Wondering if her nephew realised quite what a lucky escape he'd had, Joan watched Edith pull herself together as she realised suddenly that she was observed. Her lack of clothing, the cold glint in her eyes and her condescending expression outraged Joan and she squinted at her, disapprovingly.
"I think you'd better pick that up, don't you?" Joan growled with disdain. "And then you might want to get a move on. We need to leave in half an hour or you will miss your train."
Smirking defiantly at the older woman's censuring stare, Edith leaned over to pick up her bag, clumsily letting go of her towel in the process. Scrabbling to cover herself, her shirt too slipped from her grasp and, suddenly, she was crouched in the stark, cold, morning light of the hallway, as naked as the day she was born. Edith being Edith, and seemingly unharried even after having been stripped of more than just the last shreds of her dignity, stood up, and shrugged nonchalantly. Exhibiting skills that would make Gary Lineker proud, she reached out an impossibly slim, pale leg and dribbled her toilet bag, effortlessly, down the hall until she reached her room where she scooped it up in one smooth motion.
"Cold as a proverbial witch's tit." Joan said to herself, struggling to control her outrage, as the thin, blanched, almost translucent, young woman slipped past her.
"And about as appealing." She added, under her breath, fighting to keep the disgust from her face.
Honestly, the girl was utterly shameless, she thought as she waited for the all clear to turn around. Momentarily, in the form of the bedroom door closing firmly behind her, she heard her cue. Still shaking her head in disbelief, Joan made her way downstairs to make the tea, disturbed by the unpleasant mental image of Edith's flagrant and unabashed nakedness.
It was with some relief that Joan noticed that Martin was not downstairs. At the end of the couch there was a carefully placed pillow, atop a neatly folded blanket, which indicated that someone had spent the night there. Momentarily, Joan was puzzled because she recognised both as being from Louisa's room but, as fond as she was of the young girl, the symmetrical arrangement of the bedding, and the early hour of departure, suggested that it was more likely to have been her nephew who was responsible. There was no time to ponder last night's sleeping arrangements though. As she had done his whole life, Joan felt a fierce need to protect Marty and, to that end, it was imperative that Edith was on the first train back to London. Filling the kettle with water, she slapped it down onto the stove and bustled off to get dressed.
Sitting on the end of bed, and leaning forward, Edith vigorously attacked her hair with the towel, a brush and a can of hairspray until, with relief, she felt the volume begin to return. Without the need for a mirror, she applied eyeliner, mascara and her favourite shade of blue eyeshadow and, with a practiced and by-now steady hand, she brushed her face with powder, highlighting her cheekbones with a dab of blusher. Finally, she reached for her lipstick, plastered it across her thin, dry lips, and she was equipped to face the day.
It only took her a couple of minutes to stuff her clothing into her bady dented case. She checked under the bed and shook out the bedding, ensuring she had left nothing behind. Inevitably, she always seemed to lose her most expensive knickers on weekends away. On the bedside table, she noticed Ellingham had left a couple of copies of the BMJ. Without hesitation, she slipped them into her handbag; she would need something to stave off boredom on the journey home and, after all, it was his fault that she had had such a rotten and wasted journey so the least he could do was to forfeit some of his endless supply of bloody medical journals. And, for some inexplicable reason, he hadn't provided her with what she had needed, so she had no compunction in planning a reward for herself at the end of a difficult few days. The sleek black hair, tawny skin and rather enticing uniforms of her two favourite Primeiro-tenentes brought a sly smile to her face. Picking up her case, she gave the room one last sweeping glance and flounced her way into the hall.
Joan had scrawled a quick note to Louisa and left it on the kitchen table next to one of her pop star worshipping magazines, snorting incredulously as she took in the attire of the young woman featuring on the cover. Whatever next, she thought, blowing on her tea, and swilling it around in the mug, before taking a cautious sip and discovering it was still too hot. Placing it on the bench, she decided that it might be prudent, while she waited, to get the Land Rover started in case, like yesterday, it took several attempts.
She walked up the path, past Martin's immaculate car which gleamed impressively in the morning sunlight, and clambered into her dusty, far less salubrious vehicle where the key was, as usual, in the ignition. She pulled out the choke, crossed her fingers, and pressed the start button hopefully and, after turning over reluctantly a couple of times, the Land Rover spluttered into life. She revved it cautiously and the tired engine missed and shuddered but, seemingly intent on playing her part in removing Edith from Cornwall, the old girl soon settled into a rhythmic, if somewhat smoky, idle. Looking back at the cottage with impatience, Joan gave a long blast in the horn.
Eventually Edith emerged through the door, with rigidly lacquered hair and a supercilious expression, which darkened slightly when she realised that she would be a passenger in a rather embarrassingly decrepit and bourgeoisie vehicle. Joan took her case from her, impatiently, and wedged it securely on the back within the sheep crate. Without speaking, she went back around to the driver's side and climbed up into her seat, leaving Edith to prise open the stiff door handle and clamber in amongst the rural detritus, her pinched, pale face a mask of distaste.
As she accelerated up the driveway, it seemed to Joan that the Land Rover was even more sluggish that usual, and there was quite a perceptible whine coming from the rear end. The glass in the back window seemed to be vibrating even worse than usual, emitting a strange and piercing hum. Edith was grateful that she'd included paracetamol in this morning's medication. She wasn't generally an experimenter with chemistry, legal or otherwise but she had recently been convinced of the rather jolly side effects of Quaaludes by some of her contemporaries at a tedious weekend conference in Brighton. With her long history of being a poor sleeper, it wasn't hard to justify her repeat prescriptions, and she'd been especially in need of some form of medical comfort and support last night, as she'd lay in her bed alone. The feeling that she'd made a calamitous error of judgement had nagged at her relentlessly, despite her best efforts at rationalising her behaviour and almost successfully transferring the blame squarely onto Ellingham's shoulders.
As she lay on the bed, the throb in her temples had become incessant; and she felt some sort of strange discomfort in her stomach. Almost like a knot, she thought, and wondered what it meant. Could she be sad, she wondered, before dismissing the possibility in rather a hurry, mainly because she was a firm believer that emotions were only for weaklings. Unless lust counted as one, in which case, she was an emotional wreck she thought with a wry twist of her mouth. But the heavy, tight feeling in her chest gripped her again as she thought about never sharing a bed with him again and she pulled the pillow over her head, and growled in frustration.
In the dark, it occurred to her that Ellingham had, in some way, bested her and the thought began to cause her significant agitation. Sleep just would not come, despite her overwhelming exhaustion. As the hours ticked by, her headache became increasingly unbearable and, as the pressure behind her eyes intensified, she felt a vicious stab of pain in the socket. Moaning, and desperate for the relief of temporary oblivion, she had leaned over the side of the bed and groped for her toiletry bag.
Now, in the cold light of a Cornish country morning, she realised that she must compose herself. There is no such thing has defeat, she thought, it's just a matter of regrouping and choosing a new point of attack. This time, though she hated to admit it, she'd been out flanked but she had plenty of time to concoct a new plan, devise a new strategy that would soon see Ellingham back under her control. In fact, once he'd been forced to spend some time alone she decided that the physical and intellectual deprivation he would be devastated by might actually play into her hands. Wherever he was now, he was almost certainly regretting his behaviour toward her. Yes, she thought, a triumphant smirk splitting her face in two, sometimes you have to concede the battle to win the war.