Octavia

‘Yeah?’ said Charlie, picking up the receiver. ‘It’s someone called Ricardo,’ he added. ‘He sounds a long way away.’

‘Crackling with lust,’ I said, taking the receiver. ‘Go and get a bottle out of the fridge, darling,’ I said to him loudly, so Ricardo could hear.

‘Hi, my darling,’ I said to Ricardo.

When I had taken my time over the telephone call, I wandered into the bedroom. Charlie was lying naked on the blond fur counterpane, drinking champagne and looking beautiful and sulky. On the wall above his head hung my favourite picture: a 16th century Italian oil painting of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, surrounded by hundreds of animals and birds.

‘It’s vital,’ my brother had insisted, ‘to have something pretty to look at over one’s bed to while away the excruciating boredom of sexual intercourse.’ I knew that picture pretty well.

Ignoring Charlie, I undressed unhurriedly and sat down at my dressing table, admiring my reflection in the triple mirror. I liked what I saw. My body was as warm as an apricot in the soft light, my breasts, in contrast with the extreme slenderness of the rest of my body, had a heavy golden ripeness. Voluptuously I began to brush my hair.

‘Who’s Ricardo?’ said Charlie, trying to appear cool.

‘A rather persistent bit of my past,’ I said. ‘You know I never let a dago by.’

Charlie laughed. ‘I hope he is past.’

He got up, crossed the room and stood behind me, his hands caressing my shoulders. His body was dark brown from the Marbella sun as he bent his head to kiss me. I could see the gold streaks growing out of his dark hair.

We made a stunning picture, like a Fellini film.

‘Come on, Narcissus,’ he said. ‘It’s time for bed.’

Afterwards he reached out for the champagne and gave me a glass.

‘Christ, you were sensational tonight,’ he muttered sleepily, as I examined my now tousled but not unpleasing reflection in the mirror opposite. ‘What got into you?’

‘You did,’ I said, and laughed softly. There was no need to tell him the whole time we had been making love I had been practising every trick in the trade, imagining he was Jeremy West.

He fell asleep almost immediately, with his arms around me. It was terribly hot. I soon wriggled out of his embrace, and lay on my back, thinking about Jeremy, memorizing every angle of his face and every word he’d spoken to me. The fact that he was engaged to Gussie didn’t worry me a bit, made it more of a challenge.

Eventually I got up, went to the bathroom, removed every scrap of make-up, then luxuriously massaged skin food all over my body. Then I took a couple of sleeping pills, switched off the telephone and fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Two

When I awoke at two o’clock in the afternoon Charlie had gone, leaving me a note on the pillow, saying he loved me, and to ring him when I was conscious. I switched on the telephone, it rang almost immediately. ‘’Ullo, this is the Moroccan Embassy,’ I said.

‘Octavia, you are dreadful; it’s Gussie here,’ came the breathless, eager voice.

‘Gussie, how lovely!’

‘I thought I’d ring straightaway, before we lost touch.’

‘You must come to dinner,’ I said.

‘We’d love to, but actually we’ve got a plan. Are you doing anything the weekend after next?’

‘I’m supposed to be going to France, but it’s a fluid arrangement.’

‘Well, I expect you’d find it awfully boring, but Jeremy shares a boat with another chap, and we’ve got it next weekend. We wondered if you’d like to come too.’

‘I might get seasick,’ I said, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.

‘Oh you couldn’t! It’s a barge, and all we do is drift up and down the canals, going through the locks and tying up where it takes our fancy. Would you like to bring Charlie?’

‘He’ll be away,’ I lied. ‘It’s not a big thing, Charlie and me, we’re just mates.’

‘You haven’t got someone special you’d like to bring?’

‘I did have. We were going to get married, but he was killed in a car crash earlier this year.’

‘Oh, poor, poor Tavy,’ she said, unconsciously lapsing into the nickname of schooldays. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

There was a pause.

‘Well, anyway,’ she floundered on. ‘If you didn’t want to bring someone, Jeremy had thought. . do you know Gareth Llewellyn?’

‘No, should I? The name sounds faintly familiar.’

‘He’s a great friend of Jeremy’s. We’ve been trying to persuade him to come on the boat for ages, but he works so hard, he can never get away. I think you’d like him; he’s awfully attractive.’

I didn’t care if he were. My mind was already jumping ahead, dreaming of a long weekend, drifting up and down the canals, lounging on the deck in my bikini by day, my hair gleaming pale in the moonlight by night — how could I not hook Jeremy?

‘It sounds great,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come. Why don’t you and Jeremy come to dinner on Monday and we can talk about it?’

I planned Monday’s dinner like a military operation. As I’m a rotten cook and can be guaranteed to louse up even fake mashed potato, I arranged for the food to be sent up from the restaurant around the corner, so I could pass it off as my own efforts.

Gussie had obviously given Jeremy the impression that I was a frivolous social butterfly and I was determined to dispel it. I scoured the shops until I found a dress that made me look both demure and sexy, and I bought all Jeremy’s books — two slender volumes of poetry and a book of criticism of John Donne’s poems. I found Jeremy’s poems quite incomprehensible. The long, rather self-admiring introduction written by Jeremy himself made me understand them even less.

The doorbell rang as I was spraying scent round the flat. Gussie stood in front of Jeremy, clutching a huge box of chocolates.

‘For you,’ she said, giving me a bear hug. ‘You’re the only friend I have who doesn’t need to diet. Goodness, that blue looks stunning!’

I couldn’t say the same for her. She was wearing a scarlet dress which clashed horribly with her flushed face. We went in to the drawing-room and I poured everyone stiff drinks.

‘How delicious to have a flat like this all to oneself,’ said Gussie, collapsing on to the sofa.

‘I can’t wait to get out of London on Friday,’ I said.

‘Nor can I,’ said Gussie, shovelling nuts into her face like a starved squirrel. ‘My office is like a furnace. Gareth is coming, by the way. I lured him by telling him what a knockout you were.’

‘Well then, he’s doomed to bitter disappointment,’ I said with a sidelong glance at Jeremy.

‘Not in your case,’ he said, staring back at me until I demurely dropped my eyes.

Oh Good-ee, I thought, it’s beginning to work. I sat on the sofa, stretching long brown legs in front of me. I saw Jeremy looking at them surreptitiously. I didn’t blame him, they were a far prettier sight than Gussie’s tree trunks, displayed almost in their entirety by a rucked-up skirt.

‘Gareth wants us to go round after dinner for a drink,’ she said. ‘He says he can’t wait until Friday.’

‘Do you like him?’ I asked Jeremy, as though it were only his opinion that mattered.

‘Yes, I do. He’s one of my oldest friends. We were at Oxford together. His father was a Welsh miner, and he