Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  Miles stared at his wife, incredulous. He had seldom heard her speak at so great a length, and wondered whether it was spontaneous or whether she’d planned it. Either way, he didn’t agree with a word she’d spouted. As far as Miles was concerned, it was all a ghastly, excruciating tragedy and that was that. A tragedy for himself, he meant. Being related to the Cleggs.

  Through a combination of lucky timing and decisive action, Ross heard that the old Allied Carpets superstore in Andover was up for sale and secured it practically overnight from under the noses of PC World and Halfords. The edge-of-town site could scarcely have been more suitable, with ninety thousand square feet of retail space and plentiful parking. Furthermore, it was directly opposite Pendletons. In fact, Freeza Mart would be separated from Pendletons only by a shallow shrubbery of dusty bushes. Ross knew he couldn’t have hoped for a better location for his first venture down south.

  Having discussed strategy with his new investors from Nelson Bluff, Callum Dunlop and Brin Wilson, Ross decided on a PR blitz to get the message across that prices at Freeza Mart would be massively lower than anywhere else in Hampshire. ‘If you can find any item in our store—not just promotional lines—for less within a thirty mile radius, bring it in and we’ll refund the difference twice over,’ was his boast. Radio commercials were recorded, using the popular presenters of Taskforce Garden South, to blanket Radio Andover. Double-page advertisements were created for the local newspapers, starring Ross himself giving the thumbs up to rock bottom prices.

  The culmination of the promotional campaign would be a big launch party, with local dignitaries and celebrities invited, as well as potential customers, featuring a ten-minute trolley-dash of free groceries for shoppers entered into a prize draw.

  As the date of the grand opening approached, Ross began to worry about the launch party and whether it would come up to scratch. Not knowing many people in Hampshire, he was largely reliant on a local PR agency which didn’t fill him with much confidence. Their suggestions for celebrities to open the store were a Fourth Division football player and a daytime weathergirl. Nor could they supply many names for the guest list.

  The store itself, meanwhile, was rapidly taking shape. Following the no-frills policy of his West Midlands outlets, there was minimum investment in shop fittings, with a pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap philosophy prevailing. Escarpments of beers and beans in twenty-four can packs loomed above the aisles, and the wire trolleys made extra robust to cope with bulk shopping. The plate glass windows were pasted with posters promoting cut-price offers, and tannoys regularly announced spot bargains: ‘Value packs of own-brand sweetcorn now on reduction on aisle sixteen.’

  Sharing his concerns about the launch event with Dawn and Gemma, now seven months pregnant and horribly uncomfortable, Ross worried no one would turn up. Dawn, however, said she was sure she could rally support, and spent the afternoon calling her old friends from Droitwich, Vera and Naomi, and her new committee friends from the hospice group. Philippa Mountleigh immediately said she’d love to come along to the opening, and promised to try and bring Johnnie, the Lord Lieutenant, as well. ‘God I’m looking forward to this store. Our grocery bills come to God-knows-what every week. I’m longing for lower prices.’ Bean Winstanton promised to be there too, ‘and would it be awful if I brought Nigel, plus Toby and Shrimp, and our lovely Croatians Stanislav and Vjecke? And we have a houseful of guests staying that weekend, tell me if it’s all too much.’ After that, Dawn rang Davina and explained they were looking for extra people, and Davina immediately said she’d love to come herself, though wasn’t sure Miles would be able to (‘He’s always so busy, I can’t speak for him’), and she’d put together a list of other suggestions. In no time, she’d secured a yes from Ridley Nairn, the MP, and his wife, Suzie, and Davina was thinking of ringing James and Laetitia Pendleton to invite them.

  ‘I’m not sure that would be appropriate, really,’ Dawn said doubtfully. ‘I mean, Ross’s new store is going to be competition for them.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the Pendletons won’t mind that,’ Davina replied. ‘They’re such lovely people. Well, I’ll ask Miles’s opinion when he gets home.’

  They had then talked about poor Gemma and how she was bearing up. Dawn said she was feeling very apprehensive, poor thing, having attended pre-natal classes in Andover and the reality of caring for a new-born was beginning to sink in. Unmentioned between them was the fact that Archie had never once rung her, despite his mother begging him to. Davina didn’t say that Archie was, at that moment, staying up in Yorkshire with a bunch of friends from his house at school, attending various local dances.

  When Miles arrived home at Chawbury that night from a week’s business in Paris and Barcelona, and his wife asked for guest suggestions for Ross’s launch party on Thursday week, he went very quiet and thoughtful. And soon afterwards, in the privacy of his study, made several telephone calls to senior executives of Straker Communications and Pendletons plc. Further conversations took place over the weekend, and by midday on Monday invitations had been designed, addressed and posted out. On Tuesday morning, fifteen hundred of Hampshire’s smartest residents received a personal invitation from Lord Pendleton of Stockbridge to a classical recital by the Philharmonia Orchestra and reception at the Pendletons store in Andover, in honour of the store’s twentieth anniversary. The Pendletons event would directly clash with Ross’s opening

  The first Ross heard about any of this was when he opened up the local newspaper on Thursday. There, splashed across the front page, was a breathless preview of the great Pendletons gala at which every local dignitary was expected ‘including local Member of Parliament Ridley Nairn, the editor of the Andover Daily Echo and, it is rumoured, a member of the royal family.’ Pendletons, the article continued, ‘has been Andover’s favourite shopping destination for twenty years and looks set to remain so for many years to come.’ In an exclusive announcement to the Daily Echo, Pendletons has pledged two hundred and fifty thousand pounds towards a new civic bus shelter and youth-related charities in the area. The Daily Echo says: “Hats off to Pendletons. Happy Birthday and Many Happy Returns!” ’

  Ross summoned his PR agency which reported the Pendletons event was certain to eclipse their own, and they were no longer confident the Freeza Mart opening would generate much coverage at all. ‘And if they bag a royal, all the celebs will go there instead.’

  ‘Well, we’ve already got acceptances from quite a few.’ Ross said. ‘Our MP told Dawn he’s definitely coming. And the Lord Lieutenant. We’ll just have to work that bit harder, that’s all.’

  17.

  Miles had a golden rule that he never, other than in the most exceptional circumstances, indulged in marital infidelity within a fifty-mile radius of Chawbury. To do so, he reasoned, was disrespectful to Davina. On the same principle, he never took girlfriends upstairs at Holland Park Square, preferring to meet in hotels or, better still, abroad.

  The fifty-mile rule was carefully judged, since Chawbury was eighty-five miles from London which meant a long roster of impressive hotels in the Thames Valley were still in-bounds. Clivedon, the old Astor stately home near Taplow, was one of Miles’s favourites for assignations, as was Hartwell House near Aylesbury. Davina often commented on the ridiculous number of work conferences he attended, and wondered whether he couldn’t sometimes miss one or two.

  Generally, however, he chose to meet his mistress of the moment overseas. A long weekend would be tacked on to the end of a business trip, and the lady in question flown out to join him at the Cipriani in Venice or the Villa San Michele in Fiesole. Miles would mention to his PA, Sara White, that ‘Mrs so-and-so will be joining me in Venice on Friday,’ and the necessary flights and reservations would be taken care of. It was implicitly understood that Mrs Straker should never be appraised of the special arrangements.

  Bolstered with self-admiration for his coup in sabotaging Ross’s launch event, Miles spent part of the following week in Turin, pitching for t
he Fiat account. Accompanied by six Straker Communications executives, they made two formal presentations to the Fiat board, but Miles knew that his private dinners with Fiat’s Chairman and CEO, which took place in a suite at the Turin Palace Hotel, were of infinitely greater consequence. His contented mood was enhanced by the prospect of a weekend on Capri with Serena Harden, his on-off mistress.

  Serena was the quintessential candidate for a Miles Straker mistress. For a start, she was very attractive. For another, she was flirtatious. Both of these mattered very much to him. But above all she was grateful. Grateful for the treats, for the luxury hotel suites, for the First Class travel, none of which she would otherwise experience, being married to poor Robin Harden.

  Miles had worked out, many years earlier, exactly what worked and did not work in a mistress. Single women were definitely a no-no. Statistically the easiest to attract, especially beyond the age of thirty-eight, they were also the most dangerous; demented with baby hormones and fear of life alone, they harboured expectations he could never satisfy. The wives of rich men presented a different challenge, because they were less biddable and less impressed by the bonne bouches Miles provided. No, give him for choice the disappointed wife of an unsuccessful man. Give him a woman who felt herself born to better things; who had tasted comfort and luxury early in life, then had them withheld through an ill-judged marriage.

  The Honourable Serena Harden, by Miles’s criteria, ticked every box. The only daughter of a Suffolk peer, raised in a Jacobean farmhouse without a farm near Ipswich, she had been one of the most lusted-after girls of her generation. Vivacious and effervescent, she had stopped traffic with her long red hair and tight leather trousers, and effortlessly accumulated a succession of dashing boyfriends, including the heir to an Earldom, the scion of a Norfolk cider dynasty and a notoriously handsome commercial property whiz. Amongst the rich and raffish group she played with, she was regarded as a diamond girl. When a date was required for a big night at Annabels, or someone to take to Ascot, you could not do better than Serena Britten-Smith, who could be relied upon to show up looking a million dollars. Furthermore, she was perpetually available for fun: she did not work, or anyway had no job that restricted her social life or made it impossible for her to stay out late at midweek parties. For a while, she was a receptionist at Cluttons, the estate agents; later she worked part-time at a jewellery shop in Walton Street, and for an interior decorator behind Harrods. She shared a large, grand, second floor flat with three other girls in Cadogan Square, until one by one the other flatmates became engaged and moved on and out.

  At the age of thirty, she surprised herself by not being married, since she had taken it for granted she would be by then. At thirty-four, following a two year rollercoaster affair with a commodity trader who whisked her off to St Moritz most weekends, she began to wonder what else was out there. At thirty-five, she’d hooked up with a racing trainer until it became clear he’d never leave his wife. At thirty-seven, starting to panic, she became pregnant by Robin Harden.

  Having first met Robin in the company of people she knew to be rich and successful at a dinner at Mortons, she assumed Robin was rich and successful as well. Too late she learnt he attracted bad luck in business like an albatross. Presentably suited, well-spoken, passably handsome, privately educated and with a plausible manner, he had embarked upon a dozen different careers, each ending in failure and disappointment. He had traded bonds, sold equities, become a shipping broker. He had tried his hand at yacht chartering, and at setting up a high-class removals business in central London. He had sold school fees schemes and endowment mortages and attempted to enter the wine trade. At the time he met Serena, he said he was a player in the residential property market, which actually meant renovating a house in Hurlingham, largely single-handedly, for resale.

  By the time Serena discovered all this, it was too late. By then, she was already Mrs Robin Harden. Their son, Ollie, was born four months after the wedding. The child inherited the bright red hair of its mother and the perpetually baffled expression of its father.

  As a bachelor, Robin had lived in a top floor flat in Redcliffe Square, on which he had bought the remaining six years of a lease. It was in this high-ceilinged flat, full of mahogany chests of drawers, un-ironed shirts and a saucer full of cuff links, that Serena had become pregnant. Married with a child, and needing more space, they had sold the place for next to nothing and bought a house in Hammersmith on a thirty-year mortgage. As Robin stumbled from setback to setback, it became a struggle to keep up repayments; the house remained permanently half-decorated with a kitchen Serena hated, and bathrooms she hated more. Having comforted herself that at least when her old parents died she would come into some money, it was a bitter blow when they left practically nothing, once it had been carved up between the taxman, debts, solicitors’ fees and her two brothers. When Robin’s short-lived removals business collapsed, they conceded defeat in London and downscaled to Hampshire, to a rented cottage on the Mountleighs’ estate.

  It was not long after they’d moved in, when Serena was feeling particularly hacked-off with her reduced circumstances, that she met Miles at a drinks party.

  Their affair began almost immediately and always on Miles’s terms. He invited her to lunch in London, and when she hesitated, saying she didn’t really come up to London anymore and the train was too expensive, he’d sent his driver, Makepiece, all the way to collect her from the end of the lane. ‘I won’t ask him to pick you up from your front door, for obvious reasons,’ Miles had said, and in this remark the context of the lunch was defined.

  He had already booked a room for the afternoon at the Connaught, which showed generosity and style, but also arrogance. ‘How did you know I’d agree to come?’ Serena asked him that first afternoon, as they let themselves into the pretty yellow suite.

  ‘I didn’t. But I considered it an odds-on bet.’

  After that, they met every couple of weeks, whenever Miles said his schedule permitted it. He allowed her to buy clothes at the Bond Street boutiques she favoured, which she later told Robin came from a nearly-new charity shop in Andover. And he encouraged her to pursue her former trade as an interior decorator, to provide cover for their assignations and the pretext to travel away from home. Sometimes on Monday evenings, when Davina wasn’t up in London, he took her to the opera and dinner. If they ran into friends, Miles introduced her as ‘our near neighbour Serena Harden. You’ve probably met Serena and Robin at Chawbury with us.’ Serena understood she was never to ring Miles at Chawbury or Holland Park Square, only at the office. And their assignations were initiated solely by Miles, never by her.

  Having once or twice been unavailable to join her lover when he requested her, pleading a school commitment with Ollie or a prior social one with Robin, Serena had witnessed Miles’s petulant displeasure, and having experienced it had no desire to do so again. Now she was permanently at his beck and call.

  The invitation—the command—to come to Capri for the weekend had been issued only four days earlier. Serena and Robin had accepted, long ago, a dinner invitation for that Saturday night from their landlords, Johnnie and Philippa Mountleigh, in the big cold dining room at Stockbridge House. Having attended one of these formal dinners at the Mountleighs before, Serena knew how seriously Philippa took them. Not by nature an enthusiastic hostess, Philippa nevertheless regarded it as her moral duty to entertain in the dining room six times a year, especially now with Johnnie doing his bit as Lord Lieutenant, and that the job be properly done. And so eight couples would sit down to dinner, men in dinner jackets, the Victorian silver candelabra would be brought out of the strong room and polished up, Johnnie decanted his best claret, and Philippa, looking down the table at her guests sitting on the wonky Georgian chairs, wished everyone would go home not too late but at least she’d made the effort and given them all a jolly good dinner.

  How Serena was going to get out of the Mountleighs’ dinner party, which Robin was looking forward to, a
nd what excuse she was going to give for going abroad so abruptly that weekend, she needed to resolve. But the prospect of saying no to Miles was much worse.

  Miles arranged for a business class plane ticket to Naples to be waiting for her at Heathrow, being the best class available on this European hop. She had to admit, it still gratified her in a way she knew was silly and immature to be flying in the front of the plane. When she’d been with Roger, the commodities trader, and they’d been flying to Zurich three weekends in four during the skiing season, they’d always flown First. In fact she’d flown First quite a lot before she was married. But with Robin, if they flew at all, which they didn’t very often, it was always economy. One of the things she definitely liked about Miles was his generosity over plane tickets.

  He was waiting for her at the barrier with a porter ready to carry her luggage. A car was waiting outside the terminal to take them to the port to board the hovercraft over to Capri. Miles barely spoke when she arrived, he seldom did, it was his way. Nor did he embrace her. She asked him, ‘How was Turin? You didn’t say what you were doing there when you rang.’

  ‘Business meetings.’ He shrugged. ‘Not my favourite city, Turin.’ He sat in brooding in silence in the car to the port, and then for the journey across to Capri.

  They arrived at Capri harbour where an open-topped hotel taxi with striped canopy was waiting to take them up the steep hill to Anacapri, and then on to their hotel, the Caesar Augustus, close the summit. Still Miles had barely addressed a word to her.

  On previous trips, Serena was mortified when he’d behaved like this, wondering what she’d done to displease him. Despite regarding herself as a tough nut, she was definitely rattled. He was like a television or a piece of computer equipment, normally operating at full capacity, that had lapsed into sleep mode, and a sinister, passive-aggressive mode at that.