‘EEs?’
‘Eastern Europeans. They have their own agencies, run by their own people. Best to steer clear.’
Sam sensed Mike staring at her hungrily, which made her uncomfortable.
‘How much experience do you have?’ Pat asked.
‘I … haven’t done anything like this before. But … I’ve had some boyfriends.’
Pat cackled. ‘I assumed that, darling. You’ve got a valid passport?’
‘Yes.’ She sounded surprised, so Pat said, ‘Quite a lot of our business is overseas. Europe mostly: Brussels, Paris, Bruges, they’re the main ones. International businessmen wanting overnighters. So you have to be prepared to travel at short notice.’
‘That’d be fine, I think.’ Sam thought: it would actually be better, doing it abroad, less tacky, less chance of anyone knowing.
‘Is there anything you won’t do in the bedroom?’
‘I’m … I’m not sure. I don’t think so. What sort of things do you mean?’
Pat handed her a card like a short menu with various sexual activities written on it, several in acronyms, largely meaningless to Sam: OWO, GFE, CIM.
‘I … I’m sorry, I don’t know what all these stand for exactly.’
‘She’s awfully posh, isn’t she?’ Pat said to Mike, approvingly. ‘I think we know a few people who are going to be very happy bunnies.’ Then, to Sam, ‘You’re discreet, I assume? That’s very important. You may meet clients you recognise from television or sports. Not a word to anyone, including the other girls. You’re ok with threesomes, I take it?’
Sam mumbled something about having never tried.
‘Sheltered, isn’t she?’ Pat said, cackling again. ‘Go on, Mike, you’re on now, you lazy slob.’ Then she said, ‘Mike’s going to give you your test, check everything’s working and in the right places. Right, Mike? Use the room at the back, I’ve shut the cat in the front one. It’s scratching itself demented and the furniture. Fleas must’ve come back.’
Mike pushed his chair slowly back from the table, and directed Samantha to the little back bedroom with the pink candlewick bedspread and the towel.
Archie surprised himself by ringing Gemma. He was sitting at a pavement table outside the Café Rouge, drinking cappuccino and editing the address book on his phone, when he spotted her number. Seconds later he’d pressed Call.
He heard the ringtone—ring once, ring twice—and remembered how cute she was. How long was it since she showed up at the club? A week maybe. He’d thought about her quite a few times since, wondering if she’d come again. He’d been keeping a look out.
The number went to voicemail, her sweet, eager tone: ‘Hello, you’ve reached Gemma and Mandy. I’m afraid we’re away from our phone at present, but if you leave a message for us, we’ll call you back as soon as we can. Byeeeeee!’
‘Hi, this is Archie. I’m calling for no reason. Ring me if you want, it’s not important, no problem.’
Thirty seconds later Gemma was on the line. ‘Hi, Archie. I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to the phone, I’m in Freeza Mart with Mandy, I couldn’t find my mobile in my handbag.’
‘Yeah, well, I was just calling you. Like you said.’
‘It’s lovely to hear you. Do you want to come over? For tea, or I can get some wine?’
He consented to visit her the next day at four o’clock in Roupell Street, half wondering what the hell he thought he was doing. That night, at supper with his parents in Holland Park Square, Miles was having a go at the Cleggs as usual. He had taken exception to their new garden furniture in the private patch behind their house on the communal garden: a table, benches and chairs in a too-new, too-bright cherry wood.
‘It’ll quickly fade,’ Davina said. ‘Wood always looks like that when it’s new. By next summer you won’t be able to tell.’
Miles looked sceptical. ‘I hope it doesn’t mean they’ll be sitting outside all the time. Knowing Ross, he’ll have one of those gas-fired barbecues out there next, flipping beef burgers with his cronies. Where’ve you put those garden by-laws? Barbecues are banned, aren’t they? Certainly should be.’
‘Darling, I’m not even going to answer,’ Davina said. ‘You know perfectly well they’re lovely neighbours. And Ross hardly even uses the garden, I’ve only seen him out there a couple of times all year.’
‘That doesn’t come as any surprise,’ Miles declared. ‘People like the Cleggs never go in for fresh air. It makes you wonder why they bother having a country place at all. They don’t go on walks, don’t get involved in country pursuits. They sit in front of a giant TV screen and could be anywhere!’
‘Now you really are being silly. Dawn rides every day at Chawbury, and Debbie their youngest was eventing to county standard. She still rides when she’s home, though she’s working very hard at her hotel so she’s away most of the time.’
‘Debbie indeed,’ said Miles. ‘She’s the one who got Archie into trouble that time isn’t she?’ Turning to Archie, he said, ‘Wasn’t she called Debbie? The tart who threw herself at you?’
‘No, it was … her sister,’ Archie replied, not wanting to become embroiled.
‘Plump girl. I think I’ve seen her in the garden tottering about on stilettos.’
Archie made no reply, knowing he would be visiting her the following afternoon, and surprised by how much he was looking forward to it.
Debbie was in a serious quandary, and they’d allowed her only until the end of the week to decide. She had to call Hans-Peder at six p.m. French time, which was five p.m. English time, to say whether or not she was accepting the position, which would be a major life-changing step into a strange country. What made it so difficult was that she still loved her current job and didn’t want to let anyone down. The staff at the Buckingham Park had become like second family and the management had given her so many her new responsibilities and opportunities. She doubted many hotels would have allowed a trainee, with barely eighteen months experience, to oversee events in the banqueting suite, from liaising with the clients to ensuring everything ran perfectly on the day. Almost single-handedly, she’d organised an incentive conference, a clay pigeon shooting competition with dinner for Buckinghamshire Mercedes-Benz dealerships, and a luncheon club for two hundred local ladies, which involved pre-lunch cocktails and canapés in the conservatory followed by a three-course meal and petits fours in the Stoke Poges Suite.
It was all her own fault she was in this predicament, of course. She’d spotted the advertisement in Caterer and Hotelkeeper and, in a moment of blind ambition, sent off her CV, never imagining she’d hear anything back. Applying for a job at the Hotel Meurice in Paris was like flying to the moon, it just wasn’t going to happen. She’d looked the place up in several guides before firing off her letter, and it seemed incredible: right in the middle of the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Louvre and the Jardins de Tuileries, it was more like a palace than a hotel, with frescoed ceilings in the public rooms, marble floors and gilded pillars. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to work there—scary, probably—but it would be an incredible experience, and a great thing to have on your CV, to be able to say you’d worked at the six-star Meurice.
Before she could think better of it, she’d composed her application on Buckingham Park Hotel letterhead. Later, she’d walked down into the village to the post box.
For four weeks she heard nothing and had practically forgotten about it, when she received the letter inviting her to a preliminary interview in London. The assistant general manager of the Meurice, accompanied by someone from HR, would be meeting candidates at the Strand Palace Hotel. Feeling awfully guilty in case any of her workmates should find out, Debbie took the coach up to town on her day off, brushing up her GCSE French from a phrase-book on the way. To her relief, the interview was conducted in English anyway, though they did ask about her French speaking skills and she was able to exchange a few confident sentences. She felt she’d got on rather well with her interviewers, especially th
e assistant general manager, Hans-Peder Herrmann, who turned out not to be French at all but Swiss, from Lausanne. Consequently, she’d been slightly disappointed to hear nothing from them for a further three weeks. Then the phone call came asking her back for a second interview, at the worst possible moment, since she was down to do a double shift that afternoon, but somehow she’d switched things about and made it to the meeting. This time she had been told to bring her passport with her, and she quickly got the impression she was part of a very short shortlist. By the end of the interview, Hans-Peder had offered her a job as a junior trainee manager on a salary slightly below what she was paid already, and told her to let him know by Friday night.
During the journey back to High Wycombe she alternated between elation—she’d been offered a management position in Paris at the Hotel Meurice—and a terrible foreboding at the prospect of telling anyone at the Buckingham Park. Worse, she didn’t know if she even wanted to go. She worried she’d be lonely in a foreign city where she knew nobody, and she knew she would miss her family.
On the evening before she had to make up her mind, she rang her Dad and had a really long heart-to-heart. Afterwards, she felt a lot better, and saw things a lot more clearly. He was amazing like that, he always gave the impression of having all the time in the world for you, and his advice was so sensible.
So, just before the deadline, she hid herself away in a vacant hotel bedroom, took a deep breath and rang the number she’d been given in Paris. Having made her decision, she knew it was the right one, and felt quite lightheaded. Five minutes afterwards, she told her sister on the phone, ‘Guess what Gemma? I’m going to live in Paris.’
43.
Your table’s confirmed at George Club for eight thirty this evening,’ reported Sara White, Miles’s senior PA, as he returned from lunch, ‘and Lord Pendleton’s office has emailed over details for the shoot this Saturday.’
Shooting at Longparish Priory was one of the great treats of Miles’s life. James invited him as his guest every year and it was always a day to savour. Every aspect of the shoot was perfection: by general consent, the drives at Longparish Priory were among the prettiest in England, with high beech woods above steep grassy banks providing famously challenging sport. It had been James’s father, David Pendleton, a mad keen shot, who had bought the estate and pumped fortunes into it to turn it into one of the great Hampshire sporting estates. His eldest son had never been nearly so keen, but kept the shoot running out of respect to the memory of his father, and because it was there, and because he could easily afford to do so. There were six fulltime keepers at Longparish Priory and, on shoot days, more beaters than at any other shoot in the county: Miles liked to comment it resembled the classic scene in Zulu where the savages appear on the ridge, when James Pendleton’s beaters emerged at the completion of a drive.
Not only was the shooting first rate, but so was the networking. In his modest, haphazard way, Lord Pendleton knew everybody and the other guns frequently included the great and the good, though there was no pattern to this. One time it would mostly be neighbours shooting, or one or other of the Pendleton brothers, or James’s son Hugh and his friends; another day, your fellow guns would be bigwigs from Lazards, General Electric or Vodafone, and sometimes royals or shadow cabinet ministers. Miles knew many of them already, but others he didn’t, and he regarded the Pendleton shoot as a valuable source of new contacts. He told his executives he’d won more business over shooting lunches at Longparish Priory than by any other means.
Settling himself in front of his computer, he opened the email his PA had forwarded to his screen. What interested him was the list of other guns. Scrolling down the message, he smiled: this was going to be one of the better days, plenty of good people coming. Then he stopped dead: no, it was unbearable. Ross Clegg was shooting this Saturday.
With leaden heart, Miles drove over from Chawbury to Long-parish with his shotguns in the boot of the Jensen. Of course, he knew Ross had been taking shooting lessons, but assumed he was still on clays. It hadn’t entered his head he might surface at a proper gentlemens’ shoot. Accelerating through the Doric lodge gates and up the mile-long drive past Laetitia’s rustic fishing lodge, Miles was in a seriously filthy mood. Passing the front of the house, he took the fork in the drive to the cobbled stable yard with its clock tower and garages where the guns gathered for the day. Already half a dozen Mercedeses and Range Rovers were parked up with men in plus-fours assembling their shotguns and filling up cartridge bags; loaders with grizzled grey beards were congregating with the pickers-up and gundogs. Normally, Miles relished this picturesque English sight, but today it was undermined by the presence of Ross clambering awkwardly from his jeep and limping over to greet his host.
As Miles parked, he heard someone say in a joshing voice, ‘Morning, Ross. So you didn’t come in your chopper today then?’
Ross laughed. ‘I don’t think James would ask me again if I had! I’d have scared off all his birds.’
This was the first time Miles had encountered Ross in his shooting kit, and his instinct was to mock. He looked him up and down, taking everything in: the perfectly pressed shooting suit which looked like it had never been worn, the woollen shooting stockings with their too-perfect orange garters, the brand new mud-free boots. And then the guns: a shiny new pair of Purdeys, with freshly engraved plates.
‘Hello Miles,’ Ross said. ‘Nice to see the Chawbury contingent out in force.’ Was it Miles’s imagination, or was Ross more reserved in his greeting than usual? There was something wary about him.
‘You’re looking very … dapper,’ Miles said. ‘Is it shop-new, all that kit?’ He looked around, pleased several of the other guns were listening, including James Pendleton. ‘Hope you haven’t left the price tags on.’
‘First outing for the lot, head to toe,’ Ross replied cheerfully. ‘I feel like a kid at a new school wearing my new uniform.’ Sticking out his hand, he introduced himself to the other guns. ‘Ross Clegg. I’ve got to warn you fellows, this is my first time. First time at a proper shoot. So when I make a complete horlicks of it, I’m relying on you to put me right. I warned James when he kindly invited me, I don’t know anything about how these shoot days work.’
Immediately everyone promised their help, and the Chief Executive of Allwheat Cereals, who was a large supplier to Pendletons and whom Miles was keen to schmooze, told Ross he’d only been shooting for a year himself, and regarded himself as another novice so they could stick together.
In due course, Lord Pendleton invited the guns to draw for their pegs, and Ross drew number four in the middle of the line, which irritated Miles since it was the best position on the first drive, while he had drawn the end stand so was stuck out on the side. James gave a short speech about safety being paramount and not going for ground game, and then they all gravitated towards the Land Rovers lined up for them. Despite his best efforts, Miles was directed into the same vehicle as Ross, so they would be travelling together between drives all day. Miles clambered into the front passenger seat, Ross sat behind with the loaders.
The first drive, which Miles knew from previous days, was known as Home Farm Hill and renowned for being difficult. Even experienced guns found it challenging. The birds were pushed by the beaters from two small woods towards a dense patch of gorse on the top of a steep bank. For twenty minutes, hardly a bird would fly out, before suddenly exploding in a great mass, two hundred pheasants and partridges at high altitude. Normally Miles approached Home Farm Hill rather gingerly; delighted when he was seen to shoot well, frustrated when he wasn’t. His duff position today placed him on the margins of the firing line, but at least he’d have a good view of Ross, out of his depth.
It was a bright, chilly morning, Miles’s favourite shooting weather, with clear blue sky and a watery winter sun doing its best. From his vantage point halfway up the bank he had a fine view of the other guns taking up their positions. Ross was limping to his peg, accompanied by his loader for th
e day, Barry, an instructor at the Mid Hampshire Shooting Ground. Miles knew Barry well, and anticipated exchanging conspiratorial jokes about Mr Clegg’s performance later in the day.
Ross stood at the ready at the bottom of the hill, peering up at the skyline for any signs of life. Apart from a light breeze in the trees, and the occasional snuffle from a gundog, they waited in stillness and silence. This for Miles was always a privileged moment, the calm before the storm, an opportunity to reflect on the beauty of the English landscape at its best, by which he meant prinked and pampered by generations of benign private ownership. He surveyed the frozen fields, the noble leafless trees, the muted tweeds of the shooting party, and thought how much he deserved to be there—a favoured, regular guest of Lord Pendleton.
The line of beaters was getting closer now, you could hear their calls and the thrashing at undergrowth. ‘Won’t be long now, sir,’ murmered his loader, Chris. ‘Here comes one over now.’ A lone cock pheasant rose high into the air at the altitude of the tallest beech tree, and cruised towards the guns.
Miles smirked, this was perfect: it was heading directly over Ross. All eyes were upon him. He watched while Ross raised the gun to his shoulder. Barry the loader appeared to be telling him something, and Ross adjusted his aim. There was a single shot and the bird dropped to the ground, hitting it with a thud.
‘Now that, sir, is what I call a very good shot,’ said Chris, Miles’s loader. ‘That’s Mr Clegg isn’t it, the gentleman from Freeza Mart?’
‘Er, probably yes.’
‘I recommend his cherry cheesecake,’ Chris said. ‘We have that a lot at home.’
At that moment a flurry of birds rose up all at once, and the guns were banging away as they soared overhead. Two came above Miles and he shot one, missed one, with two barrels.
‘I was watching Mr Clegg,’ said Chris, when the action died down. ‘Looked like he got eight birds with ten cartridges. High ones too.’
Pride and Avarice Page 33