by Claire Peate
The room went quiet and Laura, clearly not impressed at being the butt of Henna’s comment, shrugged her shoulders. “I haven’t timetabled drinks and snacks,” she said in a brittle voice, “but now you mention it, perhaps it’s a good opportunity for me to take you all through the Schedule & Rota that I’ve prepared for the weekend.”
Henna winked at me, hiding a smile from Laura by turning away and smoothing down her sleek black bobbed hair to cover her fresh bruise.
Laura assumed her best Territorial-Army-Hackney-school briefing-voice and stood, legs apart, in front of us and, using the back of a wooden spoon as a baton, she took us through the Schedule & Rota edition 2 (we never got to see the mythical edition 1).
Although it was a scarily efficient piece of work, and didn’t particularly inspire confidence in having a fun and relaxing time, it did at least mean that there were probably going to be no arguments over who would do what.
HEN WEEKEND SCHEDULE & ROTA
Edition 2
Friday
Arrival – 5pm
Bedrooms assigned on a first come first served basis.
Debrief of schedule & rota + run through of inventory.
Laura to debrief
Dinner – 7.30pm
Shepherd’s Pie (p.248 of cookbook) carrots
Ready-made dessert
Rachel & Cathy cooking
Laura washing up
Drinks – 9pm+
In main hall. BYO
Saturday
Breakfast – 8am (sharp)
In main hall
Henna to prepare
Cathy to wash up
Health spa – 9.30am – 4pm
Llangorse Manor Spa (25 min journey)
Cathy & Rachel to drive
Dinner – 7.30pm
Local pub?
Laura to source suitable venue
Sunday
Breakfast – 8am (sharp)
In main hall
Laura to prepare
Cathy to wash up
Lunch preparation – 9am
Laura & Rachel
Horse riding – 9am – 4pm
Monmouth Riding School (23 min journey)
Laura & Cathy to drive
Dinner – 7.30pm
Chicken in white wine (p.233)
Gateaux
Henna & Rachel
Cathy to wash up
Monday
Breakfast – 9am
In main hall
Henna & Cathy
Rachel to wash up
Lunch preparation – 9.30am
Laura & Rachel
Hiking – 10.30am
From Pen Coed Lodge onto Offa’s Dyke Path (see OS Map below for route)
Laura to lead
Depart – 4pm
All responsible for ensuring lodge in same state as when we arrived
All
“Right, well as there’s no time slot for it I might go and get some wine then.” Henna made a dash for the kitchen. “Rachel, do you want to find glasses?”
“Absolutely.”
It took an age to locate where the glasses were hidden, tucked away in one of the many, many cupboards in the palatial kitchen. When we finally got back to the sitting room the others had turned on the TV to get the local weather report. And it was then, at that very moment, that we all discovered just what we’d let ourselves in for.
Opinion on the news report was divided. Louisa and Henna agreed that it had to be the funniest piece of TV they had ever seen. In fact, Henna had laughed so much the wine she was drinking came out of her nose and she had to be calmed down by Louisa as she wiped the tears from her eyes. The quiet Cathy and the eminently level-headed Laura, however, said that it was absolutely disgusting (Laura), very frightening (Cathy) and that the interview should have been cut the minute things started to go wrong. And me? All I could think about was the look on Marvellous Marcia’s face when I regaled her with tales of riding my enormous black stallion across barren moorland while staring death in the face.
The TV report had started normally enough, with the professionally smooth man in the studio introducing the evening news item. “It seems,” the presenter was saying earnestly to the camera, “that sightings of big cats have been on the increase here in Wales since the 1970s and although no proof of the animal actually exists in the form of photographs or video footage, there does seem to be compelling evidence to suggest there are big cats living right here in the Welsh countryside. Experts say that these animals are not the native wildcats that once roamed our country – those were last seen hundreds of years ago. What we could have here is a non-native species like a lynx, leopard or puma. This could be because of changes to rare animal licences thirty years ago – many circuses were faced with a tough decision on either having their animals put down, or giving them a fighting chance and releasing them into the wild. It is suspected that the animal that was reported attacking livestock in the Black Mountains in South Wales was just one of those animals, or even the offspring of the animals, if a breeding pair were released. Siwan Parry is live in Tretower in the Black Mountains where the recent sightings were reported. Siwan, what’s the mood like in Tretower this evening?”
The TV cut to a willowy, chic-looking presenter, clearly bitterly disappointed at being posted out into the countryside and having to wear enormous green Wellington boots that clashed horribly with her fitted turquoise trouser suit.
“Thank you, Dylan, yes I’m here in Tal-y-coed Woods near Tretower where just this week there were sightings of what was said locally to be a big cat. With me is farmer Bryan Maund whose … horse … was …. attacked … supposedly by…” and she petered out. The cameraman zoomed out from her bewildered face to show, out of focus, a gruff red-faced farmer hobbling full-pelt downhill away from them. Then things became rather confused. There were screams and shouts, which must have come from the crew and then the cameraman dropped the camera. In the flash of an eye, as the camera dropped, the TV viewers saw the presenter being knocked down by an enormous black animal. “Get it the fuck off me, John! John!”
The TV then cut back to the studio.
The newsreader was staring aghast.
“Ngh!” He gripped the newsdesk and stared into the camera.
You could tell there were people shouting into his earpiece by the way he was flinching, but all he was capable of doing was opening and closing his mouth. The director then must have lost faith as the camera cut to the weatherman standing in front of a giant map of Wales, his expression much the same as his colleague.
“Aah – hello,” he managed to say, looking around him at the studio for some direction, “well, it’s, er, going to be a lovely weekend. Ahrm, yes…”
Laura turned the TV off and we sat stunned for a moment. Louisa and Henna were killing themselves laughing and saying, “Did you see her face, did you see her face?” They stopped when they saw Laura looking serious. Everyone looked at each other, not knowing what to say. The only sounds now coming from the crack and fizzle of logs on the fire and the tick tock of the grandfather clock in the corner.
“Tretower?” Louisa said. “Isn’t that near here? I passed it on the way up. It’s like … it’s like a mile away.”
“Yes,” said Laura flatly. I felt sorry for Laura – having been the one who had clearly spent so much time and effort organising the weekend, now all her plans looked like they were going to be ruined.
Henna suddenly grabbed her mobile and bounded out of the room. “My editor’s going to love this,” she sang out as she ran off, punching in the numbers.
“Well, I don’t see how these rumours should affect us,” Louisa placated the worried-looking Laura, “I mean, it’s the health spa tomorrow, and the horse riding the next day is going to be on proper bridle tracks. We’re not going orienteering any more, are we? These cat things probably live in the woods or something. Not near where we’ll be going.”
Cathy, Laura and I didn’t say anything.
Ev
entually, Cathy, twisting her ponytail round and round her fingers asked in a quiet voice, “Do you think that was it?”
“What was it?” Laura asked, rather sharply.
“Do you think that animal was the big cat?” It was the question we’d all been wondering but no one particularly wanted to voice. What on earth had knocked the presenter down? Whatever it was, it was huge. Although in hindsight it didn’t seem particularly cat-like. It had more of a lolloping gait, rather like a dog. But whatever it was, the fact that there had been sightings of big cats in the immediate area was pretty scary stuff.
Before anyone could answer, Louisa’s phone started to ring. We all jumped.
“It’s James!” she said, looking at the display. Her fiancé was having his stag weekend in the valley next to ours. Louisa had told us that the boys were having a weekend jam-packed with activities that would make even Marcia’s eyes water. Despite my urge to be rid of my DLC, I was relieved our weekend wasn’t as full-on as theirs, which included paintballing, go-carting, orienteering, paragliding, hiking and abseiling. At least the most ambitious activity I had to face was horse riding and really, how hard could that be?
Louisa left the room to talk to her fiancé and now Henna had returned, she, Laura, Cathy and I were all sitting in silence pretending to not listen in. Whilst actually listening in.
Louisa emerged from the hallway a few minutes later, looking triumphant and snapping her phone shut with a confident flick of her fingers. “James says they’re staying put. They’ve seen the news report too, but the bloke who runs the bed and breakfast says it’s all a hoax and the big cat story has been going on for years.”
“Wouldn’t he say that to keep his customers?” I offered.
Louisa shrugged. “Apparently this bloke said sightings have been reported for years but there’s never been any proof,” she answered, text-book style. “That’s what the newsman said, wasn’t it? Anyway, the owner reckons the animal was just a big dog that one of the lads in the village owns – the whole thing was probably a prank.”
Oh well then, that was me convinced. I didn’t say any more though, a) because I was already getting black looks from Laura and quite frankly she scared me, and b) because it could actually be very exciting and I was half imagining reclining in my chair at the bar, popping an olive into my mouth and saying, “Well, Marcia, I was attacked by a savage leopard at the weekend. Olive, my love?”
5
I didn’t think much of the threat, and I don’t think any of the others thought much of it either. Well, perhaps except Cathy. She seemed to be particularly quiet and nervy. That evening, however, after having checked Laura’s Hen Weekend Schedule & Rota (edition 2) I found myself in the kitchens with Cathy making Shepherds Pie for five. After a very few minutes I discovered that “especially quiet” and “nervy” seemed to be the order of the day with her. As we cooked our great vats of mince and peeled the three tons of potatoes and carrots that a meal for five seemed to require, we got chatting.
I liked Cathy, we were quite similar in the fact that we were more than a bit scared of Laura and her “it’s ten o’clock – time to have fun! RIGHT NOW!” attitude to the weekend. And besides, next to Cathy my DLC didn’t seem so very bad. Perhaps my problem was that I hung around with people who were too vibrant and exciting. Maybe if I spent more time with quiet people like Cathy, people who kept themselves to themselves a bit more, then I wouldn’t feel quite so bad about my own sad lack of excitement.
But for all her reserve and quietness there was definitely something rather bizarre going on with her. Every few minutes her phone would beep and she would frantically rummage around in her pocket, check the text and, with lips pursed, would push the phone back again into its hiding place. Over and over and over again. No one had asked her about it; we were all hoping she might volunteer the information herself, but so far that hadn’t been the case.
She and I were chopping potatoes when it happened for about the tenth time during our cooking. She turned shaky and her knife clattered to the floor.
“Are you all right?” I asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You seem quite tense.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, her left hand hovering over her jeans pocket where the phone was still hidden.
It was clear that she didn’t to want to talk about it so I went back to chopping my potatoes and worrying about how I was going to ride a horse on Saturday without making a complete arse of myself. I could hear Cathy furtively stabbing the buttons on her phone, checking her message, the small intake of breath, and then the thrusting of the phone back into the pocket. Should I make more of an effort to see if she was OK, or was that prying? I was just deliberating how I should ask if she was all right without appearing intrusive, when she solved the dilemma for me.
“It’s my fiancé,” she said in a quiet, trembly voice. I turned round and saw she had tears in her eyes. “Or rather … it’s my ex-fiancé.” She gulped back tears and put her hand on her forehead, taking a deep breath in.
I put down my knife. “Oh. When did you two break up?” I went to get her some kitchen roll.
“Last weekend,” she sniffed and taking the kitchen roll she blew her nose loudly. “I think it was the wrong thing to do … I don’t know … How do you know if they’re the right one?”
“Mm.” I nodded my head in some sage sort of way. “Tricky one.”
“Urgh,” she sighed, “I just panicked, I think. He was talking about the wedding and – I suppose I felt a bit claustrophobic and launched into this big conversation about how I was having doubts…” She talked quickly, sniffing back the tears.
“And were you?”
“Well, no, not really. He’s just so wonderful and we get on really well together. I think its just nerves over getting married. Marriage didn’t work for my parents, or his parents, so why should it work for us?”
“Why should it work for anyone?” I volunteered, slipping into the role of utterly sensible agony aunt. “But you won’t know if you don’t try. What’s his name?”
“Heath.”
“What does Heath say in his texts?”
Cathy sighed. “He wants to know where I am and why I’m not returning his calls. He says he doesn’t know what’s happened to me and,” she let out a sob, “he’s worried about me!” She burst into tears and I manoeuvred her into one of the wing-backed chairs and poured her a glass of wine.
“Why don’t you give him a call?” I said. “Let him know where you are and that you’re OK. Arrange to meet him when you get back?” I sounded very sensible and for a moment I felt another one of those pangs about being all grown-up and reaching thirty. At least I didn’t wear flat shoes and support tights. Although I could certainly see the benefits…
“Yes,” she sniffed, “yes, I should. I don’t know why I’ve not replied properly to him. I suppose I thought I’d do some thinking about us this weekend, but now I don’t think I need to think about us. I think we’re OK as we are. What do you think?”
“I think,” I said, struggling to understand what she’d just said, “I think you should go upstairs and give him a call.”
“Yes, you’re absolutely right.” She got up shakily from the chair. “Thanks, Rachel.” She walked out into the hallway, wiping her eyes with the kitchen towel as she went.
I turned back to my potatoes and jumped as Laura silently appeared out of nowhere, no doubt on a reconnaissance mission.
“Just making sure you’re on target to serve dinner,” she said, checking her watch before turning a concerned eye to the virgin, unchopped carrots on the work surface. “Where is Cathy?”
“Excused duty,” I replied, unable to help myself. Was she for real? “Personal business.”
Laura frowned. “Do you want me to draft in another person to assist you?”
“Not necessary. I’m on top of it.”
“So we’re on track to deliver?”
“Check!” I said. “Kitchen division is ahead of s
chedule and will be on target to achieve the objective.” I even mock saluted her, which I immediately regretted because she might get annoyed at me for blatantly taking the piss. In fact, she beamed and heartily slapped me on the back, clearly delighted to have found someone on her wavelength.
“Excellent,” she said, “good woman!” and went back to her position.
6
That night we drank. We drank like it was going out of fashion. We drank, in fact, like the dinner was so absolutely God-awful that we wanted to obliterate all trace of it from our systems. Which was actually pretty close to the truth. The lamb was tough, the mash was dry, the carrots and beans had gone very badly indeed and even the supermarket cheesecake didn’t live up to the high expectations we had from the picture on the box. The bohemian, stylish setting of the Hen House was somewhere where you would expect to find pan-seared scallops and a Japanese mooli salad. I, however, had done a serious injustice to the ambience of the place by creating what could only be described as a 1970s school dinner. The only difference being the girls hadn’t had the inconvenience of pushing a tray along a rail to get the individual portions slopped onto their plates – I’d done the slopping out myself.
In my defence, I had to cook for the five of us with practically no help as Cathy came back down from making her phone call in a worse state than she had been when I sent her upstairs and could only be placated with wine.
Still, the mood thankfully was not dented by my culinary disaster, everyone gave a toast to the “crap chef” and Laura hastily amended the Schedule & Rota so that I was excused from cooking on Saturday evening and was now responsible for washing dishes and therefore minimising any harm to the public. Edition Three of the Schedule & Rota was passed round the table and signed off and we all breathed a sigh of relief.