Free Imogen by Jilly Cooper Page A

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