Harriet by Jilly Cooper Page B

a cigarette, he picked up the telephone.
        ‘Oscar? You’re still there? Look, I don’t give a damn if the Yanks do pull out, we’ll raise the cash some other way, but I’m not writing another major character into the script!’
        Poor Oscar, thought Harriet sitting down in a lemon yellow chair, hoping her laddered tights didn’t show too much.
        Then she studied some photographs on a side table. Two were of very beautiful children, a boy and a girl, with long blonde hair and dark slanting eyes. Another photograph was of a racehorse. Cory Erskine, she remembered, had once been famous as an amateur jockey. The fourth was of Noel Balfour herself, in a bikini, looking not unlike a sleek and beautiful racehorse - long-legged, full bodied, with the fine head, tawny eyes, classical features and wide sensual mouth that were so familiar to cinema audiences all over the world.
        And what of the man Noel Balfour had been allegedly happily married to for so long? Harriet turned back to look at Cory Erskine, examining the aloof, closed face with its dead-pan features, high cheek-bones and slanting, watchful eyes. He looks like a Red Indian, she thought, inscrutable and not very civilized at that.
        As he came to the end of his conversation, a shaft of winter sunshine came through the window, lighting up the unhealthy pallor of his face, the heavy lines around the mouth, the grey flecks in the long, dark hair.
        ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, putting down the receiver. He picked up a half empty whisky bottle. ‘Have a drink?’ Harriet shook her head. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunchtime, and a drink the size of the one Cory Erskine was p ouring into his own glass would put her out like a light. When he offered her his cigarette case, however, she couldn’t resist taking one, although she knew one wasn’t supposed to smoke at interviews. Her hand shook so badly when he gave her a light that he had to steady it with his own hand.
        He straightened up and looked at her for a minute. You’re in pretty bad shape, aren’t you?’ he said abruptly. How long is it since you had the baby?’
        ‘Three months,’ said Harriet. ‘I wasn’t awfully well afterwa r ds; but I’m fine now.’
        ‘Who’s the father?’
        Harriet blushed.
        ‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘I don’t make a habit of rushing round on roller skates with a megaphone, as soon as anyone tells me anything.’
        ‘He was an undergraduate,’ said Harriet, ‘called Simon Villiers.’
        Even after so long, the mention of his name made her mouth go dry, her throat tighten.
        Cory Erskine looked up.
        ‘Simon Villiers? Good-looking boy, blond? Loaded with coney? Doesn’t he want to go on the stage?’
        Harriet started shaking. ‘You know him?’
        ‘I’ve met him. I had to give a couple of lectures on drama t Oxford last summer. Simon Villiers was allotted to look after me.’
        ‘How was he?’ asked Harriet in a strangled voice. ‘Extremely pleased with himself. Don’t you see him now? doesn’t he help you?’
        ‘He gave me a lot of money to have a proper abortion, but I funked it so I bought some contact lenses instead and kept the baby.’
        ‘Does he know you’ve had it?’
        ‘I wrote and told him. He didn’t answer. I think he’s probably abroad. He wasn’t in love with me.’
        ‘Won’t your parents help?’ he asked.
        ‘Only if I have William - that’s the baby - adopted, and I can’t bear to do that.’
        ‘Where’s he now?’
        ‘I’ve left him with a friend - but only for the afternoon.’
        Her stomach started rumbling with hunger. She felt at a distinct disadvantage in his lemon yellow chair, her bottom much lower than her legs.
        Cory Erskine shook the ice round in his whisky. ‘And you want to look after my children?’
        Harriet nodded, trying desperately not to appear too eager. He pointed