Imogen

Leeds.

‘This phrase book isn’t much good,’ said Juliet, lounging on Imogen’s bed the night before she left. ‘“My coachman has been struck by lightning,” “Please ask the chambermaid to bring some more candles.” I ask you!’

Imogen wasn’t listening. She was trying on Lady J’s red bathing dress for the hundredth time and wondering if it would do.

‘My legs are like the bottom half of a twinset and pearls,’ she sighed.

‘You ought to get a bikini. Bet it’s topless down there,’ said Juliet. ‘I think Mummy and Daddy are so funny.’

‘Why?’ said Imogen, folding up a dress.

‘Thinking you’ll be safe because you’ve got a married couple in the party to chaperone you. Ha! Ha! To egg you on more likely. I hope you’re on the pill!’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ snapped Imogen.

‘Well, you won’t be able to hold off a man like Nicky once he gets you in France.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Imogen, storming out of the room.

But it was all too near the knuckle. Nicky’s last letter — the only one he hadn’t written on a postcard — had ended. . and, darling, for goodness sake go and get yourself fitted up. We don’t want to spoil the whole fortnight worrying about you getting pregnant.

Time and again during the past month Imogen had walked up and down in front of Dr Meadows’ surgery, and each time she had funked it. Dr Meadows was one of her father’s oldest friends and well over sixty. How could she ask him?

In the end, once more egged on by Gloria, she had gone to a family planning clinic in Leeds on the pretext of looking for holiday clothes. Unfortunately her two brothers, Michael and Sam, still home for the holidays, had insisted on coming with her, in the hope of catching a Gillette Cup match at Headingley. But this, predictably, had been rained off, and Imogen had great difficulty shaking them off, even for a couple of hours.

‘I’ve got to buy lots of boring things like underwear,’ she said.

‘We’ll come too,’ said Sam, who at fourteen had only recently become interested in girls. ‘We might be able to see into some of the changing rooms.’

‘I don’t like people hanging round when I’m buying clothes,’ said Imogen quickly. ‘It muddles me. Look, here’s a fiver. Why don’t you go and see the new James Bond? I’ll meet you at the barrier at five o’clock,’ and, blushing violently, she charged through the glass doors of Brown and Muff. Rushing straight through and out the other side, she set off at a trot towards the clinic.

‘Where’s old Imo really going?’ said Sam, as they shuffled off to the cinema.

‘F.P.A.,’ said Michael, who was concentrating on lighting a cigarette in the rain.

‘Blimey, is she pregnant?’

‘Course not, just getting fixed up before her holiday.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘Left the address lying around in her bedroom.’ He began to cough. The cigarette went out.

‘Hope to Christ Dad doesn’t find it,’ said Sam. ‘Fancy old Imo getting round to sex at last.’

‘Just as well she’s taking precautions. They’re randy buggers these tennis players, even worse than rugger players.’ Michael’s cigarette, sodden now, obstinately refused to be lit. ‘I hope she’ll be all right, won’t get hurt I mean,’ he went on, throwing it into the gutter.

‘Do her good to grow up,’ said Sam, who was staring at a couple of giggling typists who, under one umbrella, were teetering by on high heels, heading towards the pub. ‘I say, shall we skip James Bond and go and have a drink instead?’

‘They’d never serve us.’

‘It’s pretty dark in there; you’d pass for eighteen anywhere. Fancy old Imo going on the pill.’

‘Buy anything good?’ said Sam innocently, as Imogen came rushing up to the barrier with only a few minutes to spare.

‘I’d forgotten the sales were on. There’s nothing nice in the shops,’ stammered Imogen, failing to meet either of her brothers’ eyes.

‘Got your ticket?’ said Michael, waving his. ‘We’d better step on it; they’re closing the doors.’

‘Oh goodness,’ said Imogen, ‘I’ve got it somewhere.’

And as she was nervously rummaging, her shaking hands slipped, and the entire contents of her bag, including six months’ supply of the pill crashed on to the platform.

‘I wonder if scarlet women are called scarlet because they blush so much,’ said Sam, bending down to help Imogen pick everything up.

And now on the eve of her holiday, the mauve packets of the pill were safely tucked into the pocket of her old school coat hanging at the back of her wardrobe. She’d been taking it for eight days now, and she felt sick all the time, but she wasn’t sure if it was side effects or nervousness at the thought of seeing Nicky. It was such ages since their last meeting she felt she’d almost burnt herself out with longing. Then she was worried about the sex side. She’d been taking surreptitious glances at The Joy of Sex when the library was quiet, and the whole thing seemed terribly complicated. Did one have to stop talking during the performance like a tennis match, and wouldn’t Nicky, accustomed to lithe, beautiful, female tennis players, find her much too fat?

She put her hot forehead against the bathroom window. In the garden she could see her father talking to the cat and staking some yellow dahlias beaten down by the rain and wind.

‘That’s what I need,’ she thought wistfully. ‘I’ll never blossom properly in life unless I’m tied to a strong sturdy stake.’

She wondered if Nicky was really stake material. Her father was coming in now. He looked tired. He’d been closeted with members of his flock all afternoon.

She went back to her room and found Homer dispiritedly pulling her underwear out of her suitcase. He hated people going away. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said, hugging him.

She also packed a pile of big paperbacks she’d never got round to reading, Daniel Deronda, Lark Rise To Candleford, Scott Fitzgerald and Tristram Shandy. On the bed lay a box of tissues (they don’t have the kind of loo paper you can take your make-up off with in France, Miss Hockney had told her), a cellophane bag of cotton wool balls and a matching set of Goya’s Passport she had won in the church fete raffle. They didn’t look very inspiring as beauty aids. She imagined Nicky’s other girlfriends with the whole of Helena Rubinstein at their disposal.

There was a knock on the door. It was her mother.

‘Hullo darling, how are you getting on? Daddy wants a quick word before he goes down to the jumble sale pricing committee.’

As she went into the vicar’s study, Imogen started to shake. He was sitting behind his huge desk, lighting his pipe, a few raindrops still gleaming on his thick grey hair. All round him the shelves were filled with Greek and theological books, which the vicar never looked at, and gardening and sporting works which were much more heavily thumbed. On one ledge were neatly stacked volumes of the Church Times and the parish magazine. On the wall the vicar allowed himself one modest photograph of himself surrounded by the England team. On the desk was a large inkwell. He despised biros.

Now he was looking at her over his spectacles. Was his jaundiced air due to the fact she’d been wearing the same skirt and sweater all week to save her best clothes for France, or was he remembering all the countless times he’d called her in to lecture her about inglorious reports, or misbehaviour at home?

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Are you looking forward to your holiday?’

‘Yes,’ said Imogen.

‘Wish I’d been lucky enough to gallivant off to the sun when I was your age,’ he went on heavily, ‘but times were harder then.’

Oh God thought Imogen, he’s not going to start on that one.

But instead her father got to his feet and began to pace the room. ‘I don’t think your mother and I have ever been oppressive parents — we’ve always tried to guide you by example rather than coercion.’ He gave her the chilly on-off smile he used for keeping his parishioners at a distance. His flock-off smile Michael and Juliet always called it.