‘Anything planned?’
‘No — nothing really.’
How few girls would have admitted it, thought Nicky, taking her hand. She was as transparent and as wholesome as Pears Soap.
‘Well the only answer’s to go on holiday together then.’
All heaven seemed to open. ‘Oh, how lovely!’ gasped Imogen. Then it closed again. ‘But my father would never allow it.’
‘H’m. . we’ll see about that.’
Chapter Four
A fortnight later, during Wimbledon week, Nicky had a drink with his friend Matthew O’Connor in Fleet Street. He had known O’Connor on and off for a number of years. They bumped into each other abroad — Nicky playing in tournaments, O’Connor covering stories — and they had got drunk together and been slung out of more foreign nightclubs than they cared to remember.
‘Are you going to France this year?’ said Nicky.
‘In September. Why?’
‘Any room in your car?’
The big Irishman looked at him shrewdly. ‘Depends who you want to bring.’
Nicky grinned. ‘Well, I met this bird in Yorkshire.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Got a pair of knockers you can get lost in.’
‘What else?’
‘Well she’s adorable, like a puppy. You want to pick her up and cuddle her all the time. But terribly naive. Dad’s a vicar and a bloody tartar — like that Mr Barrett of Walpole Street.’
O’Connor grinned. ‘And you see yourself as Robert Browning?’
‘Well something of the sort. Anyway, I can’t get within necking distance on home ground.’
‘Green is she? So you fancy an away fixture?’
‘An away fixture is what I fancy.’
O’Connor ordered another round of drinks.
‘I’ve always believed,’ he said, ‘that if a bird’s worth doing, she’s worth doing well. But a fortnight’s a hell of a long time. Don’t you think you better take her away for a week-end first?’
‘I’ve got tournaments every week-end for the next two months. Besides I doubt if the old vicar would let her.’
‘Well, he’s not likely to let her go on holiday, is he?’
‘He might. I can say we’re going in a large party. Parents seem to have some totally mistaken idea that there’s safety in numbers.’
‘Will she fight with Cable?’ asked O’Connor.
‘You’ve never allowed me to meet Cable.’
‘No more I haven’t. Come and have a drink with us this evening.’
The next day Nicky wrote to Imogen’s parents. He was planning to go to France for a fortnight in September with a couple of friends who were engaged, and there would also be another married couple in the party taking their own car. He’d thought Imogen was looking tired last time he’d stayed. She needed a holiday. Could she join their party?
To Imogen’s joy and amazement her parents agreed. Even her mother had noticed how down she was, and her father, who was looking forward to his three weeks’ exchange stint in the North Riding in September (the golf course was excellent there), had no desire to have his elder daughter slopping around with a February face spoiling the fun.
‘I’ll never, never be unhappy again,’ vowed Imogen. She dialled Nicky’s number in London to give him the good news.
All the same, it was a very trying summer. Wimbledon fortnight came, and Imogen and Gloria spent most of it with the transistor on or with a pair of binoculars surreptitiously trained on the television in the Radio Rentals shop opposite the library. Nicky was in coruscating form, reaching the last eight of the singles and only being knocked out after a marathon match, and the semi-finals of the doubles with Charlie Painter. Everyone commented on his improved game. And whenever he appeared on the television screen, clothed in white tennis clothes, mystic, wonderful, whether he was uncoiling like a whiplash when serving or jumping from foot to foot as though the court were red hot beneath his feet, waiting to whistle back a shot, he seemed a God infinitely beyond Imogen’s reach.
She had also seen him in the players’ stand, laughing with some of the more beautiful wives. Nor could she miss the way the tennis groupies (pert little girls with snake hips and avid eyes) made every match he played a one-sided affair by screaming with joy whenever he did a good shot, even cheering his opponent’s double faults, and mobbing him every time he came off court. Could this really be the man who’d eaten her mother’s macaroni cheese and wrestled with her on the sofa?
After Wimbledon he moved on to ritzy places all over the world and Imogen found that a diet of almost illiterate postcards and occasional crackling telephone calls was not really enough to sustain her. Oh ye of little faith, she kept telling herself sternly, but found herself increasingly suffering from moodiness and then feeling desperately ashamed of herself.
Even worse, everyone at work, having glimpsed Nicky and learnt they were going on holiday together, had turned the affair into a sort of office
‘They ought to provide wolf hooks as well as dog hooks outside,’ Gloria said, with a slight edge to her voice. ‘Then they wouldn’t be able to come in here pestering you.’
Stung by Gloria’s sniping (You shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. I bet Nicky’s playing round with all those foreign birds), Imogen gritted her teeth and went out with one or two of the wolves. But when the evening ended, remembering Nicky’s beautiful curling mouth, and the caressing deftness of his touch, she couldn’t even bear to let them kiss her; then felt mean when they stormed off into the night.
Finally, the weather had been terrible. Throughout July, August and early September, it deluged without stopping. The River Darrow flooded the water meadows and the tennis courts, and endangered the lives of several flocks of sheep. Imogen’s hair crinkled depressingly, and she had absolutely no chance to brown her pallid body before her holiday. And the vicar, whose garden and golf had been almost washed away, was in a permanently foul mood and vented most of his rage on Imogen.
At last September arrived. By scrimping every penny, she’d managed to save a hundred pounds. Nicky had told her not to worry about money, that he’d take care of everything, but she knew France was terribly expensive, and she wanted to pay her way. As most of her wages went towards the housekeeping, it didn’t leave much for her wardrobe.
‘What am I going to do about beach clothes?’ she said.
‘You won’t need much in a small fishing village,’ said her mother. ‘Which reminds me, Lady Jacintha sent a lovely red bathing dress for jumble. Red’s in this year, isn’t it? It’s perfect, except for a bit of moth in the seat.’
The jumble was also deprived of two of Lady Jacintha’s wide-bottomed cotton trousers, which didn’t really fit, but Imogen thought she could pull long sweaters over them. Her mother bought her two kaftans in a sale in
