Читать книгу Master of the House - Justine Elyot - Страница 5

I went for the snake-print shift with the shoulder ruffle. It was vital that I looked grown-up and sophisticated, a woman in control of her destiny. I wanted the traces of what I was before I left Willingham to be completely erased, so that he had to double-take and harbour some doubt that I was the same person.

At least I was driving, so there was no chance of overdoing the wine and getting maudlin or antagonistic or, worst of all, amorous.

Mum had gone to watch Animal take part in a Battle of the Bands, and it was a relief to have this excuse not to join her. You need some fun, Luce. I hadn’t dared tell her who I was meeting. ‘An old school friend’. Not exactly.

I didn’t want to be kept waiting at the bar, so I lurked in the car park until I was ten minutes late, obsessing about that time we’d met here before, nine years ago.

There was nothing sleek about me then. I stood at the bar with Mrs Wragg’s cousin’s daughter, Minna, drinking Vimto through a straw, wearing a vintagey daisy-patterned dress and a crochet cardigan that made my arms droop.

‘Seriously, you haven’t been here before?’ Minna had spent all day making fun of me and the fact that I’d been eighteen for three months and still hadn’t had an alcoholic drink or a speeding ticket or a kiss. It was starting to get really annoying.

‘No, except in the garden, to play on the swings. A long time ago, of course. Not, like, last week or anything.’

She laughed, spluttering on her Malibu and coke.

‘You want to live a bit, Luce. Back at home, I’d be getting ready to hit the clubs. Couple of Breezers in the bedroom with my girls, music on, makeover time.’

Irritated, I had a go at trying to shock her. ‘I usually spend my Saturday nights skinning up in the van with the local biker crew,’ I said.

It was blatantly untrue. I’d had one toke of a joint, once, a few months back, and disliked the aftertaste so much that I never did it again. Besides, what it did to mum and her friends bored me. Why would I want to spend hours staring vacantly into space or giggling at the cartoon on a fucking crisp packet? No, thanks.

‘What, you’re on drugs?’ she said, wide-eyed, then, ‘Know where we can get some?’

I did, as it happened, but I shrugged and said, ‘Nobody’s holding this week.’

I could tell she was impressed by my knowledge of the terminology, though, and she was appropriately respectful when she asked if I’d mind her going and playing the slots for a bit.

I gave her my permission and watched her making the lights flash and the jingle-jangle until something terrible happened and I nearly ran out of the bar and into the lounge.

Joss Lethbridge walked in, with a contingent of preppy floppy-haired fools. His friends took a table while he came in to order the round. He didn’t seem to notice me at first, and I’d turned my back on him, but half a minute after he pitched up, I heard his voice at my shoulder.

‘Lucy, isn’t it?’

I couldn’t exactly ignore him, much as I wanted to, so I turned around and gave him a stony look.

He’d been twelve the last time I’d seen him. Of course, mum had filled me in, quite unnecessarily, with the saga of his doings and his goings-on and his Eton triumphs and polo-playing prowess, but I had never actually caught a glimpse of him in the eight years that had passed.

He had changed. As a boy, he’d been heavier-set with chubby cheeks and hair that wouldn’t sit neatly on his head. Now, at twenty, he had been chiselled and straightened and stood in front of me sickeningly tall and handsome. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t representative of the vileness within, and I felt sorry for all the girls who would be taken in by it. His eyes were the same, though, huge and dark brown and far too intense for comfort. At any minute, the sadistic smile I remembered would break through the wall of effortless aristo bonhomie and the real Joss would be out of his civilised box.

Worst of all, I knew I was blushing because of the way my skin prickled, and I was blushing because I couldn’t stop thinking about all the times I’d fantasised about him. God, what if he could read minds? What if he could see?

‘Well, I suppose I don’t deserve a smile,’ he said, and there was something in his eyes I’d never seen before. It reminded me of sadness. Perhaps it was.

‘No,’ I agreed.

‘I was a complete shit to you. You should slap my face. Go on.’

He brought his cheek close to mine, so that I had to jerk back to avoid his breath on my skin.

‘And get myself barred? Yeah, right.’

He straightened up.

‘At least let me buy you a drink. As a token of apology, though I owe you much more. What are you drinking?’

I didn’t want to tell him but something about him compelled me, even now.

‘Vimto,’ I admitted, and he burst out laughing.

‘I’m not sure I even know what that is,’ he said. ‘It sounds quite dangerous. Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Vimto.’

‘It’s a secret blend of fruit juices, herbs and spices,’ I told him, hating myself for getting lured into conversation like this but somehow unable to shut my stupid mouth.

‘How exotic. No alcohol?’

‘Nope.’

‘I can slip a vodka in there if you’d like.’

‘I wouldn’t like.’

‘Fine. As Madam wishes.’ The barman approached and Joss gave his rather extensive order. ‘Anyway,’ Joss resumed, turning back to me while the barman pulled the pints, ‘how are you?’

I shrugged. From the corner of my eye I could see, to my considerable chagrin, that Minna was flirting with the table full of toffs.

‘Left school, I take it?’ He was dogged in his pursuit.

‘Just finished A levels.’

‘Going to university?’

‘Yeah.’

He looked at me with this ‘I need a fuller answer than that’ look. Again, I was compelled.

‘London. English.’

‘Damn. I was hoping you’d say Oxford. I could show you around.’

‘I couldn’t be bothered with all the Oxbridge crap.’ Because I knew you were there.

‘Well, I’m sure you had better things to do. Come over to our table. Is she a friend of yours?’

He glanced at Minna as he put his legion of pint glasses on a tray to carry across the room.

‘Not really. Somebody’s visiting niece, that’s all.’

I narrowed my eyes at her. She was leaning over some Hooray Henry, giving him a faceful of her cleavage in its tight, skimpy vest top. It was plain that Joss’s friends had about as much respect for her as they had for the pub dog stretched out by the fireplace, but she was an amusement for them, so they tolerated her.

‘Minna, we should go,’ I said, avoiding taking my place beside Joss on the oak settle.

‘What the fuck?’ she whined. ‘Don’t be such a killjoy, Luce. Sit down and have a drink. You might even enjoy yourself.’

She looked around the group, lapping up their approval and their nodding heads and eager grins.

I wanted to kill the lot of them.

But I sat down.

It was one of the most excruciating half-hours of my life. Minna and I were exhibits in a zoo – look at the Local Girls in their Natural Habitat. They asked us questions and laughed at our answers, no matter how dull or ordinary they might be. Within five minutes, one guy had his hand on Minna’s thigh. We were just there to provide a bit of entertainment, like tavern wenches in ages gone by when the men of quality deigned to refresh themselves.

Joss, though, didn’t seem to be joining in with the heavily veiled barbs and slights. He tried to temper his friends’ increasingly drunken enthusiasm, remonstrating with them when they approached the verge of Going Too Far, and he defended me from all questioning with a flat ‘Lucy’s got more sense than to talk to the likes of you oiks. Leave her alone.’

The pint glasses emptied, one by one.

‘Would you ladies care to accompany us back to the Hall? We’ve got more beer and wine than you could imagine in your wildest dreams, and the lord and lady are on a yacht somewhere, so the place is ours?’

‘Yeah?’ Minna was wide-eyed and breathless. ‘Like, for real?’

‘No, thanks,’ I said.

Joss and his friends spent the next ten minutes trying to persuade me but I held out.

‘Well, we’ll walk you home, anyway,’ he decreed. ‘Come on, gents.’

They walked ahead with Minna while Joss hung back, not letting me away from his side.

‘I can understand why you don’t want to,’ he said.

‘Good.’

He looked up at the darkening sky. He was carrying a stick, broken off from a hazel bush, and he whacked it into the hedgerow as we walked, as if it helped release some nameless tension.

‘I’ve grown-up, you know, Lucy. I’m not the same person.’

‘Congratulations.’

A sigh and a pause.

‘How’s your mother?’

‘Same as ever. Don’t you see her, at the Hall?’

‘Oh, I don’t get up till midday. She’s long gone by then.’

‘Well, next time, get up a bit earlier and ask her yourself.’

‘Perhaps I will.’ We were walking along the edge of the caravan park now, in crepuscular light. ‘“She dwelt among the untrodden ways/Beside the springs of Dove,/A Maid whom there were none to praise/And very few to love.”’

‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘Don’t quote those poems to me.’

‘Why not? When we read them at school, I always thought of you.’

‘You had no right.’ We were at the entrance of the park. Minna was snogging one of the toffs, laughing as he slid his hand under her vest top.

‘No, I didn’t, you’re right, but Lucy, can’t we start afresh? As friends?’

‘Fuck off.’

I ran away from the lot of them – from the braying laughter of some of his chums, the smacking sound of Minna and the toff joined at the lips, the sickening memories in my head and most of all the desire to fall horribly in love with Joss for no better reason than that he knew a few lines of poetry and could use them like a deadly weapon.

‘You cheap fucking date,’ I railed at myself, slamming the van door behind it all. ‘He’s a bastard and a bully and you hate him, and you’ll always hate him.’

I fell on the bed and cried myself to sleep.

* * *

I was hoping, then, for a less traumatic encounter when I got out of the car and made a cautious way over the Feathers’ gravel.

His back was to me as I entered; he was talking to one of the villagers. Of course, they all fawned over him. Lord of the Manor and all that. He was broader, perhaps a little weightier than he had been. Nearly thirty with swept-back hair and one of those uncommitted beards that don’t know whether to be stubble or full-on growth. It looked good, all the same. He looked good. The sight of him made me feel ill and I had to clench everything to stay upright.

The villager had seen me, and Joss took his cue from the shift in his gaze and turned around.

‘Lucy,’ he said, very warmly, too warmly, holding out his hands.

‘Did you book?’ I asked, looking past him to what was once the Lounge Bar, now the restaurant.

‘No need. They always fit me in. Come on, let’s go and sit down.’

He nodded a goodbye at the villager and led me out to the patio tables, overlooking the newly landscaped garden. No more rusty old swing set. Now there was a pretty pond full of koi carp, and a fountain. Overhead was a trellis gazebo festooned with climbing roses and each table held scented candles in artisan-decorated glass jars.

‘I bet they don’t even serve Vimto any more,’ I said, pulling out my own chair before he could try and do it for me. ‘All bloody elderflower cordial and cloudy pink lemonade now.’

‘You haven’t lost that chip on your shoulder, then?’ he said, quite politely but with a glint of challenge in his eye. ‘Always ranting against anything remotely poncey or posh.’

‘Actually, I’ve developed a few poncey, posh tastes over the years,’ I confessed, fidgeting with the menu. ‘I’m very snobby about sausages now, for example, having lived in Hungary where the sausage is taken very seriously.’

Joss chuckled, his eyes brightening.

‘You have to be snobby about your sausages,’ he said. ‘Inferior sausages are quite intolerable.’

‘Well, yes.’

We ordered drinks and then sat, looking at each other until the tension almost cracked the artisan glass candle-holder.

‘So,’ he said, at the same time as I said, ‘Well.’

I looked away.

‘You aren’t here to reminisce about old times, are you, Lucy?’ he said softly, drawing my attention straight back to him.

‘My memories aren’t exactly fond,’ I snapped.

‘No. So why are you here?’

‘It’s been nine years. Perhaps it’s time to let bygones be –’

‘You’re a journalist, aren’t you?’ It was so abrupt, I started.

‘Cut to the chase, why don’t you?’ I said.

‘I didn’t want all that bygones crap to drag on,’ he said, accepting his champagne cocktail from the waiter while I took my, yes, elderflower fizz. ‘I know why you’re here.’

‘Do you? Please enlighten me.’

‘You’ve scented a story and you want to use your old connection with me to get at the heart of it.’

Very nicely deduced. I had to hand it to him, along with his scalpel of truth.

‘You’re not denying it,’ he said after a pause.

‘Why bother?’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want to think.’

‘It isn’t, actually. What I want to think is completely different.’

‘What, that I’ve come running back into your arms, ready for you to stab me in the back again? What do you take me for?’

‘Are you ready to order?’ the waiter asked.

We pinched our lips and muttered our food orders with flaming cheeks.

‘So you heard about somebody leasing the Hall,’ said Joss once the waiter was out of earshot.

‘Everybody’s talking about it. Of course I did.’

‘And you want to know who?’

‘And why.’

‘Of course, why. Lots of rumours out there, I hear.’

‘Tons. Are you going to put a stop to them? By telling me the truth of it?’

I sipped at my elderflower fizz, waiting for Joss to pull one of his trademark petulant strops. I guessed we’d be going Dutch on the meal now a shag was out of the question.

Instead he surprised me. After stroking his beard-thing for a moment or two, he said, ‘I can do better than that.’

‘Really?’

‘I can get you in there. Exclusive access to the Hall – and its mysterious lessee. And he’s a big fish, Lucy, a very big fish. This’ll be the scoop of your life.’

‘Who is he?’

Joss shook his head, peering fearfully around as if scouting for eavesdroppers.

‘If I tell you that you’ll be straight on the phone to your editors. No, you have to come into the Hall and see it for yourself.’

‘That’s an invitation, then? As simple as that. Why would you let me?’

‘Let’s say I’m not entirely happy with the situation. A big press exposé might blow the whole thing apart and give me back my birthright.’

‘Birthright,’ I scoffed. ‘You’re such a little prince.’

‘Do you want this or not?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure. I wanted – needed – something that would get me off the Village Fete Desk, but this sounded risky and strange.

‘Right. Come into the estate office on Monday morning and we’ll discuss it further.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Are you wearing a wire?’

I burst out laughing.

‘Joss, this isn’t a spy drama! Wearing a wire! For God’s sake!’

He looked discomfited by my mirth, and knocked back his champagne cocktail until he fell into a coughing fit.

I took advantage of it to click off my mobile phone’s ‘Record’ setting in my handbag.

‘So, can you give me a clue?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘I’ll tell you on Monday.’ He paused, looking at me too intently for comfort. ‘You aren’t married or anything, are you?’

‘God forbid. You?’

He shook his head.

‘Came close, last year,’ he said. ‘Until she saw my bank statements and ran a mile.’

‘Oh, dear. Did she break your heart? What a shame.’

If there was more sarcasm than sympathy in my tone, I figured he’d understand.

He looked at me for a long time then, until the waiter came with our starters, forcing him to drop the eye contact. Just as well, because I was starting to feel giddy.

‘You still aren’t over it, are you?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘What happened between us. It still hurts you.’

‘No, it doesn’t. I don’t let it.’ I stabbed at a disc of mozzarella, sloshing it around in its basil jus.

‘If only life were that easy. Life and love. I half hoped you’d have met someone else, settled down, found happiness.’

‘Only half?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, and it was more a breath than a word, floating over the candle flame. ‘Only half.’

‘I did meet someone else. In Hungary. But it didn’t work out.’

He smiled then.

‘Tell me about Hungary. I’ve never been there.’

He had given me the floor and I took it, relieved to have control of a conversation that had almost lurched beyond the boundaries I had set myself. No talking about old times. No recriminations. Definitely no flirting.

He played the perfect gent for the rest of the evening and no more reference was made to our common past.

In the car park, he offered to walk me home, and I had to remind him that I didn’t live at the caravan site any more.

‘I’m in Tylney,’ I said. ‘I drove here tonight.’

‘Oh, is that why you didn’t drink?’

‘No. I didn’t drink because I wanted to keep my head.’

He looked slightly furtive at that, a little guilty.

‘Well, I’ll see you on Monday, at the office,’ he said. He leaned forwards, a little awkwardly, aiming for my cheek, but I dodged out of the way.

‘About nine?’

‘Perfect.’

He didn’t set off for the Hall immediately but watched me get into the car and drive away. I felt the burn of his eyes on me as I belted up and chose a CD to listen to.

Go away, I thought, but at the same time a treacherous second voice chanted, Come back to me.