by Isabella May
“Definitely,” she replied. “But one step at a time, I feel like a hamster on a wheel at the moment, at least let me step off and take a breather before romance fills the air.”
“Romance has an agenda of its own, I think you’ll find,” said Hayley, looking sentimentally into the distance. “You couldn’t stop it if you tried.”
Alice watched with curiosity as Hayley sniffed the air, evidently picking out the cocktail sausages, and cheese and pineapples on sticks which she made an immediate beeline for; hideously, unbelievably, all were being served up on the same platter. She definitely wouldn’t be partaking.
The Rigby-Chandlers began to march towards her then, and as the waiter dilly-dallied behind Alice with a most timely tray of champagne flutes, she grabbed two swiftly, thankful for the diversion they’d provide during this imminent exchange. If River wasn’t done with his mingling soon enough, she’d drink his as well, anything to ease the pain of the next however many minutes; it wasn’t like there was anybody else nearby – at least not anybody she knew, who could spare her.
“Alice, sweetie,” Lady Rigby-Chandler air kissed her, standing back to look her up and down in a way that either would or would not meet with her approval. “Do you realise just how worried your poor papa has been about you? Where in God’s name did you disappear?” she said through the customary twist of her mouth.
“Probably back into the arms of that double-barrelled what’s-his-name from Beverly Hills.” Lord Rigby-Chandler broke his habitual second in command silence and let out a gargantuan chortle.
“He comes from Bel-Air actually, your Lordship,” Alice couldn’t help but courtesy, the Ps and Qs of her noble upbringing overbearing as ever in the face of a couple of fellow toffs, a label which hung to her own clothing by the dangle of a very thin thread nowadays. “And it’s not a double-barrelled name, but the typical American trait of using one’s Christian and middle name… which would appear to make one more prominent in the film industry… think Jamie Lee Curtis, for example.”
“Ew, I’d really rather he did not!” Lady Rigby-Chandler retorted. “What a hussy that woman was in A Fish Called Wanda. Lord R-C and I had to abandon the theatre when we went to watch that most common, alarmingly cheesy portrayal of a heist on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in the eighties. Never again.”
“Cinema, my Lady, cinema.”
“Theatre, my Lord, theatre. And anyway, that’s by the by. Your father, as I mentioned, has been most perturbed by your vanishing act.”
“Mummy less so, I gather.”
“Well, can you blame her, dear? How many years have you spent out of her keep? Not even a postcard or a telegram to inform her of your whereabouts.”
Alice didn’t have the patience or inclination to recount the tale of her mother slamming the door in her face just a few weeks ago, an act which made it perfectly clear she preferred the company of de-crusted cucumber sandwiches to that of her own daughter.
“A telegram?”
“Oh, you know full well what I mean, Alice, a whatsit… an email… same thing, same thing.”
Poor Lady R-C, she was positively marooned in the sixties with its debutant’s balls, pomp and ceremony, order and regalia, Stepford Wives in twinsets and pearls, sweet nostalgic Victorian Christmas cards handwritten with quills. Please somebody shoot Alice if she ever clung so tightly to her youth. Life was change and change was life.
“I was on the outskirts of Bath, if you must know, picking fruit with foreign workers… mucking out horses and living on bread and water.”
“Why, how absolutely frightful for you, my dear…whatever possessed you, Alice? And how could that so-called friend of yours allow it?”
“Awlright?”
Hayley sandwiched her way between the small gathering now and Alice couldn’t have loved her more for it. “Oh, you saved me one, Al, how very kind.” She swiped at the spare flute in Alice’s left hand and began to swig hastily, blissfully unaware of the double entendre in her words.
“My goodness,” said Lady Rigby-Chandler. “It really does take all sorts. First I’m declined by my dear friend, Cassandra, who would rather have a pony-tailed, bearded ex rocker to open up her home for moggies… not to mention that carrot-topped commoner over there…” she circled her hand as would The Queen waving from her jewel-encrusted horse and carriage, in the direction of a smooching couple, who Alice instantly recognised as Jonie and Lee, both resting cosily against his recently upgraded car on the waste ground to the left of Cassandra’s house.
Alice raised her eyebrows, at a loss as to why anybody could be disenchanted by Lee’s presence, social act of passion aside, on that note she had to agree with her ladyship: get a room or go to the seventh arrondissement.
“Didn’t you know?” Lady Rigby-Chandler continued, “Apparently he’s footing the champagne and canapé bill. With what exactly, one can only hazard a guess, but it certainly can’t be his poxy salary from that banal excuse for a supermarket that no doubt pays in shirt buttons…”
“Is he really?”
Alice could hardly believe it herself, far be it for her to stereotype, but that was one grandiose act of generosity. Sure, River was opening the sanctuary, but that hardly put him out of pocket, only added to the bar’s popularity really.
“Well, what a lovely fella,” Hayley interrupted again without having introduced herself, or as much as been granted the chance for Alice to do so – to be fair, Lady Rigby-Chandler would insist on hogging the conversation. “For he’s a jolly good fella… for he’s a jolly good feller,” she began to sing.
“Next,” Lady Rigby-Chandler cut her up, “I’m witnessing the mixing of not so much upper class with middle class, but nigh on aristocracy with the scrapings of the barrel of working class suburbia… and a token cat’s choir – whatever next?” she carried on, unmoved by anybody’s endorsement of Lee. “I bid you good day.” She looked solely at Alice and pivoted to commence a prompt high-heeled march across the undulating meadow.
“Blimey, who rattled her cage?” said Hayley, with one of her hallmark snorts of indifference.
“I rather think you’ll find that was me, the moment I married her,” said Lord Rigby-Chandler, as he saluted Alice and Hayley to signal his presence here was very much over and out, and scurried to keep up with his wife who had by now randomly fled to join Heather and Terry up near the main house.
Evidently their social status had somehow mysteriously just gone up several notches.
Chapter Thirty-One
RIVER
“How about some pudding?”
Terry rubbed his hands together with the intensity of Ray Mears about to start up a bush fire.
“Not for me, thanks, Dad,” said Georgina.
“Why what’s up with you, my love? That’s not like you at all. They’ve got chocolate brownie, your favourite. And you’ve not touched more than a drop of your wine since River poured it.”
“I’m just not feeling my usual self, that’s all.”
Fear wrangled with River’s stomach then, not that he had much of a sweet tooth either himself, but he certainly wouldn’t be doing anything that gave Terry chance to insinuate that he and his daughter were like two peas in a pod. But then he remembered she’d had a miscarriage. If indeed that was even true – since it was highly likely she’d faked the entire idea of a pregnancy. So then she was simply feeling a little drained, that was all; in which case surely the most sensible thing would have been to stay at home.
“Well, I’m having the lemon cheesecake,” River announced, “Al, are you joining me?”
“Don’t you go telling me you’re dieting too, Alice,” said Terry. “You’re skin and bone as it is.”
River could sense the red mist that was the inevitable envy in Georgina’s frown without even needing to look at it for validation.
“Okay, why not, it’s been years since I’ve had a cheesecake,” Alice replied.
“Oh my God, Al, do you remember the size of that slice we
had after Lennie took us all ice skating at The Rockefeller Center in New York that December?”
“For heaven’s sakes, don’t let it be that colossal!”
Alice laughed and River joined her, the chemistry between them fizzing and popping across the table, until Heather, Terry and Georgina, the rest of the diners besides, could have been spectators of a merry-go-round, one they were unable to hop onto to join them, their curious faces blurring at the edges while the figures at the centre fell ever deeper into love’s inescapable centrifuge.
“Are you ready to place your orders now?” The waiter semi-snapped them out of it.
“What… what… um… what about you, Heather?”
River’s heart skipped a beat as Alice leaned in closer to his mum, her eyes unable to leave his.
Was this it, her reciprocation that she was equally smitten; her invitation to permanently be that little bit more than just good friends?
He felt a twinge of shame as he remembered Georgina was also sitting at the table, but wild horses couldn’t have broken this public interchange. How were they going to contain themselves when they got back to the caravan tonight? God, he didn’t want them to contain themselves! He wanted all of Alice, now, every inch of her body. Why of all the inconvenient bloody moments in time did she have to make it clear to him she wanted him too, sat in a country pub surrounded by villagers and tourists and well-meaning ‘family’ and waiters taking orders for cheesecake whose indigestible morsels would cloy at the throat because frankly, some people had very different things on their minds?
“I think I’ll go for the steamed ginger pudding, no custard though… well, unless you have lactose-free, organic in the kitchen?”
“Sorry, we don’t.” The waiter’s eyes were scrunched up now, mouth resembling an exasperated bullfrog.
“Typical, any pub remotely outside of Glastonbury and the words ‘allergy’ and ‘organic’ are received as if I were speaking in tongues,” said Heather. “It’s okay, I’ve brought my own supply.” And she bent then to rather embarrassingly retrieve a small ethnically-printed carton from her bag. “No point in me checking if you’ve subbed sugar for stevia in the pudding,” she continued, “then again, I’m pretty sure your chef wouldn’t dream of baking ginger with a white refined sugar… oh well, if it’s muscovado or golden granulated, it’s hardly going to kill me, just this once I suppose.”
“I’ll join her,” said Terry, adding an apologetic facial expression to the waiter. “So that’s two steamed ginger puddings, just to be clear. Good old regular custard for me though.”
The waiter disappeared with a sigh, and Georgina pushed her chair backwards then, too.
“Sorry… got to run to the ladies,” she announced, standing quickly with one hand pressed over her stomach.
Thankfully, Alice hadn’t noticed. Something about her had changed this afternoon. She was dazzling, not that her beauty ever escaped her for a moment, even when she was sobbing into strawberry-stained hands; those irises had the power to captivate, overruling the puffy red rims of her eyes. In fact he would go as far as to say she’d changed so much, that if he wasn’t completely mistaken, her now un-booted foot was travelling the length of his thigh, caressing it sensually, sending a lightning bolt up his denim-clad legs, through his boxer shorts and beyond.
Oh hell.
This was good, it was very good; it boded well for the kind of future he had recently thought he could only dream of. But at this precise moment in time, it was hardly convenient, and it was all he could do not to develop a sudden ingenious code language which would see them wink conspiratorially to find their individual excuses to leave the table – in exchange for one of those giant, bouncy looking haystacks in the field beyond.
If she was this naughty now, what was she going to do to him later?
He had to play hard to get, just for a short while. But moments later, he too had freed foot from shoe, and, whilst trying desperately not to think about the stink of his socks – or the fact that Georgina would be reunited with them at any moment, not to mention the dreaded challenge of eating a heavy slice of cheesecake – he slid his foot slowly, sexily, from the tip of her toe to the length of her thigh. Alice let out a gasp, a gasp which was timed to perfection: the waiter appeared with their dessert, and in the distance, an unusually pale-faced, sweaty Georgina trundled behind.
“Right then,” said Terry, as soon as he’d hacked away the tough recycled cardboard corner from Heather’s special custard carton, and everyone – except Georgina – was digging in. “I’ve got an announcement to make.”
Could the meal get any more eventful? But please, not a marriage proposal. River wasn’t ready to walk his mother up the aisle. Playing Best Man to Lee was marital excitement enough for one year – unless of course Alice cared to flirt with that idea – and now he placed his foot back onto her shin, rubbing seductively, well, as seductively as one could when they were faced with a breaking news story and half a pound of cream cheese.
Faces turned expectantly to Terry. River braced himself for the inevitable, somehow resisting the urge to check up on Alice’s facial expression.
“So… the other day, when I was propped up against the bar, having a good old gas with Jacob and Ryan… this were up at The Pear Tree though… sorry River, hope you don’t think I’m being disloyal, but sometimes I do miss my cider,” – hang on, did he just say what River thought he said… that he was chatting… like a normal, accepting human being… to the very gay couple he was spitting feathers at for their sexuality just weeks ago? – “a certain somebody approached me.”
Here we go: Mum, ever the goddess, had gone and popped Terry the question. He knew it.
“This certain somebody happened to be a TV exec… producer… thingummyjig, whatever you call them nowadays. Well, any rate, he’s working on a brand new show – this is strictly confidential mind, you lot, you’ve gotta promise me you won’t say a word… well,” Terry looked to Heather, “I know you won’t, my love.”
“Get to the point, Dad, so we can get the bill and get out of here,” said Georgina, hand glued to her glass of water which she seemed to be constantly draining.
“All right, love, don’t rain on me parade.”
“Your daughter has got a point though,” said Heather, “I’m not sure I’ve ever met anybody with such a tendency to waffle… much as I love you.”
Georgina could have rolled the cloth from the table with her eyeballs.
Heather snuggled closer to Terry anyway, putting River in mind of a baby animal. He shook his head, somehow simultaneously ensuring his foot was still doing its thing, and Terry went on:
“Okay, okay, so, the TV bloke, well, he’s in the area filming, like. Works for one of them companies that go around doing up posh houses… and he’s looking for people – tradespeople – to star in the show.”
Georgina rolled her eyes again. “Please don’t tell me you’ve put yourself forward—”
“As a matter of fact, George, yes, I have.”
She tutted.
“And, why shouldn’t he?” Alice couldn’t seem to help but grill her.
“Just butt out,” Georgina slammed down her water glass, “you know naff all about my family.”
“Georgina!” That was Heather.
“Oh, so what is this now? Daggers at Georgina day? Am I now not allowed to have an opinion? Do none of you realise I know my own dad better than all of you put together.”
“That’s as maybe, but you don’t know me better than I know myself.”
“Fine, tell your dumb story, I’m going out to wait by the car.” She snatched at her bag and stormed out of the pub, leaving the muttering diners to guess at the roots of her problem behind her.
River instinctively returned his foot to his shoe then sensing things would be winding up here quickly enough.
“I’m sorry,” Terry shook his head. “I just don’t know what’s got into her lately.”
“Anyway, where was I? O
h yes, so myself and Jacob and Ryan, we’re all chatting at the bar and this bloke comes to join us. Course, Jacob is a dab hand at plastering, Ryan runs his own fancy doing up houses business—”
“I think you mean he’s an Interior Designer, Terry,” Heather chimed in, nodding at the details of the story as they replayed themselves for what must have been the umpteenth time.
“Yes, yes, one of them, that’s what I meant. But the funniest thing of all is,” Terry slapped his hand down on the table, laughter creasing the corners of his eyes, “they’re only looking to film and renovate The Rigby-Chandlers’ palace!”
“No way.”
River was astounded, forgetting initially that Terry had drunk the Magical Mañana, that he should already have been able to see the very clear path this story was taking him on.
Like yesterday.
“Yes way, River,” he replied. “But there’s more… there’s more.” Terry simmered to a half-whisper now, suddenly plugged in to the attention of the neighbouring table. He leaned in and encouraged River, Alice and Heather to bring their upper halves forward to almost touch the bread basket too. “After chatting with us three at the bar for the best part of an hour, he only went and offered us contracts to appear on the show. How’s that for a turnout? We’re doing up The Rigby-Chandler’s house… and we’re gonna be on the telly!”
It beat a marriage proposal to his mum that was for sure. What were the chances of any of this sequence of events happening had Terry not had the cocktail? A TV Exec, no matter their pecking order in the hierarchical chain, would hardly choose The Pear Tree as their first port of call under normal circumstances.
The bottle was definitely weaving its wonder. And all of this proved his own past thoughts about the aristocrats’ freeloading right; something was clearly afoot in his Lady and Lordship’s lives. No wonder they’d found a reason to bribe him for free drinks and had then clung onto it for dear life. Their regular jaunts to The Cocktail Bar were quite possibly the only thing keeping them going. And now, presumably, they were going to get paid for their appearance as well, not to mention the great publicity the very public renovation would bring. Next thing the world knew, they’d be seeing Lady R-C gracing the screens of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.