Up To No Good

by Victoria Corby

  Janey, wearing a red dress that did wonders for her dark colouring, materialised at my side. ‘You looked like you were having a bit of a ding-dong with Oscar there,’ she said invitingly.

  ‘Nosy, aren’t you?’ I said with a smile.

  ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t find out - first motto of a journalist.’

  ‘And the second motto is to go on asking questions until your victim caves in, I suppose?’ She grinned. ‘Oscar, not for the first time, has been interfering. Match­making to be precise, or rather trying to mend very broken fences.’

  She almost dropped her glass in shock. ‘Surely he doesn’t imagine you and Robert—’ she exclaimed, her face a mask of comical incredulity. I felt my sense of humour beginning to return.

  ‘Even Oscar wouldn’t dream of trying to reunite Robert and me,’ I said, relishing the thought of the comeuppance he’d get if he tried. ‘This is much nearer home. That,’ I gestured with my thumb, ‘is George. George who is Oscar’s friend. George who I don't go out with any more and who I was afraid might be sleeping on our sofa bed.’ Janey spluttered into her drink. ‘George who Oscar knew was staying at Napier and Solange’s when he suggested I come to the cottage. Does that answer your question about why I don’t love Oscar very much right now?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh lor!’ Janey said when she could speak again. ‘Why did you break up with him?' she asked, as if she was worried that she was treading on very thin ice and sound­ing a long way from a tough professional investigative journalist.

  ‘Laundry,’ I said. ‘I don’t do handwashing.’ She nodded as if she’d been down that particular road herself. ‘Officially, it was my refusal to do normal female domestic tasks that was the last straw for George, but to be honest I think it was because I was no good at the more personal things.’

  ‘Like what?’ she breathed eagerly.

  ‘Intimate massages.’

  ‘What?’ she exclaimed, eyes widening pleasurably, and loudly enough for Venetia and the sheep to turn around and look curiously at us.

  ‘Of the ego.’

  She giggled, obviously recognising that one too, and gave George a speculative glance. ‘He’s not very like Rob, is he?’ she asked in a leading way.

  ‘Maybe that’s the reason I went out with him,’ I said, cursing myself as I saw her suddenly attentive look. The last thing I needed was someone else thinking I was still holding a candle for an ex-boyfriend. ‘Look, I stopped comparing boyfriends to Robert years ago.’ Janey still looked sceptical. I sighed. ‘If you must know why I went out with George...’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘Well, look at him.’ She did. ‘He’s decent-looking, he’s got no obvious faults like picking his nose in public, he washes regularly and he isn’t married.’ A slow grin began to creep across her face at my list of minimum require­ments in a man - I don’t think they’re that eccentric actually. ‘And he seemed to like me. And I liked him, quite. I began to think that maybe all those people,’ namely my mother and Oscar, ‘who kept on telling me I’m far too fussy about men and any reasonable man is better than no man at all might be right, and that I’d be crazy to let a chance like that slip through my fingers.’ I paused. ‘I tried, really I did, but the problem is you can’t make yourself fancy someone rotten, can you?’

  ‘So why did you let him dump you?’ asked Janey in a puzzled voice.

  ‘Bad timing,’ I said with an effort to keep a light tone. Even after several months I was still furious with myself for letting George upstage me. ‘I was going to chuck him but not until after my brother’s thirtieth birthday bash so I’d have someone to go with. George got in and did it first. Before Nick’s party. And everyone knew about it too. I had to go alone and suffer all those bloody commiserations over my supposedly broken heart and I couldn’t say a damn thing because they’d have thought I was suffering from a bad case of sour grapes.’

  ‘Mmm, maybe you’d better not sit next to him during dinner,’ Janey began and was interrupted by a shove somewhere near knee-level. One of the twins pulled at her hem so sharply that it was a good thing she wasn’t wearing a skirt with an elasticated waist and said in an imperious voice, ‘Pick up.’

  She gave him a quick inspection to see if there was anything on his hands or body that might get transferred to her dress, and getting satisfactory results scooped him up. He put plump arms around her neck and gave her an enthusiastic kiss which would have been enough to make any mother go quite soggy at the knees. However, even mother love gets rather tried by a stranglehold and several splodgy kisses applied with a liberal helping of second-hand crisp. Murmuring that it was about time she started the twins on the going to bed bit, Janey told him to say ‘night-night’ to me and bore him off in search of his brother and Delphine.

  ‘About time too,’ Venetia muttered as she beckoned me over. ‘When I was that age my mother always had me in bed by six o’clock. It can’t be good for the twins to stay up so late.’

  It was the first time I’d been aware of Venetia showing any interest in child-rearing.

  ‘Maybe Janey’s trying to make sure that she doesn’t get woken up at the crack of dawn,’ I suggested.

  Venetia’s ‘humph’ would have done justice to an old-fashioned nanny passing comment on the dangerously liberal tendencies of some modern mothers.

  ‘Hello, Nella, nice to see you,’ said Hugh in a surpris­ingly welcoming voice. We’d only met a couple of times and I’d always got the impression he was so tied up with his girlfriend, a pearl-wearing Sloane with a blackboard scraper laugh, that I’d barely registered with him. George couldn’t stand the frightful Camilla either (one of the few topics on which we were in complete agreement), so he usually arranged to see Hugh in places where she wouldn’t be welcome, like his club or the men’s night at the Turkish baths. I cocked my head listening for a few seconds but there was no screech periodically punctuat­ing the buzz of conversation that hung over the terrace so I presumed that Camilla wasn’t here.

  Hugh’s enthusiasm for my presence was explained as he said in apparent surprise, ‘But you haven’t got a drink, I’ll go and find you one.’ He sped off without waiting to ask what I wanted. His route to the glasses of wine took him in a big loop that went past Maggie and as soon as he got within a five-foot radius it looked as if his feet had hit a patch of quicksand. Since George had frequently commented on Hugh’s regrettable tendency for fidelity, this must mean that even old Hugh had grown tired of Camilla’s laugh. Shame he couldn’t have had this revelation at some time other than when he was fetching me a drink. Oh well, no doubt it would do my liver good to hold off on the alcohol for a while, I thought with resignation.

  CHAPTER 10

  ‘Really!’ commented Venetia, watching Hugh goggling as Maggie made an expansive gesture and several interesting bits jiggled. ‘I don’t believe any man has ever been quite so eager to leave me.’ She didn’t sound offended so I gathered she didn’t really care either way if she had one sheep more or less to add to her list of followers.

  She turned around, her eyebrows rising slightly. ‘Mm, like your hair. Cunning old you. I wouldn’t have thought you were that calculating.’ I stared at her, wondering what she was on about and she smiled conspiratorially. ‘Come on, Nella, we all know why you went off and got a complete makeover. Hugh’s been telling me all about you and George.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I interrupted quickly. ‘I had no idea George was going to be here.’ I felt the colour rising in my cheeks under Venetia’s ‘don’t give me that’ gaze.

  ‘Well, if you say so...’ she murmured. ‘But it’s a funny old coincidence, isn’t it? And there’s got to be something that’s put the sparkle in your eyes. I mean, no one would have guessed seeing you at the beginning of the week that you could brush up so well.’

  Thanks, Venetia, I thought as her eyes swept restlessly around the terrace.

  ‘Honestly, would you look at that,’ she murmured, pointing to the barbecue where Jed was conscientiously turnin
g bits of meat. Janey was next to him, leaning forward to say something in his ear. ‘Couldn’t she at least avoid touching him up in public!’ It looked to me as if Janey had merely touched Jed’s arm to gain his attention and not because she couldn’t bear to keep her hands off him, but Venetia wasn’t having any of that. She tossed her head saying, ‘I don’t know what Daddy must think, it’s so blatant. And I sent Jed off there to keep him out of the way of Janey, too.’

  ‘Thus releasing your father for that,’ I said with a nod in Tom’s direction to where, far from merely touching his arm, Solange looked as if she were about to climb onto Tom’s lap. He was standing up too.

  Venetia’s eyes widened in indignation. ‘The way that woman behaves is disgusting. She should know better at her age - she’s much too old for that sort of thing.’

  I doubted Solange would ever be too old for ‘that sort of thing’.

  ‘I can’t stand her!’ Venetia declared vehemently. So though she didn’t know it, she had at least some common ground with her stepmother. ‘I can’t think how poor Napier puts up with it; it must be so humiliating for him to see his wife draped like an octopus over every single man who comes along. And the married ones too,’ she added with another furious look towards her father. ‘Look, you can see Napier’s upset, and you can’t blame him either. He’s so loyal to her, won’t say a word against her, more’s the pity. But then that shows you what a decent sort of person he is. I’d better go and talk to him, see if I can’t distract him a little from the way his wife is carrying on.’

  With that she click-clacked her way off in heels nearly as high as Maggie’s and seconds later was doling out consolation and distraction to Napier, a less ovine-looking version of his younger brother. I gazed over the garden marking time, knowing that that even without the benefit of some alcoholic fortification I couldn’t put off saying hello to George for much longer. The problem was, I couldn’t be certain that he wasn’t still bearing a grudge over what I’d said in our last row. Most of it was true, but nearly all of it was also the sort of thing it’s unwise to say unless you plan to spend the rest of your life protecting your back. And George was good at bearing grudges, too; he was rather proud of it, claimed that it came with his Scottish ancestry like tartan and deep pockets.

  However George was still chatting to Robert, and I wasn’t sure I could cope with both of them at the same time. They were talking about the gallery. George’s voice could be heard easily across three fields. That was another reason to leave them in peace. George had plenty of money, he might put some business Robert’s way. Except it didn’t sound as if he was going to.

  ‘Well, one doesn’t buy pictures, does one?’ he was saying. ‘Or hardly ever. One inherits them from rela­tions. I’ve picked up a couple of attractive hunting prints in antique shops of course, but I never buy modem art. One can’t. No offence, old chap, I’m sure you’ve got some very nice pictures in your place, if you like that sort of thing, but with furniture like mine you’ve got to have the pictures to match. I mean, a collage of newspaper and cow dung would hardly go with a Sheraton sideboard, would it?’

  George chortled at his own joke. I could almost hear Robert grind his teeth as he retorted, ‘It might look a damn sight more attractive than the normal gloomy portrait of Great Uncle Roger that seems to hang over most sideboards.’ There was a startled grunt from George. It was actually his great grandmother who hung there, but despite the most flattering efforts of the artist she could easily have passed for a Roger. ‘I can’t recall that we’ve ever handled a cow-dung picture,’ Robert went on thoughtfully, ‘and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for a dining room. Not very hygienic. So what would you prefer over your sideboard? A Monet? I can get you one if you really want, except I must warn you that most of our clients prefer artists who are less well known.’

  ‘Eh?’ George asked blankly.

  ‘Unless you appear regularly on the Sunday Times Rich List, it’s a bit obvious that The Garden at Giverny on your wall isn’t likely to be genuine, isn’t it?’

  There was silence, then, ‘You deal in forgeries?’

  ‘Reproductions,’ Robert said firmly, ‘all painted to order. We’ve got a woman who does a wonderful Constable if you’d rather have something more English. I should warn you though, that they don’t come cheap.’ George looked highly offended at this implication that he might not have the readies for a mere copy. ‘And I’m afraid they aren’t an easy route to making a few million either. They all contain a microchip so they can’t ever be sold on as the real thing.’

  ‘I would never try to pass a fake off as genuine,’ George spluttered indignantly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of giving house room to a reproduction either!’

  Oh dear. I had a nasty feeling that Robert’s next comment would be along the lines of how could George be so sure his sideboard was genuine since Sheraton wouldn’t have had time to eat, let alone sleep, if he’d really made everything that was attributed to him. It might be nine years but I still knew how Robert’s mind worked in some ways. Perhaps I should go in and try to smooth things over a little. Except, given my past relationships with both men, I was hardly the obvi­ous choice for oil pouring on troubled waters. The matter was decided by Tom who was wandering around, doing his duty with the bottle. Seeing I was alone he seized me by the arm and interrupted Robert in the middle of saying something about the authenticity of sideboards. ‘Let me introduce you all—’

  ‘It’s all right, Tom, I already know George,’ I said.

  He looked at me in faint surprise. ‘Do you? You seem to know a lot of people. You must be the sort of girl who gets around a lot.’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t think you meant that to come out that way.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think I did,’ he agreed apologetically, then feeling that his social duty was done he wandered off in the direction of the barbecue saying he must go and see if Jed needed a hand. He probably felt that his hormones needed a breather before they returned to the high activity stimulation provided by at least two of his female guests.

  The boredom had disappeared from Robert’s face and he was glancing from me to George with a knowing look in his eyes. ‘George,’ he murmured. ‘Oh, I see. Is this the George you were talking about the other night?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said shortly, thinking that if he started to go on in the same way that Venetia had I’d kick him - on his bad leg. I didn’t normally have these violent impulses; it must be something in the air tonight, I thought, as George smirked slightly, sure that whatever I’d said must be complimentary. Perhaps my memories of the part of our epic row where I’d got really personal were the result of after-the-event wishful thinking. Or maybe not. George probably hadn’t believed it was possible any female could think that about him.

  Robert’s bright eyes rested on my new hairstyle. ‘Nice cut. Had it done on an impulse, did you?’

  I glared at him - he was worse than bloody Venetia - and turned my attention to George. ‘Hello, George, how are you?’ I said with a smile that was much warmer than I intended it to be.

  He kissed my cheek. ‘All the better for seeing you, Nella,’ he said with a gallantry that had been quite absent from his manner when we’d been going out. ‘I must say you look very nice.’

  I smiled and thanked him, though I didn’t return the compliment. I was prepared to be civil but drew the line at flattery. Besides, absence hadn’t made me any fonder of the blackberry-coloured shirt he was wearing.

  George was looking me up and down assessingly as if I was a heifer in the local fatstock show. ‘Really, you look very good indeed,’ he said with an unflattering degree of surprise. ‘Much better than when I last saw you. How did you manage to lose so much weight? Been using the gym at last?’

  I bared my teeth. ‘No, I’ve been ill. I’m sure that Oscar must have told you.’

  George looked uncomfortable. His fear of catching my germs had been so acute that not only had he not come to visit me - a
good thing as my feelings about him at that point were so strong the very sight of him would have given me a relapse - but I hadn’t had a Get Well card either. Perhaps he was afraid I might feel obliged to thank him, and you never know what infec­tion can rest on a stamp. ‘Well, it’s certainly brought good results!’ he said with a slightly forced laugh.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Robert asked. I was subjected to another of those fatstock assessments. ‘I disagree,’ he said coolly, after a few seconds. ‘Nella’s much too thin now. Of course she looks nice, but she’s always been pretty whatever her weight and she looks better with a few curves.’

  I’d have been a damn sight more grateful for these compliments if I hadn’t felt that they had very little to do with me and a lot to do with a simple desire to disagree with George on every possible topic. And he’d just managed to make me feel that I’d got all the sex appeal of a broom handle too.

  ‘So you’ve known Nella for some time have you, old chap?’ George said.

  ‘Nine years,’ Robert said tersely.

  ‘Oh university,’ said George. ‘That explains you being in the art world. It was that sort of place, Nella said. I haven’t met many of her friends from those days, she doesn’t seem to keep up with them. Of course, it’s easier for me. I was at Oxford. Lots of people of one’s own type there.’

  ‘Mm.’ Robert nodded his agreement. ‘But I met quite enough people of my own type at school. I thought it’d be interesting to meet some different ones. That’s why I turned my place down.’

  George stared at him for a moment as if not sure whether to believe that anyone, no matter how bohemian, could possibly turn down a place at Oxford. ‘My father would never have allowed me to do anything quite so rash. I daresay he’d have threatened to disinherit me if I’d even thought of it,’ he chuckled, looking extremely proud of having a parent who could act with such firmness.

  Robert smiled thinly. ‘My father didn’t threaten. He did it.’ His eyes flickered sideways in my direction. ‘But not over which university I was going to.’