‘So am I,’ said Cable.
Nicky turned to Tracey. ‘How would you like to come for a ride on a pedalo?’
Larry looked out of the window at the heat haze shimmering on the road out of the village: ‘I think it’s going to snow. I want another large vodka.’
Larry and Imogen and James went back to the beach and they taught her how to play poker, but before long the heat and the heavy lunch overcame James and he staggered back to the hotel for a siesta. Larry picked up his camera. ‘Let’s wander along the beach. I’d like to take some pictures of you.’
‘Oh, please no,’ stammered Imogen. ‘I don’t take a very good photograph.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Larry. ‘I’m the one who takes the good photographs.’
And certainly he was so quiet and gentle, and snapped away so unobtrusively, and flattered her so outrageously, that she was soon relaxing and posing in every position he suggested, on the rocks, paddling in the shallows, lounging against a breakwater.
‘Has anyone told you what a pretty girl you are?’ he said.
Imogen gazed at his thick black and grey hair, as he bent over the viewfinder.
‘Yes, one or two people,’ she said bitterly. ‘And then they rush off with other people, telling me I’m too inexperienced.’
He looked up. ‘Finding the musical beds confusing, are you? I must say we’re a pretty decadent lot for you to stumble on, except perhaps Yvonne, and she’s enough to put one off respectability for life, the frigid bitch. Turn your head slightly towards the sea, darling, but leave your eyes in the same place.’
‘But Matt doesn’t seem like that.’ The temptation to talk about him was too strong.
‘Matt’s different,’ said Larry, changing the film.
‘In what way?’ said Imogen, letting her hair fall over her face so Larry couldn’t see she was blushing. ‘I mean, when he gave Cable that medallion he must have known what she’d been up to with Nicky, but he didn’t seem in the least put out. He was far more annoyed with her not getting the typewriter.’
‘He completely switches off when he’s working. Until he’s got that piece finished, and it’s going to be a bugger — turn your head slightly to the left, darling — he won’t notice if Cable’s being laid end to end by all the frogs in Port-les-Pins.’
‘It must be awfully irritating for her. She’s so beautiful.’
‘She’s nothing special. Just a spoilt little bitch who doesn’t know what she wants.’
‘She wants Matt,’ said Imogen.
‘Et alia. But I’ve got a feeling each time she cheats on him, it worries him less — head up a bit, darling — and if he allows her enough rope, she’ll hang herself.’
Imogen giggled, and felt a bit better, and allowed herself a tiny dream about getting a job in the library on Matt’s newspaper and his taking her on a story, and then getting snowed up.
‘That’s enough work for one afternoon,’ said Larry. ‘Let’s go and have a drink.’ He screwed his eyes up to look out to sea. ‘Where’s that pedalo? I hope Nicky hasn’t sunk without Tracey.’
‘She is nice,’ said Imogen. ‘In fact it’s been so much better all round since you and she arrived last night. Will it be frightfully grand this evening?’
‘It’ll be ludicrous,’ said Larry, tucking his arm through hers. ‘But we might get a few laughs.’
They turned into the first bar on the front, and sat idly drinking and watching the people coming back from the beach.
‘That girl oughtn’t to wear a bikini,’ said Larry, as a fat brunette wobbled past them, ‘she ought to wear an overcoat.’
‘You should have seen the sensation Tracey caused on the beach this morning,’ said Imogen. ‘It was a bit like the Pied Piper drawing all the rats into the water when she went down to bathe.’
Larry didn’t answer, and, suddenly turning round, Imogen saw he’d gone as white as a sheet and was gazing mesmerised with horror at a beautiful woman with short light brown hair, and very high cheek bones, who was walking hand in hand with a much younger, athletic-looking man down to the sea.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Imogen.
He took a slug of his drink with a shaking hand.
‘Please tell me,’ she urged. ‘I know something’s wrong. You seem so — well — cheerful, but underneath I’m sure you’re not.’
For a minute he was silent, his thin face dark and bitter, and she could feel the struggle going on inside him. Then he took a deep breath and said:
‘That woman. For a minute I thought she was Bambi.’
‘But she’s in Islington.’
‘No she isn’t. She’s down here somewhere with her lover. She left me about a fortnight ago.’
‘Oh,’ said Imogen with embarrassment. ‘I can’t bear it. You poor thing.’
‘I didn’t want everyone pitying me. It was my fault. I suppose I neglected her. I’ve been working so hard the last two years just to survive and pay the school fees. Every night I’d come home and collapse in front of the telly with a double whisky, far too zonked out with my own problems to realise she was unhappy.’
‘But when did she start seeing this other man?’ asked Imogen.
‘Oh, last year sometime. Suddenly she started finding fault with everything I did. If the washing machine had broken it was my fault. Going home at night was like being parachuted into a fucking minefield. In retrospect I realise now she was picking fights with me to justify falling for this other bloke.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Silly, really. She used to go out every Wednesday to pottery classes. I used to babysit. She was quite often late back, said she and the rest of the class had been to the pub. Then one day I met her pottery teacher in the High Street, and he said what a pity it was she didn’t come to classes any more when she was so talented. I went straight home and she admitted everything. In the old days I suppose I’d have blacked her eye, but I was buggered if I was going to be accused of being a male chauvinist pig, so I just got bombed out of my skull every night.’
‘And what about Tracey?’
‘She’s just window dressing. She’s a nice girl, but with me putting back the amount I’m putting back at the moment I’m not much use to her in the sack anyway. Best thing for her is to get off with Nicky. They’re well matched intellectually!’
He took her hand. ‘Look, I’m really sorry to dump on you like this.’
‘I like it,’ said Imogen. ‘I’ve felt so useless this holiday. But aren’t you likely to bump into Bambi any minute?’
He shrugged. ‘I know she and loverboy are staying somewhere on the Riviera. He’s frightfully rich, so it’s bound to be expensive.’
‘Does Matt know?’
‘Of course,’ said Larry. ‘He rumbled it last night.’
Back at the hotel they found Cable and Yvonne both with sleek newly washed hair drinking lemon tea with Nicky and James.
‘I suppose I’d better ring the paper to see if that film’s arrived,’ said Larry.
‘What time have we got to be on parade?’ asked Imogen.
‘Well it starts at eight, but I don’t think we need roll up much before nine or nine-thirty,’ said Yvonne.
‘Must make an entrance,’ muttered Nicky.
James looked at his watch. ‘Five o’clock. I’ve just got time to ring the office to see if everything’s OK.’
After that Nicky decided he ought to go and ring his agent, and Cable and Yvonne suddenly came to the conclusion they ought to ring theirs as well.
Imogen wondered if she ought to keep her end up by ringing the library, but what could she ask them? Had the Mayor returned The Hite Report at last? Was Lady Jacintha still clinging on to Dick Francis? She decided to go upstairs and wash her hair.
She met Cable coming downstairs looking bootfaced. ‘Matt’s lost his sense of humour. He simply can’t get his dreary piece together. He’s just bitten my head off simply because I asked for some change to telephone. I’ll have to borrow from Gilmore.’