‘’Fraid she hash; entirely my fault; take her home at onshe.’
‘You’re as bad as she is,’ said Cory, dropping his cigarette into a discarded plate of fruit salad. ‘Neither of you is in a fit state. Give her a ring in the morning, but for God’s sake get someone to drive you home.’
‘Or you might go slap into a tree along the Fairmile,’ said Harriet and laughed.
Elizabeth came up to them. ‘You’re coming back for a drink, aren’t you, Cory?’
Cory said he had to take Harriet home.
‘Billy can take her,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Far too drunk.’
‘Michael can run her back then.’
Harriet frantically pressed Cory’s hand.
‘He’s too drunk too,’ he said. ‘It’s late, and she is my responsibility.’
‘I am, I am,’ agreed Harriet, beaming.
‘Thanks, Annie,’ said Cory taking her coat from Mrs Willoughby. ‘I feel I ought to tip you.’
‘I’d much rather have a kiss,’ said Mrs Willoughby, her eyes gleaming. ‘You and Harriet,’ she shot a sly glance at Elizabeth, ‘must both come to dinner.’
Harriet had never seen anyone so cross as Elizabeth Pemberton.
Outside the rain had stopped; the clouds had rolled back like a blind on a clear starry night.
‘Damn,’ said Cory, going up to his car. ‘I’ve left the lights on; the battery’s flat.’
‘As flat as Elizabeth Pemberton’s chest,’ said Harriet. Really she was behaving very badly; she must get a grip on herself.
‘Having trouble?’ It was Harry Mytton, one of the red-faced stalwarts in the Bentleys’ party. Out of the corner of her eye, Harriet saw Elizabeth and her party bearing down on them.
‘Quick,’ she whispered.
‘Battery’s flat,’ said Cory. ‘Can you give us a lift? The garage can come and get it in the morning.’
Harriet leapt into the car as quick as a dog thinking it might be left behind. She found she was sitting on two riding crops and a dog lead. There was a sticker for the Aylesford point-to-point in the back window.
As the headlights lit up the bracken and the trailing traveller’s joy, she was achingly conscious of Cory sitting beside her in the back. Mrs Mytton discussed one of the drunks in their party.
‘Kept a pack in some unlikely place like Haslemere,’ said Harry Mytton. The huge stars seemed to be crowding in on them as they drove along the winding road. Harriet kept being thrown against Cory.
‘Annie Willoughby’s a damned attractive woman,’ said Harry Mytton, ‘magnificent woman across country you know.’
‘She can even keep potted plants alive,’ said Mrs Mytton.
Another corner, another lurch across the back of the car. This time Harriet didn’t bother to move away, nuzzling up to Cory like a puppy. Her head kept flopping forward. In the end Cory turned her over, so she lay with her head in his lap, and stroked her gently behind the ears, almost as he might have petted Tadpole or one of the children.
Looking up she could see the lean line of his jaw, above the white tie. Behind his head, out of the back window, Orion glittered in a sooty, black sky. Now he disappeared, now he appeared again as the car swung round the bends.
‘What did Orion do?’ she said sleepily.
‘He was a mighty hunter who died of a scorpion sting,’ said Cory. ‘After boasting he’d rid the world of wild beasts. Then Zeus put him in the sky.’
‘Who was that, Cory?’ said Harry Mytton. ‘Didn’t he used to hunt with the York and Ainsty?’
Cory’s lips twitched. Harriet started to giggle. He put his hand over her mouth. She started to kiss it. He shook his head, smoothing her hair back from her forehead.
Orion was moving back and forth again. Following his progress, Harriet suddenly began to feel very odd. She shut her eyes. Everything went round and round. She sat bolt upright.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Cory.
‘I feel sick.’
‘Serves you bloody well right.’ Cory wound down the window, and shoved her head out. Icy blasts of cold made her feel better, but it was a relief when Harry Mytton turned into the Wilderness drive.
The owls were hooting in the garden. Mrs Bottomley’s thermos of cocoa was waiting for them in the kitchen. Cory unscrewed it and poured it down the sink.
‘Don’t want to upset the old girl,’ he said.
Harriet fled upstairs, put on more scent and cleaned her teeth. Then, thinking Cory might smell the toothpaste and think she was trying too hard, rinsed her mouth out again. Then she turned off her electric blanket.
‘Careful, Harriet, careful,’ said her reflection in the mirror. ‘This kind of behaviour got you into trouble before.’
Down in the drawing room Cory had taken off his coat and tie and stood in front of a dying fire nursing a glass of whisky.
Harriet curled up on the sofa, watching the light from one lamp fall on the bowed heads of a pot of white cyclamen.
The telephone rang. Cory picked it up.
‘No, it’s very kind, Elizabeth, but I’m absolutely knackered. Thank you for a tremendous evening.’ There was a pause. ‘As to that, I don’t think it’s any of your bloody business. Goodnight.’ And he dropped the receiver back on the hook.
‘Interfering bitch,’ he said.
Harriet giggled. ‘I bet she said, “That child’s been hurt enough”.’
Cory looked startled, then he laughed. ‘That’s exactly what she did say.’
For a minute he looked out over the silent valley, then he drew the curtains, stubbed out his cigarette and came towards her. Then he held out his arms, and she went into them like a bird out of the storm. As he kissed her she could feel the current of excitement coursing over her. God, this is absolute dynamite, she thought, as her hands crept around his neck, her fingers twining into the thick black hair.
Suddenly the telephone rang.
‘Leave it,’ said Cory, his hold tightening.
‘It might be important,’ murmured Harriet.
‘Can’t be.’
‘I’ll get it. It might wake Mrs Bottomley and we don’t want that,’ said Harriet, giggling. ‘I’ll say you’re in a meeting.’
She picked up the receiver. She could hear the pips.
‘It’s long distance for you from America.’
‘I expect it’s MGM about the treatment,’ he said, taking the receiver from her.
Suddenly the colour drained from his face. Someone must have died. She could see the knuckles white where his hand clutched the receiver. The conversation was very brief. Harriet collapsed onto the sofa. She had a premonition that something very terrible was about to happen to her. She looked at Cory and suddenly had a vision of pulling a wounded man up to the edge of a cliff, then finally letting him go so his body circled round and round as he splattered on the rocks below. Cory put down the receiver and reached automatically for a cigarette.
‘That was Noel,’ he said. ‘She’s finished filming and she’s flying back to England tomorrow. She and Ronnie Acland are coming North next week. She wants to see the children so they’re coming over for lunch on Wednesday.’
‘But she can’t,’ gasped Harriet. ‘It’ll crucify you. She can’t go round playing fast and loose with other people’s lives.’
Cory glared at her, his face grey. He seemed to have aged ten years. The last hour might never have happened.
‘They’re her children as much as mine,’ he snapped.
Harriet stepped back as though he’d hit her, giving a whimper of anguish.
‘And don’t stare at me with those great eyes of yours,’ he said brutally. ‘If Noel and I choose to behave in a civilized manner, it’s nothing to do with you. You’d better go to bed.’
Harriet heard the cocks crowing. She looked at the photograph by the bed. She couldn’t even be loyal to Simon’s memory. Cory was a different generation; his world was in ruins; he merely regarded her as a diversion, because he was a bit tight and she was available.