The Last Kiss Goodbye (9 page)

‘You’re on,’ he shouted, giving her a thumbs-up.

‘Excellent,’ she whispered, and let herself into the house.

Chapter Ten

‘Remind me who these people are again,’ said Ros, looking up at the tall white stuccoed house in front of them, and smoothing down the red cocktail dress that she had borrowed from Sam.

‘Friends from university and assorted others,’ replied Dominic, tucking a bottle of champagne under his arm as he trotted up the stone steps towards the front door.

‘Rabid Tories, you mean,’ muttered Ros, wishing she weren’t meeting
all
of Dominic’s friends in one intimidating go.

Dominic paused before he rang the doorbell.

‘Ros, I wish you’d stop insulting everyone who doesn’t share your political views.’

‘So what does he do, then? This Jonathon Soames.’

‘He works in Whitehall.’

‘There you go. A rabid Tory.’

He turned around and looked at her. ‘So my friends are a little more conventional than yours. We’ve lived shallow, sheltered lives of little meaning. But they are generally very nice, so don’t start badgering them to hand over the means of production to the proletariat, or whatever it was that Marx and Engels said. This is a dinner party. For my friend’s birthday. I’m just asking that you don’t turn things into a political debate.’

Ros smiled mischievously. ‘I thought that was what every good dinner party needed. Lively conversation.’

‘Not all-out war,’ grinned Dominic, finally pressing the bell.

The door swung open, spilling warm light and the chatter of conversation on to the street.

‘Blakey, old chap!’ cried the man in the blue shirt and tie who stood there. ‘So glad you could come.’ He pumped Dominic’s hand enthusiastically, then switched his gaze to Rosamund. ‘And who is this, may I ask?’

‘Jonathon Soames,’ said Dominic, ‘may I present Miss Rosamund Bailey?’

‘Good to meet you, finally,’ Jonathon smiled.

Rosamund felt a vague sense of triumphant excitement at being talked about. She didn’t want to put too much meaning into the fact that Dominic had mentioned her to his friends, but secretly it thrilled her. In the six weeks since their night at the Primrose Hill pub, they had seen each other a handful of times, although they’d spoken on the phone almost every day.

Their afternoon walking the streets of London on Rosamund’s blue plaque tour had been magical. They had lost interest in plaque-spotting sometime after John Logie Baird, and instead had got lost in a six-hour conversation that had covered their views on love and life.

At one point, Dominic had held her hand to cross the street, but instead of keeping hold of him, she had let go to scratch her leg, not because it was particularly itchy but because she had been so nervous and afraid that he would let go first. Looking back, as Rosamund had done many times since, she suspected it had been a turning point in their fledgling relationship. Were it not for that fateful scratch, the night could, she dared to dream, have concluded in a kiss in some dark, sultry corner of London. Instead they had settled into a comfortable, combative friendship that made Ros think of what it must be like to have a particularly clever and confident brother. She tried to ignore the giddiness she felt whenever the phone rang at the Primrose Hill house, or the way her heart sometimes flipped when he smiled at her. But she was self-aware enough to know that Dominic Blake was out of her league, and that even if a drunken night out did lead to something romantic, it would be a fleeting involvement, a diversion before he moved on to a more exotic and beautiful woman, that wouldn’t be worth the heartbreaking consequences. No, it was better this way. They were better as friends.

‘No one’s wearing a cocktail dress,’ she whispered from the hallway, as she glanced into the house.

‘I’ve got one under my jacket,’ said Dom distractedly as he accepted a glass of champagne from a butler.

‘I’m not joking. I feel overdressed,’ she hissed, wishing she was wearing something plainer than Sam’s Hardy Amies gown.

He turned his full attention back towards her.

‘You look beautiful.’

He rested his hand on the small of her back and led her into a wide, stylish living space, where a dozen or so people were standing around drinking wine and talking loudly. There was modern jazz playing on the record player in the corner, and the butler circulated with a bottle of Pol Roger held in a crisp white linen napkin, topping up glasses.

‘Everyone,’ called Jonathon over the soothing noise, ‘you all know Dom – obviously – but this is Rosamund. Be nice to her, hmm?’

‘I love these paintings,’ said Rosamund, indicating the bold graphic artwork on the wall.

‘Roy Lichtenstein,’ Jonathon said simply. ‘Most people hate them. My mother threatens to send them to the tip every time she sees them. But I’m quite excited about the pop art coming out of New York. Time will tell if I’ve made a good investment or whether my mother was right.’

A sexy brunette approached, wearing a pencil skirt and a tight jumper that clung to her curves. Ros felt like a gaudy Christmas decoration next to her.

‘So you’re Rosamund?’ she said in a husky voice that suited her. ‘What a pretty name. Where did you find her, Dominic?’

‘In the street, shouting insults,’ said Dominic with a smile. ‘Rosamund, this is Clara Barrett, she’s an old friend from . . . Where did we meet, Clar?’

‘At Bunty Willoughby’s twenty-first, of course. Surely you couldn’t forget that night?’

As Jonathon led Dominic away to view his latest artistic acquisitions, Clara continued to quiz Ros.

‘So. How long have you been seeing Dominic?’

‘He’s just a friend. I work for
Capital
.’

‘Ooh. A clever girl.’

Ros smiled thinly.

‘I remember now,’ continued Clara. ‘You’re the one writing those controversial think pieces.’

‘I was brought on board to bring alternative viewpoints to the magazine, yes. Dominic likes to call me his polemic-in-chief.’

‘Dominic is very good at making people feel special,’ Clara said pointedly.

‘So where do you stand on the nuclear question?’ asked Ros, desperately casting around for something to say.

‘The nuclear question?’ Clara giggled.

‘The United States’ Polaris missiles have arrived on British soil. You must have read about it?’

‘Oh darling, I try not to think about that sort of thing too much,’ said Clara, waving her wine glass airily. ‘I mean, if the Russkies are going to drop a bomb on my flat, I’m not going to know about it until it’s too late, am I? So why waste time worrying?’

Ros looked at her, not quite believing how someone could be so flippant about something so important. She was considering telling her about the Committee of 100’s sit-in that was due to take place in Parliament Square that week when Jonathon clapped his hands to summon them for dinner.

‘If you’d all like to follow me through to the dining room . . .  I promise I haven’t cooked any of it myself.’

The dining room was a smaller version of the living room, but the table was large enough to seat the dozen dinner guests, and it had been laid with white linen and silver.

‘Boy, girl, boy, girl,’ called Jonathon as they all filed in looking for a seat. ‘You know the rules.’

‘I didn’t know you were so strict, Jonny,’ quipped a red-cheeked man named Neville, to much laughter.

Dominic ended up sandwiched between Clara and Michaela, Jonathon’s rather mousy girlfriend, while Rosamund found herself at the far end between the host and an art-dealing friend called Zander, who seemed intent on impressing his knowledge of abstract impressionism on everyone.

Jonathon, on the other hand, was more down to earth, despite his obvious riches. He told her that he and Dominic had met at Cambridge and had been friends ever since. They went pheasant shooting every Boxing Day, cycled together every fortnight and were currently working their way around the pubs of England that had the word ‘cricketers’ in the title. He told her that not only was Dominic the most social creature he knew, but also the most solitary. How he loved to travel by himself. How he had grieved alone after the death of his father, retreating to a remote woodland cottage belonging to the Soames family for over a month before returning to London.

The picture he painted was of a complex and contradictory individual, and to Ros, that made Dominic even more appealing.

‘So, Dom, I hear you’re heading out on another of your splendid adventures,’ said Zander as coffee was served.

‘Where’s it to be this time?’ smiled Jonathon. ‘Borneo? Tierra del Fuego?’

Dominic smiled. ‘Jonny, I know for a fact that you haven’t the faintest idea where either of those places are.’

‘Well
I
don’t need to know where they are,’ said Jonathon. ‘You’re the one who’s going to get lost.’

‘Fair enough,’ smiled Dominic. ‘I’m heading back to the Amazon, actually.’

‘How thrilling,’ said Michaela. ‘Is it terribly dangerous?’

‘Only if I forget my shotgun.’

The girl gave a little gasp, and Rosamund glanced over.

‘What’s the game this time, Dom?’ asked Neville. ‘I mean, why go all that way? Sounds damned uncomfortable for a start, riding on donkeys and rickety aeroplanes, and that’s without all the snakes and the scorpions in your boots.’

‘I suppose I like to see what’s out there.’

‘Well I think you’re bally mad,’ said Jonathon. ‘All the gold in Shangri-La couldn’t drag me there.’

‘I think you mean El Dorado, and that’s all very well for you to say when you’ve already got a vault like Aladdin’s cave over at Coutts.’

‘You’re only jealous of Dom’s daring,’ purred Clara.

‘I know it may seem crazy,’ Dominic said. ‘But there are still huge parts of the globe that have never been mapped – not accurately, anyway. Even somewhere as developed as America is so large that there are hundreds of miles of desert that no man has ever walked across. And the Amazon jungle is so dense it’s almost impossible to penetrate, let alone say with any certainty what’s hidden in there.’

‘Do you think you’ll find El Dorado?’ asked Michaela breathlessly, directing her full gaze in Dominic’s direction. ‘Is it really there?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ smiled Dominic. ‘I don’t think it ever was. I think the first Westerners to South America misinterpreted local legends and rituals as fact because they wanted them to be true. However, the secret city of Paititi could very well be real.’

‘Paititi?’ asked Jonathon, looking more interested.

‘It’s a mythical lost Inca city. Stories from around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries talk about a jungle settlement in the Amazon full of gold and silver.’

‘I love Dominic’s stories,’ said Michaela. ‘Last time he was here, he was telling us about the lost Fabergé eggs.’

‘Dominic is actually going to liberate the oppressed peasants, aren’t you?’ said Zander with a wink.

‘Really, old man?’ said Neville, his brow furrowed. ‘You haven’t gone pinko on us, have you?’

‘Actually, Zander is right,’ piped up Ros, eager to join in the conversation. ‘Dom believes that the native Indians are being exploited and that they should be left alone. Isn’t that right?’

Dominic pulled a face. ‘Yes, to an extent, but—’

‘You were absolutely right when you said that they are relatively ignorant of international trade – large-scale commerce of any kind, actually – and there’s a danger that their resources are going to be exploited by others,’ continued Ros.

‘And you think that’s a bad thing?’ asked Neville from his seat opposite her. She had learnt earlier that Neville’s family had made their fortune in imports, historically sugar and oil. But in the fifteen years since the end of the war, they had lost almost all of it through the redrawing of borders, new interests in the Middle East and, most importantly, the sudden feeling in many places that, frankly, they were better off exploiting their own sugar and oil.

‘What about British companies like Moran Timber who are operating in the Amazon? Do you think we should force them out?’

‘Ros wasn’t saying that,’ said Dominic quickly.

Neville didn’t look placated. ‘Principles are one thing, but not at the expense of British commerce. We’re struggling enough abroad as it is.’

‘But those resources belong to the people of Brazil and Peru,’ said Ros, taking another sip of wine.

‘No they don’t,’ scoffed Neville. ‘They were bought fair and square by Western companies, who, by the way, are providing jobs for these so-called locals.’

Ros and Neville both looked at Dominic for support.

‘What do you think, Dommy?’ asked Clara, taking the role of provocateur.

Dominic shrugged diplomatically. ‘I think that native people should benefit from their own land, their own crops, but letting them self-govern is perhaps a fast route to corruption and I don’t think you’d be doing them a favour. You’d be throwing them to the lions of capitalism. And they’re not ready. Not yet.’

Neville grunted his approval as Clara leant forward, her finger tracing the edge of her wine glass.

‘And what do you believe, Rosamund? Capitalism or communism?’

Ros glanced at her, realising that her sudden interest in politics was simply for show.

‘I think socialism is the only sane choice,’ she said haughtily.

Silence fell on the room.

‘Socialism?’ said Zander finally, as if he were addressing a child. ‘But my dear, we have just finished fighting a war against it.’

‘The Nazis were socialist in name only. We were fighting against totalitarianism. Hitler was a dictator. Whatever he said went, however terrible, or you would find yourself up against a wall. The Allies were fighting for the very opposite of that: self-government. Pure and simple.’

‘Isn’t self-government just a polite way of saying “give everything to the workers”?’ laughed Zander.

‘Not at all,’ said Rosamund. ‘Self-government is democracy, the ability to choose how your country is run. What’s wrong with that?’

‘You’re saying you’d allow a lot of lazy, illiterate Peruvian peasants to run their own country?’ laughed Neville. ‘They’d never become a developed nation, no matter how rich they are in natural resources.’