Up To No Good

by Victoria Corby

  UP TO NO GOOD

  By

  Victoria Corby

  Copyright © Victoria Corby 2001

  First published 2001 by Headline Book Publishing

  Revised edition published by Victoria Corby 2012

  The right of Victoria Corby to be indentified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.

  This story takes place in the late 1990's when it was still possible to go on holiday without a mobile phone.

  This one is still Plum’s book.

  CHAPTER 1

  Several pairs of eyes bored into me accusingly and gave me the entirely intended impression that if I didn’t agree to do what was demanded immediately, I could hold myself responsible for ruining everybody’s holiday.

  I squirmed under the searchlike glares of disapproba­tion. In true Gestapo style, someone - Maggie probably - had saved me the chair on the terrace that faced directly into the sun, so I had to squint as I tried to focus on the three others on the opposite side of the wrought-iron table.

  As far as I know there is no psychic ability in my family; no seventh daughters of seventh daughters, no one born with a caul over their head, not even a tea-leaf reader. Great Uncle Henry is reputed to have had a prophetic dream about the horse he’d put his shirt on trailing in last in the Derby - but that was hardly surprising since Great Uncle H’s ability to pick a sure­fire loser was so marked that his regular bookie used to take him out for a slap-up lunch once a year. However, some distant relative must have been a dab hand at crystal-ball gazing, for I’d known, just known, that when Oscar suggested that what I really needed after being so ill was to join him and a group of his friends for two weeks’ recuperation in a cottage in France, it wasn’t a good idea.

  I’m not sure why. A pretty cottage with its own pool in the middle of peaceful vineyards, excellent wine from the château, wonderful food, sunshine - what more could I ask for? Even the English couple who owned the château and cottage were friendly and charming, Oscar reported, quite different from the normal sort of propri­etor who seemed to think they breathed a more rarefied air than their tenants. It wasn’t even that expensive. And my only other option for some R & R was with my parents in Chatham, where I’d have to fend off my mother’s anxious enquiries about whether I was warm enough, would I like this rug over my knees and how about a nice hot drink?

  Yet still I’d dithered. Partly because I wasn’t certain about going away with four near-strangers, though Oscar blithely assured me I’d get on like a house on fire with everyone. Even at the time I’d had a feeling this statement was based less on conviction than the need to fill the gap left by the last-minute cancellation of Maggie’s sister and her toy boy. Somehow Oscar swept away my doubts, per­suading me that my forebodings were a previously unknown side-effect of taking too many antibiotics, even over-riding my objection that I’d have to leave early for my grandparents’ diamond wedding anniversary by showing me how I could go back by train to England with only one easy change. Surely even I could manage that? So here I was, having nearly two weeks’ intensive convalescence in France.

  I barely knew Maggie, though since we were mutual friends of Oscar’s we’d stop to exchange a few words if we met at parties on the PR or advertising circuit. Shoot­ing stars like Maggie couldn’t afford to spend much time on copywriters much lower down in the firmament when there were so many other, more valuable contacts to be made. She was reputed to be very clever, very good at her job. She was also strikingly good-looking, small and curvy with large toffee-coloured eyes and lots of tumbling dark hair, and while other women were increasingly trying to be one of the boys she made no bones about playing up her femininity to the hilt. Like other people reputedly annihilated by Maggie, it seemed I’d made the fundamental mistake of assuming that anyone who bore such a close resemblance to a kitten, all big eyes and soft gestures, must be as fluffy and cuddly as one too. Right now Maggie was being about as fluffy and cuddly as her Prime-Ministerial namesake. And as set on getting her own way.

  She leaned forward. ‘I can’t see what you’re making all this fuss about, Nella.’ Fuss? I wasn’t making a fuss. How could I, since every time I opened my mouth to speak, someone cut across me and drowned me out? ‘Anyone would think that Oscar had Disgusting Personal Habits.’

  I glanced at where Oscar lay sprawled on a sun­lounger, studiously not taking part in the conversation. Amused by the sudden attentive tilt of his head, I was tempted to retort, ‘You should see the way he cuts his toenails.’ I haven’t actually, so I said, ‘I’m sure Oscar’s personal habits are all that’s fragrant and civilised.’

  ‘You must have shared a room on holiday before, so what’s the big deal?’ she demanded impatiently.

  Primarily that I wouldn’t have come at all if a condition had been sharing with Oscar. I’m very fond of him, he’s one of my best friends, of either sex. We’d just spent the last two days driving through France without a single row over map reading, each other’s driving, whether we had classical, jazz or soul playing on the stereo, or if this was really the best place to stop for a picnic of pâté, baguette and vin plastique. But it still didn’t mean that I wanted to share wardrobe space with him. Boarding school is supposed to teach you how to rub along with others and accept their foibles. All being in a dormitory with seven others taught me was that there’s only one decent reason for sharing your sleeping accommodation - and that’s if he’s about six foot two and makes you weak-kneed with lust.

  ‘You do know Oscar’s gay, don’t you?’ Maggie asked, as if this was something that in six years of knowing him might have escaped my notice.

  No wonder I’d had doubts about coming. I’d even mentioned it to Oscar, but as he always does when anything gets in the way of what he wants, he’d brushed it aside, saying I was imagining things. I was right. Maggie didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual.

  Goaded, I raised my eyebrows and stared back at her. ‘Actually, Maggie, Oscar’s not completely gay,’ I said, matching her superior tone.

  Unfortunately, as withering material, it didn’t work. Maggie merely looked at me, probably amazed I’d dared to answer back, then her eyes swivelled round to settle speculatively on my travelling companion. ‘I can’t see that occasionally taking a girl out really counts,’ she proclaimed as her eyes came back to rest on me. ‘You'll be quite safe, don’t worry.’

  I don’t know who had the most reason to be offended. Oscar for the aspersions on the strength of his sexuality, even if it had to be admitted that the exquisite young man in pale primrose cotton trousers, still remarkably uncreased after six hours’ driving, who was playing idly with his earring didn’t look like most people’s idea of rampant heterosexuality. Or me for the implication that even if by some strange chance Oscar was concealing a supercharged vein of testosterone, my virtue would still be as safe as if I was immured in a convent.

  In fairness to Maggie, I couldn’t blame her for being dubious about my prowess as a man magnet. Consumption might have done wonders for the looks of La Dame aux Camellias; pneumonia had done absolutely nothing for mine - even if, much to my delight, I could see my hipbones for the first time since I was ten. Given a week or so’s rest and a bit of a tan I might begin to look halfway decent again. Might. A complete makeover and a new wardrobe were probably needed too - and a Wonder-bra. Sudden weight loss has unexpected disadvantages.

  ‘Perhaps Oscar wouldn’t be safe from me,’ I retorted crossly. Oscar sat up looking pleased, a bit too pleased in my opinion, and I found my wavering resolve begin to harden. After all, the whole point of being here was to get myself back on my feet again after a bout of illness that had nearly landed me in hospital, and my convalescence was har
dly going to be aided by being constantly on my guard about my roommate having ideas of that sort. Worry that I might show off my bits as I got in and out of bed - inevitable given the length of the T-shirt I wear to sleep in - wouldn’t help my stress levels either. And what if it was really hot and I wanted to sleep in the nude? I certainly wasn’t going to do that when sharing a room with Oscar, whether he was in one of his gay phases or not.

  I decided to make one last-ditch attempt to stand my ground before I was steamrollered into giving up my bedroom for this Jed whom I’d never even met, and who wasn’t even supposed to be staying here in the first place.

  ‘Um ...’ I floundered. Everyone looked at me expect­antly with ‘What now?’ expressions on their faces, while I sent a meaningful stare at my proposed roommate. I was absolutely certain Oscar viewed the prospect of our bunking up together with as little enthusiasm as I did. He widened his yes and smiled at me blandly. In other words, over to you, Nella.

  I sought frantically for a cast-iron, copper-bottomed, rock solid reason why we shouldn’t share, which no sane person could possibly refute and which wouldn’t result in everybody making a dash for the door when I entered the room. ‘I talk in my sleep,’ I said at last. ‘All the time.’ This didn’t seem to be making much of an impression on my audience. ‘It used to drive George mad,’ I added, putting on a tragic face. ‘He couldn’t stand the noise.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Oscar with deep interest. ‘He never told me that.’ Not surprising, since it wasn’t true, but I wondered uneasily what George and Oscar did talk about when they met up for a drink in the City after work. Oscar claimed it was about subjects such as England’s chances in the next Test, but that topic wouldn’t last halfway down the first bottle of Beck’s. ‘Is that one of the reasons why you two broke up?’

  In fact ‘nocturnal noise’ was one of the few faults George didn’t choose to ascribe to me when explain­ing at length why he’d decided I was no longer fit to be his particular bit of arm candy - not that he, of course, would have lowered himself to use such an expression. My faults had included my chronic untidiness, my completely unreasonable refusal to handwash his silk boxer shorts, and my inability to make a bread and butter pudding as good as his nanny’s.

  I beamed at the others. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on Oscar. I’d keep the poor thing awake.’

  Maggie didn’t look as if she thought this was a serious consideration. Sally, her best friend and sidekick, a slim girl with light brown hair tied back in a pony tail, leaned forward saying, ‘Wouldn’t the answer be earplugs?’

  ‘No, it would not,’ Oscar said indignantly, at long last spurred into action. ‘Besides, why should Nella share with me? She’s been ill, she needs her rest.’

  I was glad that at last someone had seen fit to mention this point. It was obvious from Oscar’s expression that his heels were now dug in immovably. Even Maggie realised she was flogging a very dead horse, for she cast us both a scorching look – I could see who was being awarded the lion’s share of the blame - and muttered something deeply reproachful about what on earth was she going to say to Janey now.

  Delicately brushing off some insect that had landed on his arm, Oscar said, ‘What’s Janey got to mind about? We’re doing her the favour. And there’s still the sofa bed. I can’t think why you didn’t suggest this Jed slept on that in the first place.’

  Maggie hesitated. If she said she didn’t want to have the sitting room cluttered up by a strange man sleeping on the sofa bed I really would give into temptation and clonk her. I waited expectantly. To my slight disappointment she said, ‘It doesn’t look very comfortable.’

  I didn’t see how anyone could assess the comfort of a sofa bed while it was still folded up. ‘If it’s that uncomfortable, why can’t Jed go in the twin room with Oscar?’ I suggested.

  I got a look which implied that I’d just come bottom in the class IQ test. ‘I don’t think Jed would like that at all,’ Maggie said, with a pointed glance towards Oscar.

  ‘Actually, I wouldn’t like it either,’ said Oscar firmly. ‘I’m very fussy about who I sleep with. Frankly, Maggie, I don’t see why we’ve been landed with someone none of us knows in the first place.’ Neither did I, but I’d been too busy fighting my corner to ask this question. The news that I was now sharing a room with Oscar to make way for this Jed had been sprung on me almost before I’d had time to swing my legs out of the car. ‘At the very least you might have asked the rest of us before you promised Janey we’d have this bloke to stay,’ he added.

  Charlie, Sally’s other half, who had been sitting back in his chair, eyes fixed on the horizon as if he wanted to stay right out of this, nodded in agreement. Sally sent him a furious look which he didn’t appear to notice.

  ‘Well, I felt we had to help Janey out...’ Maggie cast a glance for support at her boyfriend Phil, a slim wiry man with, according to gossip, a severe case of wandering hands. He was too busy lighting a cigarette to see it. ‘She’s been terribly good to us. We got a special rate on the cottage after all.’

  ‘Only because you went direct to her to book it and she didn’t have to pay her letting agents a commission,’ interrupted Oscar.

  ‘Maybe,’ she admitted, ‘but it is much nicer than anything else we could have got for the price.’ True. From what little I’d seen of the cottage so far, it was as charming as Oscar had claimed. The Provencal tiles in the loo were certainly very pretty.

  ‘When she gave us the key yesterday evening she was virtually tearing her hair out because she can’t fit every­one in at the château.’

  ‘She’s so pushed for space in that enormous great pile she’s driven to bludging for bedrooms off her tenants in the cottage?’ asked Oscar sceptically.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Maggie said earnestly. ‘It’s not really that big.’ No? OK, it was small compared with Longleat or Blenheim perhaps, but in my opinion any house which has ten windows in a row on the top floor counts as big. ‘The rooms are large but there aren’t many of them,’ she went on, ‘and Tom’s daughter and her boyfriend are there, one guest room is being decorated, and yesterday the electrician who was fixing something in the attic put his foot through the ceiling of the other guest room, so of course it can’t be used until the repair’s done. And she’s got Jed arriving today for a week’s stay, with no room for him.’

  ‘She could have put him off for a while, couldn’t she?’ Oscar said.

  ‘That wouldn’t have been fair. He’s coming down here on business, and he’s already fixed his appointments so she couldn’t cancel him.’ Maggie looked at us both to ensure that we properly appreciated the chain of disasters that had struck the hapless Janey. ‘She was going to send him to someone in the village who does bed and break­fast, but they’re full up, then when she realised that we can sleep eight here and there are only six of us, I thought that it wouldn’t bother us much to help her out and put him up for a few days.’

  No, it wouldn’t have bothered her much, since she hadn’t been planning to have her own sleeping arrangements disturbed. Oscar was now eyeing her with the sort of steely expression that I suspected was mirrored on my own face.

  She went on quickly, ‘Janey says he’s charming and it isn’t as if he’ll put us to any trouble over meals and things as he’ll be eating up at the château. So we’ll hardly notice he’s here. And it’ll probably only be for a few days until the ceiling is fixed.’ She looked hopefully at Oscar and me and we stared back silently. She sighed meaningfully, the major part of the sigh being reserved for me. ‘If you really insist, he’ll have to go on the sofa bed,’ she said in the disapproving tone usually saved for those who say they positively dislike puppies.

  Another silence indicated that indeed we did insist. She sighed again. ‘Janey’s asked us to come up for a drink to meet him this evening,’ she said, as if she had just announced we were about to be entertained by a duchess at the very least. So was this the reason why Maggie had been so keen to offer house room to this Jed?
I wondered. So she could have a chance to experi­ence a little of la vie au château? In Tuscany last year, I stayed in a cottage converted from an old stable block, and the owners of the main house, though absolutely polite, had done little more than show us where the light switches were. Perfectly understandable; if they started fraternising with their tenants they’d find the whole summer was spent entertaining people they hardly knew. But we were hardly going to be run-of-the-mill tenants if we were putting up one of Janey’s friends, were we?

  ‘We’re due up at the château at six-thirty, so as we’re already running behind,’ Maggie said with an irritable glance at me, ‘we’d better be ready to leave in a few minutes.’

  It was obvious that the invitation included all of us, and equally obvious that like the voluntary church services at school, we were all expected to attend. I slumped back in my chair, tempted to see what the reaction would be if I said I was too exhausted to go out and wanted to be allowed to unpack in peace - in my own single bedroom. Since I was already heading for the Miss Unpopularity prize, I decided not to make myself a runaway winner. Besides, even post pneumonia, I wasn’t so feeble as to willingly turn down a social invitation and a chance to see what a genuine château was like from close quarters.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, and gestured at the cotton dress that had looked so fresh and pretty this morning and now resembled the cheaper sort of dishcloth, ‘but I’ll have to change first.’

  ‘Janey and Tom aren’t at all formal. You don’t have to get dressed up,’ Maggie said airily, managing to imply both that I was the sort of person who didn’t know what to wear and also that it wouldn’t make any improvement even if I did.

  She was obviously one of those who believes that punctuality is the politeness of kings and PR executives for when I emerged after what I thought was a remarkably quick change and brush up, she muttered something about having agreed to allow me five minutes and I’d taken nearer twenty (neither statement was true actually) and herded us out of the cottage and on to the road through the vineyard to the château almost at a jog. We’d probably have been whipped on to an even faster pace if Charlie hadn’t said firmly that he was damned if he was going to arrive dripping in sweat and defiantly slowed down to a normal walk. I began to think that Charlie might be my sort of person. Maggie still marched on ahead, but the rest of us took the opportu­nity, now the landscape wasn’t rushing by in a blur, to look around. The cottage, small and square with a roof that dipped almost down to ground level on one side, was only a few hundred yards from the château if you took the short cut through the rows of immaculately tended vines that stretched away over the hillside like neatly combed hair, but it meant going the whole way in the full heat of the sun, still uncomfortably strong even at this hour.