girlfriend.’
‘Pooh,’ said Will. ‘Mattie’s leg smells awful.’ Then, realizing Chessie was getting into the car without him, started to cry.
‘Mummy won’t be long. I’ll bring you a present,’ called Chessie as she drove off.
‘Girlfriend indeed,’ muttered Louisa, catching a whiff of Diorissimo. ‘Mummy’s gone a-hunting.’
Ten miles from Robinsgrove the wind dropped, the sun came out and the temperature rocketed, shrivelling the wild roses hanging from the hedgerows. Chessie could see her face reddening in the driving mirror and feel the sweat trickling down her ribs. It was all Ricky’s fault for not being able to afford a car with air-conditioning. There were no shops on the way for her to buy something cooler. Her mouth tasted acid with nerves.
Rubens’ Retreat, once a large country house, now an hotel, was set in lush parkland. Reputed to have the best food and the softest double beds in England, it was a favourite haunt of the rich and libidinous. Inside it was wonderfully cool. Chessie nipped into the Ladies to remove her stockings, tone down her flushed face and clean her teeth.
‘I’ve just had gastric flu and keep getting this terrible taste in my mouth,’ she explained to the attendant who’d seen it all before.
She found Bart in an alcove, screened by huge plants. On the telephone, he only paused to kiss her and wave her to the chair beside him. He was very brown and wearing a cream silk shirt, a pin-striped suit and an emerald- green tie, which matched the greensward on which naked ladies were sporting with cherubs on the mural round the walls.
‘I don’t care if the price is rising, keep buying, but spread it around; we should have control by tomorrow lunchtime,’ ordered Bart, waving to the waiter to pour Chessie a glass of champagne.
While half his mind wrestled with the complicated finances of one of the fiercest take-overs Wall Street had ever known, his eyes ran over Chessie. She was as flushed as a peony, that pink dress emphasized every curve like a second skin. As the waiter laid a dark green napkin across her crotch, it was as though he was putting on a fig leaf. Bart wanted to take her upstairs and screw her at once.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said as he came off the telephone.
‘Aren’t you drinking?’ asked Chessie, noticing his glass of Perrier.
‘I’m driving.’
‘Perrier don’t make you merrier,’ said Chessie idly.
‘Just looking at you makes me drunk,’ said Bart. ‘Where does Ricky think you are?’
‘At home. I was terrified the match might be cancelled.’
‘It isn’t. I checked it out,’ said Bart. ‘How is he?’
‘Preoccupied. Mattie’s deteriorating; Kinta won’t stop.’
‘Sure he hasn’t got a bit on the side?’ asked Bart as they studied the menu.
Chessie laughed sourly. ‘The only bits Ricky’s interested in go in horses’ mouths.’
‘How was he when you got home after Lady Waterlane’s reception?’
‘Asleep in the hay beside Mattie.’
‘That figures. He thinks he’s Jesus Christ anyway.’
The telephone rang.
‘Choose what you want to eat,’ said Bart picking up the receiver. ‘I’d like poached salmon, zucchini and no potatoes,’ he told the waiter.
‘Why are you so keen to take over this company?’ asked Chessie, as he came off the telephone five minutes later.
‘Chief Executive, Ashley Roberts, blackballed me at the Racquet Club ten years ago.’
‘You
‘Never forget a put-down. That all right?’ He brandished his fork in the direction of Chessie’s fish pate.
‘Fraction too much fennel,’ said Chessie. ‘OK, OK, that wasn’t a put-down. I used to cook for a living before I got married. I’ll cook for you one day.’
Bart massaged her arm. ‘I sure hope so. I’m sorry about Grace.’
‘Did the Bloody Mary come out of her shirt?’
‘No. She called Ralph. He’s making her another one.’
‘I suppose that’s what shirty means. How was the wedding? Is Grace still Biddling while Rome burns?’
Bart tapped her nose with his finger. ‘You must not take the piss.’
‘How did you two meet?’ asked Chessie as the waiter took away her hardly touched pate.
‘I was a test pilot at NASA. Great life, none of us thought we’d live beyond thirty. You can’t imagine the joy of testing an airplane, learning its personality, talking to it, poking and probing, finding new things. I was a little boy from nowhere, but when I flew I felt like a god.’
He blushed, ashamed of betraying emotion. ‘Grace came to visit the plant, and that was that. She grounded me but she backed me.’
Chessie was fascinated: ‘How come you got so rich?’
Bart shrugged. ‘I build the best airplanes and helicopters in the world and I bought land when it was worth $300 an acre. Now it’s going for $10,000. All markets go in cycles, the skill is knowing when to get in and when to get out.’
Chessie breathed in the sweet scent of white freesias and stocks in the centre of the dark green tablecloth.
‘How were your children when you went back?’
‘OK.’ Quite unselfconsciously Bart got photographs out of his wallet.
‘That’s Luke. He’s twenty-two.’
‘Nice face,’ said Chessie.
‘Comes from my first marriage. Doesn’t live with us. He’s been working his way up as a groom in a polo yard. Very proud. Won’t accept a cent from me.’
‘Sounds like Ricky.’
‘More sympatico than Ricky,’ said Bart flatly. ‘This is Red.’
Chessie whistled. ‘Wow, that’s an even nicer face. He really is beautiful.’ Then, sensing she’d said the wrong thing: ‘Nearly as good-looking as his father.’
Bart looked mollified: ‘All the girls are crazy for Red. He’s kinda wild. He got looped at the wedding, and threw his cookies all over his granny’s porch. Plays polo like an angel. If he’d quit partying he’d go to ten. And here’s my baby, Bibi.’ Bart’s voice softened.
‘Now she
No one could call her pretty with that crinkly hair and heavy jaw.
‘Bibi is super-bright. Harvard Business School, only one interested in coming into the business. She’s Daddy’s girl. Doesn’t get on with Grace. She might relate to a younger woman,’ he added pointedly.
He is definitely putting out signals, thought Chessie, as their second course arrived.
‘D’you often have affairs with men who aren’t your husband?’ said Bart, forking up poached salmon.
‘Not since I was married. And you?’
‘Occasionally. They weren’t important.’
Chessie examined the oily sheen on a red leaf of radicchio.
‘Is this?’
‘I guess so. That’s why I didn’t call you before.’
Elated, Chessie regaled him with scurrilous polo gossip, knowing it would delight him to know how other players ripped off their patrons. Aware she was dropping the twins in it, and not caring, she told him about them selling one of Victor’s own horses back to him.
‘Are you going to Deauville?’ asked Bart as he came off the telephone for the third time.
‘Not unless Ricky forks out for a temporary nanny. The grooms get so bolshy about baby-sitting and Deauville’s no fun unless you can go out in the evening. We haven’t had a holiday since we were married,’ said Chessie bitterly and untruthfully.
Bart traced the violet circles under her eyes.
‘You need one. Don’t you ever get any sleep?’
‘Not since I met you,’ said Chessie, who had drunk almost an entire bottle of champagne.
