First the massive walls had risen, as lumpy as the thighs of Rembrandt’s Venus. Layers of limewash, the colour of clotted cream, held the ancient plaster in place over the unspeakable heaps of stone, cob, horsehair and downright rubbish of which the walls were built.
Above the walls rose the roof, a mound of thatch, dishevelled, barely contained by rusted chicken wire, drooping in places almost to the ground, which gave the building the air of a semi-comatose shaggy mammoth crouching by the roadside. The thatch was burrowed by mice and nested by a colony of stonechats; as long as there was daylight, scores of these inexhaustible tiny birds flew in and out of the roof, twittering a non-stop symphony of avian triviality.
Inside, there were beams. Beams as wide as cows, each one the whole bole of an ancient oak, blackened by the fire smoke of centuries, pitted with peg holes, studded with two-hundred-year-old nails and cunningly rebated for the cable bringing television programmes from the satellite dish that nestled in the ivy which blanketed the quavering brick chimney stack outside.
The main fireplace, where huge logs smouldered in a sleep of ages, was as big as a small room by itself, tucked behind the carved stone lintel. This bore, in bas-relief, some attractively primitive devices whose significance nobody knew except Florian Addleworth, and he knew better than to let on that they were his ancestral coat of arms. It was unwise to have ancestors when you were a claimant of government subsidies by trade.
The bars were so small, so low in ceiling and eccentric in shape that they hugged their customers in intimate embraces and drew them to sit down on various dark, heavy and lopsided items of furniture that awaited them. The stools had worn legs that lurched and wobbled on the rough-cast floors. Oak settles, elm benches and massive carver chairs with barley-twist bars and lion’s-claw feet, their slippery seats softened with lumpy cushions of ragged chenille, stood in anticipation around tables spotted with candle wax and ring-marked with ales.
The walls were hung with old tools, pitchforks, ploughs and harrows, and leather straps displaying horse brasses, polished until their stars and sunbursts shone pale as silver. Over the main bar, the landlady, for the pub was now in a woman’s hands and in everyone’s view all the better for it, fixed a fresh swag of dried hops every summer, where their flowers faded to the colour of antique lace and their scent blended with the smells of the fire, the beers and the great, tottering ploughman’s lunches that came up from the kitchen in an endless procession all day during the tourist season. The Yattenham Arms depended on tourists, because the perfect dream of timeless rural hospitality was way too expensive for anyone living near it, except when they had a hot date to impress.
Oliver had a hot date to impress. He had known her two hours already and never seen her with her hair dry before. The way it stood up so fine and cheeky, like the new feathers of a baby bird. She was wearing some little black top thing with a lot of holes in it. Women went for things like that, he remembered. London women, anyway. Little holey garments, little baby-bird haircuts you wanted to reach over and ruffle. Maybe London women had their points. Truth to tell, he had not met many Suffolk women with whom to make a comparison. Lucy Vinny seemed to be the only free female under forty in the whole county, and she was in love with her horses.
It started out as one of those sweet-as-a-nut evenings. Everything just went as right as it could possibly have gone. The perfect seat was free for them, the very high settle right by the fire, the one that was probably hand-carved with courting couples in mind by some lust-promoting artisan of the randy Restoration era.
Maybe it was the mother thing, that little extra childlike thrill of putting one over on their custodial parents, but they just clicked. Whatever he said, she thought it was witty. Whatever she said, he sounded as if he was listening, even though 80 per cent of his available neurones were mesmerised by the holes in the top. Click-click. Click-click. Sweet as a nut.
And then there was the beer. The Yattenham Arms kept a classic cellar. Nothing short of sex can give a man like Oliver such simple joy as discovering a really gorgeous ale that he had never sampled before. They stumbled on it quite by accident, both looking to drink something that wouldn’t render them too drunk to enjoy any greater and more physiologically complex pleasure that might be on the cards for later. A pint of Foulsham’s Old Pheasantplucker seemed to fit the bill.
Paying for the pints broke Oliver’s last tenner. Damn! Cash-flow crisis! Amazing that this woman could make him forget.
‘So how long have you been in the hotel business?’ Miranda asked, when her pint was approaching half-full.
‘I’m a farmer,’ he replied, 80 per cent of neurones still decoding the thrilling communiques from his optic nerves.
‘Oh, you’re a farmer,’ she assented. Was this going to be a problem? A waiter was so gloriously uncomplicated. A farmer might have a bit more baggage. Baggage always messed things up. And he probably didn’t live at the hotel, either. Not quite so convenient. Still … ‘What do you farm, then?’
‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘I’m turning my land over to organic production. Takes a few years. I’ve got some rather fine pigs, just a few of them. The rest is set-aside, for now.’
‘So the hotel keeps you busy in the meantime?’
‘The Saxwold Manor Hotel, you mean? Well, they’ve said they’ll consider a Christmas order when the time comes. Nice, but not what I’d call busy, really.’
Click-clunk. Clunk. Clunk. And clunk. Something about this patch of conversation seemed a mite choppy. Hard to say what it was, since they were now in the eye area. She had the most wonderful clear grey eyes. Nearly blue, really, but just that important shade more sincere. With the finest starriest eyelashes. Possibly the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. And he had fine dark brown eyes, the sort of deep, soft brown that makes you think of brown sugar or silk velvet or a Burmese cat, with the eyebrows that were just nothing but downright damn imperious. Possibly the most gorgeous eyes she had ever seen.
The television, which lived in the old bread oven on the opposite side of the chimney breast, stopped showing football and began with the evening news. About 2 per cent of Oliver’s neurones registered the change.
‘And what do you do in London?’ he asked, as if it was important.
‘Communications in a town-planning group,’ she said. She might as well have spoken in Finnish, for all he grasped the implications.
‘Enjoy it?’ he asked.
‘It’s challenging,’ she answered.
She doesn’t really like this job, Oliver’s personal Babelfish translated for him. She’d probably be up for taking a few days off. Not that you want to get into that. Bit too cosy, bit of a commitment.
The TV news moved on to a fresh item. A hall full of people. Some woman making a speech. Angry people. People on their feet with ugly faces. Close-up of the woman.
About 5 per cent of Oliver’s neurones registered this.
But the glasses were empty. And the landlady was reaching for the set of old brass harness bells, which had once tinkled above the mighty shoulders of a Suffolk Punch as it plodded honestly over the meadows, on which she pealed a warning to her customers that closing time was only half an hour away and that they should, therefore, approach the bar with their last orders.
‘Another pint?’ Oliver said, on autopilot.
‘Maybe a shot,’ Miranda suggested, thinking that a little shiver of something more powerful might just hit the spot. ‘Do they have tequila?’
Silly me, she thought. This is a classic English country pub. Therefore they keep the fermented juice of some Mexican cactus. Yeah, right. Is this event going pear-shaped?
‘I’ll find out. Be right back,’ he promised. The trouble with having to go to the bar was that he had to lose sight of her for at least a minute. The way she was sitting there. Just perfect.
As he was ordering and paying with almost the last penny he had in the world, Oliver became aware that whatever was passing on the TV over there in the old
bread oven was holding the attention of the people around him, who were gazing at the screen with glassy eyes and open mouths. Following a simple herd instinct, he looked in the same direction. And with nothing better for most of his brain to do, he finally received the information that had been trying to get through from his peripheral vision for several minutes.
The woman making the speech, and seen in close-up, and now sitting in some studio talking to the camera, was a woman he knew. It was the woman whose bags he had carried up to the Rose Room at his mother’s house. The woman he had lectured neurotically on the early history of Great Saxwold. The woman who was the mother of the woman sitting so perfectly on the high-backed settle, waiting for the very tequila that was at that instant cold in his hand.
‘Who is that?’ he blurted to the company in general.
‘Well,’ somebody advised him, ‘it would be the Minister for Agriculture if there was still a Ministry of Agriculture, but now they’re calling it some poncey new name, I don’t rightly know what you’d call her.’
A significant episode of grunting indicated that many of the listeners could have advised the speaker on appropriate vernacular terms for the new Minister.
‘’Cept another bloody Islington farmer, getting ready to sell off the land to her fat-cat cronies,’ said somebody else. ‘I thought the Blob was bad enough. Least he was just stupid. This one’s another one out to sell the family silver. Looks like we didn’t know when we were lucky.’
Recognition hit Oliver like a badly managed hammer descending on an unwary thumb. Owww! That woman was the boss of Agraria. That woman had been on the TV earlier in the day, trying to put another filthy scam over on the Royal Conservation Society, for fuck’s sake. That woman was evil and stupid with it. And here he was, getting ready to make a move on her daughter.
When he got back to the table, the conversation suddenly curdled. Ninety per cent of his neurones were deployed in telling him he was the biggest moron east of Birmingham. His hormones simply crashed. Over in the limbic system, joy was running out like bath water. A long, scratchy silence took place. She got one of those ironic little smiles on, more of a twitch than an actual expression of pleasure, the sort of smile only London women did. He remembered more things he didn’t like about London women, and about women in general.
‘So,’ he said, realising that his reasons might be demanded if he didn’t say something, ‘what made you think of Suffolk for your weekend?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, trying to remember. ‘I think we just wanted a really nice country house hotel and somebody recommended yours.’
Yours. Meaning mine. Meaning my really nice country house hotel. His memory centre scrambled into action. Hotel. She’d used that word before. Were they both making big mistakes here?
‘Somebody recommended mine?’ he said, finessing. He’d been a master of finessing, just a couple of years ago.
‘Yes. And it was in all the guidebooks. Saxwold Manor Hotel. My mother wanted somewhere small. For privacy. She’s got very keen on privacy since she got her new job.’
‘New job?’ Yes, it was all coming back.
She’d gone. Not physically, of course. All the physical being was still present, the haircut, the eyes, the clothes, the stuff inside the clothes. But the person had left the building. So the eyes were flat, and the haircut silly, and the sitting on the settle nothing remarkable. The spirit had fled. It had been, his memory centre offered, a nice spirit. But maybe just one of those hormonal illusions. Maybe she really was just a flat-eyed London woman after all.
What was left was a perfectly painted façade, saying, ‘You’ve just twigged it, haven’t you? You’ve just seen her on TV.’
‘I thought she looked familiar.’ No, he refused to feel guilty. It’s not my fault there’s a hologram sitting here, obviously about to start giving me the lines it’s used a thousand times before with other people. I didn’t do this. It just happened. And anyway, she was trying to con me, right? She was the one who knew who she was and didn’t let on. This is her fault.
‘Well, if you are a farmer,’ Miranda went on, ‘you probably would have figured it out. She is sort of in your area.’
‘You must think I’m pretty slow. Not realising straight away.’
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ she said, knocking back the liquor in a what-the-hell way and then folding her arms. ‘I mean, she is my mother. But I’m not a Mummy’s girl, if you see what I mean. She’s always much more interested in her job than whatever we’re up to. When she was in business, that took all her time. Now I suppose it’ll be worse, with being a politician. So that’s probably why she wanted to come away this weekend.’
They think they’re in a hotel. The deduction just wouldn’t go away. It was jumping about in the foreground of his consciousness, trying to get his attention. That woman is the Minister of Agraria, or whatever it is, and they think they’re in a hotel. Yes! And we need some money by Tuesday. Aha!
Something could be done here. Several things could be done here. Money could be extracted. Scores could be settled. Justice could be administered. The new Minister, or whatever she called herself, could be given a truly memorable mini-break, and be obliged to pay at least five hundred pounds for it. Politeness. The last refuge of a scoundrel. ‘Well, I suppose we’re honoured that you picked our place. Good to know we’re recommended.’
‘Oh you are. Lots of stars.’
‘Good. That’s good to know. Well,’ he downed his shot, ‘must be getting back, eh?’
Are there sadder words in the whole spectrum of human communication than ‘Must be getting back’? Is there anywhere in modern English a sentence that drags along a more melancholy subtext? It’s over. It’s finished. It’s fucked. It’s not worth another breath. And I’m not even going to waste the energy it would take to say so. Just let it lie here and finish dying, I’m on to the next thing.
Miranda blamed her mother. She’d done that before and it always went down well. If my mother wasn’t a power-freak, if my mother wasn’t on television, if my mother wasn’t here in this godforsaken place with me, it would all have been fine. Good. Great, most likely. Brilliant, there had been a good chance of brilliant, even. Until my mother was in the picture and everything took on that old familiar pear shape.
Oliver drove her back to the hotel. When she was safely in her room, he tiptoed up the stairs and went to wake up Bel. After a short and thrilling conversation, he left and went back to the farm, where he sat up far into the night with his computer.
Toni buzzed home on her moped some time around 2am. Fortunately, she was extremely drunk. Had she been less drunk, she would have felt extremely annoyed. Some woman had turned up at The Pigeon & Pipkin. Some woman with tangled long hair that wasn’t even extensions, and an arse you could rest a pint on. Some woman who looked fucking useless, and who hung around the pool room looking fucking useless, until the other Goths pissed off home, because they were just babies and had to be home when their parents said.
Then Useless had kind of lurked around the edge of the pool table, and rolled a ball over the green baize in a useless kind of way, and suggested that Toni give her a game. And Toni – she was extremely annoyed at this recollection when it surfaced through the pool of vodka in her head – had not only agreed to do so but also suggested putting a tenner on the outcome.
Well, Useless won the toss. Then she had heaved around the table, and flounced and fluffed and tossed her hair and fiddled around with her bra straps and walked around the table again and tossed her hair again, and pulled up her long drippy skirt to tie knots in her bootlaces, and taken her jacket off, and snapped her knickers, and tossed her hair again, and walked round the table again, and bent over to line up the first shot, and wiggled her bottom, and decided against the shot she’d set up, and stepped back, and stretched her arms, and tossed her hair, and snapped the other side of her knickers, and leaned down again, and lined up a shot again, and almost touched her cue to the ball
, and pulled it back, and almost touched it again, and tossed her hair again, and at last made an extremely average break.
So Toni had put down a few balls and then missed an easy one, because what did it matter? This useless tart didn’t know what she was doing.
And old Useless had stepped up and gone through the whole performance again, and then suddenly there weren’t any balls left on the table. She had upped and sunk the lot. A fluke, obviously. So that was a tenner to Useless, but she’d bought another round with it, so Toni hadn’t minded another match. She really had intended to get her game sorted the next time.
So now it was late, and she seemed to be down at least fifty quid. Worst of all, the useless female had been so fucking sweet about the whole thing. Such a lot of, ‘Oh, you must think I’m so awful, coming in here and winning all this money,’ which was exactly what Toni did think, but of course it was all made worse by letting the whole bloody pub know what was happening. Which occurred because, every time she won, Useless went tripping up to the bar, flicking her hair for England, and bought another round. Toni liked a drink as much as anybody, but not at the expense of her social standing.
It was a good thing the bike knew its own way home because at that time Toni’s impression of Saxwold Farm Lane was not very precise. The landscape in general was a blend of grey smears, dark to either side of her and pale in the direction she was going. Above, in the upwards direction, there was a very large moon. She spent most of the journey looking at the moon. It was her own moon, shining specially for her Gothly soul, radiating wisdom and understanding and …
Some fucking animal ran across the road. Some deer or badger or fox or some other fucking stupid animal they had in the country. Toni swerved to avoid it and fell over. No harm done, but nobody really likes to fall in a hedge full of horrible prickly tree things. Still, it could be quite comfortable, if you didn’t move. Toni decided not to move for a while, since the moon was being so nice and making her feel better.
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