‘Nice’ wasn’t a word you’d apply to her husband, I thought, looking at him with rather more attention than I had on the previous occasion. His face was harsh and angular with a dark chin that gave the unnerving impression of polished steel. His whole stance looked tough too; he was a solid man, not fat but the breadth of his shoulders, which a tweed jacket did nothing to disguise, made him seem both shorter and broader than he really was. My heart sank. He wasn’t the sort to be fooled easily. Now that he appeared to be assured his wife wasn’t getting up to anything on the drive with her guest he was examining me with interest. I received a more refined version of the visual once over most Italian men seem to learn in the cradle: first up and down assessing the basics, then the face, then lingering on the important bits that go in and out, finally contemplating what you’d look like with your gear off. I didn’t have a clue from his impassive expression whether he thought the prospect an appealing one or not.
He held out his hand. ‘I too am delighted to meet you again, Signorina.’ His smile didn’t reach his dark eyes. I wondered for a nasty moment if he suspected I was a ringer. Maybe I should invent a sudden crisis in the family so I could leave immediately; a hard nudge from James reminded me I wasn’t likely to receive much co-operation from that quarter.
I took Stefano’s hand. His grip was hard. ‘Good afternoon... Count?’ I floundered with an air of helplessness. I’m good at airs of helplessness. Sadly they’re usually absolutely genuine.
He responded as I’d hoped, smiling a bit more warmly this time. ‘Stefano. That is if I may have the privilege of calling you Laura?’
‘Of course,’ I said demurely. We were much the same height so I couldn’t do the peeping coyly through my eyelashes trick, which I decided was probably a good thing. He was too acute and besides I’m not very good at being coy. I’m too big for one thing and I don’t concentrate hard enough and soon forget my maidenly role. The slight soreness at the top of my arm was proof of that.
Cressida had shielded her hands high up the sleeves of a sloppy grey cashmere top that I would have been prepared to kill for and was hopping from foot to foot in the chill wind that seemed to be coming straight down from distant peaks. At least we were protected from the drizzle that was now falling gently. I wondered if the size of the portico had been dictated not by the number of carriages it needed to cover but by the necessity for a permanent giant umbrella. ‘Shall we go in?’ our hostess asked plaintively. ‘Stefano never seems to feel the cold despite his southern blood, but I’m always freezing.’
Both men looked as if they would like to offer to take her tiny frozen hand in theirs immediately. ‘Yes, cara, take Laura in to have a cup of tea. She will need it after the long journey.’ Stefano spoke English as easily as if it were his mother tongue, though his pronunciation had an unmistakably Italian cadence. ‘James and I will take the bags. The staff are busy getting everything ready for the ball. ’
I was very happy for James to cope with my cases. On the principle that I hadn’t really known what to expect I had included most of my wardrobe, all the clean things without holes anyway, as well as six pairs of shoes, boots, trainers and gumboots -you never know what to expect in the country, and most of the contents of Selfridges cosmetics hall. I reminded him to be careful of the dress in its travelling bag and not to crush it, and escaped before he could discover exactly how much it all weighed.
Cressida took me into a cavernous hall dominated by an ornate stone fireplace of quite incredible ugliness which could only have been put in by a Victorian owner who was heavily into gothic, and monumental gothic at that. A meagre fire of two logs burned sullenly where half a tree wouldn’t have been lost. Cressida grimaced as we went past. ‘It smokes if we make it any bigger. I’d like to put in a flame-effect gas fire but Stefano prefers to sacrifice comfort to architectural integrity.’ She rolled her eyes to indicate the general unreasonableness of men.
We went into what she called the small sitting room, positively cosy by the standards of the hall since it was merely about twenty-five foot by twenty-five, with a proper fire burning in a Regency fireplace and a huge silver tea tray already laid out on a side table. It was furnished with a medley of elderly furniture that had never been particularly good or particularly bad, just ordinary. The sort of things which are pronounced to be antiques in many shops simply because they’re over fifty years old. A pile of artist’s sketches of the room and fabric swatches were jumbled amongst copies of Vogue, Elle and Interiors on the glass coffee table. I glanced at them curiously as Cressida pressed a bell in the wall. Presumably this was her own special domain, for the designs, though stunning and looking as if they could easily feature in the pages of House and Garden, had a fluffy, fussy feel about them, especially the sheer quantity of proposed ruffles on the sofas. Even on a couple of minutes’ acquaintance I was prepared to bet Stefano was anything but fluffy or frilly.
Two different kinds of tea appeared like magic, brought in by a plump middle-aged woman with a harassed face who said, ‘Pleased, I’m sure,’ when I was introduced and promptly removed herself. I never did discover what her name was.
‘She’s worried about leaving the kitchen in case the caterer’s assistants pinch the silver,’ Cressida said as she poured the tea. ‘They aren’t local, you see, come from Nottingham.’ She made a face. ‘And you know what sort of person comes from there.’ She sat down, holding out her hands to the fire, and chattered away about how pleased she was that we had come, the other guests who were arriving later, all relations of hers of one sort or the other, and how ridiculous it was that in this huge house they could have so few people to stay as they hadn’t yet got around to furnishing all the bedrooms. I did a swift reckoning. It sounded as if even so they could still manage to accommodate eight guests. At least they had a decent-sized dining-room table so she was going to be able to have a proper dinner party before the ball.
It was impossible not to like her. Like a puppy she seemed to assume that everyone was going to be captivated by her and it was difficult not to respond. Luckily for me she was so caught up in the excitement of entertaining properly for the first time in her new house that she merely skated over some potentially awkward subjects, such as how long had James and I been going out and whether she and I had ever met as my face seemed familiar...
James seemed to be moving a bit stiffly when he came in, as if he had strained his back. Discreetly I did not enquire. ‘Is your room all right?’ asked Cressida with another of her beaming smiles.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said in a slightly strangled tone, giving me a quick look. ‘I should think the view in daylight is wonderful.’
‘Yes,’ she said without any marked enthusiasm. ‘I wanted to buy somewhere in Oxfordshire where the scenery’s more gentle and the neighbours less horsy but Stefano likes grand vistas. As usual he won.’
James frowned slightly in response to the little crease appearing between her fair eyebrows. ‘Just be thankful he’s not hooked on the views of North Scotland.’
She laughed, discontent vanishing like magic from her face. ‘Oh, James, you’re so good for me. I am pleased that you’ve come.’ I had a good view of Stefano’s expression as he appeared in the doorway. He didn’t appear to share his wife’s pleasure. She patted the sofa next to her. ‘Come over here and tell me all you’ve been doing since I last saw you properly. It must be at least two years since we had a really good talk.’
‘All of that,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘It was when you told me you were going to marry Stefano.’
‘So it was. You didn’t come to the wedding, did you? Didn’t you have an important sale or something you had to go to? What a shame - you’d have enjoyed it.’ It wouldn’t have occurred to me that seeing the love of his life get hitched to another might be James’s idea of a good time, but you never know. ‘It was a good wedding, wasn’t it, darling?’ she asked her husband.
‘I thought so, certainly,’ he agreed
, pouring himself a cup of tea. ‘But then I am prejudiced. It was my wedding after all.’
The conversation was becoming a little too loaded for my taste so I cut in with, ‘Have you been living here long, Stefano?’
‘Only about two months.’ He didn’t move from his watchful position by the tea tray where he was able virtually to breathe down Cressida and James’s necks.
‘You moved to England from Italy in the middle of winter?’ I asked in genuine surprise.
‘Cressida says we Italians don’t understand central heating,’ he said with a ghost of a smile that made me realise he could be very attractive if he chose. ‘So we will live in England in the winter and move to Italy during the summer.’ His dark eyes flickered backwards to where Cressida’s fair head was now bent towards James.
‘And you’re hosting the hunt ball already. How noble of you. And Cressida too. It must involve her in lots of organisation when she’s barely unpacked. But is it usually held here? What’s the history of the house? Do tell me about it.’
The look he gave me indicated he knew very well what I was up to but manners dictated he had to come and sit by me. He launched into an extremely terse history of the house: owned previously by only two families, the last plagued by expensive young men who sold off all the heirlooms and eventually forced the sale of the house. I did my best to indicate I found it all riveting. James leaned forward and interjected the odd remark, sensibly giving the impression that, unlikely as it was, he found local history just as interesting as the very pretty woman next to him. Gradually Stefano began to unbend as, bored by the problems of renovating a listed house, Cressida leaned back against the sofa cushions and daintily nibbled a corner of shortbread. Nonetheless it didn’t make for the easiest of atmospheres and I was relieved when she stood up, saying, ‘If you want to have a bath before getting changed, Laura, it’d be a good idea to have it before my sisters arrive and pinch all the hot water.’ She sighed heavily. ‘The heating and hot water systems were state of the art in about 1900 but it’s such a big job we’ve got to wait until the summer when we’re at the castello before we get them replaced.’
I’d have agreed to almost anything to get out of there to somewhere I could relax for a while. A bath sounded just fine.
‘I’ll take you up and show you where everything is. Oh, hang on, could you wait a few minutes? I’d better go and make sure there isn’t open warfare between the caterers and my staff in the kitchen.’
‘It’s all right, Cressy. I’ll take Laura up, I know where everything is,’ said James to my surprise. He’d looked remarkably comfortable stretched out in his chair, nursing the whisky Stefano had only just given him. ‘It’ll save you having to hurry.’
‘I don’t mind waiting, honestly,’ I began as he rose to his feet.
He silenced me with a frown and took my elbow in a firm grip. ‘Come on, sweetheart.’ I almost tripped over the edge of the rug. Never before had I heard James express himself in that particular tone of sickening sweetness. Especially when accompanied by a weightlifter’s grip. ‘I’ll be back for that whisky, Stefano, it’s much too good to leave,’ he said over his shoulder as he steered me out of the room.
‘Sweetheart? I echoed incredulously as soon as the door shut behind us. ‘You might think the act needs a bit of beefing up to convince Stefano, but if you carry on like that he’s going to think you’ve gone soft in the head! You’ll be calling me Bunnykins next.’
‘Shut up or I’ll do just that!’ he snarled. ‘Look, there’s something I’ve got to tell you-‘
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, blast it!’ he swore as a green baize door at the end of the corridor swung open and the plump woman walked towards us, carefully carrying a hanger which was supporting an elaborately flounced white dress that enveloped us in the crisp smell of freshly ironed fabric.
She glanced at the two of us standing motionless at the bottom of the staircase. ‘Are you unsure of the way to your room? Can I help you?’
‘No, thank you very much. I know where we’re sleeping,’ replied James. ‘We were just admiring the carving on the balusters.’
‘Yes, they look nice but they’re the devil to dust,’ she commented, doing a sort of agitated hover. I realised she was dying to get on but felt she couldn’t leave us aimlessly hanging around. I pulled on James’s arm and motioned him upwards. He sighed softly but began to walk up. We heard her follow us, then stop on the landing and watch to make sure James really was guiding me to the right room. After a couple more seconds she moved off.
James flicked on the light by the door and stood back for me to go into a large room wallpapered with an old-fashioned design of rosebuds contained within a criss-cross trellis made of twisted blue ribbons. The air was heavy with the sweet smell of hyacinths from a bowl placed on a bow-fronted chest of drawers between two windows hung with blue velvet curtains.
‘Laura—’
I wasn’t paying attention. Instead I was staring open-mouthed at an enormous four-poster that was to be my resting place for the night. The deep rose pink of the silk curtains, faded now from their original ruby red, was echoed in an exquisite patchwork quilt in a ring design that covered the bed itself. I walked over and stroked the fabric. To my relief it didn’t feel nearly as brittle and fragile with age as its appearance suggested or I would have been afraid to turn it back lest I damage it. ‘Gosh, isn’t this fantastic?’ I said. ‘I’ve never slept in a four-poster before and it’s huge. There’s room for about six of me.’ I twirled around, ‘What a super room,’ and peered through a door cut in the panelling. Gosh, I had my own enormous bathroom too, with a claw-foot iron bath and what must have been one of the earliest showers in existence suspended over it. The head was about the size of a meat dish. A bowl in the middle of a marble-topped table was heaped with bars of soap from Floris and L’Artisan Parfumeur, and several exotically shaped bottles of bath oil were ranged neatly on a shelf above the bath. There was even a long, snowy white towelling bathrobe hanging on the back of the door just in case I’d forgotten my M & S dressing gown.
‘I can’t believe this. It’s amazing!’ I burbled, skipping back into my room and nearly falling over one of my suitcases. I seemed to have a lot of luggage, I thought idly, and then slewed to a halt. Neatly aligned against my two tatty and battered suitcases, one with a rip in the canvas that allowed an embarrassing scrap of lace to peep out, was one of those strong and expensive black moulded models that people who travel a lot on aeroplanes use.
‘This isn’t mine. Isn’t it yours? Why’s it been put in here?’ James was standing by the door looking distinctly hunted.
I must be very slow on the uptake because it took at least twenty seconds for the truth to sink in. ‘Oh, no. No. No way,’ I said firmly, my voice rising to a shrill note of outrage. ‘I am not, definitely not, sharing a room with you. What the hell do you think you’re doing, James? You promised it was just a pretence.’
He shut the door behind him hastily. ‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake! They’ll be able to hear you all over the house.’
‘So what?’
‘From the noise you’re making anyone would think you were some Victorian miss afraid of being ravished.’ Presumably it hadn’t occurred to him that since he must have told Cressida we were sleeping together my fears were not unreasonable. So he’d said he wasn’t asking me to commit adultery, had he? Granny Lovatt, righteously indignant about James’s carryings on with an older and unsuitable girlfriend (a so-called ‘exotic’ dancer), had once been unwise enough to accuse him of breaking the commandments. James had taken enormous pleasure in pointing out to her that since neither Cheryl nor he was married all they were doing was committing fornication, which hadn’t actually been forbidden. Granny hadn’t cared to tackle him on that issue again.
I shook my head. ‘You’re missing the point, James. Let me repeat, there is no way I’m spending the night in the same room as you. We’ll have to tell Cressida she’s ma
de a mistake.’
‘We can’t. It’ll ruin everything.’ My face must have showed I did not consider this in any way a convincing reason why I shouldn’t go straight to our hostess. He dropped his voice. ‘It isn’t just you and me who’d be embarrassed.’ He didn’t look particularly embarrassed, merely worried about the sort of scene I was going to kick up. ‘It’d be mortifying for Cressy. The first time she’s entertained in a big way in her new house and she goes and makes a bosh of it. Is it really fair to upset her just before everything gets going?’
I was halfway to agreeing with him when he went and spoiled it with, ‘Why create a drama for no reason?’ Naturally steam started coming out of my ears again. He backtracked rapidly. ‘I’d sleep on a sofa if there was one, but that little day bed is barely long enough for me to sit on, let alone lie down, and as you said yourself, the bed is plenty big enough for six. You won’t even know I’m in there, I promise. I won’t lay a finger on you. You have my word on that.’
He walked towards me, holding his hands wide apart in a faux-ingenuous gesture of total innocence. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me, James,’ I hissed. ‘If you get within arm’s reach you’re liable to go down to dinner with a black eye, and that’ll sure as hell spoil your cover story.’ Prudently he backed away out of range. ‘And I’m not creating a drama out of nothing,’ I continued. ‘Out of the goodness of my heart I agreed to pretend to be your girlfriend, but you neglected to tell me exactly what the role entailed.’ I was working myself up into a fine rage. It was rather fun, since for once I was absolutely in the right. James glanced at the door in a worried way as if he feared that at any moment there might be a knock and a query as to whether everything was all right. ‘Don’t you dare give me that nonsense about the bed being big enough for both of us and that I’m making a fuss about nothing. You give your word that you won’t try to lay a finger on me? Huh! I’d sooner trust the word of an octopus!’
Something Stupid Page 9
