Emily

Chapter Eleven

I didn’t sleep at all. I lay trembling with panic, clutching Walter Scott’s solid body, my mind reeling from possibility to possibility. At dawn I tried to be rational. Rory and Marina had probably been childhood sweethearts, and he’d been piqued when she married Hamish. After all, it was me he’d married.

Next morning I came down, washed up, and tried to be brave about my hangover.

What would please Rory most? I decided to clean out his studio.

He came down at midday. He looked terrible. He must have been hungover down to his toes, but, glass in hand, he was making a nice recovery. I was standing on a ladder dusting a shelf.

‘Hello, darling,’ I said, brightly.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Dusting.’

‘Why the hell can’t Miss Mackie do that? You’ll only muddle everything up, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Please don’t let’s quarrel. I’m sorry for the things I said. I didn’t mean them. I couldn’t bear another night like last night.’

‘You can always leave,’ he said brutally.

‘I don’t want to leave. I love you.’

His face softened. ‘Do you now? Well come down off that stupid ladder then,’ and, catching my ankles, he ran his hands slowly up my legs.

‘I’ll just dust this last folder,’ I said, steadying myself on the shelf.

‘Put that down,’ said Rory, his voice suddenly icy.

Startled, I swayed on my high ladder.

‘I said put it down.’

Purely out of nerves, I let the folder slip from my hands and crash to the floor. Hastily I scrambled down and knelt to pick it up.

Rory reached it at the same time as me, his hand on my arm like a vice.

‘Ow!’ I yelped.

‘Leave it,’ he snarled, but it was too late.

Spilling out of the folder were the most beautiful drawings. The naked model smiling that secret, comehither smile was unmistakably Marina.

We looked at the paintings scattered round our feet. Marina in her lush beauty mocked me a hundred times over.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘It’s your fault. I told you not to touch that file.’

‘They’re very good, very life-like indeed,’ I said slowly, trying to keep my voice from trembling. ‘I’m sure you didn’t paint these from imagination.’

‘Of course I didn’t. I wanted to do some nudes last summer, and there are only a limited number of people on the island who’ll take their clothes off. You can hardly see Buster or Hamish stripping down to the buff and sitting around for hours on end. Anyway, as I’ve said before, it’s damn all to do with you what I did before I was married.’

‘Or what you do after you’re married,’ I said bitterly.

Rory drained his drink and poured himself another one.

‘Rory,’ I said slowly, ‘this is important. Do you love me at all?’

Rory looked bored. ‘Depends how you define love.’

How could I explain that he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, that my tongue suddenly got stuck in my throat when I saw the set of his shoulders, that I spent all day wanting him.

‘Oh Rory,’ I said, appalled. ‘Can’t you try and be a bit more loving?’

‘Why?’ he said, logically.

‘Why did you marry me then?’

He looked at me reflectively, ‘I’m beginning to wonder.’

I gave a gasp. God, he could be vicious.

‘What shall we do about it, then?’ I said.

‘Do?’ he exploded. ‘Do let me work, that’s enough for me.’

‘But not enough for me!’ I screamed, and brushed blindly past him.

‘Where are you going?’ he said.

‘Out.’

‘Well, for God’s sake come back in a less destructive mood.’

And so our marriage began to deteriorate. It wasn’t helped by the rain which started to fall the next day, and continued for weeks. Rory passed the time in painting, I in sulking, then in trying to win Rory round, then in sulking again.

I suppose I was pretty disagreeable myself, I complained steadily about the weather and how bored I was. At first I made an attempt to stop myself, then I didn’t try to stop myself, then I found I couldn’t. Emily — the fishwife.

That crack about being lousy in bed had gone home too. I wrote off to London for a sexy black cut-out nightie, and a book on how to undress in front of your husband. It showed you how to swing your bra round like a football rattle, and slide your pants off in one go.

I tried it on Rory one evening, but he merely raised his eyebrows and asked me if I’d been at the gin. As the weeks passed, he didn’t lay a finger on me. I was desperately unhappy and cried a great deal when he wasn’t around. I kept telling myself that when he’d assembled enough canvases for the exhibition we’d be like a couple of love birds, but I didn’t really believe it.

I spent most of my time corrupting Walter Scott. Rory was a great believer that dogs should be treated like dogs and kept outside. I kept bringing him in and feeding him in between meals and cuddling him — I needed a few allies.

Gradually Walter invaded the house. He started off sleeping in the kitchen, then moved to the foot of the stairs, then to the landing outside our bedroom. At dawn he would steal in and try to climb on our bed. Invariably Rory, who was a light sleeper, would wake up and throw him out.

‘Walter Scott suffers from being an only dog,’ he was fond of saying.

‘Blood is thicker than Walter,’ I said.

‘Nothing is thicker than Walter,’ said Rory.