Imogen (9 page)
Time and again during the past month Imogen had walked up and down in front of Dr Meadows’ surgery, and each time she had funked it. Dr Meadows was one of her father’s oldest friends and well over sixty. How
could
she ask him?
could
she ask him?
In the end, once more egged on by Gloria, she had gone to a family planning clinic in Leeds on the pretext of looking for holiday clothes. Unfortunately her two brothers, Michael and Sam, still home for the holidays, had insisted on coming with her, in the hope of catching a Gillette Cup match at Headingley. But this, predictably, had been rained off, and Imogen had great difficulty shaking them off, even for a couple of hours.
‘I’ve got to buy lots of boring things like underwear,’ she said.
‘We’ll come too,’ said Sam, who at fourteen had only recently become interested in girls. ‘We might be able to see into some of the changing rooms.’
‘I don’t like people hanging round when I’m buying clothes,’ said Imogen quickly. ‘It muddles me. Look, here’s a fiver. Why don’t you go and see the new James Bond? I’ll meet you at the barrier at five o’clock,’ and, blushing violently, she charged through the glass doors of Brown and Muff. Rushing straight through and out the other side, she set off at a trot towards the clinic.
‘Where’s old Imo really going?’ said Sam, as they shuffled off to the cinema.
‘F.P.A.,’ said Michael, who was concentrating on lighting a cigarette in the rain.
‘Blimey, is she pregnant?’
‘Course not, just getting fixed up before her holiday.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘Left the address lying around in her bedroom.’ He began to cough. The cigarette went out.
‘Hope to Christ Dad doesn’t find it,’ said Sam. ‘Fancy old Imo getting round to sex at last.’
‘Just as well she’s taking precautions. They’re randy buggers these tennis players, even worse than rugger players.’ Michael’s cigarette, sodden now, obstinately refused to be lit. ‘I hope she’ll be all right, won’t get hurt I mean,’ he went on, throwing it into the gutter.
‘Do her good to grow up,’ said Sam, who was staring at a couple of giggling typists who, under one umbrella, were teetering by on high heels, heading towards the pub. ‘I say, shall we skip James Bond and go and have a drink instead?’
‘They’d never serve us.’
‘It’s pretty dark in there; you’d pass for eighteen anywhere. Fancy old Imo going on the pill.’
‘Buy anything good?’ said Sam innocently, as Imogen came rushing up to the barrier with only a few minutes to spare.
‘I’d forgotten the sales were on. There’s nothing nice in the shops,’ stammered Imogen, failing to meet either of her brothers’ eyes.
‘Got your ticket?’ said Michael, waving his. ‘We’d better step on it; they’re closing the doors.’
‘Oh goodness,’ said Imogen, ‘I’ve got it somewhere.’
And as she was nervously rummaging, her shaking hands slipped, and the entire contents of her bag, including six months’ supply of the pill crashed on to the platform.
‘I wonder if scarlet women are called scarlet because they blush so much,’ said Sam, bending down to help Imogen pick everything up.
And now on the eve of her holiday, the mauve packets of the pill were safely tucked into the pocket of her old school coat hanging at the back of her wardrobe. She’d been taking it for eight days now, and she felt sick all the time, but she wasn’t sure if it was side effects or nervousness at the thought of seeing Nicky. It was such ages since their last meeting she felt she’d almost burnt herself out with longing. Then she was worried about the sex side. She’d been taking surreptitious glances at
The Joy of Sex
when the library was quiet, and the whole thing seemed terribly complicated. Did one have to stop talking during the performance like a tennis match, and wouldn’t Nicky, accustomed to lithe, beautiful, female tennis players, find her much too fat?
The Joy of Sex
when the library was quiet, and the whole thing seemed terribly complicated. Did one have to stop talking during the performance like a tennis match, and wouldn’t Nicky, accustomed to lithe, beautiful, female tennis players, find her much too fat?
She put her hot forehead against the bathroom window. In the garden she could see her father talking to the cat and staking some yellow dahlias beaten down by the rain and wind.
‘That’s what I need,’ she thought wistfully. ‘I’ll never blossom properly in life unless I’m tied to a strong sturdy stake.’
She wondered if Nicky was really stake material. Her father was coming in now. He looked tired. He’d been closeted with members of his flock all afternoon.
She went back to her room and found Homer dispiritedly pulling her underwear out of her suitcase. He hated people going away. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said, hugging him.
She also packed a pile of big paperbacks she’d never got round to reading,
Daniel Deronda, Lark Rise To Candleford
, Scott Fitzgerald and
Tristram Shandy
. On the bed lay a box of tissues (they don’t have the kind of loo paper you can take your make-up off with in France, Miss Hockney had told her), a cellophane bag of cotton wool balls and a matching set of Goya’s
Passport
she had won in the church fête raffle. They didn’t look very inspiring as beauty aids. She imagined Nicky’s other girlfriends with the whole of Helena Rubinstein at their disposal.
Daniel Deronda, Lark Rise To Candleford
, Scott Fitzgerald and
Tristram Shandy
. On the bed lay a box of tissues (they don’t have the kind of loo paper you can take your make-up off with in France, Miss Hockney had told her), a cellophane bag of cotton wool balls and a matching set of Goya’s
Passport
she had won in the church fête raffle. They didn’t look very inspiring as beauty aids. She imagined Nicky’s other girlfriends with the whole of Helena Rubinstein at their disposal.
There was a knock on the door. It was her mother.
‘Hullo darling, how are you getting on? Daddy wants a quick word before he goes down to the jumble sale pricing committee.’
As she went into the vicar’s study, Imogen started to shake. He was sitting behind his huge desk, lighting his pipe, a few raindrops still gleaming on his thick grey hair. All round him the shelves were filled with Greek and theological books, which the vicar never looked at, and gardening and sporting works which were much more heavily thumbed. On one ledge were neatly stacked volumes of the
Church Times
and the parish magazine. On the wall the vicar allowed himself one modest photograph of himself surrounded by the England team. On the desk was a large inkwell. He despised biros.
Church Times
and the parish magazine. On the wall the vicar allowed himself one modest photograph of himself surrounded by the England team. On the desk was a large inkwell. He despised biros.
Now he was looking at her over his spectacles. Was his jaundiced air due to the fact she’d been wearing the same skirt and sweater all week to save her best clothes for France, or was he remembering all the countless times he’d called her in to lecture her about inglorious reports, or misbehaviour at home?
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Are you looking forward to your holiday?’
‘Yes,’ said Imogen.
‘Wish I’d been lucky enough to gallivant off to the sun when I was your age,’ he went on heavily, ‘but times were harder then.’
Oh God thought Imogen, he’s not going to start on that one.
But instead her father got to his feet and began to pace the room. ‘I don’t think your mother and I have ever been oppressive parents – we’ve always tried to guide you by example rather than coercion.’ He gave her the chilly on-off smile he used for keeping his parishioners at a distance. His flock-off smile Michael and Juliet always called it.
‘But I can’t let you depart without a few words of advice. You are going to a foreign country – where there will be temptations. I trust you follow me, Imogen.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘We are letting you go because we trust you. We know Nicky is an attractive young man, and a celebrity, used to getting his own way in life, but we still trust you.’
He stopped by the window, absent-mindedly stripping yellow leaves off a geranium on the ledge, testing its earth for sufficient moisture.
‘It’s been a trying afternoon,’ he went on. ‘Molly Bates and her daughter Jennifer were here for over an hour. Poor Molly. Jennifer suddenly revealed she was three months pregnant and the young man concerned has disappeared. Of course every attempt will be made to trace him and persuade him to marry the girl, but if not, she will spend the next months in an unmarried mothers’ home – not the most attractive of dwelling places – but Molly Bates feels, as a member of the Parochial Church Council, that Jennifer cannot have the child at home. Whatever the outcome, the girl’s life is ruined. She is second-hand goods now.’
Poor Jennifer, thought Imogen, perhaps she’ll be sent off to the jumble sale.
‘When you’re in the South of France,’ said her father, ‘remember the fate of poor Jennifer Bates and remember you’re a clergyman’s daughter, and they, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion.’
Imogen had a momentary fantasy that the packets of purple pills must at this moment be burning a hole in her old coat pocket, that her father’s outrage was like the sun on glass. Fortunately he construed her crimson face as embarrassment at the topic of conversation rather than guilt.
He sat down and moved the inkwell on the desk. ‘Remember the words of Milton,’ he said in sepulchral tones, ‘She that has chastity is clad in complete steel.’
Imogen suddenly had a vision of herself clanking around the beach in the South of France in a steel suit of armour. Her father, she decided, must have been very much like Milton. She also suspected that he was rehearsing his sermon for next Sunday. She had a horrible feeling that he was going to make her kneel down and pray over her.
‘You are entering the school of life,’ he said, dropping his voice dramatically. ‘All I can do is pray for you night and day. Now go back to your packing and have a wonderful holiday in the sun. I must away to the jumble pricing committee.’
The contrast between her gadding, sybaritic existence and his modest, selfless toil was only too obvious. Imogen went out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She went upstairs feeling hopelessly depressed. Her father had brilliantly succeeded in taking all the excitement out of her holiday. Sex with Nicky would be even more of a moral battlefield than ever. Whatever she did, bed or not, her father would be standing at the bottom of her bed in spirit, shaking his finger at her.
Oh hell, it was time to have the pill, lying in its little capsule like one of the lights round an actress’s mirror. She felt like Persephone about to take her pomegranate seed and be condemned to an eternity in Hades.
She shut her bedroom door and started groping through her half-empty wardrobe to find the thickness of her old tweed coat at the back. She couldn’t find it. She pushed aside the rest of the clothes; it wasn’t there, not even slid off its hanger on to the floor. She burrowed frantically through the landing cupboard, then ran downstairs. Her mother was peeling potatoes and reading a novel at the same time.
‘My old school coat, it’s gone,’ gasped Imogen.
‘Surely you’re not taking that to France?’ said her mother.
‘No, but where is it?’
‘I gave it to the jumble, darling. As we’d taken out Lady Jacintha’s bathing dress and those trousers I thought it was the least we could do.’
But Imogen had gone, out of the house like a rocket, belting down the garden path, slipping on the wet pavement, tearing along the moorland path, bracken slapping against her stockings, twigs scratching her face.
The coat had her name in it, the pocket contained the pills and Nicky’s last letter, the one about getting fitted up and telling her most explicitly all the delicious things he was going to do to her when he got her to France. Visions of what her father would do swept over her. He’d stop her going. Suddenly the thought of not seeing Nicky again filled her with such horror she thought she’d faint. Her breath was coming in great sobs.
There was the church hall, light, laced with raindrops, streaming from its uncurtained windows. Inside Imogen found scenes of tremendous activity and was nearly knocked sideways by the smell of moth balls, dust and none too clean clothes. Ladies of the parish in felt hats stood round laden trestle tables, rooting through other people’s cast-offs, searching for possible bargains, subtly pricing down garments they pretended they didn’t know had been sent in by fellow sorters.
‘I don’t think she’s even bothered to launder these corsets,’ said the butcher’s wife, dropping them disdainfully into the nearest bin. ‘And this hostess gown is quite rotted under the armpits.’
‘Lady Jacintha has sent in a fox fur without any tail,’ said the local midwife. ‘Rats, rats,’ she added, waving it at the caretaker’s cat, who, giving her a wide berth, leapt on to a pile of old books and records.
‘Hullo, Imogen love,’ said the butcher’s wife. ‘Come to lend a hand? I thought you were off on your holidays tomorrow.’
‘I am,’ said Imogen, frantically searching round for the piles of coats.
‘If you’re looking for your Dad, he’s over there.’
Imogen peered through the dusty gloom and froze with horror. In the far corner, in front of a long freckled mirror, Miss Jarrold from the Post Office was trying on Imogen’s school coat, which came down to her ankles, and being encouraged on either side by Mrs Connolly, her mother’s daily woman, and the vicar.
‘There’s still some wear in it,’ Miss Jarrold was saying. ‘I could get my sister from Malham to turn it up.’
‘Oh very becoming, Miss Jarrold,’ the vicar was saying jovially. He had his hearty ‘flock-off’ smile on again.
‘Not sure about the colour, Elsie,’ said Mrs Connolly. ‘It never did anything for Miss Imogen either.’
‘I’m only going to use it for gardening and walks, seems a bargain for 50p,’ said Miss Jarrold, and turning back to the mirror, she adopted a model girl’s stance, shoving her hands into the pockets. ‘Oh look, there’s something inside.’
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