Imogen (8 page)
‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go upstairs, much more comfortable. We’ve got hours of time. Homer will bark if anyone comes.’
‘Not at Daddy and Mummy, he won’t.’
‘They won’t even have started dinner yet.’
Imogen gazed up at Nicky with huge troubled eyes.
‘It’d kill my father.’
‘Hooray,’ said Nicky. ‘I’ll come and sell tickets at his funeral.’
Imogen tried and failed to look shocked. He put his hands round her waist. She came towards him, dissolving into him. He moved his hand under her sweater, and closed it over her breast.
Imogen started to struggle.
‘It’d be so awful,’ she muttered, ‘if I got pregnant.’
‘You’re not fixed up?’ he asked sharply. ‘When are you due?’
Imogen swallowed. She’d never discussed things like this with a man. ‘Tomorrow or the next day.’
‘No problem,’ said Nicky, relaxing, launching into the attack again. ‘That’s why your tits are so fantastic at the moment.’
She was glad to be able to hide her embarrassment in his shoulder. Now she felt his hand on her back. She’d never known anyone with such warm hands. Next moment he’d slipped it under her jeans, and was stroking her bottom.
‘You must stop,’ gasped Imogen as he pushed her back on the sofa, and removed her sweater. ‘I’ve never done it with anybody before,’ she said, emerging from the fluff.
‘I’m not just anybody,’ said Nicky. ‘And you can’t stop, sweetheart, any more than I can.’ Oh, help, thought Imogen, what’s happening to me. But next minute she froze with horror as the back door opened and Homer bounded out with a crash.
‘Yoo hoo,’ said a voice. ‘Anyone at home?’
‘
Ker-ist
,’ said Nicky, then with incredible presence of mind he seized Imogen’s sweater, turned it right-way out and pulled it over her head.
Ker-ist
,’ said Nicky, then with incredible presence of mind he seized Imogen’s sweater, turned it right-way out and pulled it over her head.
‘Keep cool,’ he murmured, kicking her bra under the sofa and tucking in his shirt.
‘We’re in here,’ he called.
‘Hullo Nicky,’ said her mother, walking into the room carrying a large marrow. ‘Hullo darling, what a beastly night. Isn’t it a shame, poor Mrs Westley’s got shingles? They tried to ring us but we’d already left. We didn’t stop to dinner, and came straight home. They gave us this.’ She waved the marrow. ‘Daddy’s putting the car away.’
‘Well, have some champagne to cheer you up,’ said Nicky.
Imogen rushed off to get more glasses, her heart hammering, feeling quite faint with horror. Just think if her father had found her and Nicky at it on the floor, in front of Homer too, she thought with an hysterical giggle. Thank God it was her mother who’d come in first.
As she went back into the drawing-room she heard her mother asking Nicky, ‘Do you think there’s any hope of Virginia Woolf winning Wimbledon?’
The rest of Nicky’s visit was disastrous. They’d all gone to bed early and Nicky had whispered to Imogen on the stairs, ‘
Courage, ma brave
. As soon as all’s quiet on the West Riding Front, I’ll creep along to your room.’
Courage, ma brave
. As soon as all’s quiet on the West Riding Front, I’ll creep along to your room.’
But alas, the vicar, suffering from one of his periodic bouts of insomnia, had decided to sleep – or rather not sleep – in his dressing-room, which was equidistant between Imogen’s room and the spare room. There he lay with the light on and the door ajar, pretending to read Donne’s sermons, but actually brooding on former glories, a row of silver cups on the chest of drawers and framed pictures of muscular men with folded arms round the wall.
Imogen lay shivering with terror in bed. And every time Nicky tried to steal down the passage, the vicar, who had ears on elastic, called out, ‘Is that you, my dear?’ So Nicky had to bolt into the lavatory. By one o’clock, mindful that he might rot up his chances in the Scottish Open tomorrow, he gave up and fell into a dreamless sleep. Imogen, who didn’t sleep at all, could hardly bear to look at his sulky face next morning.
‘Well that was a lead balloon, wasn’t it?’ he said, getting into his car. Tears filled Imogen’s eyes. This was obviously good-bye for good. Then, noticing the violet shadows under the brimming eyes, Nicky relented. It wasn’t her fault. If the vicar hadn’t come home unexpectedly, she’d have dropped like a ripe plum into his hands. ‘You couldn’t help it. I shall be much freer once the American Open’s over. Would your parents ever let you come away for a week-end?’
Imogen shook her head. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Have you got any holiday left?’
‘A fortnight in September.’
‘Anything planned?’
‘No – nothing really.’
How few girls would have admitted it, thought Nicky, taking her hand. She was as transparent and as wholesome as Pears Soap.
‘Well the only answer’s to go on holiday together then.’
All heaven seemed to open. ‘Oh, how lovely!’ gasped Imogen. Then it closed again. ‘But my father would never allow it.’
‘H’m . . . we’ll see about that.’
Chapter Four
A fortnight later, during Wimbledon week, Nicky had a drink with his friend Matthew O’Connor in Fleet Street. He had known O’Connor on and off for a number of years. They bumped into each other abroad – Nicky playing in tournaments, O’Connor covering stories – and they had got drunk together and been slung out of more foreign nightclubs than they cared to remember.
‘Are you going to France this year?’ said Nicky.
‘In September. Why?’
‘Any room in your car?’
The big Irishman looked at him shrewdly. ‘Depends who you want to bring.’
Nicky grinned. ‘Well, I met this bird in Yorkshire.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Got a pair of knockers you can get lost in.’
‘What else?’
‘Well she’s adorable, like a puppy. You want to pick her up and cuddle her all the time. But terribly naïve. Dad’s a vicar and a bloody tartar – like that Mr Barrett of Walpole Street.’
O’Connor grinned. ‘And you see yourself as Robert Browning?’
‘Well something of the sort. Anyway, I can’t get within necking distance on home ground.’
‘Green is she? So you fancy an away fixture?’
‘An away fixture is what I fancy.’
O’Connor ordered another round of drinks.
‘I’ve always believed,’ he said, ‘that if a bird’s worth doing, she’s worth doing well. But a fortnight’s a hell of a long time. Don’t you think you better take her away for a week-end first?’
‘I’ve got tournaments every week-end for the next two months. Besides I doubt if the old vicar would let her.’
‘Well, he’s not likely to let her go on holiday, is he?’
‘He might. I can say we’re going in a large party. Parents seem to have some totally mistaken idea that there’s safety in numbers.’
‘Will she fight with Cable?’ asked O’Connor.
‘You’ve never allowed me to meet Cable.’
‘No more I haven’t. Come and have a drink with us this evening.’
The next day Nicky wrote to Imogen’s parents. He was planning to go to France for a fortnight in September with a couple of friends who were engaged, and there would also be another married couple in the party taking their own car. He’d thought Imogen was looking tired last time he’d stayed. She needed a holiday. Could she join their party?
To Imogen’s joy and amazement her parents agreed. Even her mother had noticed how down she was, and her father, who was looking forward to his three weeks’ exchange stint in the North Riding in September (the golf course was excellent there), had no desire to have his elder daughter slopping around with a February face spoiling the fun.
‘I’ll never, never be unhappy again,’ vowed Imogen. She dialled Nicky’s number in London to give him the good news.
All the same, it was a very trying summer. Wimbledon fortnight came, and Imogen and Gloria spent most of it with the transistor on or with a pair of binoculars surreptitiously trained on the television in the Radio Rentals shop opposite the library. Nicky was in coruscating form, reaching the last eight of the singles and only being knocked out after a marathon match, and the semi-finals of the doubles with Charlie Painter. Everyone commented on his improved game. And whenever he appeared on the television screen, clothed in white tennis clothes, mystic, wonderful, whether he was uncoiling like a whiplash when serving or jumping from foot to foot as though the court were red hot beneath his feet, waiting to whistle back a shot, he seemed a God infinitely beyond Imogen’s reach.
She had also seen him in the players’ stand, laughing with some of the more beautiful wives. Nor could she miss the way the tennis groupies (pert little girls with snake hips and avid eyes) made every match he played a one-sided affair by screaming with joy whenever he did a good shot, even cheering his opponent’s double faults, and mobbing him every time he came off court. Could this really be the man who’d eaten her mother’s macaroni cheese and wrestled with her on the sofa?
After Wimbledon he moved on to ritzy places all over the world and Imogen found that a diet of almost illiterate postcards and occasional crackling telephone calls was not really enough to sustain her. Oh ye of little faith, she kept telling herself sternly, but found herself increasingly suffering from moodiness and then feeling desperately ashamed of herself.
Even worse, everyone at work, having glimpsed Nicky and learnt they were going on holiday together, had turned the affair into a sort of office
Crossroads
. Not a day passed without someone asking her if she’d heard from him, or how long was it until her holiday, or how was he getting on in Indianapolis. Gloria’s attitude was ambiguous too. On the one hand she liked to boast, when out, of how her greatest friend Imogen was going out with a tennis star, and let slip crumbs of tennis gossip passed on by Imogen. But on the other she was wildly jealous, particularly when the word got round and several of the local wolves started coming into the library asking Imogen for dates.
Crossroads
. Not a day passed without someone asking her if she’d heard from him, or how long was it until her holiday, or how was he getting on in Indianapolis. Gloria’s attitude was ambiguous too. On the one hand she liked to boast, when out, of how her greatest friend Imogen was going out with a tennis star, and let slip crumbs of tennis gossip passed on by Imogen. But on the other she was wildly jealous, particularly when the word got round and several of the local wolves started coming into the library asking Imogen for dates.
‘They ought to provide wolf hooks as well as dog hooks outside,’ Gloria said, with a slight edge to her voice. ‘Then they wouldn’t be able to come in here pestering you.’
Stung by Gloria’s sniping (You shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. I bet Nicky’s playing round with all those foreign birds), Imogen gritted her teeth and went out with one or two of the wolves. But when the evening ended, remembering Nicky’s beautiful curling mouth, and the caressing deftness of his touch, she couldn’t even bear to let them kiss her; then felt mean when they stormed off into the night.
Finally, the weather had been terrible. Throughout July, August and early September, it deluged without stopping. The River Darrow flooded the water meadows and the tennis courts, and endangered the lives of several flocks of sheep. Imogen’s hair crinkled depressingly, and she had absolutely no chance to brown her pallid body before her holiday. And the vicar, whose garden and golf had been almost washed away, was in a permanently foul mood and vented most of his rage on Imogen.
At last September arrived. By scrimping every penny, she’d managed to save a hundred pounds. Nicky had told her not to worry about money, that he’d take care of everything, but she knew France was terribly expensive, and she wanted to pay her way. As most of her wages went towards the housekeeping, it didn’t leave much for her wardrobe.
‘What am I going to do about beach clothes?’ she said.
‘You won’t need much in a small fishing village,’ said her mother. ‘Which reminds me, Lady Jacintha sent a lovely red bathing dress for jumble. Red’s in this year, isn’t it? It’s perfect, except for a bit of moth in the seat.’
The jumble was also deprived of two of Lady Jacintha’s wide-bottomed cotton trousers, which didn’t really fit, but Imogen thought she could pull long sweaters over them. Her mother bought her two kaftans in a sale in Leeds.
‘This phrase book isn’t much good,’ said Juliet, lounging on Imogen’s bed the night before she left. ‘“My coachman has been struck by lightning,” “Please ask the chambermaid to bring some more candles.” I ask you!’
Imogen wasn’t listening. She was trying on Lady J’s red bathing dress for the hundredth time and wondering if it would do.
‘My legs are like the bottom half of a twinset and pearls,’ she sighed.
‘You ought to get a bikini. Bet it’s topless down there,’ said Juliet. ‘I think Mummy and Daddy are so funny.’
‘Why?’ said Imogen, folding up a dress.
‘Thinking you’ll be safe because you’ve got a married couple in the party to chaperone you. Ha! Ha! To egg you on more likely. I hope you’re on the pill!’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ snapped Imogen.
‘Well, you won’t be able to hold off a man like Nicky once he gets you in France.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Imogen, storming out of the room.
But it was all too near the knuckle. Nicky’s last letter – the only one he hadn’t written on a postcard – had ended . . .
and, darling, for goodness sake go and get yourself fitted up. We don’t want to spoil the whole fortnight worrying about you getting pregnant
.
and, darling, for goodness sake go and get yourself fitted up. We don’t want to spoil the whole fortnight worrying about you getting pregnant
.
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