by Fiona Walker
Finding herself immediately embroiled in a conversation about next year’s Glyndebourne line-up, while Fitz shoe-gazed beside her, Petra had a sneaking suspicion her son might have preferred an evening posing for Gunny’s iPad after all. She certainly would. Charlie’s golden ticket was very Cotswolds’ old-school, signet rings glittering against champagne flutes everywhere, hardly anybody under sixty. Raised by principled socialist parents to believe everyone was born equal and died the same death, Petra always felt uncomfortable faced with proof that the privileged enjoyed a far better time in between, and that she’d married a man who aspired to that exclusive club. How easy it would have been six months ago for Fitz to jump across his parents’ self-made generation and gain entry now by answering the simple question, ‘Tell me, young man, where do you go to school?’
The man who had asked it, a lantern-jawed rugby type in an Old Harrovian tie, let out a blast of delighted laughter when Fitz politely replied that he was seeing what the local co-ed academy had to offer that nine years at an all-boys boarding school had missed. ‘The clue’s in there.’
Petra’s smile fixed slightly. Perhaps he was his father’s son, after all.
Charlie, who had fought hard to overrule his wife about boarding schools, would no doubt be delighted when their hostess, utterly charmed, whisked Fitz off to introduce him to an old alumnus, while Sandy fed Petra into a trio of stooped old landowners by the roaring hall fire. ‘This is Petra Gunn, Compton Magna’s writer in residence – watch out or she’ll put you in a book!’
The fixed smile solidified. It was a well-worn introduction and always tricky to navigate away from. The three, who made Petra think of the wise monkeys – one with thick glasses, another with a huge hearing aid and the third with a tracheostomy – asked the usual questions: ‘Tell me, where do you get your ideas from? Have you had anything published? Would I have heard of you?’ She dispatched swift, smiley answers, turning the conversation back to draw out an anecdote because people inevitably knew someone whose life they thought would make a wonderful book, and it was a good way of deflecting attention. As soon as people discovered how raunchy her books were, conversations could get very Carry On. Fitz was particularly mortified when social situations involving his mother descended to nudges, winks and gales of dirty-old-man laughter. Parents’ evenings had always been a minefield.
While Hear No Evil droned on about an uncle in the navy who’d made replicas of civic buildings out of matchsticks, she sneaked a peep at her son standing amid an ever-growing crowd of admirers. He’d been right: the languid charm of a teenager was the ultimate Cotswolds party accessory. She’d have to start training Ed.
‘Got a chap lives next door to me who wrote dreadful nonsense about a nun in the Great War,’ said the man with the thick glasses, mentioning a household name. ‘You heard of it?’
‘It’s been made into a very successful movie, I believe.’ A handful of Oscars, Golden Globes and Baftas, and a full house of critics and film-institute awards. She’d adopted a brief foetal position of jealousy when it had come out.
‘Awful poppycock.’ He guffawed.
‘Petra’s are anything but,’ said an amused voice behind her, and Bay stepped in to refill glasses. ‘I’ve read quite a few. Startling absence of poppies. Petra, darling, how are you? I see you’ve brought a toy-boy to scandalise the village.’
‘My son, Fitz.’ She accepted a delicious-smelling kiss on each cheek, trying not to feel downcast at the sight of his pretty, proprietorial wife beside him.
‘You look quite ravishing, doesn’t she, Moni?’
‘Very good.’ Monique flashed her freeze-spray smile and dropped a trio of cold kisses six inches from Petra’s ears. With no need for wrinkle-smoothing make-up or lump-smoothing tit-high pants, Monique looked fashion-page chic in crisp, tailored shirt and slim trousers, making Petra feel like a cabaret act in her velvet and high heels. The house was incredibly hot, even with the big front doors opening constantly to let in more guests. She had a feeling the red tones Gunny had warned about were working their way from mildly flushed to heavy steroid user.
It cheered her up that Bay looked faintly ridiculous in trousers that were probably Savile Row’s finest but the bright blue of an exhaust-repairman’s boiler suit. They brought out the colour of his eyes, sparkling mischievously as he poured champagne into her glass.
‘Just half – I’m driving.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ He filled it right up. ‘We’ll find somebody to give you a lift back.’
Just for a moment his eyes lost their sparkle – the comedian’s glittery jacket shrugged off to reveal something darker and far sexier. Petra looked quickly away, resisting an urge to blow air up onto her hot face, grateful to spot their hostess bearing down on them with a regal smile as she made her way back to front-door duty.
‘What a seeuuper young man. You must be so proud.’ She turned to her daughter-in-law and Petra heard a muttered exchange in which she picked up ‘struggling’, ‘kitchen’ and ‘hot’, and Monique was despatched to sort it out.
Left unmarked, Bay wasted no time in whipping Petra away to a quiet corner under the guise of showing her a little William Etty painting he thought she’d like as inspiration for a book. ‘God, I’m glad you came. Monique’s been hell. She made me sleep in the spare bed last night. She thinks I’ve been a bad boy.’
‘What makes her think that?’ she asked nervously, hoping she hadn’t seen the porny Egyptian goddess GIF.
‘She can always tell when I’m having wayward thoughts.’ His gaze moved in a slow, disconcerting triangle from her left eye to her right eye to her mouth, then moving lower to draw a triangle that made her feel even hotter. ‘How she can’t guess who those are about when you turn up looking as desirable as this, Mrs Gunn, I have no idea.’
‘Bay, I’ve told you before this really has to stop.’ She laughed nervously.
He was doing the face triangle again, blue eyes unblinking. ‘Ssh, I’m thinking.’
Petra tried to peg the silly laughter. This conversation was dropping its knickers fast. Thank goodness hers were too tightly armoured to be lowered without the help of two shoe horns while she adopted a natural birthing position. And his eyes were far too sparkly. It was when they flooded with dark ink, the big black pupils, she felt out of control.
A couple had moved in behind them, also looking at the painting, and he stepped back, saying loudly, ‘Seventeen dead stags in oil-paintings in this house and just one nipple, but what a splendid one it is, I think you’ll agree.’ The couple moved on and he leaned closer to Petra again, voice lowered: ‘My wife’s not a jealous woman. She’s a controlling one.’
‘Next you’ll be telling me she doesn’t understand you,’ she muttered uncomfortably.
‘She understands me, just doesn’t like me very much.’
She turned to face him. ‘Understandable.’
His fingers reached into her hair and drew out a long strand of hay. ‘I’m just a boy standing in front of a girl asking her to flirt with him.’
Somewhere deep inside the miracle pants, miracles were rebelliously happening.
Not trusting herself, Petra turned away to look at another painting. She felt his warm hand on her bare back, so much of her now dissolving she was amazed that frothy foam bubbles hadn’t started floating around in clouds of steam. God, it was hot. It was probably hell fires coming up to claim her. Monique might be human frostbite, but Bay was a married man, and she had to step back: her son was here.
‘Flirt with your wife,’ she said firmly, hurrying away to find safety in numbers before realising she didn’t know anybody there, except the three old monkeys and Fitz, whom she couldn’t see anywhere. The only familiar face belonged to Carly, her favourite Feather Dusters cleaner and occasional pony-helper, looking hot and pink against a white waitressing shirt buttoned up to cover her tattoos as she offered a platter of canapés around: ‘Roasted artichoke tartlet with red-vein sorrel, or Parmesan and olive sho
rtbread with oven-dried tomato and goat-cheese sprinkle.’
Petra took both with a grateful smile and, sensing Bay closing in, tried to keep her there. ‘Did your children enjoy Hallowe’en?’
‘My boy did.’
‘What are their ages?’
‘Four, two and eight months.’
‘Something looks delicious!’ A whiskery old regimental type swooped in to claim a canapé. Petra saw Carly briefly stand on tiptoe before he moved away.
‘Did he just pinch your backside?’ She asked, shocked.
‘He had a feel. Not the first one tonight.’
‘That’s outrageous!’ It was like stepping back in time to an era when Ustinov, Niven and the Duke of Edinburgh had patted waitresses on the bottom in the Tuesday Club, thought Petra, glaring around at them all. ‘Have you complained?’
‘I need the work,’ she muttered, shaking her head urgently. ‘Please don’t say anything.’
Monique swept up with an Arctic blast, and told Carly to keep circulating. ‘The hot canapés are waiting to go out and glasses are empty.’ She turned crisply to Petra. ‘I think my husband’s been boring you too long. Come and meet some friends I’m sure you’ll get on with. You have lots in common, okay.’
The friends turned out to be a bunch of ageing and lecherous rakes from the hunt.
Petra was quietly grateful to find herself marked closely by Monique, who might make her feel like a well-fatted mother seal but was so ice cool it was like positioning herself next to an open window and kept Bay usefully at a distance.
Her bad mood was lightening at last, a sociable feistiness kicking in that she’d almost forgotten she possessed. She was reminded of the pre-Charlie parties where she’d held her own among old-school publishers and egoistic fellow authors. Knowing nobody had been part of the fun. She still couldn’t see Fitz but she wasn’t worried, given his enthusiasm for coming and his easy charm, last spotted chatting to Lord and Lady Burford from Chipping Hampton Priory about the need for new sports equipment at his cash-strapped school.
The hunting rakes turned out to be an entertaining bunch, flatteringly delighted to meet her, knowing all about her naughty books, several of which had found their way into their wives’ bedside bookshelves with very pleasurable consequences.
Perking up even more, Petra found her party form, keeping them all in stitches as she described her latest plot, careful to ensure her description of Father Willy bore no resemblance to Bay. As Monique drifted off to circulate, unable to disguise her boredom, Bay reappeared with champagne to fill glasses, his hand resting for a moment against the bare skin on her back, a gesture of ownership Petra wanted to find irritating, but instead made her feel stupidly special.
As he moved back past her, his mouth passed close to her ear and he whispered, ‘I love you in that dress.’
I dressed up to make Charlie jealous, Petra recognised, with a pang of loneliness. I knew Bay would react like a hound with a scented rag dangled in front of his nose. What was the point without Charlie?
Monique was keeping Bay on her radar from a nearby gang of ladies-who-lunch types. There were photos of grandchildren on ponies everywhere. Petra found herself wishing she’d worn her trusty dull LBD. She felt horribly sober and had eaten far too many canapés for her long-starved stomach, which was being tourniqueted by her underwear. Indigestion niggled, like a thumb digging under her ribs.
‘Pheasant casserole is served!’ The call went up from Leonie, the ultra-thin caterer, ladle aloft, steaming in her leather trousers as she presided over a cauldron of gamebird swimming in creamy, calvados-infused sauce.
As the guests began to queue from the opposite end of the long table laden with plates, cutlery and side dishes, it struck Petra as rather endearing that the most coveted and snobbish local invitation served its statement dish like school dinners.
She wasn’t remotely hungry. Neither, it seemed, were the boozy Fosse and Wolds roués, who hung back with her while the queue curled round them.
‘You must ride out with us again this season, my dear,’ one said.
The feisty streak in Petra wanted to point out that she really didn’t approve – although she’d loved the galloping about bit – and she’d only ever joined in as part of her husband’s quest to get him an invitation to this party. But that sounded rather ungrateful to her hosts, so she settled for ‘I’m afraid I’m far too busy.’
‘Nonsense. Take a day off,’ said a red-nosed thruster. ‘Bay here will look after you. Terrific field master.’
Bay cleared his throat beside her. ‘Petra’s an anti.’
She looked at him in surprise, pretty certain she’d never told him that.
There was a round of good-natured chortles.
‘Don’t tell me you dress up in a balaclava and hide in bushes?’
‘She does,’ Bay insisted, an amused curl to his mouth. ‘Regularly spotted in hedges around the Comptons.’
‘My dog runs off so I hide to make him come back,’ she protested, ‘and it’s a snood not a balaclava.’
‘And she pilots a drone.’
‘I do not!’ She couldn’t entirely tell if he was winding her up or not.
‘Always flies off in the direction of Upper Bagor Farm.’
‘Bloody hell, she’s a full-fledged anti.’ The red-nosed roué roared with laughter, enjoying the spat. ‘Like Pax Ledwell, hey, Bay?’
‘Ronnie’s daughter?’ Petra asked, grateful for the change of subject.
Bay cleared his throat uncomfortably.
‘Drove the Captain mad that she refused to come out hunting. You changed her mind though, didn’t you, Bay?’
‘Briefly.’
‘Pax and Bay were love’s young dream back in the day,’ another of the rakes stage-whispered and nudged Petra. ‘Now, that would make a good story for one of your books. Very pretty girl. Lives over near Ludd-on-Fosse now.’
‘Long time ago,’ Bay dismissed.
Monique floated back from her friends, drawn to the amused guffaws, one pale eyebrow aloft. ‘What was a long time ago?’
‘Just an old girlfriend from the village.’
Her cool eyes didn’t blink. ‘What happened to her?’
‘She went to London to work for an architect so it fizzled out.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’ The most drunken of the hunting chorus had lurched forwards, voice lowered conspiratorially. ‘I heard she ran orff because Ronnie came back and she and Bay— Ouch!’ He leaped back as his foot was crushed under a size-eleven brogue.
‘What is this about Ronnie?’ Monique asked, in an ultra-bright voice.
Petra was keen to find out the same thing. Bay’s past was starting to look as chequered as the floor of St Paul’s Cathedral, and considerably less holy.
‘Just giving Petra a few plot ideas,’ he said. ‘There’s an awful lot of stories about Ronnie Percy that the hunt has dined off for thirty years or more, most of which are entirely fictitious.’
Monique, who thought Ronnie’s reputation extremely overrated and Petra’s books very silly, gave a thin smile. ‘I think you need to soak up some of that champagne with casserole, don’t you, darling?’ She separated her husband from the group and herded him away, like a pale-eyed, heel-nipping collie.
The rakes’ conversation had moved on to Ronnie Percy’s return. ‘Always was a bloody good-looking woman. Wouldn’t mind having a crack if she’s unattached.’
‘Be good to see her out again. Remember the old Tuesday country? She was always up front. Prettiest sight in the Cotswolds, following her backside. I used to pray hounds wouldn’t check for at least four miles...’
Petra escaped to the loo, now so hot that it took her several minutes to peel off the clammy miracle pants, which rolled down into a shrivelled truss around her ankles while she peed and stubbornly refused to go back up afterwards, no matter how hard she hauled.
In the end she was forced to step out of them, looking around for her clutch-bag in the hope tha
t she could somehow cram them in there.
It was only then she realised that Fitz must have kept hold of it.
*
Carly tried not to gape at the beautiful paintings and furniture around her as she offered hot canapés to guests not yet ready for casserole: ‘Those are sous-vide mini venison shanks on roasted baby potatoes in redcurrant sauce. These are steamed chicken gyoza with sweet chilli and fine soy sauce,’ distractedly became ‘meaty potatoes and chicken geezers’ but nobody seemed to mind.
The house was sensational – she could have fitted the whole of number three Quince Avenue into the entrance hall alone. It was also boiling hot – underfloor heating and roaring open fires conspired to give everyone flushed pink cheeks, scarves sliding off bare shoulders and ice-cool champagne knocked back twice as quickly.
Carly could feel her white shirt sticking to her back. Until tonight she had never in her life had her bum pinched by a stranger, but it was now happening so often it was seriously pissing her off, the same three culprits every time. If she’d been on a bus, she’d have shamed them loudly and posted photographs on her Facebook page. It was all right for the likes of Petra Gunn to take offence on her behalf, but she didn’t have to count every penny coming in. Muttering, ‘Keep your hands to yourself,’ as one of the groping three took the last canapé from her tray with an over-familiar pat, she headed through the house to fetch another.
Mr and Mr Austen were at the front door greeting a late arrival as Carly dashed back through the entrance hall. Something about the sudden hush made her look back.
Tiny, blonde, conservatively dressed in tailored navy-blue silk, the woman walked in with no pretension, no Norma Desmond ballet arms or minor-royal self-pageantry, yet there was a bravery about her Carly sensed from across the room. Her eyes were blue and expressive, her smile burst out instinctively as she shook hands and kissed cheeks, a rumble of infectious husky laughter spreading to her hosts, then rippling on. Two small dogs marched in beside her and stood their ground, outriders to someone Carly sensed was not so much VIP arrival as moon landing.
‘Do you mind terribly that I brought them?’ she asked her hosts, as the dogs sat neatly beside her.