Pandora (72 page)

Sophy still went home in utter despair.

Next morning, Alizarin gravely thanked the nurses and doctors who’d been so kind to him. Then, the picture of desolation, he was led shuffling out of the hospital and for a moment enjoyed the soft rain on his sweating face and was transported to the wet walks of Limesbridge, feeling the green silken caress of the wild garlic, which would be soon sweeping over the woodland floor.

‘Taxi’s waiting, Mr Belvedon.’

From then onwards it was all under cover. He was overwhelmed with panic as, trapped in his own tunnel of darkness, he was led by a kind hostess down another tunnel onto the plane. It was like being engulfed for ever in the belly of a whale.

They put him by the window, so he could ‘enjoy the view’. The moment the plane was aloft, he was again transported back to Limesbridge on a warm June evening as a heavenly scent of flowers overwhelmed him.

‘What would you like to drink, Mr Belvedon?’ asked a steward.

‘We’d like two glasses of champagne,’ said Sophy’s sweet, trembling voice from the seat beside him.

Despite the beauty of the March morning, Rosemary Pulborough was in low spirits. Not only had Forbes, her gardener, pruned all the buds off the viburnum intended to smell sweetly under the kitchen window, but he had also mowed away the pink and black fritillaries she’d been nurturing on the edge of the lawn.

To add to her misery, David was catting around more than ever, and, even more lowering, the
froideur
between him and Anthea had clearly melted. Anthea was once more imparting advance information to Rosemary about Melanie’s second baby, which was due any minute, and more painfully this morning about Si Greenbridge, who was evidently in London and had popped into the Pulborough yesterday.

‘The busiest people always find time,’ had said Anthea smugly.

David had been so incensed by his public humiliation when Alizarin had won the British Portrait Award last month that he had whisked Rosemary away from the Dorchester before she had had time to say goodbye to Si. As Si hadn’t been in touch since then, she became more and more convinced she had imagined the pressure of his leg and the warmth of his huge hand closing over hers. She had clipped out of
Hello
a photograph of David, herself and Si, with his arm proudly round her shoulders, at the awards, and tucked it into her notecase, behind her credit cards and snapshots of the cats and Melanie’s first baby. Her sole act of defiance had been to cut David out of the picture.

David was forced to be nice to her at the moment because from April as High Sheriff he would need a wife. The prospect of struggling into coats and skirts and little black dresses for an eternity of engagements depressed her even more.

She must pull herself together. It was past eleven and she was still in her dressing gown. Rubbing in moisturizer in front of the bathroom mirror, she wished the hand running down over her face and neck was Si’s instead of her own, stroking her as tenderly as outside the first acid-green criss-cross leaves of the weeping willows were caressing the white sweep of daffodils.

‘“Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way”,’ murmured Rosemary, so lost in sad thought she didn’t at first hear the telephone.

‘Rose-
mary
?’ Only one voice emphasized the second syllable. ‘This is Si.’ Then, when she couldn’t speak for joy: ‘Si Greenbridge.’

‘How lovely!’

There was an indignant squawk as Rosemary’s knees buckled, and she collapsed on Abednego, who’d been stretched out on the window seat enjoying the sunshine.

‘Sorry, darling.’

‘Is someone with you?’

‘Only one of my cats.’

‘Are you free for lunch?’

‘Golly, yes.’

‘I’ll pick you up.’

‘No,’ squeaked Rosemary, catching sight of Lady Belvedon gathering narcissi next door, ‘Anthea’s home.’

She kicked herself. How presumptuous to think Si was planning anything clandestine. Then her spirits soared as he said, ‘Christ, we don’t want to give that bitch any ammunition. Where’s somewhere safe and quiet for lunch near you?’

Rosemary’s mind went as blank as the untroubled blue sky outside. Finally she stammered, ‘There’s the Grasshopper and Sixpence on the Limesbridge–Rutminster road.’

‘See you there, a quarter after one. If I’m a few seconds late, order a bottle of Krug.’

Switching off the telephone, Rosemary threw her head back, breathing deeply, clutching herself in ecstasy.

After that, everything went wrong. She had just showered and washed her hair, and sent Abednego scurrying out of the bathroom by spraying on deodorant, when Green Jean, that enemy of aerosols, arrived lobbying for jumble and gasping for herbal tea.

Green Jean was followed by the doctor’s wife collecting for the Lifeboats, accompanied by her fox terrier, who promptly treed Shadrach. By the time Rosemary had coaxed Shadrach down, her un-blow-dried hair was sticking out wildly like a greying sunflower.

A sassy new bra gave her a good shape, but if one rammed one’s breasts together over a certain age, one’s cleavage wrinkled like an Australian drought area. Her body hadn’t seen the sun since last September but gardening in all weathers had left a satsuma net of red veins on her pale cheeks.

You’re a very unattractive property, she told herself despairingly, an old wreck coming out of an old rectory.

At least she had a terribly pretty frilly cream silk shirt to wear with her brown velvet suit. But her hands were shaking so much that she pricked her finger while pinning on her cornelian brooch, and bled all over the cream silk, so she had to wear her dreary grey poplin instead. By the time she’d picked a bunch of daffodils and polyanthus for Si, it was twelve-forty-five.

Rushing outside, she found her car battery flat. She was being punished for sinful intent. The only answer was to take David’s vast new Range Rover. She felt so plain she couldn’t bear to glance in the driving mirror. But as she gingerly manoeuvred the great double-decker tank along the twisted Larkshire lanes, it was impossible not to feel optimistic. The cottages were wearing plumes of yellow forsythia in their hats. Flocks of gulls, like outsize snowflakes, followed the tractors over the rich brown earth. Primroses, anemones and celandines shining like little suns crowded the banks on either side of the road. St George’s horse was off to the races.

‘Going to see Si, going to see Si, going to see Si,’ sang Rosemary to the last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

But drawing up outside the Grasshopper and Sixpence, she gave a moan of horror as she realized she’d picked a motel. What would Si think? Inside, presumably because everyone was busy humping away in the surrounding bungalows, the self-service dining room was deserted. A bored-looking waitress, who occasionally lifted a silver lid and gave some sickly yellow chicken marengo a stir, had clearly never heard of Krug.

There was no sign of Si. Catching sight of General Anaesthetic and his wife driving decorously past in their ancient Rover, followed by a furiously hooting convoy of motorists, Rosemary collapsed into a chair in the foyer, taking refuge behind the
Financial Times
.

Then she jumped out of her skin as on page three she found a belligerent Si glaring out at her, looking far too busy to take anyone out to lunch. ‘King Midas’, said the headline.

‘So sorry I’m late.’

Through the swing doors came a grim-faced Si, navy-blue coat collar turned up against a jaw already blackened with stubble.

‘I’m so sorry,’ began Rosemary, then, lowering her voice in case she hurt the feelings of the staff, ‘that I chose such a sleaze hole.’

She was so nervous as she leapt to her feet, she overturned her bag, which spewed out its contents. Next moment Si was on the floor beside her. As he retrieved a little paperback of Matthew Arnold’s poems and her notecase from under the table, the photograph of them both at the British Portrait Awards fluttered out. A smile of such delight softened Si’s heavy features.

‘I clipped the same picture. I cut out David too,’ he said.

As they were both on their hands and knees, and her mouth, open in amazement, was so near his, he kissed it very gently, then, edging nearer, extremely hard.

‘Just adore your new hair-do,’ he added, ruffling her hair.

‘It’s a hair-don’t, actually. Oh, Si, I’ve only driven past and never noticed it was a motel . . . I don’t want you to think . . .’

‘Best idea you ever had.’ Si squeezed her hands. ‘How hungry are you?’

‘Not very.’

‘Nor am I. I’ll get a room, and we’ll have a bottle and some sandwiches.’ Then, seeing the terror in her eyes: ‘It’s OK, we can just talk and smooch. No big deal.’

Si was overjoyed with his bunch of flowers, unwrapping them from their silver foil and putting them in a tooth mug beside the vast bed. This had a headboard like the console of some touring opera, complete with telephone, lights to dim, air conditioner, music controls, levitating television set, electric window blinds and a button to make the bed do the humping if you were feeling tired. An ice bucket holding a chilled bottle of Moët came up through a trap door.

Rosemary got the giggles and wanted to try everything as they talked about Tiger Woods’s swing, Si’s new horses and his airline company, and, best of all, in between lingering kisses, how they had missed each other. Si was so huge and hunky, he made her feel by comparison as fragile as Anthea.

By the second glass, he had most of her clothes off and in the rose-coloured lighting, her flesh didn’t seem nearly so pleated, particularly when they snuggled under the sheets, and he stroked her and told her how pretty her body was until she stopped trembling.

‘The first time I saw you, I thought what a
fritefly
attractive man. What did you think?’ asked Rosemary.

‘That’s the woman I’d like to spend the rest of my life with.’

‘Oh, Si.’ Rosemary buried her blushing face in the pillow. ‘I’m so plain.’

‘You’re beautiful,’ snapped Si.

Then, rolling her towards him so he could look into her face: ‘I had a pretty rough childhood, my mom drank and knocked me about, there wasn’t any money, but my dad promised me a puppy, and after a lot of nagging he took me to the Dogs’ Home. There, amid all the din and barking, I saw a brown crossbreed, about nine or ten I guess, whom no-one wanted. She’d been there for months, her despair and loneliness was palpable’ – smiling down at Rosemary, Si caressed her cheek with the back of his hand – ‘I said, “I’ll have that one”.

‘I called her Sunny, and she lived for another eight years. She was the sweetest, best, most loving dog I ever had, and never stopped wagging her tail. She made my adolescence bearable.’ Si couldn’t speak for the moment. ‘The day she died was the blackest of my life. I’ve been looking for another Sunny ever since.’

‘Woof, woof,’ muttered Rosemary, to hide how touched she was, turning her head to kiss his fingers.

‘And once she was loved,’ added Si softly, ‘she became beautiful.’

Rosemary couldn’t believe that a man normally in such a hurry seemed to have all the time in the world to kiss her breasts, her tummy button, even her chilblained toes, and all the way up her thighs.

‘Sorry it’s taking so long,’ she muttered, rigid with tension.

‘Hush, honey, relax.’

Wearing her dark forest of pubic hair as a moustache, Si looked more like a bandit than ever.

His chunky gold rings grazed her breasts as he caressed her.

I mustn’t fake, she kept telling herself. This is the really real thing, I mustn’t.

‘Oh! Oh! Oooooh! Oh Si!’ she cried as suddenly she toppled over the cliff into the lovely warm ocean, shuddering in wonder and amazement.

But soon she was panicking again. It was clearly her turn to give Si pleasure. Feeling dreadfully amateurish and out of practice, she began licking him, as nervously and surreptitiously as a child warned not to accept lollipops from strangers. But soon nerves gave way to joy at his obvious delight.

‘That is so good, honey, but I want to come inside you.’

‘I don’t think you’ll be able to get inside,’ confessed Rosemary. ‘My gynae says, after a certain age, women close up if they aren’t used, like rusty old gates, padlocked and entwined with goose grass.’