A Much Married Man: A Novel

Cast of principal characters in order of appearance

ANTHONY ANSCOMBE: Son and heir to the Winchford Priory estate, Oxfordshire.

AMANDA GIBBONS (later Anscombe): Mesmerising heartbreaker.

GODFREY ANSCOMBE: Anthony’s tepid merchant banker father, owner of Winchford Priory.

HENRIETTA ANSCOMBE: Godfrey’s powerful, opinionated wife.

CHARLIE EDWARDS: Rodent-faced neighbour of the Anscombes with a notably spotty back.

SIR PERCY BIGGES: Retired British Ambassador living at the Mill House, Winchford.

JACINTHE BIGGES: His busybody wife.

MRS HOLCOMBE: Henrietta Anscombe’s ineffectual cleaning lady at Winchford Priory.

WALTER TWINE: Organist at All Hallowes church, hedge-layer and ancient village character.

LEX HOLLAND: Anthony’s oldest friend with shared history at three consecutive schools.

‘SCROTUM’ HOLLAND: Lex’s landowner father, reputed to have the biggest dick in Oxfordshire.

ROSIE HOLLAND: Scrotum’s long suffering wife.

JASMINE ANSCOMBE: Anthony’s daughter with Amanda.

JUDY HOLCOMBE: Barmaid at the Plough and Harrow pub. Daughter of Priory cleaner Mrs Holcombe.

SANDRA POTTS (later Anscombe): Nanny to Jasmine, mother to Richard and Rosanna.

STEVE: Sandra’s first fiancé, a very fit soldier.

GERVAISE SABLON: Smarmy Belgian proprietor of the Fox and Terriers gastropub in Lower Oddington.

ARAMINTA NALL-CAINE: Childhood playmate of Jasmine.

RUPERT ‘BONGO’ NALL-CAINE: Solid, conventional neighbour of Anthony. Gifted amateur cricketer and joint Master of the Heythrop hunt.

MARK AND ANNIE PLUNKETT: Neighbours of the Anscombes at Fyford.

PATRICE BOUILLON: Big, sardonic French movie star. Voted one of the world’s sexiest men.

LEONARD POTTS: Sandra’s small, matey father, owner of Potts Electrical Services of Poole, Dorset.

MARJORIE POTTS: Len’s immaculate, perky wife, mother of Sandra and Ginette.

GINETTE POTTS: Sandra’s younger, grossly fat sister.

ARCHIE BIGGES: Dashing, faintly seedy son of Sir Percy and Jacinthe Bigges.

ARABELLA BIGGES: Archie’s sister, a secretary at a charity for disabled Maltese donkeys.

MICHAEL ANSCOMBE: Chairman of Anscombe Brothers Bank. First cousin to Godfrey.

REVEREND JEREMY MEEK: Fey parson of All Hallowes, Winchford.

RICHARD ANSCOMBE: Beefy, rugby-loving son of Anthony and Sandra.

ROSANNA ANSCOMBE: Richard’s chunky, pony-mad sister.

BRENDON SHEAF: Over-familiar landlord of the Plough and Harrow pub.

NULA STARLING: Paddington-based acupuncturist. Mother of Gaia Anscombe. Ecology activist and hunt saboteur.

DIANE: Immaculate, perky girlfriend of Len Potts.

GAIA STARLING: Nula’s daughter by Anthony Anscombe.

JOHN FURLONG: Lugubrious farm manager, father of Tom and Katie.

CONSTANCE FURLONG: Beautiful, pre-Raphaelite first wife of John Furlong.

TOM FURLONG: Clever, smooth son of John and Constance.

KATIE FURLONG: Tom’s fragile, artistic, redhead sister.

GRACIDO MENENDEZ: Virile Argentinian nine-goal polo professional.

LADY FITTLEWORTH: Excessively old owner of a West Sussex estate.

SIR HECTOR PLUNKETT: Local Tory MP for Oxfordshire North, father of Mark.

ED GIBBONS: Marsupial, motorbike-riding father of Amanda. A lecturer at the American College in Rome.

DITA EMBOROLEON (later Anscombe): Energetic, strong-minded, collector of millionaires. Anthony’s third wife.

CARINA RESNICK: Socially omnipresent interior decorator, Dita’s closest girlfriend.

ALECO ‘GOLDIE’ EMBOROLEON: Multi-millionaire Greek shipping tycoon, Dita’s second husband and owner of the island of Kypsos.

JOHN-SPIROS EMBOROLEON: Sensitive son of Aleco and Dita, always immaculately dressed.

AMBROSIA EMBOROLEON: John-Spiros’s plump, unhappy sister.

MORAD AHVAZI: Dita’s hairy-chested, Rolex-wearing son by her first marriage to Sharif.

JONNY FAISAL: Morad Ahvazi’s mega-rich best friend.

REGIS: Dita’s French chef at Winchford Priory.

THATCHER: Retriever belonging to the Furlong family.

TEBBIT: Another Furlong family retriever.

DUNCAN: A third Furlong retriever, named after Conservative Leader Iain Duncan-Smith.

PEANUTS: Spaniel puppy belonging to Katie Furlong, shot dead with a paintball gun.

STIGMATA CORBETTA: Spanish housekeeper imported to Winchford Priory by Dita.

SANTOS: Dita’s Italian butler.

HENRY ANSCOMBE: Anthony’s youngest child, with Dita.

CHALKIE CLIFF: Falklands veteran running Winchford Paintballing.

TREVOR BRATT: Cutting-edge fashion designer.

SHARIF AHVAZI: Dita’s first husband, dodgy Iranian casino owner.

DARREN: Dorkish mechanic owner of Winchford Autoparts.

SCOTTY: Darren’s business partner.

IRINA EMBOROLEON: Goldie Emboroleon’s latest wife, Slavic model with torpedo shaped tits.

SIR RAMNAKRISHNA GUPTA: Software billionaire, reputedly the third richest Ugandan Asian in Britain.

Part One

1

1965: Winchford Priory

Anthony Anscombe could remember the precise moment he fell madly and irrevocably in love with Amanda Gibbons. He had been watching the guests arrive at Winchford Priory from the gallery that ran the width of the Great Hall. Originally built for minstrels, the gallery was used by Godfrey Anscombe, Anthony’s father, as a handy place in which to store cigars, paper clips and elastic bands in the drawers of an old desk. The reason Anthony was lurking in the gallery, rather than chatting up his parents’ neighbours downstairs, was that he wasn’t in the mood for this party. Godfrey and Henrietta Anscombe’s annual fork supper, held in the same week each October, drew a predictable and, in Anthony’s view, thoroughly tedious crowd of local worthies. Three months after leaving school, and two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, he would rather have been meeting some mates in a local pub than doing his bit to entertain the county.

Already there must have been sixty or seventy people milling about downstairs, and continual ascending gusts of icy air as the great oak front door opened and closed heralded ever more guests piling inside from the bitter October night. Fires blazed in the stone hearths at opposite ends of the hall, and dishes of pheasant casserole were being set up on hotplates along a trestle table. One entire wall was hung with Elizabethan portraits of Anscombe ancestors.

The door reopened and Anthony recognised the new arrivals as the Edwardses, who had recently bought Brasenose Farm in Steeple Barford. Several stragglers his own age hovered in their wake, swathed in scarves and overcoats. That was when he caught sight of Amanda. It took him less than a second to realise she was the most enchanting girl he’d ever set eyes on.

She had glanced up to the ceiling with its massive oak beams and spotted Anthony skulking in the gallery, holding his stare in a way he found disconcerting and vaguely flirtatious. Her eyes were huge and black, ringed with kohl, and her hair, also black, was straight and cut into a short bob. She cocked her head to one side in a speculative summons he found irresistible: ‘Well, are you coming down here or aren’t you?’

He sped down to the Great Hall as though in the pull of some mighty ocean current drawing him towards the sooty-eyed girl. He found her still lingering in a small group with the Edwardses, whom Anthony hardly knew. Charlie Edwards, twenty-one, rodent-faced and smoking, had one arm draped around the girl’s back, signalling some kind of proprietorial entitlement. Close up, she was even more enticing than she’d appeared from above. Having shed her overcoat, she was dressed like an eighteenth-century highwayman in black frock coat, breeches and gauntlets. Large paste buckles gleamed on her boots.

‘Do you normally lurk upstairs during your own parties?’ she asked him.

She had high, delicate cheekbones and luminous white skin. Hopeless at estimating girls’ ages, having been educated among boys, he reckoned she must be seventeen or eighteen.

‘Not normally. I just didn’t feel particularly sociable this evening.’ He found it difficult to think; her beauty made him anxious.

‘I’m Amanda, in case you’re wondering.’

‘Anthony Anscombe.’

‘I know. This is your party and your place.’

‘Can I get you a drink or some food?’

‘Charlie will do that, won’t you, Charlie? No pheasant, if that’s what it is. Just vegetables and potatoes, plenty of potatoes.’

‘Don’t you like pheasant?’ Anthony asked.

‘No, though red meat is one of my passions. I just loathe game - it’s so gamey.’

As Charlie, with evident reluctance, joined the queue for the food, standing in line behind the racing trainers and foxhunting men, solicitors and stockbrokers who comprised the Anscombes’ friends, Amanda leant against one of the two overpowering Italianate marble chimneypieces that dominated both ends of the room. Anthony felt momentarily shy, and wished he was less boringly dressed. Six foot two inches tall, and conventionally handsome with short black hair, he realised he lacked dazzle in his grey suit and dark tie. Heart racing, he tried desperately to think of something interesting to say to this mesmerising girl before Charlie returned with her food. Across the room, he saw his mother staring in their direction, frowning, wondering who this girl was. Then Amanda said, ‘Would you show me round your house? Or am I supposed to pay for a guided tour?’

‘Er, sure, why not? Of course I can show you, if you want. It’s a good excuse to get out of here. But I warn you, it’s really not that interesting unless you go in for mullioned windows and moth-eaten tapestries.’

As they left the hall Amanda brushed his arm, and her touch shot through him with an adrenalin rush.

Anthony had led tours of Winchford Priory several times before. The house wasn’t open to the public, but there were tours in aid of the local nurses and hospice, for the Tories and the pony club, garden organisations and enthusiasts for vernacular architecture who came to see the linen-fold panelling in the library. He had developed a route around the house which began with the four large reception rooms downstairs, took in the long gallery with its Tudor portraits and a couple of older bedrooms — or ‘chambers’ as they were known, the Judge’s Chamber and the Assize Chamber — and ended up on the roof, with its turrets and distant views towards Warwickshire and Stratford-upon-Avon. He could go into any room and, without even thinking, reel off the facts about soot-blackened armorial firescreens and floorboards refashioned from the decking of British frigates. Tonight he could barely get the words out and heard himself trip over the simplest phrases. Amanda had the sexiest mouth and most provocative smile he had ever seen.

Are you always so shy?’ she demanded. ‘You didn’t look shy when I saw you up there in the gallery.’

‘Me, shy? Not at all. What an odd question. I’ll show you the Assize Chamber next, shall I? It’s where they used to hold monthly courts at one time; the circuit magistrates convened at Winchford Priory and all the local trials were held here.’

‘I’d rather see the roof,’ Amanda said. ‘It’s smoky in this house. I need air.’

‘Then we have to go up this rickety staircase. Watch your head — the ceiling gets quite low.’

Anthony stooped at the top of the stone stair and eased open the bolts of the trapdoor. Amanda placed her warm hands on top of his and pretended to help.

They emerged onto the roof, where a leaded walkway, eighteen inches wide, ran round the perimeter of the slates, linking four large turrets. The parapet was castellated, and several precarious pink-brick chimneystacks tottered above them. Afterwards, Anthony recalled how dark the starless night was, the blackest he could remember.

After some fumbling about, he found the right switches for two or three dusty lights set into walls of the turrets, but Amanda said, ‘No, leave them off. I like it better this way. Shhh, don’t say a thing; listen to the silence. The wind in the treetops. There’s nothing — you can’t hear one car.’

Just then the stillness was shattered by a blast of soul music from the Great Hall: The Drifters’ ‘Up on the Roof.

Amanda laughed. ‘How corny is that? On the roof it’s peaceful as can be, and the world below can’t bother me.’ I think that’s how it goes; you can’t hear the words clearly. I’ve always detested that song. It’s the pits. Anthony, you didn’t lay it on specially, did you?’

‘Nothing to do with me, I assure you. It’s just the disco. There’s supposed to be dancing.’

‘Maybe we should go back down.’ She gave him a measuring look, as though trying to work out what he wanted. ‘Charlie will be wondering where I am. He goes all possessive at parties.’

‘Is he … ?’ Anthony’s voice trailed away.

‘My boyfriend? Sort of. Kind of. He thinks he should be; let’s put it that way. Technically the answer is still no.’ She smiled. ‘Shall we dance? I’ve always wanted to do that, dance on a big old rooftop.’

And so they swayed together, awkwardly at first, to the record Amanda said she detested, and to Anthony it felt not quite real, to be dancing with this beautiful girl who made him dumb and powerless with yearning, on the roof of his own house on this arctic October night while the music filtered up through the slates from far below. When the record changed to something slower, Amanda held on to him, so they were properly slow dancing, and Anthony shuddered at her touch.

‘If this was my home,’ Amanda said, ‘I’d live up here all the time in these turrets. One would be our bedroom, another could be our sitting room, a bathroom and … kitchen, I suppose.’

Anthony heard only: our bedroom, our sitting room.

‘They’re filthy dirty inside, and some of the doors have warped so they’re jammed shut. That one at the front’s still okay, I used to have it as a hobbies room when I was eleven. But they could probably be repaired.’

‘Are they still there - your hobbies, I mean? Can I see?’

So they walked along the leads to the west tower, and Anthony put his shoulder to the door and found the light, and they entered the circular brick room, which had a workbench fixed to the wall. The place still bore faint fumes of paint and turpentine and the floor was littered with bat droppings. Dangling from the ceiling on lengths of cotton were a dozen model aircraft constructed from kits — Spitfires, Stukas and Hurricane bombers — and the workbench was covered with tiny, dried-up tins of acrylic paint, and Anthony’s childhood butterfly collecting kit.

‘As you can see, no one’s been in here for ages,’ Anthony said. ‘Look at the bat shit everywhere. I’m surprised the bats haven’t collided with the planes, actually.’

‘It’s radar,’ Amanda said. ‘Bats have this amazing radar. They can find their way in the dark.’ Then, with startling speed, she flicked the light switch so they were plunged back into darkness. ‘Okay, Anthony, before your eyes acclimatise, you have to find me. I’m going to move about very slowly. All you have to do is touch me. And watch out for your aeroplanes; if you knock into one, it’ll give away where you are.’

They edged around the turret, feeling their way in the gloom, listening for any movement that would betray each other’s position. Anthony held on to the workbench with one hand while shielding his face from the dangling warplanes, inching his way in the confined space. Sometimes he thought he heard Amanda’s cat-like tread, tantalisingly close, but when he moved in that direction she eluded him.

Amanda? You still in here?’

He heard the softest of whispers. ‘I am. But you have to find me.’

‘Where on earth are you? I’ve been round this damn turret twice and you’re not anywhere.’

‘Then you’ll have to persevere. Enjoy it. It’s a game.’

This time the voice seemed to come from close behind. Groping in the darkness, his fingers found warm, soft skin. At first he thought it must be her face, then he discovered it was the side of a breast. To his astonishment, it was naked.

‘Christ, Amanda. Your clothes …’

She laughed. ‘Does it shock you?’

‘No, just slightly surprised for a second. But, well, great—’

She took his face in her hands and pushed her tongue between his lips, pressing herself against him. Amazed, confused, exhilarated, he kissed her back passionately.

Then he heard the urgency and fierceness of her whisper: ‘Fall in love with me, Anthony. I dare you to fall in love with me.’

Before he could reply, they heard footsteps outside on the leads and a male voice calling, ‘Amanda? Amanda, you up here?’

‘God, it’s Charlie.’ She cursed, suddenly recoiling. ‘Why the hell does he have to show up now?’

Anthony heard her struggle back into her frock coat, and moments later open the turret door, flicking the light back on as she did so. ‘Charlie? We’re over here. Anthony’s showing me his aeroplanes. Come and see.’

Charlie loomed in the doorway, taut with suspicion. ‘I’ve been searching everywhere for you. No one knew where you were. Didn’t you hear me calling? You mustn’t just disappear like that.’ Spotting Anthony, he eyed him with hostility, then flicked a dismissive glance at the plastic models dangling from their threads. ‘These are what you and Amanda have been looking at all this time?’ he sneered. ‘You make them all by yourself from kits, do you? You stick the transfers onto the fuselages yourself?’

‘Used to,’ Anthony said. ‘I haven’t made one for ages.’ He stole a glance at Amanda, who was standing between them, innocent and noncommittal.

‘Anyway, we’ve got to leave now,’ Charlie said, grabbing hold of Amanda’s hand and yanking her in the direction of the door. ‘We need to be getting back. I still haven’t packed.’

Anthony followed them across the roof and re-bolted the door behind him. Charlie and Amanda were twenty yards ahead along the corridor and had reached the top of the staircase that led back down to the Great Hall.

He hastened to catch them up. Hearing his approaching footsteps, Charlie turned and glared, then strode on downstairs.

‘Amanda?’ Anthony called after her.

She paused, looked back at him and murmured, ‘Remember what I told you.’

‘What was that?’

‘I dared you something.’

‘I do remember.’

‘Then accept my dare’, she whispered. ‘I shall be disappointed in you if you don’t.’ Then she hurried on to join Charlie, who was fuming impatiently by the front door.

2

Anthony woke with the feeling something momentous had happened. Downstairs he heard the sound of hoovering and the drone of an industrial floor polisher in the Great Hall. He had breakfast with his parents who, in their measured way, seemed to think that their party had gone off well enough. ‘People seemed to have reasonably enjoyed themselves,’ Godfrey Anscombe declared, which was the highest level of satisfaction to which he considered it decent to aspire.

‘Who was that peculiar-looking girl who tagged along with the Edwardses?’ sniffed Henrietta. ‘The one in fancy dress, all in black.’

‘She’s called Amanda,’ Anthony said.

‘I didn’t at all care for the look of her,’ said his mother. ‘I’m quite surprised the Edwardses would know anyone like that, let alone bring them here.’

At the age of fifty-three, with a helmet of ash-grey hair, tangerine-coloured lipstick and a large, fleshy, orange-hued face which dimly resembled a Halloween pumpkin, Henrietta was a woman of strongly-held opinions. Anthony had long ago learnt it was easier to tacitly acquiesce to his mother than challenge her directly. Godfrey Anscombe had adopted an identical policy upon marriage.

‘She’s actually very nice,’ Anthony said neutrally.

‘I rather doubt that,’ Henrietta replied, in a tone that declared the subject closed. ‘She didn’t look very nice at all.’

There were three telephone extensions in those days at Winchford Priory: one in the drawing room where Henrietta was now ensconced, one in his father’s study where Godfrey was reviewing farm accounts, and one next to Anthony’s parents’ four-poster bed. Slipping into his parents’ room, he squatted on the carpet so as not to rumple the bedcover, and dialled the number for the Edwardses.

‘May I speak to Amanda please? I believe she’s staying with you.’ It occurred to him he didn’t even know her surname.

‘Sorry, she’s already left. They set off for France very early this morning.’

‘For France?’

‘She’s gone on holiday with my brother and some other people. Who is this speaking?’

‘Anthony Anscombe. Charlie and Amanda were over at our house last night. Amanda told me to ring up for the address in France. I’m probably going to be staying nearby and might look them up.’

‘I think they did leave it somewhere,’ the girl replied doubtfully. ‘Do you want me to hunt for it now?’ Anthony heard a great deal of sighing and shifting of papers. Eventually, ‘Here it is. It was pinned on the notice board.’ She dictated the address of a villa near Sainte Maxime, on the road to Saint Raphael and Frejus.

‘Remind me how they were getting there,’ Anthony asked. ‘Were they flying or driving?’

‘On the train. Well, first on the ferry to France, of course.’

Anthony raced upstairs, flung some clothes into a bag, then slipped down the back stairs and out of a side door to the garage yard. His green Triumph, an eighteenth birthday present from his parents, was parked under the arches of the old granary, between a tractor and coils of wire fencing. The ignition turned at first try and, as quietly as possible, he allowed the car to roll outside onto the cobblestones and towards the drive. Had anyone seen him and asked where he was going, Anthony had prepared no reply, though he knew well enough his destination. He glided along the great avenue of horse chestnut trees into the village, past the pub and village shop and medieval almshouses, all built from the same honey-coloured ironstone from the Winchford quarry, then out onto the main road that led to Stow-on-the-Wold. Not until he was well clear of Chipping Norton did he feel sufficiently safe to let rip. In less than five hours he had crossed half of southern England to arrive at Dover, and several hours later disembarked in France.

He drove in a kind of trance, determination tempered by an abnormal calmness. On the ferry, he studied the map, plotted his route along the straight French roads from town to town, estimated the time for each part of the journey that would finish at Sainte Maxime. What he’d do or say once he’d arrived he did not know, or even particularly consider; he would resolve that question when he got there. On that first evening in France he drove for seven hours without stopping, eventually pulling over into the entrance to a field at three o’clock in the morning and dozing at the wheel. It crossed his mind his parents would be worried about him, but he quickly suppressed that thought. He awoke with the thin grey light of dawn, stiff with cold, drove through a dozen village squares before the first cafe had rolled up its shutters, downed two cups of thick, silty coffee to pull himself together and bought three baguettes to eat in the car. The peculiar thing was, try as he might, he could not visualise Amanda’s face; he had no distinct picture of what she looked like, just a fleeting sense of how she was — the highwayman’s coat, kohl-black eyes and hair, the memory of the closeness of her lips and the warmth of her breath, whispering, ‘Fall in love with me, Anthony. I dare you to fall in love with me.’ By the afternoon of the second day he had left behind the dank steeples and war memorials of northern France, and warm breezes were gusting through the open window of the car. At dusk, the sun was so low in the sky he could scarcely see to drive, the leather of the seatback burnt against his bare skin (he was driving shirtless by this time) and the fields on both sides of the road were full of cornflowers and scarlet poppies. Too tired to drive further, he parked next to the chained gates of a modern cemetery and slept in the open on the green tarpaulin he kept in the boot.

Aside from stretching his legs at petrol stations, he had barely left the car in forty hours. Unshaven, unwashed, his only purpose was to reduce the kilometres that lay between him and Amanda. He set targets which he no sooner met than he exceeded them. I will stop and take a break, he promised himself, when I reach Orléans, but arriving at the industrial outskirts of that city he pressed on to Clermont-Ferrand, and then to Saint Etienne, Lyon, Grenoble. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ he had asked her of Charlie, and her reply had been equivocal. He had to reach Sainte Maxime before that could change.

He hardly understood the compulsion that propelled him any more than a migrant bird understands why it must journey thousands of miles from the African delta to the eaves of a Sussex barn. Some instinct told him all future happiness depended on being with Amanda. He was mesmerised by her beauty, of course, but it was more than physical beauty; within Amanda, he sensed, lay the key to his whole life. He could see now that his existence to date had been bleak and mediocre; the banality of his parents, of his friends, of Winchford itself. In Amanda lay colour, sexuality, exoticism and the possibility of escape.

Somewhere south of Aix-en-Provence, when he reckoned he must now be within half a day’s drive of his destination, he spared a thought to how his imminent appearance on the scene would be received, not only by Amanda, but by Charlie Edwards, last seen glaring with such hostility by the door of Winchford Priory. The scrap of paper on which he had scrawled the address lay on the passenger seat, but he hadn’t the vaguest notion to whom the house belonged, or who else might be staying there. He realised how little he knew Amanda. How could he explain his thousand-kilometre journey to see her again?

The villa was difficult to find. It was market day in Sainte Maxime and the centre of town clogged with traffic; it was impossible even to pull over and ask directions. Many of the side streets were shut off by stalls selling melons and cheeses, and their pungent smell, wafting through the car window, reminded him how famished he was.

Eventually he was directed to a road in the foothills above the town, lined with villas surrounded by high walls and covered by trails of bougainvillea. Palm trees were visible above some of the walls, and ornate iron gates bore signs warning against unchained guard dogs. As the road left the town behind, the villas became more widely spaced, interspersed with glimpses of a coast road far below and a sparkling blue sea dotted with sailing boats and motorised yachts.

Three or four miles further on, near to a scrappy arcade of stalls selling fruit and terracotta pots, Anthony located the villa: rendered and pink-washed, set back from the road and screened by lemon trees and a low wall faced with shards of crazy-paving. Three white hire cars, all Peugeots, were parked beneath a vine-covered loggia. To the side of the house was a boules pit, the heavy silver balls abandoned mid-game in the sand, and footprints — large, male footprints — evident around the pitching line.

He had retrieved his shirt, stiff with dried sweat, and wondered whether he should have stopped to wash and shave. Too late now: he pressed the doorbell, and listened with trepidation for approaching footsteps, but none came. The house was silent, the shutters tightly closed; of course, it was siesta time. He dreaded to think he might have arrived too late, and Amanda and Charlie might even now be entwined in the cool of some upstairs bedroom.

He pushed the door and entered a hallway with a grey marble floor like a hotel bathroom. Down some steps lay a sitting room with signs of recent human activity: a backgammon board tilting precariously on a white sofa, open bottles of beer and wine on a table, a half-eaten bowl of black olives with spat-out stones mixed in with the rest.

‘Hello? Hello? Is anybody here?’ His voice echoed up the stairwell. Amanda, you up there?’

‘Oh Lord, look what the cat’s dragged in.’ Charlie Edwards, sporting a towel draped around his bony shoulders, a wet pair of maroon bathing trunks, and legs streaked by sand, appeared at the open French doors from a terrace. ‘Now this is what I call a coincidence.’

‘I, er, dropped in to see Amanda. I was in the area. She gave me the address the other night.’

‘She did? That was clever of her, since she hadn’t a clue where we were staying.’

Several other people were surfacing on the terrace from a flight of steps that evidently led up from the beach. Anthony saw two other boys — both slightly older than himself, friends of Charlie’s presumably — and two pretty English girls in string bikinis, neither of them Amanda.

‘So you just happened to be in the area? You didn’t say anything on Saturday about coming down to the Cote d’Azur.’

Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend, Charlie?’ asked one of the boys who was wearing white cricket ducks, and whose face and demeanour seemed somewhat less boorish and brutal than Charlie’s.

‘This is Anthony Anscombe,’ Charlie said with a twisted little smile. ‘He’s a neighbour of ours in Oxfordshire. He tried to pull my girlfriend a couple of nights ago by showing her his collection of model aeroplanes. Amanda was fascinated. Now, by an astounding coincidence, he has turned up at your villa, Mark. Apparently, he was in the area and Amanda had given him the address and told him to drop by any time he was passing. That’s about it, isn’t it, Anthony?’

Charlie sloshed some wine into a glass from the open bottle. His sandy shoulders, Anthony noticed, were spangled with livid red pustules, whether infected mosquito bites or boils, he couldn’t tell. From time to time, Charlie adjusted the towel to try and conceal them.

‘Where’s Amanda?’ Anthony asked. ‘Is she about?’

‘Still crashed out upstairs,’ Charlie said. ‘We didn’t get much sleep on the couchette coming down.’ He sniggered, and for the second time Anthony wondered whether he had arrived too late.

‘Drink?’ asked the friend, Mark. He gestured to the tepid white wine, then said, ‘No, don’t drink that, it’s boiled in the sun. Some cretin forgot to put it back in the fridge. I’ll get you something cold. Beer okay?’

The two English girls, introduced as Clarissa and Jemima, perched on the white sofa in their swimsuits. ‘So you’re a friend of Amanda’s?’ Jemima asked.

‘Yes, though I don’t know her all that well, really.’

‘You’re like Charlie then. He hardly knows her either. She is a fast worker.’

Anthony got the impression the girls neither liked nor quite approved of Amanda.

‘Where exactly is it you’re staying?’ Charlie asked.

‘Just along the coast,’ Anthony replied vaguely. Where was Amanda? He hadn’t imagined it would be like this. It was to have been Amanda who opened the door to him at the resolution of this fool’s quest.

Mark returned with a Stella. ‘We’re having a barbecue on the beach. We’ve been collecting driftwood all afternoon for a fire. Can you stay?’

Anthony sensed Charlie’s grimace. ‘Is it me or is there a disgusting stink in this room? Kind of like fetid socks?’ Charlie said to the room at large.

Anthony coloured. He was increasingly conscious of the smell drifting up from his feet, and had been trying to keep his distance. But Mark’s invitation to join the barbecue had thrown him a lifeline, and he grinned with relief.

Anthony? Is that really you?’ Standing on the bottom of the stairs, enveloped in a man’s silk dressing gown several sizes too big for her, eyes bleary as though she had just that moment woken up, was Amanda; more ravishing, more captivating than he could have believed possible. She looked so fragile, with childlike bare feet and tousled black bob. He longed to rush over and hug her, but found himself rooted to the spot.

Instead, it was Charlie who hastened over, solicitous and proprietorial, asking how she’d slept and pressing coffee and drinks upon her.

‘You know what?’ said Mark. ‘If we want to get the cooking going before it gets dark, we need to get our skates on and light the fire. Everybody take some things — plates, food, matches, booze. All the food’s in boxes on the kitchen table. Charlie, if you could carry the grill, which is quite heavy, and Joe and, er, Anthony and I will take the food, and Clarissa and Jemima, could you grab those plastic salad bowls and plates.’

Amanda, Anthony noticed, was asked to carry nothing. Certain people are automatically excluded from anything so prosaic as transporting picnics. Her role was to trail behind the others in her dressing gown and skimpy leopardskin swimsuit, exuding artless glamour, while each boy sought a reason to hang back and keep her company.

The steps to the beach were steep and winding, descending past the gardens of a dozen small villas and pensions, several with somnolent guard dogs chained to half-laid patios or pawing at bald patches of earth. When the path narrowed to enter a tunnel beneath the coast road, Anthony contrived to be one step ahead of Amanda.

‘I knew you’d come,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

‘I hope you don’t mind me turning up. I had to see you.’

‘It’s fate. Neither of us had a choice. You were bound to come.’

Before Anthony could reply, the path widened again and Charlie was waiting for them, buckled under the weight of the iron grill and scowling.

The strip of beach at the foot of the cliff consisted of grey sand above the tide line and smooth flat pebbles below, with a bluff of jagged rocks marking the boundary of the bay. A couple of miles south, towards Sainte Maxime, you could just make out the roped-off private beaches with their coloured umbrellas and tented changing huts, some already closed for the winter. Here, however, the beach was neglected and unraked, the sole attraction being a rusted swimming raft formed from four floating oil drums and a wooden platform, moored fifty yards out to sea.

Mark and Joe started the bonfire, and candles were lit and relit inside jam jars for storm lanterns.

‘The sea’s getting rough out there; look at the white horses on those waves,’ Joe said. ‘Do you reckon there’ll be a storm?’

‘Those black clouds are ominous,’ said Mark. ‘Probably blow over though — it’s moving fairly fast.’

Jemima and Clarissa were already in the sea. Charlie had suggested a swim to Amanda but she’d said no, so now he felt unable to swim himself, since that would mean leaving her unchaperoned with Anthony on the beach, so he sat brooding near her on the sand, like the doorkeeper at a purdah palace, glowering if anyone came too close.

Anthony walked down to the sea and stood in the shallows, cold water lapping over his feet, his mind in a state of confusion. He hardly knew what to make of Amanda with her talk of fate. He’d never met anyone remotely like her. The sky was dark with thunderclouds, and waves were beginning to lash in earnest against the rocks. He waded out up to his waist until it was deep enough to swim. He could feel the swell pulling him this way and that, and the surface of the sea as he ventured further out had a crust of taut ripples. He passed the girls swimming back towards the beach.

‘I wouldn’t go out much further,’ Clarissa said. ‘It’s really choppy.’

‘Just to the raft,’ Anthony said. ‘No further.’

As he approached the pontoon, he realised it was no simple matter to haul himself aboard. The oil drums were pitching to and fro, and the wooden platform lurched in the water. A short rusty ladder with three metal steps was thrust more than a foot above the waves, before the raft slammed down again with a loud crack. When he reached out for the handrail, he felt the raft jerk away from him and lift half out of the sea, like a flying door above his head.

At the third attempt, he hoisted himself aboard the soaking platform, grasping at the planks for support. He could just make out the others on the darkening beach, black shadows crouched around the fire, their faces illuminated by dancing flames. One of the boys, Mark he thought, was grilling steaks under the beam of a car torch.

‘Anthony?’ He heard his name from somewhere close by. ‘I think I might need a hand up.’

Ten yards from the raft he saw Amanda, heading towards him. ‘You’re brave,’ he said. ‘It’s rough out here.’

As she came within arm’s reach, he yanked her up and was struck by her lightness. They lay side by side on their stomachs on the tilting raft, watching the spray exploding against the jagged bluff.

‘Are we slightly crazy, would you say, to be out here?’ Amanda asked. ‘Or isn’t it really that dangerous at all?’

‘Probably safer here than on the beach with Charlie around. He isn’t going to be too happy when he realises we’re here.’

‘Poor Charlie. He was quite devoted in his way.’

Anthony, who didn’t regard Charlie as a remotely pitiful figure, made no reply. He draped his arm over Amanda’s damp, salty back and when she did nothing to remove it, rolled closer and kissed her on the neck. ‘So Charlie’s not your boyfriend?’

‘Not now. Now you’ve arrived.’

‘Why were you so certain I’d come?’

She rolled onto her back and smiled at him. ‘I just knew. The minute I saw you looking down from that balcony at your parents’ house, I knew what was going to happen.’

‘And what is going to happen?’

‘Wait and see. Everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘You accepted my dare.’

The storm, which for a while seemed to be quieting down, now gathered renewed force, and they felt the raft yank beneath them on the barnacled chain that secured it to a concrete block on the seabed. Huge waves, light-struck and broad-shouldered, surged against the oil drums, sending them spinning, before breaking against the beach in a ferocious cascade of spray. As ever-stronger waves broke around them, they clung together on the platform, locked in a salt-kissed embrace so passionate they hardly registered the cries and shouts of warning from the others on the beach.

Mark and Charlie had waded out up to their chests, hollering and waving at the raft. ‘Amanda! Anthony! You okay out there?’ But their voices blew right back at them.

‘It’s so damn difficult to see anything,’ Mark said. ‘Charlie, bring the torch down here, won’t you?’ Charlie fetched the big rubber torch and directed its beam towards the raft, sweeping like a searchlight across the waves until he found his mark.

For one traumatic moment he held the beam directly on them, before jerking it away. In that instant, the whole raft was illuminated and with it the lovers, fucking for Britain for the very first time.

3

They knew they must leave the villa that night. Charlie was glowering like a wounded bear, humiliated and sullen. Having failed to manoeuvre Amanda away for a reconciliation, he focused his rage upon Anthony. The two girls, Jemima and Clarissa, crept around the living room with sanctimonious expressions, muttering, ‘Poor Charlie, but he’s well out of it.’ Invidiously positioned as host of a divided house, Mark conversed stiffly with Anthony while Amanda gathered her stuff. ‘You do have somewhere to go tonight?’ he asked.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Anthony said, and he knew they would be fine, not just tonight, but for ever. He felt drained and almost overwhelmed by what had happened, as though he was an actor in a play who had mistakenly turned over two pages in the script and veered out of character, assuming another man’s role. How else to explain that steady, predictable Anthony Anscombe had driven halfway across Europe and seized the loveliest girl in the world from the clutches of another man?

Amanda was at the door with the smallest of suitcases. It seemed incredible they would leave together like this. She kissed Mark and Joe goodbye, disregarded the girls and pointedly ignored Charlie who sat sulking in the other room, full of self-righteous indignation.

‘Just drive,’ Amanda said. ‘Let’s get as far away from these people as possible.’

So they headed up the coast in the green Triumph, following the road for two hours, then three, as far as Antibes and Juan-les-Pins, until they felt they’d put sufficient distance between themselves and the villa, and drew up outside a small hotel and asked for a room.

‘Names?’ asked the night porter, for it was after midnight and the door had already been locked. They’d had to knock and knock before he came to let them in.

‘Monsieur et Madame Anscombe,’ replied Amanda.

‘Passeports, s’il vous plaît! He carefully recorded their names and details without comment before handing over a key secured to a fat red tassel.

Safely ensconced in the room, Anthony said, ‘What on earth made you tell that guy we were married? I didn’t know where to look when we had to hand over our passports. He could see it wasn’t true.’

‘It hardly matters, does it?’ Amanda said. ‘By this time tomorrow we really will be married.’

As it transpired, they could not marry the next day, French formalities being too tortuous and prolix for such haste, but two days later, under the great frescoed ceiling of the Hôtel de Ville in Nice, they were married in a civil ceremony that lasted barely twelve minutes. The delicate white lace nightdress Amanda had worn for breakfast on the previous two mornings doubled as a wedding dress, hastily pressed by room service at the larger, grander hotel on the Promenade des Anglais to which they had moved on the eve of their marriage. She carried a posy of tiny white freesias they’d bought in the flower market on their way to the registry office. Anthony thought she looked beautiful, and wondered again how she could possibly have chosen to marry him. He was the luckiest man alive. As they strolled through the town hand in hand, in search of a restaurant after the service, he felt the envious stares of everyone they passed. Even the registrar who had married them had been flirtatious with Amanda, and she had played him along in fluent French. Where, he wondered, had his wife learned to speak French? He was ardently aware he still had an endless amount to learn about her, and ecstatic that he had an eternity in which to do so. As they lunched at a pavement fish restaurant, where the bedazzled owner invited them to drink champagne on the house and produced a long-stemmed rose for the beautiful young bride, teenage boys on Vespas zipped up and down the street, leering and gesticulating and inviting Amanda to hop on the back of their scooters. At some point towards the end of lunch, feeling a little drunk, Anthony remembered his parents for the first time in five days, and supposed he ought to let them in on his marvellous news. His telephone call forestalled the continent-wide missing persons search that was gearing up to look for him. The Home Office, prodded into action by the Anscombes’ local Tory MP, had already established his ferry crossing to France, but thereafter the trail had gone cold.

When Henrietta picked up the phone she sounded furious. ‘But what on earth have you been doing all this time, you stupid, thoughtless boy?’ she demanded. ‘Your father and I have been frantic. You could have been lying dead in a ditch for all we knew. I’ll tell you one thing: that car of yours is being confiscated the minute you get home. And I asked you a question to which I’d like an answer please: what in God’s name made you suddenly hare off to France without telling anybody?’

‘Well, the thing is …’ Anthony began. From the callbox in the narrow corridor between restaurant kitchen and dining room, he could see Amanda bathed in sunshine at the table outside, laughing with the waiter who was bringing more coffee. ‘I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, Mum, but I’ve got married, actually… Yes, that’s right, got married … I am being serious … No … No, not to a French girl, to an English girl … I promise you … She’s called Amanda … No, I don’t think you’ve met her. Not really. Well, she’s been to our house once; that’s where we met… she came along to your party. That’s right, the party on Saturday … Yes, I did say that’s when I met her. Only last Saturday. She came with the Edwardses … Yes, it is that girl — Amanda. When will I be back home?’ It was a good question. He had made no plans for the rest of his life. Being with Amanda had seemed like an end in itself. Now, against the background of incredulous disapproval echoing down the telephone line, he wondered what they would actually do, he and Amanda; where would they go and how they would live? He wondered how much longer they could stay in France; at the rate they were getting through his money, it wouldn’t last that long.

‘Yes … yes, I suppose we will be coming home to Winchford,’ Anthony said. ‘We’ll be there by the end of the week, probably.’

‘Well, if you think your father will allow you to install this girl, of whom we know absolutely nothing, at the Priory, you’re very much mistaken.’

‘Then where do you expect us to go, if we can’t come home?’

‘You should have thought of that before. Hasn’t this young woman got parents of her own you can go to? You have met her parents, I suppose.’

But Anthony knew nothing about his wife.

‘I suppose you could use Forge Cottage, if you really have nowhere else,’ he heard his mother concede. ‘It is empty at the moment.’ Anthony knew Forge Cottage: the thatched workman’s hovel at the end of the village by the millstream, where old Tom Tew, the last Winchford blacksmith, had shoed hunters and made fire tongs.

‘Thanks, Mum. And don’t worry, you’re really going to like Amanda when you get to know her. She’s the perfect wife.’

*

Had Anthony not been utterly infatuated, he would probably have been more disquieted by Amanda’s unpredictability during their journey back to England. They took things more gently than Anthony’s frantic dash south, starting late each morning, dawdling over breakfast, driving for scarcely an hour or two before stopping for lunch or drinks in some pretty French village, and often taking a room afterwards in the local hotel, declaring they’d driven far enough already for one day and instead making love on some unyielding, bolster-strewn bed until it fell dark outside and the hotel kitchen was long closed for the night; so they tended to go to bed hungry and needed larger and longer breakfasts on each successive day. Each morning, when he awoke to find Amanda’s soft, naked back pressed against him, Anthony blessed his incredible luck. Amanda was his first proper girlfriend and he had been anxious not to disappoint her in bed.

‘Did you ever do this … with Charlie?’ he dared ask her, thinking of her couchette journey with his vanquished rival.

‘The answer to that question is no, actually,’ she replied, quite sharply. ‘But a man should never ask his wife questions like that, especially when she is yours and only yours for ever and ever.’ And then she laughed and kissed him with such gentleness and joy, he felt ashamed of his inquisitiveness, and regretted asking.

Similarly, when he asked about her life, her home, family or school, she was deftly evasive, deflecting him with a caress or a shrug.

‘You’ll meet my parents one day, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘They’re not still together anyway. My dad lives in Rome with his lover. My mum usually stays in Dublin when she’s not travelling.’

In a strange way, Anthony felt liberated rather than stonewalled by the sketchiness of information. Living at Winchford, he often felt burdened by an overload of family history pressing down on him from every wall. Every stick of furniture, every rosebush or cedar tree had been bought or planted at the behest of some earlier Anscombe. Amanda, by contrast, was a ravishing, mesmerising sprite, who had miraculously consented to throw in her lot with him as his wife, and whose tantalising elusiveness was all of a piece with the rest. This journey through France was an interlude from real life. They drove as the impulse took them, from hamlet to hamlet. After six days, having covered not even half the distance home, they spotted the walled and towered hill town of Carcassonne from the road and felt compelled to stop for the night. Prohibited from taking the car into the centre of town, they parked outside the walls and Anthony carried their two small bags through the winding medieval streets until they found a hotel, ringed by geranium pots, with a bedroom to rent. From their window on the second floor, you could see right across the sloping rooftops to the arid plain beyond.

Anthony was almost out of cash. Leaving Amanda to unpack, he located a Banque Agricole and converted the last of his English money into francs. Seventy pounds in French bank notes felt like a fortune in his hands, and he walked jauntily back to the hotel. He found their bedroom door open and the room deserted; evidently Amanda had slipped out on some errand. He spread the money on the bedcover and thought about unpacking.

After an hour she had not returned; after two hours he became uneasy and began to pace the streets, ducking in and out of cheese shops and cavernous delicatessens parading wild boar and salami. Every so often he hurried back to the hotel to check whether she’d returned. Her stuff was still strewn about the room, but no Amanda.

It was becoming dark, and he wondered whether to contact the police. Surely she would turn up soon, anyway. Where could she possibly have got to in this tourist-trap hill town? At ten thirty the bars began to shut down for the night. Anthony watched the waiters stack chairs on top of tables and mop the floors. He was desperate. Just before eleven o’clock, returning to the hotel for perhaps the tenth time, he saw her approach from the opposite direction, looking self-possessed and happy.

Amanda?’

‘Oh, hi Ant. Sorry I’ve been ages.’

‘I’ve been really worried. Where’ve you been, for heaven’s sake? I was. about to go to the police.’

‘Oh, I went for a walk around the town. Then I got talking to this French boy, and he introduced me to some of his mates. They took me to a bar.’

‘But I looked in all the bars. I couldn’t find you anywhere.’

‘Not in Carcassonne. A bar in the next village. It was great. There was table-football and a jukebox; everyone was dancing.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me before going off like that? You’ve been gone seven hours. Couldn’t you at least have rung the hotel?’

‘Sorry, I never realised you’d be worried. Anyway, I didn’t know the name of our hotel. Listen, darling, I’ve said I’m sorry. I was only having a couple of drinks. It was fun — stop fussing. Now let’s go up to bed. I’ve missed you.’

4

As he drove his wife towards the ironstone village of Winchford, Anthony felt an uneasy mixture of pride and dread: pride at introducing her properly to the mellow beauty of the place, of which he knew every cottage, field and footpath; dread at the meeting that must shortly take place between Amanda and his parents, an encounter that would surely be sticky.

‘Well, we’re almost there now. We’re almost at Winchford,’ he said as his exhausted car rattled its way to the brow of the hill.

To reach the village, you first drove six miles beyond Stow-on-the-Wold in the direction of Moreton-in-Marsh, then made a sharp turn down a single-track road signposted Winchford Village Only. The track, with its numerous passing places, took you to the rim of a wide, gently sloping valley bordered by copses of oak and horse chestnuts, their foliage a dramatic orange and yellow on this crisp October afternoon; far below, in the bottom of the valley, lay the slate and thatched rooftops of forty cottages and barns, the square steeple of a Norman church, and a shallow river, the Winch, which meandered beside a cobbled village street. There was an old stone trough opposite the almshouses erected by Anthony’s five-times-great-grandfather, and a memorial to the fallen of the Great War, where stragglers from the village pub, the Plough and Harrow, congregated after closing time on Saturday night, leaving the stone plinth littered with empty glasses and bottles. Nestling into a cleft of the hillside, a quarter of a mile above the village, stood the great mongrel facade of Winchford Priory, the mullioned windows of the Elizabethan hall glinting in the sunshine, flanked by the solid Victorian wing and the Georgian coach house, covered in Virginia creeper. The Winchford Estate, it was generally agreed, with its two thousand acres surrounding its own picturesque village, and perhaps the finest high-pheasant shoot in the country, was one of the most