Bad Brides

by Rebecca Chance

  Her voice tailed off as she sensed a sudden drop of temperature in the kitchen. It was as if she had opened both panel doors, allowing an icy-cold blast of chilled air to flood into the room, filling it with frost: quite an achievement, considering that the kitchen was big enough to host a fireplace in which a whole pig could be roasted on a spit and a double-height gabled ceiling in which, until very recently, a drying rack had been hoisted for all the kitchen towels, napkins and cleaning rags. Tamra’s installation of an entire laundry room, complete with industrial washing machines, had rendered the rack obsolete, and the ceiling had been scrubbed and freshly painted in a pale green that chimed nicely with the yellow Smallbone wooden panelling and the dark racing green of the Rayburns.

  In consultation with Mrs Hurley, Tamra had decided that the original flagstones should be kept, but they had been power-washed and now gleamed as bright as grey stone could; Tamra had, as she put it, fast-tracked the kitchen, and this alone would have been enough to make Mrs Hurley her loyal devotee from that moment onwards. The bright clear colours, the new paint job and the thorough clean of the flagstones made the kitchen look enormous, a positive empire in one room over which Mrs Hurley ruled supreme.

  Which was why, with Brianna Jade’s last words, all the men who worked on the Stanclere estate, and had been in the kitchen either to admire the new ranges, help ensure that the oil-supply pipe had full access to the elevated steel storage tank outside, or slack off hoping that Mrs Hurley might have some baked goods that needed eating up before they went stale, disappeared out through the back door in a flurry of movement. Almost instantly, they could be heard outside tapping on the side of the new tank and muttering meaningless jargon in the way that men did when they suddenly needed to look busy. The only two men left in the kitchen were the Rayburn employees, who didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

  ‘Fix yourself something?’ Mrs Hurley repeated, her voice even colder than the water Brianna Jade was drinking. The latter shivered right to the base of her suddenly clammy spine.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ she began, as the Rayburn installer who was not trapped behind the ranges mumbled something about needing to check the radiation barrier that protected the house from the tank, and hustled outside to join the other men as fast as his heavy work boots would take him, ignoring the agonized expression of his colleague.

  ‘That means “prepare yourself something”, if I’m not mistaken?’ Mrs Hurley asked Brianna Jade, picking up a tea towel and starting to wring it between her large, gnarled fingers. ‘Even Mrs Maloney, who eats like a bird, has me prepare her a plate with her special Italian beef slices and her non-fat crème fraiche and her Little Gem salad without dressing! Mrs Maloney doesn’t want to come into my kitchen and “fix” anything for herself. She tells me what she wants and I make it for her, which is my job, and has been for over twenty years!’

  The installer behind the ranges managed to squat down far enough that his body was now barely visible behind the bulk of the cast-iron stoves.

  ‘I just meant . . .’ Brianna Jade said feebly. ‘I just wanted to save you trouble, with all these extra diet versions of regular food – and it sounds like Mom’s been going on and on at you about it. I just meant I could go into the fridge and pull something out if you’re busy.’

  She flinched back at the expression on Mrs Hurley’s face.

  ‘Of course I’m busy,’ Mrs Hurley positively snapped. ‘I’m always busy. A cook’s work is never done. You shouldn’t go into this line of work if you mind being busy.’

  Only Brianna Jade’s long experience in pageants kept her legs from buckling under her at this stage in the confrontation; Mrs Hurley’s eyes were fixed on her beadily, her head jutting forward like a T-Rex bending over a vulnerable vegetarian stegosaurus. Very luckily, at that point Jennifer, one of the new maids, appeared in the kitchen door with Brianna Jade’s breakfast tray, and the interruption allowed the Rayburn man to pop up from hiding, boost himself frantically over the range and scramble for the back door.

  ‘I was meaning to say thank you so much for a delicious breakfast,’ Brianna Jade managed to get out, thinking frantically: What would Mom say? How would she handle this? She’d start with a compliment. ‘The eggs were, uh, scrambled really nicely.’

  The hard lines of Mrs Hurley’s hatchet face softened fractionally, and Jennifer, crossing to the new, brushed-steel commercial Miele dishwasher and putting down the tray, provided even more distraction. The cook’s head swivelled and she said sharply: ‘Jennifer, there’s a wonky foot on that tray! Take it out and get Gideon to look at it after you’ve cleared it. He’s doing bugger all at the moment, so he might as well have something to get on with, the lazy sod!’

  Okay, now Mom would follow up with something smooth that shows she understands the situation.

  ‘I totally get that you’re happy to do diet meals for me as well as everything else, Mrs Hurley,’ Brianna Jade said, taking the opportunity to cross the kitchen, heading for the back door, which also meant strategically putting the length of the kitchen table between herself and the cook. ‘I won’t worry any more about you—’ don’t say ‘working too much’, or ‘being busy’! – ‘uh, being driven crazy by all my mom’s suggestions.’

  Mrs Hurley’s features tensed up again.

  ‘Which you’re not! You’re not, and that’s great,’ Brianna Jade said swiftly. ‘My mom’s great and really cool and I bet after all these years of just kicking around here with Edmund, Mr Edmund – the Earl – anyway, I bet that it’s really great to have a lot of new challenges in the kitchen and of course my mom’s made sure that you have loads of new stuff to cook with . . . and on . . . and put stuff in . . .’

  She trailed off rather desperately, but Mrs Hurley’s face was now wreathed in smiles.

  ‘She’s ordered me a Gaggia ice-cream maker – the professional one!’ Mrs Hurley said. ‘And don’t worry, Miss Brianna, I can just as easily make you frozen yoghurt in it too. With a little fruit in it and Hermesetas for sweetening.’

  ‘Sounds great!’ Brianna Jade said, now almost at the back door. ‘So, lunch at one, right? Cool! Off for a run now – lovely talking to you – really glad you’re happy about the ice-cream machine. Back for lunch, courgette crêpes, sounds totally yummy—’

  Outside! Into the sunshine, moving swiftly, not looking back, passing the group of men gathered around the huge oil tank, their voices low, clapping the second Rayburn installer on the back in congratulations at his successful escape. They averted their eyes respectfully from her Lycra-clad figure as she walked swiftly by; she was followed by Jennifer carrying the tray out to Gideon for repairs, and she heard the guys bursting into relieved banter with the maid, letting off steam as they teased her and tried to get her to bring them cups of tea and biccies.

  There’s nothing men hate more than women fighting! she thought, waiting until she’d rounded a corner, turned into the farmyard and was out of view before she hoicked one leg up on a fence and stretched out her hamstrings. I mean, if it’s not a pillow fight between two Victoria’s Secret models, they’re more scared of that than almost anything in the world. They’d rather face a charging bull.

  She started to run, slowly at first, five minutes just to warm up, past the old stables, which were now the garages, as Edmund couldn’t afford the expense of keeping horses to ride. She skirted the huge lorry which had brought the two Rayburns and the oil tank and turned onto the gravel drive that looped around the whole front wing of Stanclere Hall. By the time she had reached the façade of the house, she was hitting her stride, crossing the lawn, dodging and dancing around the mole holes, taking long leaps over them for extra shits and giggles, as they’d said back home.

  Make the most of it, she told herself. This is the biggest fun you’re going to have today.

  Which was . . . depressing. And also, not quite true: she and Edmund were spending tonight in, i.e. not going out to one of the many dinner parties or ‘drinks dos’ to which
they were constantly invited, and they’d planned to watch a film after dinner. Brianna Jade was definitely looking forward to that. Tamra had been quite right on the phone yesterday: Brianna Jade was much more of a homebody than her mother was, much more inclined to stay in and watch a movie than go out to the latest hot club and fall over George Clooney in the darkness.

  I mean, what would I say to George Clooney anyway? Mom would know just the right thing. She’d be rattling away with him in a minute, saying something funny and making him burst out laughing. I’d just mumble ‘sorry’ and stare at him, making an idiot of myself looking star-struck.

  But that’s why I’m in the country and she’s in the city. Which is cool, I love it here, but I have to find something to do.

  Her lame attempt to ask Mrs Hurley if she could give her some cooking lessons had been thrown back in her face. Which was a real shame, as Brianna Jade genuinely wanted to learn to cook, and had barely had the opportunity. The only real lesson she’d ever had was when she begged Mrs Lutz, their landlady, to show her how to make that casserole for the Kewanee State Fair Pork Queen pageant. Tamra, working her two jobs, was rarely home long enough to be able to make home-cooked meals, not that she had ever been the domestic type anyway. On the road, mother and daughter had pretty much foraged. And after their miraculous elevation to multi-million-dollar status under the aegis of Ken Maloney, they had still not been free to do exactly as they wanted.

  Which was fair enough, considering all Ken was giving us, Brianna Jade thought. Ken wanted me to be his perfect princess. He loved me to dress up, go shopping, get my hair and nails done, have beauty treatments, take tennis and swimming and dance lessons so I could join in the junior and débutante cotillion balls. Boy, I don’t miss those at all! All the girls being competitive with me because I hadn’t grown up in their so-called high society, most of the guys thinking I’d be easy because my mom and I weren’t as classy as they were. Well, they soon learnt their mistake. I hated all those preppy boys, acting like they were the cream of the crop in their polo shirts with the collars turned up . . .

  Ken’s previous two marriages had produced no offspring, something that had never bothered him. It had been an unexpected, but charming bonus that with Tamra he had found not only a gorgeous trophy wife, but a pretty, affectionate, grateful daughter: he had lavished money and attention on Brianna Jade in order to turn her, Cinderella-like, into a sophisticated glowing blonde princess fit for the highest circles of West Palm Beach society. But cooking lessons would not have fallen into the princess category. Maybe a Cordon Bleu course would have been acceptable, but Brianna Jade would have to have known her way around at least the basics of a kitchen before she dared to go near something as smart as that.

  Well, so much for Mrs Hurley teaching me how to cook, she thought wistfully. Maybe I should take up embroidery. That sounds very aristocratic. Ladies are always embroidering on those wooden circle things in the movies. And it might not be exactly practical, but it would be something to do. I’m not brainy like Mom, I can’t lose myself in a book like she does. I need a hobby I can do with my hands . . .

  She was over the lawns now, heading at a long, easy lope down the slope that led to the ornamental lake. Even before it came into view, she heard the clash of chisels on stone, the whine of machinery which was hoisting replacement blocks into place to substitute some that had been found to be dangerously cracked. The work on the bridge was well under way, would be completed in plenty of time for the wedding. Brianna Jade skirted the lake, waving cheerfully at the men labouring below, who stopped, shading their eyes with their hands, to watch the blonde vision that was the lucky Earl’s bride-to-be flit past in her trainers, her long tanned legs lifting and falling effortlessly, her bosom strapped down with a sports bra but still with enough of a jiggle to keep them hypnotized.

  ‘Lucky bugger – all that and pots of money too,’ one of them commented, shaking his head.

  ‘You seen her mum?’ another one asked, whistling long and low as Brianna Jade’s bouncing ponytail disappeared around the back of the gazebo. ‘If he’s really lucky he’ll be doing ’em both!’

  ‘You filthy bugger,’ the first one said happily. ‘That’ll be summat to think about later . . .’

  The gardens were separated from the farmland beyond by what was called a ha-ha, which Brianna Jade had thought for ages was some sort of in-joke of Edmund’s: eventually she had looked it up and discovered that it was actually a real word, meaning what they’d call a ‘drop-off’ in the States. The land fell away sharply below the gardens so that animals grazing, or farm workers toiling away below, could see the boundary, but the Respers family and guests strolling in the pleasure gardens would merely perceive a long green stretch of lawns and plantings flowing gently into the rolling fields beyond. Combine harvesters were ticking away in the distant fields, the air crisp with warm summer scents, the perfume of linden trees and freshly cut hay; it was a glorious perspective, a perfect English late-summer panorama, and Brianna Jade stopped for a moment to appreciate it. She was incredibly lucky that all of this was so soon to be hers, inherited by her children, this countryside that had to be among the most beautiful in the world, these lands so rich and verdant that she couldn’t see why anyone would ever want to live in town when you could be surrounded by this pastoral bliss instead . . .

  And then another scent reached her nostrils, and she inhaled it with even more delight than the smell of fresh hay and linden. It wouldn’t have appealed to many people, but to Brianna Jade of Kewanee, Illinois, the smell of a pig farm was as delicious and familiar as lavender to a girl who had grown up in Provence. She was too young to have seen the Bisto gravy ads where eager children with pug noses followed the visible brown trails of meaty gravy smell to their point of origin, but what she did now was just the same; sniffing the air like a bloodhound, she jogged around the ha-ha, tracking the odour of pig as it grew stronger, eventually spotting the farm buildings and fenced pens up ahead where her quarry had to be located.

  Pigs! They were her favourite animal. She’d grown up around them: everyone had pigs in Kewanee. People laughed at the current fashion for keeping pot-bellied pigs as pets, but why not? Pigs were friendly, loyal, and very clean. They recognized people and their voices just as much as dogs did, and they sure as hell never tried to hump your leg.

  ‘Oh wow!’ broke from her lips as she reached the first pen. Forgetting all about needing to cool down and stretch after a run, she hung eagerly over the railing, staring at the animals inside. They were huge, with wide-set lop ears that drooped over their eyes, almost covering them completely. The dirty white colour of their hair, dappled with big black spots, made their forward-thrust noses seem even pinker; snuffling with excitement at seeing a new human, several of the sows trotted forward to greet Brianna Jade and see if she had any scraps to throw them, oinking happily in greeting.

  ‘Hey, ladies!’ she said, squatting on her haunches to scratch their backs, digging her fingers in just the way she knew they would like, utterly careless of her shellacked nails. Their hair was silkier and straighter than the pigs she’d known back home, but they were every bit as friendly, jostling to get close to her even when it was clear that no mid-morning snack would be forthcoming. Their noses were soft and smooth against her knees as they pushed their faces through the bars.

  ‘Oh, you’re lovely!’ she cooed at them. ‘Good girls, lovely ladies . . .’

  She could have stayed there all day hanging out with them, and they would have been very happy; when one of them eventually wandered off to flop down on the short grass with a heavy grunt, another came over to take her place. It was only an awareness that she had lunch at one, and would need to be back, showered, and nicely dressed in time for it which made Brianna Jade, reluctantly, climb back to her feet; even then, she noticed a stick propped against the railing and, knowing exactly what it was for, picked it up and started scratching the sows further down their backs, which sent them into fresh snuffle
s of excitement.

  Happy memories were flooding back to her. Days in Kewanee, when she was old enough to roam around with her friends, or even on her own, hanging out on the local smallholdings, helping the farmers with the farrowing sows, lugging pails of slop and dumping them into the troughs, cleaning out the sties. Tickling their tummies as they rolled over enthusiastically and waved their trotters in anticipation. Sweeping the wood shavings they slept in into neat piles that they would burrow in happily, watching them wallow in the summer mudslicks, as Mrs Lutz explained that pigs didn’t sweat and wallowing was the only way for them to cool down in the heat . . .

  Winning Pork Queen at the Kewanee Hog Day fair had been the highlight of her life, the best thing that had ever happened to her; being the crowned queen, standing on the tractor trailer, her sash arranged over the pigskin jacket she wore proudly over her cheap blue pageant dress, hearing the crowd cheer as she scattered Oreo cookies on the finish line of the hog race, the signal for the competing pigs to be released and scamper as fast as their trotters would carry them towards the enticing black-and-white cookies . . . oh, how happy she’d been at that moment! Her heart had literally been as full up with happiness as a trough brimming over with potato peelings.

  And of course, the irony was that my winning Pork Queen was the thing that made Mom think I could compete in pageants and take me away from Kewanee and all the lovely pigs.

  She sighed. Mom never lets me say a word about Kewanee. She took away that pigskin jacket, and all the photos of me in my crown holding a cute little piglet and kissing it. Those were such cute photos . . . Okay, I know why she doesn’t want us talking about it any more. I do get it. We’d get so teased about it – no, way more than teased. Torn to shreds. We’d never hear the end of it.