Love Falls (7 page)

Upstairs, in front of the long wardrobe mirror, Lara tried on her bikini. It fitted perfectly, something she’d been too rushed to properly check when she’d tried it on before, and for the first time since her body had begun to change, since, at the age of twelve, it had appalled her by thickening and developing breasts – small lopsided breasts she’d never asked for – for the first time, really, in five years, she looked fine. She twirled around in a little loop of pleasure, admiring herself, so sheer in polka-dot, the square of her back between the straps turned from pink to brown, her legs smooth, her stomach flat. Her nose still looked a little sunburnt but the stripe below her eyes was darkening, turning to freckles, throwing light up into her eyes.

She took her towel and a bottle of suntan oil and skipped through the house.

‘Don’t forget to use it,’ Caroline called as she ran across the terrace. ‘I know you think you’re immortal but one day, when you have skin like wrinkled leather  . . .’

‘OK.’ Lara glanced back at Caroline, creamy in her pleated skirt, her hat pulled down a little, her legs pale. ‘Thank you,’ and she went more carefully, treading with bare feet down each hot step of stone.

It was worth not having swum that morning to feel the anticipation of it now. Very slowly Lara waded out from the shallow steps, sinking inch by inch, watching the water creep over the edge of her new costume, darkening it until she was submerged. She swam underwater for as long as she could, watching her hands form into their leaf point, feeling her muscles flex and tense as she pushed the water away. She rose up at each end, shaking her head, glorying in the shower of drops, swooping back under, pushing off hard, gliding towards the other end, her body bursting with pleasure, her mind free from any thought. When her eyes became sore she flipped over, going more slowly, slicing the water with her arms, kicking back and forth.

Eventually she pulled herself out and sat for a while on the scorching stone at the side of the pool, feeling it sizzling against the wet material, marvelling at how quickly she dried. She glanced up at the terrace and in case Caroline was watching she collected the boiled brown bottle of Ambre Solaire and moved into the shade. She rubbed some into her face. It smelt of coconut, of Bounty bars and advertisement beaches. She dribbled it along the length of her legs and arms, and when it was rubbed in, squirted a splash over her shoulder and stretched an arm around to rub it into her back.

‘Would you like help with that?’ It was Lambert.

Lara spun round. ‘No. It’s fine.’ She was seized with fear he might be about to touch her skin. She took the bottle and slid it under the seat. ‘I’m going to lie on my back anyway,’ she said, and smiling at him, hoping to disguise her panic, she arranged herself on the towel and closed her eyes.

Not long after she heard a splash. She opened one eye and saw the ripples on the smooth blue pool. She rolled on to her side. She could see him under the surface. He swam a length, turned, took one professional gulp of air and swam another. Where did he learn to swim like that? Who taught him? But more than that she wanted to know how he’d managed to resist the pleasure all these years. All the summers of her childhood when he’d stayed leashed to his desk, his only exercise a walk through Kensington Gardens and then back. It was obvious from the way Caroline talked that he must have had another, livelier life, but whenever Lara asked him if he was going away, taking any time off from his work, his answer was always the same. ‘Time,’ he’d say, ‘there’s too little of it as there is.’

Lara got up to drag the lounger further into the shade. She scooped up the suntan lotion and began to smooth another layer into her legs. Lambert heaved himself out, and wrapping a towel round his middle sank down on to the other seat. She smiled at him and slid over the lotion, watching, she couldn’t help herself, as he poured a pool into his hand and dabbed it experimentally into the thick hair of his chest.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she told him, ‘if we just stayed here tonight.’

‘Oh, no.’ He shook his head, as if whatever reservations he’d had that morning about going out were now forgotten. ‘You have to come. See all the young people. I think it’s why Caroline arranged it. She’s worried you’ll get bored.’

‘I won’t get bored.’

‘Well, if you really don’t want to then . . .’ He frowned, as if this was just one more complication.

‘Oh . . .’ She was regretting everything now. ‘I mean. I don’t mind.’

Lambert lay back with his paper. ‘It’s an interesting house, apparently, Ceccomoro. It was originally a village, well, a hamlet, I suppose, but Willoughby bought each family out, it took him years, and he turned it into his hilltop empire. They’re our nearest neighbours here, the Willoughbys, and Andrew, he lives out here all the time, well, however many days you have to live abroad to be a tax exile.’ There was a flicker of his earlier, disgusted tone, and then, after another minute or so, half lost in a distracted yawn, he added, ‘I used to know his wife, long ago.’

‘Oh really? Will she be here?’

Lambert laughed. ‘I doubt it.’

‘Does he live out here alone then?’

‘That seems unlikely.’ He flipped the pages of the paper. ‘But I expect we’ll find out.’

Lara looked up at the sky. The deep blue bowl of it. As bright as a postcard of the sea. There were so many questions she wanted to ask: how many children does Andrew Willoughby have, what are their ages, how far away are they, their nearest neighbours? She looked around but could see nothing but the dust-grey leaves of olive trees, and the hills rising up out of the valley, thick with pine.

‘The great tragedy about Lord Willoughby . . .’ Lambert was talking, she assumed to her, ‘is that he was rather promising as a young man. He was the second son of Lord Montague and he was training to be a lawyer – you could do that if you were a second son – had already become a lawyer, quite brilliant, I think. But then, his elder brother died and he was expected to give up his career and take over the estates. But he just wasn’t up to it. He squandered the family money, as much as he could get his hands on, and instead of banishing himself to Yorkshire to look after the estate, he spent his every waking hour chasing after girls.’

‘But I thought you said he was married. I mean . . . that you knew his wife?’

‘Yes.’ Lambert frowned. ‘Yes, well, he was married. Still is. Poor girl. Anyway, eventually his father gave up on him, disinherited him, passed on the title and all that went with it to Willoughby’s son, Kip, who at the age of seven became the new Lord Montague. Poor boy. And Andrew Willoughby, his tail between his legs, abandoned all his duties and disappeared out here.’

Lambert rifled through the paper as if he might find more news of it right there, and forgetting she still didn’t have cream on her back, Lara rolled on to her front and entertained herself by watching the ants, so busy as they worked, pulling pieces of dried grass bigger than themselves across the tiles.

That night Lara tried on every single item of her clothing, and found each one somehow not to be quite right. There was a pair of pink-and-white-striped trousers she’d bought in Oxford Street, but as she examined them she saw why they had been so cheap. At home, when she’d tried them, she’d been standing on the bathroom chair, checking them section by section in the narrow oblong mirror above the bath, but here, in the full length of glass attached to the back of the wardrobe door, they didn’t work at all. She pulled them off and tried a skirt, but she didn’t seem to have a shirt to go with it, and very soon she’d run out of combinations and so opted for the jeans and cotton shirt she’d travelled in, which had appeared, washed and ironed almost beyond recognition, on the end of her bed. She put on her high heels and swept her lashes with mascara, noting with pleasure how white the whites looked, how blue the blue, against the stripe of tiny freckles on her cheeks.

When she finally came down Lambert and Caroline were waiting for her on the terrace, and as soon as she saw them all the pride she’d taken in her appearance fell away. Lambert had on a light suit, and Caroline was as perfect as a film star in a gauzy jumper crocheted from silk.

‘Shall we go?’ Caroline, just for a moment, appraised her, and then she smiled and they walked out to the car.

No one spoke as they set off. It was just beginning to grow cooler and the shadows cast by the bushes seemed to add a hint of restlessness to the wakening night. Caroline drove, her back straight, her hands almost translucent on the wheel, a spectacular cluster of jewels on each ring finger, forcing you to think of whoever it was that had slipped them on. They glided down a hill, up another and then curved round in a semicircle through open fields until they turned into a chalky white drive, the start of which was marked by two stone lions. They continued more slowly then, the shards of white rock snapping and splintering beneath their wheels, and then they turned a corner and Caroline slowed the car.

‘There it is.’

To one side, set in against a hill, looking out over a valley, was the house. It really was a village, the cluster of tiled roofs, the gardens falling away from it, the low walls and terraces and the outbuildings on either side. Above it, set into the hill, was a chapel with a bell tower, steps cut into the green hill, at least a mile long.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Lara said, because it was, and also because something was expected, and Lambert shook his head.

‘I told you.’ Caroline put a hand on his arm. ‘He’s happy to be Lord of the Manor here.’

She drove on then, letting the car bump along the drive, slowing when they reached two giant pots of oleander like sentries on either side of the road. She turned the car, pulling into a yard, and parked between a Mercedes and a jeep.

‘This way,’ she called and walked ahead of them, making her way up a small flight of steps and through an opening in a wall.

They followed and found themselves looking down into a courtyard. There was a long bank of roses and beyond that a swimming pool edged in tiles, one side protected by a high stone wall, the colour of honey in the falling light. In the centre of the courtyard, which once must have been the village square, was a long table covered with a cloth and as they stood, admiring, several women, Italians in headscarves and aprons, appeared around the corner of the house with plates and candles and small jugs of flowers which they began to arrange along its length.

‘Hi!’

They turned at the shout, and there was a girl in a bikini standing with her back against the wall, a girl of such voluptuous beauty, her body bronzed, the white scrap of her costume only just supporting the deep weight of her breasts.

‘Caroline!’ She waved, then rose up on her toes and in a perfect arc dived into the pool.

‘Who is that!?’ Lambert asked, but almost immediately the girl had risen to the surface, and, her hair slicked back, her eyes glistening, she climbed out.

‘I’ll tell them you’re here. She smiled and grabbing a towel she ran up some steps and into a house.

‘Remind me,’ Lambert said, his voice more careful now, ‘which one is that?’ and Caroline, keeping him waiting, lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the still air.

‘Lulu? Oh . . . she’s not one of Andrew’s. That’s Pamela’s girl.’

Lambert put his head to one side as if to read her. ‘I see.’

Just then a woman in a Japanese kimono came out to greet them. ‘Caroline.’ She looked askance at the cigarette in her hand. ‘Doctor’s orders. Surely not!’

‘Pamela’ – Caroline ignored her – ‘you know Lambert, of course, and this is his daughter Lara, who has very kindly come out to keep us old folk company. She’s been here for three days now and she’s most horribly bored.’

‘No,’ Lara protested. ‘Really.’ But other guests were streaming through into the courtyard and both Caroline and Pamela turned away.

Lara hovered beside her father as people began to gather. Lambert took out his Gitanes, and began to smoke nervously, and Lara, feeling herself examined, stared at the roses in the garden with unnecessary scrutiny, testing the soft velvet of their petals, stooping down to breathe in the lemon sweetness of their scent.

And then Andrew Willoughby was there, small, with a sand-and-speckled beard, thin hair below his ears, but unmistakably the owner of the house, in a hat and a sequinned waistcoat, calling from the head of the table for everyone to sit down. Lara hurried back towards Lambert, stood as close to his side as she dared, but Andrew had spotted her, was calling out and waving.

‘Lara. Lara Gold. Come up here and join our end of the table. What are you thinking? You don’t want to sit down there with the old and the dimwitted.’

Lara glanced round at her father, who had turned away, and seeing no alternative she walked reluctantly towards Andrew Willoughby, who was holding a chair for her, the empty one beside him, and as she sat down he began to introduce her to the young people who sat around.

‘Lara, this is Pamela’s daughter, Lulu, a great actress, just honouring us with a few weeks of her time.’ The beauty from the swimming pool smiled at him. ‘And this is May, who is . . . what are you? My fourth daughter?’

May was fair-haired and olive-skinned with the perfectly tilted nose of a doll. ‘Hello,’ she said, and Lara saw if she hadn’t been sitting beside Lulu she would have been considered beautiful in her own right.