Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  The hotel was typical of the places Miles liked: five-stars, civilised and deferential, with large suites, marble bathrooms and long views. The view from the Caesar Augustus was especially magnificent; from the terrace was a panorama of the whole of the bay of Naples with Mount Vesuvius smoking gently on the horizon, and Sorrento and the island of Ischia just visible in the haze. Speed boats and superyachts criss-crossed the bay.

  They were shown to their suite and, immediately they were alone, Miles commanded her, as she knew he would, to strip naked and lie face up on the linen bedcover. He made no effort to undress himself, though he unbuckled his watch—a Patek Philippe with leather strap—placing it on the dressing table.

  Assessing her critically on the bed, he said, ‘Not bad. A pound, two pounds overweight would we say? And your bush needs trimming.’

  Very slowly and carefully, he removed his suit trousers and boxers and folded them over a hanger. Then, menacingly erect, he rolled on top of her.

  Afterwards he padded into the bathroom, pulled on one of the hotel’s towelling robes, combed his hair, and picked up his mobile. ‘Find me by the pool in an hour,’ he told her. ‘I’ve got calls to make.’ They were almost the first words he’d addressed to her since she landed.

  Revitalised and freshly alert after sex, Miles settled himself on a sunbed and made four calls in quick succession. The first was to Ridley Nairn, the Member of Parliament whose campaign literature was designed and distributed by Straker Communications. After an exchange of pleasantries about Suzie and Davina, Miles said, ‘Reason I’m calling you on a Saturday, Ridley, is a slightly sensitive one. I know you’ve accepted to attend the Pendletons’ Twentieth Anniversary event on Thursday, but I hear you might also be going to Ross Clegg’s Freeza Mart launch.’

  Ridley replied, yes, he’d intended looking in on both events, since they were so close.

  ‘Be a sensible fellow and give the Freeza Mart thing a miss,’ Miles said. ‘James Pendleton wouldn’t like it if you went, and you know how his lordship can be if he’s unhappy. Gets things out of proportion. And he’s told me he wants you at his own party from start to finish.’

  Ridley sounded uncomfortable, and said something about having promised he’d put his face in at Freeza Mart and how he had an obligation to treat all businesses in the constituency equally.

  ‘Well, it’s your decision, of course,’ Miles said. ‘But I shall have to report back to James. As you know he’s a major donor to the Tories. And he was just about to issue Suzie with a Pendletons’ gold card too, which entitles you to forty percent off at all their supermarkets … I must tell you, Ridley, as your political mentor, I think you’re making a mistake. I’d reconsider if I were you.’

  Ridley agreed to reconsider.

  ‘Well, ring me later and let me know your decision,’ Miles said. ‘I’ll be speaking to James tomorrow at noon.’

  After that, Miles rang the Mountleighs and had a similar conversation with Johnnie. ‘As Lord Lieutenant,’ Miles told him, ‘Lord Pendleton expects to see you at the anniversary party. Confidentially, Princess Margaret’s agreed to honour us, so you’ll be there all morning in your official capacity in any case. You and Philippa too, of course.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to speak to Philippa. Not now though, she’s in a frightful bate. A couple who were meant to be coming to dinner tonight pulled out at the last minute. Invited them months ago too. Bloody rude. You probably know them … Serena and Robin Harden.’

  Miles sounded vague. ‘The redhead with the leather trousers?’

  ‘That’s the one. Lives in one of our cottages too. Philippa’s gone ballistic.’

  After that, Miles rang the Winstantons to say there was a chance Bean might be needed for the line-up to meet Princess Margaret, but he didn’t know the precise time, so could she be on standby at Pendletons the whole morning.

  After that, he rang Davina to say negotiations at Fiat were dragging on and he doubted he’d now get away before Monday afternoon. ‘So while you’re all swimming and playing croquet at Chawbury, you can think of me cooped up in this ruddy industrial town in back-to-back meetings.’

  Serena joined him at the pool. As usual following their first, always emotionally disengaged, sexual encounter of any trip, she was feeling used. At these moments she questioned what she was even doing here with Miles, and what sort of Faustian pact it was she had entered into. She thought of the lies she’d resorted to, to make it here at all. Philippa had been distinctly cool when she’d rung her with an excuse about confusion over dates, and how she’d long ago promised to meet a potential decorating client with a villa in Italy.

  ‘How come I’ve never heard about this friend before?’ Robin had asked.

  ‘You don’t know half my clients,’ Serena snapped back. ‘If we could afford a house large enough to invite them to, you would know them.’

  His phone calls completed, Miles’s mood brightened. Serena had observed this pattern before: after a period of intense work, like the past few days in Turin, his reserves of energy were temporarily depleted, leaving him introverted and remote. Nothing could shift it except impersonal love-making, followed by more work. And then like sunshine emerging from thunderclouds, the charming, attractive Miles reasserted itself.

  Now he was full of self-esteem. As they had baths and changed for dinner, he regaled her with his strategies for sabotaging Ross’s party. ‘A subtle word here, a little pressure there,’ he told her. ‘I don’t think you’ll be seeing Ridley Nairn at the Freeza Mart bash. Or the Mountleighs. And it was a masterstroke wheeling out Princess Margaret. Pendletons have put half a million into the Royal Ballet School. So she owes us a favour.’

  They ate outside at the Lucullo restaurant on a candlelit terrace overlooking an inky-black sea. They drank martinis, and then Miles chose a particularly splendid bottle of wine, with each glass feeling more relaxed and expansive. He told Serena about other famous, successful people he’d had breakfast and lunch with since they’d last been together, and what Maurice Saatchi privately thought about the Tories’ current electoral prospects, and how the Bernie Ecclestone business had damaged New Labour more deeply than they’d appreciated and how it was the harbinger of further New Labour financial scandals to come. He mentioned he would be in Dubai in October for the opening of Zach Durban’s marina and resort, and perhaps Serena would like to accompany him, since the opening clashed with his daughter Mollie’s college open day, which Davina was making a ridiculous fuss about and refusing to miss.

  At some point during every meal Miles always asked after Serena’s unfortunate husband. Ostensibly showing commendable concern for his mistress’s spouse, he in fact took ghoulish pleasure in hearing Serena describe how hopeless Robin was, since it contrasted so starkly with his own spectacular success. ‘Remind me what he’s up to now,’ Miles said, savouring a balloon of after-dinner cognac. ‘I can’t remember whether he’s still selling life insurance or renting out gin palaces.’

  ‘Neither, sadly,’ Serena replied. ‘Both bombed. He’s got some new scheme for selling fermented chicken shit and mustard oil as fuel. Apparently it works. Or he thinks it might. He’s got in with some guy in the pub, they meet to discuss it every night.’

  Miles chuckled indulgently. ‘Well, if he needs any help, get him to ring me. John Browne at BP is a friend, I’m sure he’d be happy to give Robin advice, or at least put him in touch with his research people.’

  Serena squeezed his hand across the table. Miles was a bastard, of course, but sometimes, on evenings like this, she found him irresistible. The food and wine and the warm, balmy island air helped her forgive his earlier behaviour. Eating on the terrace with its tables of well-groomed Italian guests made her feel glamorous for the first time in months. She thought of what she’d left behind this morning in Hampshire: the two-bedroomed labourer’s cottage—Grooms Cottage, where the stablegirls had lived in the days when the Mountleighs still kept horses at Stockbridge House—with its cramped, cold kitch
en and dark sitting room. She thought of Ollie tucked up in bed upstairs and felt a twinge of guilt, but not a prolonged one. She justified herself that she always returned from escapades with Miles feeling so much happier—bucked-up—which made her much nicer to Robin. Poor Robin. He would probably be lurking in the kitchen now, eating toast (he could get through a loaf in a sitting, slice after slice, smothered with jam) or maybe his mate from the pub would be at Grooms Cottage for a drink, and they’d be fantasising about the fortune they were going to make from chicken poo petrol.

  Miles was telling her more about Ross, ‘dreadful little creep with a limp’ and how he’d skewered him over the store opening. ‘He’s going to be a very lonely man come Thursday morning. By the time I’ve finished, he’ll be just about the only person at his own opening party.’

  Serena said, ‘I’ve heard he’s got quite a nice wife and kids, that’s what Philippa Mountleigh says. Pretty daughters.’

  Miles bristled. ‘I wouldn’t say any of them are much to write home about. I won’t go into it, but take it from me the elder daughter’s a manipulative little minx. She’s caused a great deal of trouble, that one.’

  Then he stood up, and announced with an anticipatory leer that it was bedtime for both of them.

  18.

  Dawn was dreading the opening party for Ross’s new superstore. Partly because she feared it might be a failure, which would be a knock-back for Ross, and partly because she’d secretly love to have been going to the Pendletons’ one instead, which everyone was talking about.

  For a week now, all she’d heard was Pendletons, Pendletons, Pendletons. Getting a blow dry and her colour done for Ross’s party, there were three very smart-looking women in the salon, all going to the Pendletons thing and having their hair done specially. And when they’d stopped at the garage to buy petrol, the man behind the till had said, ‘You’re looking very dressy, ladies. Off to the big do at Pendletons, are you?’

  ‘No, actually,’ Dawn replied. ‘We’re going to the Clegg’s Freeza Mart opening.’ She enunciated the word ‘Clegg’ very clearly, hoping he might notice her name on the credit card and make the connection.

  ‘Don’t know about that one,’ he replied dully. ‘I thought you’d be going to Pendletons. They’ve got the Queen opening it, so I’ve heard.’

  The more she heard about it, the more Dawn wished she was going. It sounded such a classy affair. Not only this classical orchestra brought specially from London, but a champagne reception which was all going to be photographed for the newspapers, and there was a rumour Hello! was sending down a photographer to cover it too. Freeza Mart’s own efforts to secure the local newspapers, freesheets and county magazine, Hampshire Life, had ended in failure, since all said they’d made agreements to cover Pendletons exclusively, and anyway had nobody spare to send. According to Philippa Mountleigh, who had rung up in a state of total embarrassment, Johnnie could no longer come, being tied up with Lord Lieutenantly duties greeting Princess Margaret. ‘I’m supposed to be on duty all day myself too, but I’m going to sneak out and come and see your lovely new shop.’ Even more annoyingly, the local MP, Ridley Nairn, cried off on a pretext without even the good grace to ring up himself, leaving it to his tax-efficient PA-cum-wife, Suzie.

  ‘Who actually is coming to ours then?’ Dawn asked despairingly at the final debrief with the public relations people. ‘I haven’t spent all afternoon at the salon just to party with Ross, you know. We could do that at home at the Park, we’ve got the space.’

  But Ross reassured her at least one hundred and twenty people were confirmed acceptances, including two coaches full of Freeza Mart staff from other branches and head office. ‘And there’s the minibus Vera’s bringing down,’ with a dozen mates from the Midlands.

  ‘Well, it’ll be nice to see the old gang again,’ Dawn said doubtfully, wondering how her old friends would mix with Philippa Mountleigh, if Philippa ever made it, which Dawn now slightly hoped she wouldn’t.

  ‘And the band should get the joint jumping,’ Ross said. His agency had hired a country music group, fronted by a Dolly Parton look-alike, which they swore was excellent and normally played dancehalls and ice rinks in Portsmouth and Southampton. ‘And with luck there’ll be some genuine customers. That’s what it’s all about.’ For days, between bouts of intensive training on the new swipe-and-pay checkouts, Freeza Mart staff had been handing out invitations in the High Street, urging people to come along and maybe win a trolley-dash.

  ‘If you ask me,’ Ross declared, ‘Our event is going to be every bit as good as this Pendletons junket. And once people clock the price deferential, they’ll be coming over in droves. Some of the prices at Pendletons, they must be having a laugh. Seventy-nine pence for two hundred millilitre Fruits of the Forest yoghurt? We’re doing them for thirty-eight pence, providing you buy a dozen.’

  Both events were scheduled to kick-off at eleven a.m., and by ten-to-eleven Dawn, Gemma and Debbie were standing outside the trolley park waiting for Freeza Mart to open its doors. A handful of prospective customers were hanging about, some clutching handbills distributed earlier in the week, entitling them to enter the draw for the trolley-dash. To be precise, there were five punters in the queue: two old women, a single mum with a snotty-nosed toddler, and a gormless young man with a mullet haircut.

  ‘I can see Dad inside,’ Debbie said excitedly. Her nose was pressed against the glass doors and she’d spotted Ross making a final inspection of the aisles with the branch manager, who was holding a clipboard.

  But Dawn’s attention was focused on the far side of the car park where a succession of increasingly smart cars were drawing up outside Pendletons. There was a strip of red carpet across the pavement, which a man was vacuuming in readiness for the royal visit. Dawn couldn’t see very clearly, but she thought there were half a dozen waitresses lined up holding trays of champagne. And she spotted a specially cordoned-off area for photographers, packed with cameramen and TV crews filming guests as they arrived. On both sides of the entrance, metal crash barriers had been erected and already five hundred locals were pressing forwards waiting to catch a glimpse of Princess Margaret.

  ‘When are they going to open the doors, Mum? I’m bored.’ Debbie was breathing onto the plate glass windows so they misted up, and playing noughts and crosses against herself on the pane. Gemma, feeling horribly bloated, leant against a concrete tub which had been planted out the previous day with geraniums. The queue outside Freeza Mart now reduced from five people to four, the gormless young man having shuffled over to Pendletons, attracted by photographers’ flashbulbs.

  Inside the store, Ross was furious. The country music band had turned up very late, and furthermore proved to be a transvestite act, a fact of which his PR people had been entirely oblivious, despite having booked them. The five hairy men were now in make-up, changing into Dolly Parton costumes.

  Meanwhile, a celebrity weathergirl from BBC Winchester’s Daytime Round-up had arrived and was impatient to get on with the ribbon-cutting ceremony, so she could make it over to Pendletons in time for the concert.

  ‘Do you think we should delay another ten minutes, Ross? There isn’t much of a crowd yet,’ suggested the useless PR person, Lysette.

  ‘Five minutes, no longer,’ Ross said. ‘We can’t keep people hanging about.’ He was still hoping the coaches of Freeza Mart employees would turn up; they’d been gridlocked in traffic on the M25.

  Across the car park, Dawn could see a reception committee of dignitaries forming up on the red carpet, including the Lord Lieutenant, Ridley Nairn the MP, and a stout gentleman in chains of office, the Mayor of Andover. And now, emerging from inside the store, was Miles with Davina, escorting a very distinguished-looking couple who must be Lord and Lady Pendleton. Lady Pendleton looked very stylish, Dawn thought, though personally she’d have chosen to wear something more eye-catching than a navy blue suit and matching hat.

  Her view was now obstructed by two enormous coaches pulling u
p at the kerb, belching diesel exhaust. It was the Freeza Mart delegation from the Midlands, two hours late and frazzled from the journey, and bursting for the lavatory ‘because there were no facilities on board and the driver wouldn’t stop for a toilet break, we were that late,’ moaned one of Ross’s employees. But the injection of an additional seventy people in the queue made a big difference, and Ross breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Let them in now,’ he told the PR people.

  The doors were unlocked and a ribbon stretched across the entrance for the weathergirl to cut and declare the supermarket officially open for business. Ross was handed a microphone, and Gemma and Debbie looked on proudly as their Dad began a speech of welcome, saying how proud he was to have brought Freeza Mart to the town, and how he hoped they would appreciate his low, low prices. He was introducing the weathergirl when an enormous cheer erupted across the car park, and a tall black Daimler with royal insignia drew up at the red carpet. Now four buglers from the Household Cavalry sounded a fanfare as the royal personage stepped out of the car, and an orchestra struck up the national anthem. Everyone outside Freeza Mart immediately turned round to cop a look at her.

  Miles, stationed between Laetitia Pendleton and Davina in the receiving line, saw what was happening and smiled. Everything was going perfectly to plan. And there were plenty more surprises to come.

  As the tiny figure of Princess Margaret disappeared into the crowd outside Pendletons, the seventy Freeza Mart employees plus thirty or forty members of the public flooded into Ross’s store, heading for the trestle table where coffee, drinks and plates of promotional snacks were laid out. Ross was in his element, greeting customers and personally escorting them around the aisles, showing them where the chill cabinets were sited and the glass-fronted freezers full of oven-ready crinkle fries and breaded scampi. The managers of his stores in Telford, Redditch, Coventry and Solihull, some of whom had been working for Ross for ten years or more, all expressed admiration for the new electronic point-of-sale replenishment systems and wondered when their own stores would be similarly upgraded. Dawn was doing her bit, chatting up Ross’s executives and his PA, Jacqui, who had inherited Dawn’s own role as Ross’s secretary when she finally stopped work after Debbie was born. Jacqui was one of the few people Ross had taken into his confidence over Gemma’s situation, and she pressed a plastic bag into Dawn’s hands containing an elaborately wrapped parcel with silver ribbon. ‘Baby clothes,’ she mouthed. ‘For the little newborn when it arrives.’