Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  That same night, at the grand gala dinner, Davina had watched her husband at his most brilliant. While Shirley Bassey and Brian Ferry, both flown in as cabaret, performed from an orchid-fringed pagoda beside the largest of the three hotel swimming pools, Miles had held his end of the top table in his thrall, mesmerising Zach Durban and the numerous socialites and tycoons Miles had imported with anecdotes of the powerful. Placed at the furthest end of an inferior table between the Nelson Bluff’s general manager and one of Zach Durban’s bodyguards, Davina had studied him at long distance. Once she had felt able to tell when her husband was being sincere and when he was putting on a show for business reasons. She had admired his ability to connect, when he put his mind to it, with just about anyone, at least for short periods over dinner or at a meeting. Once Miles had told her that, even the very next morning after a dinner, he could scarcely remember the night before, or whom he’d spoken to; yet the people seated next to him were invariably charmed by his attention. Over time Davina reached the conclusion that Miles saw conversation primarily as an opportunity for self-affirmation, as he basked in the admiration flowing his way.

  She could hear him now, down table, telling Zach a story about having breakfast with Rupert Murdoch and Martin Sorrell at the Connaught, and what Rupert had said, and what Martin had said, and what Conrad Black of the Daily Telegraph had said when he’d repeated the conversation verbatim to him over lunch at Mark’s Club the same day, and everyone within a ten-yard orbit was transfixed, nodding and laughing. Once, as a shy person, Davina had envied Miles’s confidence and energy, because she realised it was his dynamism which enabled their family to live as it did. But sometimes she wondered what it was she’d ever liked about it.

  It had been less than a fortnight after the successful launch party for the hotel, which even the normally carping Zach had declared a success, that Straker Communications won the rest of the International Leisure and Casino Group’s account, and took on responsibility for hotels and resorts in Macau, Oman, Mauritius, the Maldives and South Africa itself.

  Now it enraged Miles to think that, of all possible people at the charity garden party, it should be the dreaded Ross Clegg who’d won the free holiday to Nelson Bluff, and that furthermore he was heading there—entirely thanks to Miles—with his unspeakably common family.

  Disembarking from their business class flights from Gatwick to Grantley Adams International airport in Barbados, the Clegg family were in mixed spirits.

  Of the five of them, Dawn and Debbie were in the best form, hardly able to believe their good luck. Ever since the raffle three weeks earlier, they’d been elated, telling absolutely everyone. Debs had told every single girl in her class about the ‘all-expenses-paid trip to a Caribbean six-star hotel’ and became quite annoyed when one of the girls said six-stars didn’t exist, it only went up to five stars, so she had brought in the brochure, which did clearly state six stars, and everyone stared in envious silence at the pictures of a glorious white sandy beach, vast marble lobby, personal Jacuzzis, beach boys offering cold towels and grinning black barmen mixing cocktails. Dawn, meanwhile, had been hardly less excited than her daughter. Having initially wondered whether it was right to accept the prize at all, being one of the organisers, she had discussed her reservations with Davina who had firmly dismissed them, saying, ‘No, don’t be silly, of course you should go, Dawn. You bought the winning ticket, it’s all perfectly fair. You must go. And, anyway, the hotel is giving it all for free, it’s not like it’s costing anybody anything.’

  Miles, who overheard the conversation and would have loved to withhold the Cleggs’ prize, found his wife’s attitude extremely annoying.

  Dawn’s excitement increased with everything she read about the hotel. The Cleggs’ prosperity being only recent and embryonic, they had never previously holidayed further afield than Cyprus and Sharm El-Sheikh, so the prospect of the West Indies thrilled her. Furthermore, the Nelson Bluff was the absolutely in-place. An avid reader of Hello!, she remembered seeing photographs of the launch party with all sorts of celebrities present, and wished now she’d put her copy aside so she could look at it again. To the best of her memory, Joanna Lumley from Absolutely Fabulous had been out there for it, and Shirley Bassey and Aneka Rice, and Tara Palmer Tomkinson, and all manner of socialites and grand folk. Then there had been a boastful review of the food by Michael Winner in the Sunday Times, who’d taken a girlfriend for Easter and bought a two-thousand-pound bottle of wine, and Philippa Mountleigh, who subscribed to Tatler, pointed out a glowing hotel review by Victoria Mather who’d praised the goosedown eiderdowns and five-hundred-thread pillowcases, and singled out Amos the beach boy as Hotel Beach Attendant of the Year.

  Ross spent the entire flight working. If truth be told, this wasn’t an ideal moment for him to be away on holiday, he was right in the middle of a complicated refinancing of his business, with several new investors on the point of deciding whether or not to come in. As he said to his PA, Jacqui, ‘this ruddy prize couldn’t have come at a worse time. But Dawn and the girls will murder me if we don’t go. They’re on about it non-stop.’ So they laid careful plans for documentation to be faxed out, and he could always phone the office if he had to.

  Greg, meanwhile, was torn between the excruciating embarrassment of sitting up front in Business Class, and greedily drinking as many free wines as he could get his mitts on. When a stewardess questioned whether he should really have a seventh mini-bottle, he became belligerent, and Ross had looked up from his briefcase and said, ‘Enough, Greg. You’re being impolite. And thank you, miss, he’s had plenty to drink already.’

  Gemma, breathless and panicking, wondered how she could ever get through the next seven days. No way could she wear a swimsuit, let alone a bikini. She had been examining her stomach in the mirror and it was huge, elephantine. By wearing a lot of loose tops, she could hopefully get away with it, but people were starting to give her funny looks, and her parents would guess in five seconds if they saw her tummy. Also, she’d read in Sugar that flying after the fifth month of pregnancy could damage the baby. What could she do? Switching on the inflight entertainment screen, she tried to concentrate on the film.

  Everyone was blown away by the incredible over-the-top magnificence of the Nelson Bluff. Debbie was so excited she was racing about, saying, ‘Dad, Mum, you’ve got to come and see this’ and ‘Mum, you’ve got to see the spa, you won’t believe it.’ Everything was so luxurious and so perfect. They’d been met at the airport by a white limousine with tinted windows and air-conditioning so cold it was like being driven about inside a fridge. The windows made the outside as dark as night time, when it was actually the middle of the afternoon, and when the doorman opened the door to let them out at the hotel, they were practically blinded by the fierce sunlight. The hotel’s Assistant General Manager, a Swiss-German, greeted them with elaborate ceremony, cold towels and a welcome cocktail called the Nelson Paradise Aloha, made with pineapple and fresh strawberries. ‘It is an honour to welcome friends of Mr Miles Straker to the hotel,’ he said.

  It was the bungalow which astonished them. For a start, it was enormous. ‘I think this is about double the size of our first place in Droitwich,’ Ross said, as three bellboys delivered their luggage, preceded by the Assistant General Manager and the Hospitality Manager, all eager to ensure the Cleggs’ absolute comfort. ‘I must apologise that our Executive General Manager, Mr Küppenkülm, is not available to greet you,’ said the Swiss-German. ‘He will come to meet you tomorrow at your convenience.’

  Dawn, who was keen not to appear unaccustomed to all this bowing and scraping, ignored Ross’s quip about their first place in Droitwich and concentrated on the tour of the bungalow.

  According to Debbie, who was racing ahead exploring, there were ten rooms: ‘Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a lounge, this huge walk-in clothes cupboard as big as a whole room, separate toilet and then, in this little garden, a hot tub which is, like, really boiling. Quick Mum, you�
��ve got to see it.’

  Two minutes later, Debbie reappeared to announce there were eight TVs in the bungalow. ‘I’ve counted. Including one in the toilet. You’ve got to come.’

  No sooner had the reception committee departed, and the Cleggs were unpacking into cedar-lined closets clearly designed for guests bringing half-a-dozen trunks rather than a single suitcase each, there was a tap at the door. This was Joseph—‘Your personal butler’—whose role it emerged was to stick with the Cleggs like a limpet, night and day, during their entire stay, to take care of every whim.

  Dawn became quite flustered at the idea of Joseph, not being able to think of anything they needed, until Ross had the idea of asking him to fill the ice bucket on the drinks tray, and Joseph beetled off looking relieved.

  ‘Now, why don’t you kids go and check out the pool and the beach, while your mum and I finish unpacking?’ Ross said. But Gemma complained of having a stomach ache and didn’t feel like swimming today.

  As the Cleggs quickly discovered, there were so many choices of things to do and eat at Nelson Bluff, you could spend the day in a muddle of indecision. Unable to adapt to local time from British time, Debbie and Gemma were waking at four in the morning and turning on MTV, which echoed through the bungalow. Ross was, in any case, finding it difficult to sleep, being frozen by air con. Each time he thought he’d turned it off in one part of the bungalow (no easy task, there being a dozen different remote controls for the TVs, DVDs, electric drapes and temperature control), it had come back on in another. It took several days to discover Joseph was rebooting it, each time they stepped outside.

  By half-past seven each morning, the Cleggs were the first family waiting outside the buffet breakfast restaurant, having already been awake three hours and starving hungry. Inside, half a dozen chefs in whites and toques were on standby to cook omelettes and bacon. Others were stationed behind ice-beds of exotic cut-up fruit and displays of imported sushi, and trestles covered with sweating German cheeses, salamis, eight different kinds of Danish pastries and Barbadian corn breads. Feeling increasingly nauseous, Gemma forced herself to eat a slice of pineapple. With her customary self-control, Dawn took two Ryvitas and a glass of orange juice. Ross and Greg had the full fry-up, while Debbie tried a little bit of everything and left most of it on her plate.

  After breakfast each day, they gravitated to one of three enormous infinity swimming pools, or sat under straw umbrellas on the beach. Whichever they chose, Joseph soon found them, awaiting his orders for the day. It would be his pleasure, he said, to organise a castaway picnic with vintage claret on a neighbouring sandbank, or a special de-stress seven-steps spa programme lasting an entire day. Increasingly stressed by Joseph’s persistent stalking, Dawn felt she was just about ready for the treatment. Ross stepped in, dispatching Joseph to refill the ice bucket.

  One lunchtime, the Executive General Manager of the hotel, Fritz Küppenkülm, came to the table and said, ‘I trust you are having an enjoyable stay. I have taken the liberty of faxing Mr Straker, and telling him his guests are enjoying full VIP upgrades.’

  When he received the fax at his office, Miles snarled, having never requested any special courtesies for the Cleggs.

  By the middle of the week, Dawn had got quite into her stride and was having a blissful time. The hotel was everything she had hoped it would be. As she said to Ross, ‘I could easily get used to this.’ She loved looking at the other guests in the dining rooms or by the pool, wondering who they were. Some she felt she half recognised—she swore she knew that face—though whether they were on TV or she’d seen them in Hello!, she couldn’t be certain. She loved the way everyone dressed up to the nines at night—the most lovely gowns came out—not to mention jewellery she’d be nervous to travel with. Her one regret—well, two regrets—was that she hadn’t brought more evening clothes with her, and only two swimsuits. Most of the ladies appeared at the pool in a different swimsuit every day, and it was embarrassing wearing the same two in rotation. In the end, Ross told her, ‘Go on Dawn, take a look in the hotel boutique and see if they’ve got anything you like, I’ll treat you,’ but the cheapest costume cost $650, and she wasn’t paying that, even for a designer one.

  Dawn was also worried Greg looked scruffy all the time, especially in the La Dolce Vita Italian restaurant in the evening, which was silver service and had a dress code. She’d been on at him all week, but he wouldn’t put a tie on, and you could see the head-waiter looking at them. She hoped it didn’t get back to Davina he’d shown them up.

  And then there was Gemma. Dawn was becoming seriously worried about Gems. She’d been under the weather for weeks, not her normal happy self at all, and so uncommunicative. Of course it was partly her age. You couldn’t expect a sixteen-year-old to act the sweet little girl they were accustomed to. But, nonetheless, she missed the old Gemma. And she’d put on quite a bit of weight recently, which she was clearly embarrassed about, poor love, because she wouldn’t even wear a swimsuit, just sat about looking hot. Dawn wondered whether all the upheaval of moving house had upset her. Poor Gems. It would have been better, really, if they’d stayed put in Droitwich, but it was all for Ross’s work, which had to come first.

  Ross, it so happened, was getting a lot more out of Nelson Bluff than he’d ever expected. Fed-up after two days of frying by the pool, he’d taken to using the hotel gym for a work-out each morning and soon got talking to other guests using the Cybex machines. There was a Glaswegian retail entrepreneur he got on well with, Callum Dunlop, who’d brought the JG SweatMax brand to Britain, and another guy, Brin Watkins, who’d founded and later sold the GrowPoints customer loyalty card programme. Both were evidently very rich men with time on their hands, who quickly got interested in the potential of Ross’s Freeza Mart. After four long gym sessions, Ross had found two major new investors who furthermore were giving him a lot of useful advice and contacts. Ross made a mental note to thank Miles next time he saw him, because this Caribbean holiday was going to make a big difference to the business.

  Fired up with enthusiasm, Ross had the idea of inviting his new friends, Callum and Brin, to join them for dinner, along with their respective other halves, to toast their new business association. Dawn, who had been surreptitiously eyeing up the immaculate Heather Dunlop by the pool all week, was quite excited by the idea, and the three Clegg children were made to promise to be polite to the guests at dinner, which would take place in the French La Bagatelle d’Or, the most exclusive of all the hotel restaurants. Greg, while signalling his disapproval of his dad’s new capitalist cronies, reluctantly agreed to put on a tie for the occasion, and the girls all appeared looking their best in Matalan cocktail dresses. Dawn spent the afternoon at the spa having her hair done plus full manicure and pedicure, and bought a new pair of white evening sling-backs in the boutique, which were difficult to walk in. Ross couldn’t help feeling proud of his little family as they set off, bronzed and glowing and enveloped in scent, along the low-lit pathways from their bungalow to the restaurant.

  ‘I bet this is going to be a really plonking evening,’ Greg said. ‘This tie’s strangling my neck, I can hardly breathe.’

  ‘That’s enough, Greg,’ Ross said. ‘It’s going to be a nice occasion. No one’s going to spoil it.’

  They rendezvoused for pre-dinner drinks at the Frigate Bar where Dawn initially found herself slightly in awe of Heather Dunlop, who had her hair up on top of her head, which showed off her pendulous pair of pink diamond earrings. And then Brin introduced his new partner, Chantelle, a slinky bottle-blonde half his age who looked like a pole dancer, and turned out to be exactly that, cheerfully declaring she had met Brin at Spearmint Rhino. ‘He slipped a fifty-quid note down my thong. We hit it off right away.’ Greg couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Soon they progressed in to dinner at La Bagatelle d’Or, which turned out to be a large, circular, goldy-beige room, with goldy-beige carpet, goldy-beige tablecloths, goldy-beige chairs and diaphanous goldy-beige
net curtains covering every window and totally obscuring the view. At the entrance by the captain’s desk was an elaborate arrangement of imported flowers and ferns, and further displays in ornamental urns were strategically placed throughout the room. Heather mentioned that La Bagatelle d’Or was her favourite restaurant at the resort, and that she and Callum ate there most evenings. As usual the air-con was turned up to polar and Debbie wished she’d brought a sweater.

  The menu, which ran to sixteen pages, was printed on beige parchment like Egyptian papyrus, bound in purple crocodile, with a minimum of three lines of description for every dish, plus the sommelier’s special recommendations for wine to accompany each one. Gemma didn’t know where to begin, it was all incomprehensible. She was already feeling nauseous, and the only words she could recognise on the menu were lobster and langoustines, both of which made her feel like throwing up. All she wanted was a bowl of spaghetti or a burger. No, not even that. She didn’t want anything.

  A French headwaiter appeared in a goldy-beige linen jacket, flanked by two black waiters to announce the specials. He could particularly recommend the grilled lobster, swordfish and scallop kebab, served on a bed of saffron rice with a sauce of sweet sauternes and raspberries. Gemma felt her stomach turn. Suddenly she felt very ill indeed. Her forehead was damp with sweat, even in this icy room. She felt giddy.

  Orders were placed and a phalanx of waiters appeared to clear away the decorative place settings in front of them, and replace them with a fresh set to eat off. Meanwhile, the three businessmen were setting the conversational agenda, with Callum and Brin bragging about deals they’d been involved in, and other retail tycoons they were good mates with, and the margin on this High Street business and that. Apart from very expensive wine, which both men had a passion for, all they talked about was retail and how different brands were faring. Dawn got quite muddled as they jumped between Dixons and Comet, Pendletons and Primark. But Ross, she was impressed to see, easily kept his end up.