‘He certainly has great style,’ said Imogen, still giggling as she and Matt stretched out on the beach later. ‘I mean that grey hair with that young face.’
‘It’s dyed,’ said Matt. ‘You may laugh, but he’s absolutely lethal where women are concerned. You should have seen him at Oxford, bowling them over with his Cartier watches and his dinner jacket with green facings. Any girl worth her salt in those days claimed to be educated at Roedean, Lady Margaret Hall, and Antoine de la Tour. So watch it, mate.’
Although everyone else on the beach was sunbathing topless, Imogen jumped out of her skin as she felt Matt’s fingers undoing the clasp of her bikini.
‘No, I can’t,’ she gasped.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Matt. ‘Turn over. I’ll oil you.’
Imogen shut her eyes and turned over. The hot sun beat red through her lids. Hastily she covered her breasts with her folded arms.
‘Come on,’ said Matt. ‘I want to look at you.’
‘Oh please don’t,’ muttered Imogen. ‘I’m so awful.’
‘Shut up,’ he said, gently pulling down her arms.
‘You’ve been hiding your finest asset for far too long. Nicky was absolutely right about your tits.’
As his hands began to move luxuriously over her stomach, she felt her throat tighten and her mouth go dry. She opened her eyes to find him smiling lazily down at her, the heavy olive lids almost shutting out the dark green eyes. Her heart was going bump-bump like an overloaded spin dryer. Suddenly the beach had become a tiny room.
‘I’ll oil the rest of me,’ she stammered, snatching the tube of Ambre Solaire from him and hastily smothering her tits.
Matt laughed. ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun,’ he said.
‘It’s not the heat of the sun I’m scared of at the moment,’ muttered Imogen, frantically reaching for her bikini top. ‘I’m going for a swim.’
‘Uh, uh,’ he held her down. ‘Not when I’ve just oiled you. Concentrate on getting brown.’
He picked up the evening paper. ‘Bugger,’ he said. ‘Braganzi and the Duchess went to the theatre in Marseilles last night. Jesus, if only I could get in there.’
If he’s totally unmoved by my lying beside him half naked, perhaps it’s all right, thought Imogen, looking timidly around. A few yards away a handsome German was lasciviously rubbing oil into his companion’s enormous breasts. Goodness, I am seeing life, she thought as gradually the tension seeped out of her.
Much later, when Imogen’s bosom and the sea were turning a deep rosy gold, Matt glanced at his watch. ‘Christ it’s late. We’d better get back.’
They drove back in a manic mood. The wireless was roaring out the Fifth symphony. Matt was waltzing the car round the hairpin bends. He was wearing that battered Panama hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. His thick tawny hair was now extravagantly bleached and streaked by the sun, his teeth gleamed white in his brown face.
God, he’s divine. How could I ever have thought he was ugly? she wondered.
‘Such a lovely day,’ she said, stretching luxuriously. ‘And all my heavenly clothes. You are good to me, Matt.’
He looked round and smiled approvingly.
‘Nicky won’t be able to keep his hands off you now.’
Nicky! That brought her up with a jerk. How awful, she hadn’t given him a thought for hours.
Chapter Eleven
Sulky faces greeted them as they drove up to the hotel.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ snapped Cable.
‘Exciting each other on the beach at St Trop,’ said Matt.
Nicky and James were gaping at Imogen, who had got out of the car and was standing in the street in her bikini, her hair streaming down her back.
‘Gosh,’ said James in awe. ‘You look like one of the girls at the Motor Show.’
‘Matt seems to have been playing Pygmalion,’ said Cable frostily.
‘Rather successfully, don’t you think?’ said Matt, looking at Imogen.
‘She looks tremendous,’ said James. ‘Have a drink?’
‘We bumped into Antoine de la Tour, mad as ever. He’s coming over this evening. How was the water skiing, darling?’ said Matt to Cable. He bent over to give her a peck on the cheek, but she jerked her head away and spat a remark at him which only he heard.
He straightened up and looked at her.
‘It’s those loving things you do that make me grow so close to you,’ he said in an undertone.
‘Yvonne’s ill,’ said Nicky, who was still staring at Imogen. ‘She’s been stung by a jellyfish.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Matt in concern. ‘Is the poor jellyfish expected to live?’
James tried, but failed, to look affronted.
‘She wants me to sit by her bedside all night,’ he said plaintively. ‘I’d get her some pills to ease the pain, but I can’t make the beastly chemist understand.’
‘I’ll get her something,’ said Matt. ‘Order us a drink. I’ll be right back.’
‘First she says I stink of garlic, and then I mustn’t touch her because of her sunburn, and now this. What a holiday.’ James looked as though he was going to cry.
Nicky turned to Imogen. ‘You look sensational,’ he said, and began to tell her about the water skiing, his eyes wandering over her body as of old. Cable looked so thunderous, Imogen was glad when Matt came back.
‘Here you are,’ he said, handing James a phial of green pills. ‘But tell Yvonne not to take too many. They’re absolute knockouts.’
‘Thanks awfully,’ said James, bolting into the hotel. He came back five minutes later, his face wreathed in smiles.
‘What on earth were they?’ he asked. ‘She went out like a light.’
‘Smarties,’ said Matt. ‘I got them from the sweet shop round the corner. We extracted the green ones.’
Cable was the only person not to join in the shouts of laughter.
‘I’m going to change,’ she said.
‘So am I,’ said Matt grimly.
Imogen, at a discreet distance behind them, saw Matt follow Cable into their room.
‘When are you going to stop buggering up every one else’s holiday?’ she heard him say.
‘Male chauvinist Pygmalion,’ thought Imogen.
Dinner was decidedly stormy. The collision of wills in the bedroom had obviously escalated into a major row. Cable was in a murderous mood, her jaw set, her green eyes glittering. She kept ordering the most expensive things on the menu, and then sending them back untouched.
She was drinking heavily. And although Nicky was listening to her feverish chatter, every so often he cast discreet glances in Imogen’s direction.
Imogen was feeling beautiful in one of the dresses Matt had bought her. She had noticed the way men’s heads had turned and looked at her and stayed looking, as she came into the restaurant. It was a completely new experience. Even Cable couldn’t destroy her mood of euphoria. James, delirious to be off the matrimonial lead, was getting thoroughly overexcited. Matt appeared outwardly unruffled, but he was lighting one cigarette from another.
No one was sorry when Antoine and Mimi arrived and bore them all off to a disco outside the town.
On the way they passed a large turreted house, strewn with creeper, set back from the road behind high walls and huge iron gates.
‘That’s one of Braganzi’s ’ide outs,’ said Antoine. ‘It go straight down to a private beach.’
Above the burglar alarm trill of the cicadas, they could hear the faint baying of guard-dogs.
‘I ’ave made the enquiries, Matthieu,’ Antoine went on. ‘If you go along to Le Bar de le Marine tomorrow lunchtime and ask for a Monsieur Roche, ’e might be able to help.’