesn’t have time to take painting up as a hobby — like you, Rory.’

  ‘Rory does not paint as a hobby,’ I said furiously, ‘it’s his profession.’ But I spoke to deaf ears, Rory had turned on his heel and gone off to get himself a drink. Charles and Fiona were suddenly shrieking at a couple who had just come into the room.

  I was extremely pleased therefore that the next moment Calen Macdonald bore down on me and kissed first my hand, then my cheek, then both my bare shoulders.

  ‘I was just saying to Buster I wished I could see more of you,’ he said, pulling down my tartan sash and peering at my cleavage, ‘and now I have. I must say that dress is very fetching, pink looks like bare flesh if one shuts one’s eyes.’

  ‘Where’s Deidre?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, she’s stalking in Inverness.’

  I giggled.

  ‘So I’ve got the whole evening off and I’m going to devote it entirely to you.’

  Two matrons with red-veined faces stopped discussing herbaceous borders and looked at us frostily.

  At that moment a voice shouted ‘Emily!’ and there was Coco, dripping with sapphires as big as gull’s eggs, wearing a glorious midnight blue dress. She was lying like Madame Recamier on a red brocade sofa, surrounded by admirers.

  Rory sat at her feet.

  ‘I didn’t see you,’ I said, going over and kissing her.

  ‘You look very nice, doesn’t she, Rory,’ said Coco.

  ‘A bit prawn cocktail,’ said Rory.

  I bit my lip.

  ‘I think she looks tremendous,’ said Buster giving me a warm look. ‘In the pink, I might say,’ he laughed heartily.

  The room was filling up. Buster and Calen were joined by some ancient general, and they were soon busy recounting to each other the number of creatures they had slaughtered in the last week.

  ‘Grouses, and twelve bores, and twenty bores, and million bores, that’s all men can think about up here,’ said Coco. She began talking to me about shoes.

  There was a sudden stir and a whisper ran through the room. The old general straightened his tie and smoothed his moustache.

  ‘What a beautiful girl,’ he said.

  A swift flush mounted to Rory’s pale cheeks. With a sinking heart, without turning my head, I knew it must be Marina.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she said, coming over and kissing Coco, ‘how’s your poor leg, darling?’

  She was wearing a pale grey chiffon dress, smothered in two huge pale grey feather boas. With her flaming red hair it made one think of beech woods in autumn against a cloudy sky. I noticed she had no truck with Hamish’s tartan across her bosom. I supposed it was Rory’s tartan she was after. Sadly I realized that if I spent a million years on my face and clothes, I would never be as beautiful as Marina. Hamish, all done up in black velvet and frills, looked awful.

  ‘Mutton dressed as cutlet,’ said Rory to Marina under his breath. Even worse was to come. Following her into the room came Finn Maclean in a dinner jacket, with a sleek brunette.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Rory, ‘here comes the virgin surgeon. Diney,’ he added, turning to the daughter of the house, ‘what the hell is Doctor Finlay doing here?’

  ‘He was absolutely wonderful about Mummy’s ulcer,’ said Diney, her eyes shining.

  ‘Probably gave it to her in the first place,’ said Rory.

  ‘Well, I must say, I think he’s rather super myself,’ said Diney.

  ‘I’m surprised at you,’ said Rory, ‘one really shouldn’t know one’s doctor socially.’

  Finn came up to Coco.

  ‘How’s it feeling?’ he said.

  ‘Much better,’ said Coco.

  ‘May be, but there must be no dancing on it,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Who’s that with him?’ I whispered to Calen Macdonald.

  ‘I think she’s one of his nurses,’ said Calen.

  ‘She’s pretty,’ I said.

  ‘Not my type,’ said Calen, and started whispering sweet everythings into my ear. I, however, was much more interested in seeing how Rory and Finn reacted to each other.

  ‘Look, Rory,’ said Coco, ‘here’s Finn.’

  Rory, just lighting a cigarette, paused, eyeing Finn without any friendliness.

  Finn nodded coldly, ‘Hello, Rory,’ he said.

  ‘Good evening, Doctor,’ said Rory — he smiled but his eyes were cold, his face as pale as marble. There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Isn’t it nice Finn’s back for good,’ said Coco brightly to the assembled company.

  ‘Not for my good, he isn’t,’ said Rory.

  ‘This is Frances,’ said Finn, ignoring him and introducing the sleek brunette. ‘She works at the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, a staff outing,’ drawled Rory, ‘what fun. Did you come here by charabanc with a crate of beer, or is it part of the S.R.N. syllabus — a dazzling night of danci
ng and passion in the arms of Doctor Maclean?’

  ‘Only for very privileged nurses,’ said Frances, smiling at Finn.

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve been able to drag him away from delivering babies and darning up appendices,’ said Rory.

  Frances was obviously uncertain how to take Rory.

  ‘Dr Maclean certainly doesn’t allow himself enough free time,’ she said warmly.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Rory, his eyes lighting up with malicious amusement. ‘He’s an example to us all. I gather that’s the reason your marriage came unstuck, Finn. I heard your ex-wife couldn’t cope with the short hours, or wasn’t your double bedside manner up to scratch? However,’ he smiled at Frances, ‘you seem to be consoling yourself very nicely.’

  I turned away in embarrassment; if only he wouldn’t be so poisonous. Rory grabbed my arm.

  ‘You haven’t met Emily, have you, Finn?’

  ‘Yes he has,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Oh?’ Rory raised an eyebrow.

  ‘We met at Coco’s one day,’ I said, ‘when Finn came to see her about her ankle.’ Rory held out his glass to a passing waiter to fill up.

  ‘Are you still trying to paint?’ Finn said.

  ‘He’s got an exhibition in London in April,’ I said hotly.

  ‘Doesn’t really need one,’ said Finn. ‘He’s been making an exhibition of himself for years,’ and taking Frances by the arm, crossed the room to talk to his host.

  ‘Scintillating as ever,’ said Rory, but his hand shook as he lit one cigarette from another.

  ‘Do you like dancing reels, Emily?’ said Marina.

  ‘If I have enough to drink,’ I said, draining my glass, ‘I reel automatically.’

  We went in to dinner.

  The leathery, sneering faces of ancestors looked down from the walls. The candlelight flickered on the gleaming panelling, the suits of armour, the long polished table with its shining silver and glasses, and on the pearly white shoulders of Marina.

  ‘I hope there’s a huge flower arrangement in front of me so I don’t have to sit staring at Doctor Maclean,’ said Rory.

  I was horrified to see that he and Marina were sitting next to each other on the opposite side of the table. I was next to Calen, who ran his fingers all over my bare back when he pushed my chair in. And now the bad news. On my other side was six feet four inches of Titian-haired disapproval — Finn Maclean.