Peter, meanwhile, found himself in charge of a White Elephant stall selling plants in plastic tubs, old books, CDs, broken lamps and jigsaw puzzles. His table was positioned at the furthest end of the garden, and it was obvious the merchandise had been donated by neighbours as a cheaper alternative to paying for landfill. It amazed him, looking at this great array of rubbish, that anyone would want to buy anything at all. He had once watched a documentary about life in Soviet Russia, with peasant women trying to scratch a living selling junk from trestles much like this one, but he remembered their stock as being slightly more alluring than his own today. And yet, from time to time, a customer would shuffle up to sift through the boxes of yellowing Nevil Shute and Hammond Innes paperbacks, or the old Dandy and Topper annuals, and sometimes even buy one for five or ten pence. Or they would ask questions about the plants, wanting Peter to identify them from their droopy stalks. To his shame, he hadn’t a clue. They could be anything at all. Foxgloves? Thistles? Marijuana plants? All seemed equally plausible.
At the same time, Peter was enjoying his role as sole-trader. It was rather pleasant to stand outside in the May sunshine, waiting to see who came along and have a nice chat with them. Already, he’d had several conversations with all sorts, and he enjoyed marking-down the prices if people looked like they couldn’t really afford them. He’d just sold a pile of children’s books with scribbles on their covers for 10p the lot to a young mother, when it should really have been five quid. And he reduced a 1000-piece wooden jigsaw, with three pieces missing, from a pound to 5 pence for a pensioner. Compared to life at Straker Communications where they were encouraged to mark-up everything to clients as steeply as possible, with 30-percent service charges on each and every transaction, this felt so much more ethical and real. It amused him, as he stood waiting for the next customer, to imagine the Straker Communications strategy for the stall, had he become their client. In no time, they’d have been billing a £10,000 a month retainer, and setting up focus groups and viral marketing programmes to triple consumer footfall. What a load of baloney it all was! Often, at meetings, he felt like laughing out loud.
He was standing there, minding the shop, and drinking from a can of cider, when he saw the Cleggs heading in his direction. Dawn was in the lead, knowing her way round the Strakers’ garden, which Ross had never visited before, proudly pointing out the herbaceous borders and swimming pool enclosure, and introducing her husband to the ladies on the committee.
‘This is Ross, my other half. I told him he had to be here, and not disappear off working on a Saturday morning, which he has a naughty tendency to do.’
‘Well, Saturdays are our biggest days,’ Ross explained. ‘I’m in the cash-and-carry food business, and our customers favour Saturdays since their partners are home to help unload the weekly shop. Anyway,’ he went on, beaming at everyone and grasping their hands in his vice-like grip, ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. Dawn’s been on about it for months. And, looking round, I can see all you ladies have done a grand job getting the shoppers out. You’re going to have to let me in on your retail strategy.’
As Peter watched them, he saw a straggle of younger Cleggs trailing behind their parents; there was a guy about his own age, quite heavy with small, darting eyes, wearing a Ban Foxhunting t-shirt. Behind him, two teenage girls, both pretty, one running excitedly from stall to stall, the other looking like she’d prefer to be anywhere else in the world but here. She was furtively glancing left and right, with a sense of dread.
Ross and Dawn arrived at the stall, and Ross said, ‘Now there’s a familiar face. Peter, isn’t it? I’m bowled over by your garden. What a grand job you’ve done on it.’
‘It’s all my mother. She’s nuts about gardening.’
‘Your not saying she manages all this on her own?’
‘Well, they do have quite a bit of help. But it’s all her vision, and she does do a lot of it herself, she’s outside everyday when she’s down here.’
‘It’s inspiring. Dawn and I were just saying that, weren’t we, Dawn? Hope we can make something of the garden up at our place one day. It’s a bit of a prairie right now.’ Then he said, ‘Maybe I should start by buying some of these plants for sale, if you can help me pick something out.’
‘I wish I knew what they were myself. People have donated them, but they don’t all have labels and some have fallen off.’ He peered doubtfully at a black plastic flowerpot, with a fragile green tendril poking through cracked soil. ‘This one might be a tomato plant, I think. Or a sunflower.’
Ross roared with laughter. ‘Tell you what, give me that whole tray and I’ll plant them all out, and we’ll just see what comes up. It’ll be fun for the kids to learn a bit about nature, won’t it, Gemma?’
‘Uhh? What’s that Dad?’ Gemma slunk up to the stall, peering suspiciously at her father.
‘I was telling Peter we’re going to plant out these pots and see what grows. It’ll be interesting for you to learn where tomatoes come from. You probably think they grow in Styrofoam boxes, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, Dad. Whatever.’
‘This is Gemma—and Debbie,’ Ross said, introducing his daughters. ‘Gem’s our resident shopaholic, and Debs loves her horses. Horses and pop music. Well, they both love their pop music, typical youngsters.’
‘Then you’d better have a rummage through this box of CDs,’ Peter said, pushing it over to them. ‘Not that there’s anything too recent in there.’ He fished a couple of random CD cases from the carton: Harry Belafonte and Led Zeppelin. ‘This Joan Baez is good though. Diamonds and Rust.’
Gemma looked sceptical, but Debbie, who liked the look of this friendly man, asked, ‘How much is it?’
‘To you? Er, one pence.’
‘Really?’ Debbie looked thrilled.
‘No, make that one pence for three. Go on, pick out two others, three CDs for a penny. You too, Gemma, if you’d like to. Or seven for two pence.’
Soon the girls had a huge stack of CD cases up to their chins, and Dawn was saying, ‘Really, you can’t take all these for just ten pence, it isn’t right. Truly, Peter, you must let us give more than that, it’s for the charity.’ So, in the end, Peter accepted a five-pound note for the lot and they went off gleefully. Debbie glanced back at the handsome man who had been so kind to her.
Greg Clegg drifted between the trestles, sneering to himself about this bourgeois English scene of the worst sort. He had never actually experienced anything like it before, not at first hand, but he had imagined it, and read about it, and now here it was in all its hideous, complacent smugness. The faces of the other people said it all: rich, soft, southern faces of Middle England. Tory faces. Men in blazers with brass buttons and straw hats. Women with plumped-up, wrinkled, kindly, stupid faces that had never experienced a day’s hardship. The garden only made him angry; he did not see a labour of love, but an indulgence, and wondered what it took in money and manpower to maintain it to this level. At college, he belonged to a society named the 80:20, which met to debate—to condemn—the indefensible fact that 80 percent of the resources in this country are owned by—stolen by—only 20 percent of the population. Although he attended almost all the meetings in the Junior Common Room, he had never previously seen so blatant an example of injustice at close quarters. So he sneered at it all: the yew walk, the flowerbeds with their box hedges and well-mulched herbaceous plants, the enormous flint and brick house which had to be the size of ten normal houses put together. And, of course, Greg had a personal reason to resent everything about Chawbury Manor. Samantha’s behaviour in Koh Samui still niggled him, more deeply than he cared to admit. To be given the bum’s rush by a privileged, pampered thicko like Sam Straker was more than he could stand. It confirmed every prejudice he’d ever had. He would never forget the way they had dropped him so abruptly—those three la-di-da babes. From the moment Sam had signalled her intention to leave Ko Pha-Ngan and return to Koh Samui, they had withdrawn all semblance of good ma
nners. At supper that night, they had openly mocked him. When he’d mentioned his PhD, they’d yawned openly (‘Boring, boring’). When he’d told them about the bus times to the port the next morning, they’d said not to worry, they’d already booked a taxi, which they pointedly didn’t invite him to share. His contempt for them—for all this—bordered on the pathological.
To make matters worse, Greg dimly recognised that in his contempt lay an element of envy. Of course, he could not possibly acknowledge it. And yet, each time he pulled up the slated wooden blinds in his new bedroom at Chawbury Park, it was the Manor that commanded the view, arrogantly perched on the brow of the hill. There it was, every morning: right in his face. No doubt the Strakers had inhabited it for hundreds of years, lording it over the peasantry. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the Strakers had been implicated in the slave trade; he could easily imagine Samantha’s forbears shipping chained Africans to the sugar plantations, without a second thought or a moment’s regret. But he was damned if he was going to hide himself away. He had as much right to be here, in this garden, as she did herself, whatever she might believe. For the remainder of his stay in Thailand, he had thought about her incessantly, eaten up with rage and bitterness. Sometimes he entertained visions of exactly what he’d like to do to her (these tended toward the graphically violent and sexual) but other times he imagined her turning up at whichever flea-pit he was staying in, consumed with remorse, admitting his superior intellect and begging to be allowed to do whatever it took to redeem herself. He was unable to think about her without suffering acute sexual agonies. After all these tortures, he didn’t relish the idea of seeing Sam again in real life.
He had not mentioned running into Samantha Straker in Thailand to any of his family. When he’d come down to Chawbury for the first time, and Dawn had pointed out the Strakers’ house (‘my new best mate Davina’) across the valley, he’d kept quiet; nor had he said anything when at supper Ross had talked about seeing Miles on the New York flight (‘He was sat up in First, needless to say’). As for Chawbury Park itself, Greg suffered anguish over the name, mortified lest anyone at college get wind of it; he would continue to give Droitwich as his address to the university, student grant, rail card and everything else. But secretly he got a bit of a kick out to the family’s new, so-much-larger property, and wondered whether it was socially reprehensible to learn how to play tennis.
Having decided the garden party was going better than anticipated, Miles was beginning to enjoy himself. There was something gratifyingly public-spirited about holding the hospice event in his own large garden, with all the county worthy in attendance, thanking him for his hospitality at every turn. Providing it didn’t inconvenience him personally, or involve serious outlay of money, Miles was keen to be regarded as a public-spirited citizen, even a benefactor, like his clients the Pendletons. Davina was dressed appropriately for once (he had sent her inside to change) and everyone was saying what a good job she’d done, which reflected well on himself. As a control freak, he had dreaded a failure being put on under his surname, damaging the Straker brand. But, as things were turning out, this was a perfectly inoffensive little jamboree. He did wonder why anyone would go to such efforts to raise barely two grand for charity, when professionally-managed charity galas in London regularly brought in two million plus, but then he wasn’t in charge. It pleased him, too, that the Cleggs didn’t seem to be anywhere in evidence. Maybe they hadn’t actually come.
Davina and Dawn had decided the raffle should be jointly drawn, at precisely three o’clock, by Philippa Mountleigh and a local celebrity, one of the five presenters of Taskforce Garden South, a daytime TV makeover programme specialising in transforming Hampshire cottage gardens into gravel-strewn cactus gardens or minimalist potagers. As the person who had found the top raffle prize—the fortnight at the six-star Nelson Bluff resort and spa in Barbados, with Business Class return flights—Miles was miffed not to have been asked to conduct the draw himself, so instead positioned himself proprietarily next to the shallow stage to watch proceedings. By a few minutes before three, the crowd gathered around the dais was ten deep; there must have been three hundred people craning their necks and nervously fingering their raffle tickets. Bean reported more than 1,500 tickets had been sold as news of the lavish holiday prize filtered round the garden. There was a smattering of applause as the two raffle-drawers appeared on stage and, after a short speech of welcome, began picking tickets from a wicker basket. Soon, triumphant villagers were filing up to collect vouchers entitling them to a manicure at the hairdressers in Odiham, or to carry away value-cartons of Arctic rolls and mini pizzas.
In the throng, Miles now spotted the Cleggs. Slightly to his annoyance, he saw Dawn chatting nineteen-to-the-dozen with Johnnie Mountleigh, the Lord Lieutenant, who furthermore appeared not to mind nearly as much as he ought. One of the teenage daughters looked horribly overweight, which wasn’t surprising, since people like that generally had obese children these days, it was the biggest giveaway; he assumed she’d been gorging herself on Ross’s trans-fat, no-nutrition, deep-frozen garbage all her life. The younger girl, on the other hand, was surprisingly attractive, if you liked that slightly sharp-featured look.
Gemma, meanwhile, was stricken. She had spotted Archie across the stage, standing next to a tall blonde girl. Her first reaction was devastation: Archie had a new girlfriend. But then her brother, Greg, who was standing alongside her, said, ‘Oh fuck, there’s Sam,’ and told her the blonde girl was Archie’s sister, which was a lot better. In her self-absorbed state, it did not occur to Gemma to ask Greg how he knew.
Relieved there was no present rival, Gemma couldn’t decide whether to push round and say hello or wait till Archie spotted her, and then whether to give him a big smile or cut him stone dead. She had to admit he looked fit in tight jeans and a pink shirt, her heart was pounding: he was the one. At the same time, she felt hideously self-conscious about her weight. In the last few days she’d felt so fat and heavy, her arms and stomach seemed to be full of fluid, she could hear it sloshing about inside her. No way was he going to fancy her. Then she remembered she loathed him, and it didn’t matter.
Standing next to her in his provocative Ban Foxhunting sweatshirt, which he was glad to say had been drawing hostile stares all afternoon, Greg was thinking how much he fancied Sam. She was just so … fucking fanciable. Pin-thin, beach-bronzed, blonde hair bleached by sunshine, he was transfixed by her white teeth and air of unwitting haughtiness. Seeing her here, in her own setting, he recognised the preposterousness of ever possessing her. It was unthinkable and yet think about it he did, and the idea was tinglingly appealing. He was still ogling her when she caught his eye and he quickly looked away, instantly regretting it, since he knew she knew he’d seen her. Hot with embarrassment, he tried to focus anywhere but on Sam.
Ninety percent of the raffle tickets had been drawn now, only the star prizes remained. Dinner for six at Le Gavroche went to the reclusive man from the bicycle shop, who immediately began panicking about who he could take with him. The five thousand pound Pendletons supermarket voucher went to the head of North European trading at Goldman Sachs, who couldn’t have told you to the nearest five million how rich he was.
Finally, the presenter of Taskforce Garden South announced the draw for the top prize, ‘The Caribbean holiday worth thirty thousand pounds.’ She gave the basket a final shuffle and stir before delving in and announcing, ‘Number 497. That’s four hundred and ninety seven.’
There was a moment of silence followed by a gasp of surprise, and a voice saying, ‘I don’t believe it. That’s my number.’ And Ross, all smiles, was limping up to the stage, brandishing his ticket stub above his head.
14.
The Nelson Bluff resort and spa, following a hundred million dollar refurbishment by its billionaire South African owners, was regarded as the most sumptuous six-star hotel on the island. Celebrated from the thirties to the fifties for its art deco dining room and cocktail
bar, much frequented by Noel Coward and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, it had gently declined over subsequent years before being purchased by Zach Durban’s International Leisure and Casino Group, which had razed the old hotel and replaced it with a luxurious campus of high-spec bungalows and multiplex dining options.
When Miles and Davina had been amongst the three hundred A-list guests at the four-day opening event (Straker Communications held the PR and marketing account), Davina had hated the place. Having once stayed there years earlier on holiday with her parents, she could hardly bear how the charming bougainvillea-covered dining veranda had been swept away and replaced by a series of marble hangars serving a choice of Italian, French, sushi, Thai, pan-Asian fusion and Creole food, each more pretentious than the one before. When she’d mentioned this to Miles, in the privacy of their arcticly air-conditioned bungalow, saying she thought Zach Durban had ruined the place, he became paranoid she might say so in public.
‘For heavens sake, Davina, we’re staying in the most expensive hotel in the world. Stop being so picky about everything. Do you know what this cabana would normally cost in high season? Ten thousand dollars per night, breakfast and tax not included. So enjoy it. And don’t you dare look like you’re not, Zach’s a key client and needs careful handling.’
Pride and Avarice Page 10