‘Chicken and duck, borscht and salad!’ he shouted over his shoulder as he bore down upon the moped.
‘Borscht very good!’ said Tolvo, hoping he was helping and giving a thumbs-up sign. If these people were running a restaurant, they didn’t seem to have a clue how to go about it, but as he and Juri had benefited so superbly from their incompetence, it seemed wise to shut up and encourage them.
‘Shampoo, shampoo, what kind of glasses have we got for shampoo?’ muttered Toni, taking over the search of the glass cupboard. It seemed to her that champagne, being a luxury type of booze, ought to be served in luxury-sized glasses. Meaning the biggest ones there were. She pulled out a pair of monstrous glass balloons that someone had given her father, way back when she had been too young to appreciate that their capacity was one entire bottle of wine apiece.
Bel wiped her hands on one of the nine tea towels that she had in use and found various items which, when flung together onto a dish and decorated with one of Toni’s turnip water lilies, looked passably like creative canapés. A bottle was found, in the fridge, to general relief, and after Toni had dragged out the cork with a short struggle, the entire contents were poured into the glasses and the time-consuming offering assembled.
‘’Ere you go,’ said Toni, swooping down on Clare and Miranda with her loaded tray. ‘On the’ouse.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ cried Clare. The nice thing about politics, she had already discovered, was that people kept trying to buy you and giving you presents. But the nice thing about this – OK, distinctly amateurish – sweetener was that she had the leisure to enjoy it and her daughter to share it with.
Miranda eyed the turnip and tried not to wince. Vegetable sculpture. Design atrocity. Complete lack of cultural syntax. Still, what else could you expect in the country?
Half a mile away in his own house, Oliver was carefully rolling his last bottle of Lacrime del Serafimi over the bed of his scanner. He planned to stick the copy of the label on a bottle of Florian’s evil Pinot. The plan delighted him so highly that he got careless. Not so careless that he forgot to check on his pigs before jumping back on the moped, but as he left them he slammed shut the gate to their field so exuberantly that it rebounded off the gatepost, and the catch did not catch.
While he was buzzing back to The Manor House, the wind caught the gate. Slowly, invitingly, it swung open. There was just enough light in the sky for the nearest of the pigs, already lolling drowsily on the straw in her shelter, to be able to observe the opening gate.
Miss Piggy, who was nearest to the exit, got back on her feet. Various piglets were still trundling about in the twilight, and a group of three of them trotted over to investigate.
A new field! A new world! What pig could pass up such an opportunity?
Pretty soon, Oliver’s seven pigs, and all their fifty-one offspring, had spread out down the lane and were rooting in the hedges.
Colin’s pigs found this a most interesting development. A few of them started rooting in the hedges themselves, from their own side. The hedges were still young, and had not grown roots deep enough to resist a double-sided assault. Pretty soon, nearly three hundred pigs were spread out along the lane and A327, the car park of The Pigeon & Pipkin, the churchyard at St Oswin’s and several front gardens in Great Saxwold.
The trouble with being offered free champagne, when you have the leisure to enjoy it, is that you are likely to do just that. In the case of Clare and Miranda, they went on to enjoy their dinner, including most of a very interesting bottle of wine, and some outrageous desserts, and a few glasses of an agreeable yellow drink called Cowslip Sack. By 10pm, they had collapsed into their beds.
The trouble with giving people free champagne is that other people may demand equal favour. Which meant that Colin and Jimmy had polished off a bottle of whisky, helped by a final push from Oliver, who felt he damn well deserved it for pulling off a bloody brilliant scam. So far.
‘Where’s that mother of yours?’ Colin demanded, impressed to the point of chivalry by the meal he had eaten. ‘You’re not leaving her in the kitchen after all this?’ So they invited Bel to join them, and persuaded her into a small glass of Baileys. Following the morning’s tragedy and the afternoon’s hard work, it made her feel quite dizzy. In a nice way. The world was going mad, but it really wasn’t too awful.
The two boys who Toni had collected seemed decent enough, and were scrubbing up the saucepans and sweeping the floor, generally trying to be helpful, which meant that Toni was not quite helping them, but joking around the kitchen in a good-hearted sort of way. The boys couldn’t understand a word, of course, but they obviously adored her, and a bit of adoration never did a woman any harm. The real Toni, the dear little girl who Bel had always believed was hiding behind the façade of hostility, was finally making an appearance.
Oliver was stamping around looking pleased with himself and giving orders again, just the way he used to do when he was a banker. Bel had seen the way that girl looked at him. And the way he looked at her. And the way they had sneaked out together last night. There was still hope of grandchildren there. And the debt-collector man was going to get his five hundred pounds. And, if she was not much mistaken, this Colin chap had a twinkle in his eye and was aiming it at her in a certain unmistakable way. Counting it all in, things were suddenly looking good.
11. Pigging Out
Just before 2am, Colin and Jimmy marched out to their vehicles with the determination of men who know they’re drunk, know the nearest cop is half the county away and have to get home somehow. They set off down the lane. Fortunately, Jimmy was leading, at a cautious speed, so when the first piglet trotted across his headlights he was well able to pull up and let it pass unhurt.
‘What?’ yelled Colin, seeing the other man climbing out of his truck.
‘Pig!’ Jimmy yelled back.
‘Shit!’ yelled Colin, getting out himself and lurching forward to join him. ‘Is it one of mine? Which way did it go?’
‘There,’ said Jimmy, turning on his flashlight to probe the dark hedge bank to the right.
‘It’s over there,’ said Colin, seeing a pale shape over on the left.
‘I got it,’ Jimmy insisted. ‘It’s one of yours.’
‘It’s over that way,’ Colin told him. ‘It’s one of Oliver’s – I can see the dark back on it.’
Then another pale shape loomed out of the night.
Then a gaggle of spotted piglets appeared from behind them and scampered frantically off into the darkness to join their relations. Some squealing was heard in the middle distance.
‘There’s a lot of them,’ Jimmy confirmed.
‘There’s his and mine,’ said Colin.
Slowly, the various bits of their intelligence emerged from the fog of whisky and joined up into a scenario.
‘If one’s out, they’re all out,’ said Jimmy.
‘Bugger,’ said Colin.
‘Yup,’ said Jimmy. ‘You best go on and get your men out to catch’em.’
‘And you best go back and see what Oliver can do,’ said Colin.
They argued a while longer about the best way to achieve these goals, because the lane was too narrow for Colin to pass Jimmy, or for Jimmy to turn until the gateway of Oliver’s farm. Furthermore, the lane was totally bestrewn with pigs. In the end, Jimmy drove cautiously on and turned when he could at the end of the lane, then headed back to the Manor House.
Colin, whose car was a large and prosperous model that had begun its life carrying company directors to board meetings, decided to reverse down the lane. This was not a wise choice for a man in his condition. He ran into a ditch in the first bend, blocking Jimmy’s way to the Manor House. Finishing the trip on foot at least sobered them up, but not much.
In another hour, Jimmy was out with Oliver, Toni and the two Lithuanians, working with a will to catch each pig and piglet and load them into the back of Jimmy’s truck. Colin had roused the rest of his illegals, who were working through the
runaways from their own side. The stillness of the night was shattered by shouting and squealing, just as the darkness was broken by searchlights, headlamps, torches and the lights outside the house, which Oliver turned on when pigs were discovered in the garden.
Clare woke up first, resenting enormously the loss of the first dreamless sleep she had achieved for weeks. Miranda was awake soon afterwards, feeling cross and thirsty. They sat together on the window seat on the landing, trying to make sense of the chaotic scenes that were occasionally visible in the pool of light outside. A truckful of pigs roared into the hotel car park, turned around briskly and drove away.
‘Why are they transporting animals in the middle of the night?’ Clare asked. ‘How on earth do they expect us to sleep with all this going on?’
‘They don’t think, we’re in the country,’ said Miranda. ‘Anybody with half a brain got out of the gene pool generations ago. Only the stupid ones stayed behind.’
Clare considered ringing up one of her staff and getting something done. She weighed the mental effort against the likely outcome. She tried to remember where her phone was, and what numbers she had in it. She thought of what would happen if the media got hold of the story.
Very strange, this feeling of impotence. This feeling of choosing impotence. Well, choosing to do nothing, anyway. Yes, this is unsatisfactory, and no, I’m not going to sort it out. Quite refreshing really.
Local problem, get local action. While Clare was thinking about rousing the hotel staff and demanding some peace, a big pink pig cantered across the lawn below their window. After it the waiter came running, hurdling over the ornamental hedges, minus his jacket and tie, the lights picking up his white shirt. It more or less answered her questions.
Miranda, she noticed, was giggling. Was that good? Anyway, the best course of action seemed to be the traditional one: make a cup of tea and try to forget about everything.
One of the things Clare had decided she liked about this hotel was the absence of complimentary guest-sized offerings of anything. In the bathroom, she had found real soap, not a small pat of something that reeked of chemical freesias, and some agreeable bath oil in a decanter, and woman-sized bottles of shampoo. In the bedroom she had found mineral water and some pleasantly brainless magazines, and a delightful absence of the tray crowded with ugly cups, a fiddly kettle, stale tea bags, and sachets of non-dairy creamer and non-coffee coffee. It was all very civilised.
A family-run hotel, she reasoned, would expect guests to behave like family. So she put on slippers, and headed downstairs to the kitchen.
On the highest part of Florian’s domaine was a place that felt properly spiritual. It was a mound, with steep sides and a flattened top. Only half of it was really his and the boundary hedge ran over it. From the first spring aconite to the last autumn crocus, the mound was always thickly covered with flowers, probably because it had always been too much of a hill to cultivate. Even in the moonlight, they could see the pale splashes of the primroses, set off by the indigo fingers of bugle and the crimson lips of the first field orchids.
A grove of trees had survived on the far side of the hedge, and a large oak now spread its branches just far enough to keep the rain off a couple of vineyard workers if the weather turned nasty. The oak, as Florian enjoyed telling Dido, was the sacred tree of ancient Europe and probably the subject of a druidic cult. So the mound was probably a temple, the site of sacred rituals for thousands of years. The ideal venue for a sacred rite to welcome Ostara.
Since the rest of the resident Addleworths were now exhausted by the strain of calling the police, giving their statements, shepherding the punters from the wine-tasting safely into their vehicles and distracting the bees long enough for Ashok to be carried to an ambulance, Florian found himself leading the midnight meditation for Dido alone.
They sat cross-legged on the grass. Dido gazed at the moon. Florian shut his eyes. The wind sighed thoughtfully in the oak tree. It isn’t easy to settle into a meditation when you are alone with the most wonderful being on the planet and sap is rising all around you.
An acorn, which had been hanging on to its twig all winter, suddenly surrendered to its biological destiny and fell earthwards, hitting Dido on the forehead. She took her eyes off the moon and looked at Florian. Had he thrown that? His eyes were perfectly shut. He had the longest eyelashes. They were all dark against his white skin. A tiny, tiny crease between his eyebrows, the merest shadow of a frown. He was so gorgeously serious. Not the sort to chuck an acorn at a moment of spiritual intimacy.
Dido looked at the moon again. Was it full? Was it just a sliver short of full? It was huge, whatever. So beautiful. Like a great big primrose, really, all silvery and luminous. Was that a bat flittering about? Such a pity they sent those astronauts. Better not to know what was up there. Better not to spoil the wonder of gazing at it. Was that an ant or something running across her ankle? Wouldn’t it be just perfect if Florian leaned over and kissed her just now? Spiritual intimacy was fine, but the sexy sort was better.
Florian tried a leaf meditation. A leaf. A leaf. A small leaf. A small leaf unfolding. A small leaf unfolding on a winding stem. A small leaf unfolding on a winding stem that was snaking around Dido’s warm, pliable waist and pulling her over … no. Try again. A leaf. A leaf. A long leaf. A long leaf in the grass, rising above the blades. A long leaf in the grass, rising above the blades, caressing Dido’s smooth creamy thigh, ever so gently … no, no.
Anyway, it wasn’t going to work. Women never did work out with him. He just wasn’t one of those men who could get with the Zen of sex. He never knew the unknowable moment, he never made the move when the move should be made, he always ended up with the energy all tangled and the underwear snagged and the whole thing turning into a total farce. Then the woman either laughed or felt sorry for him or both. Most often it had been both. What use was a hare-eared goddess if she couldn’t just lollop by and sort this out for him?
A touch. A touch of something warm and smooth. Warm and smooth and definitely flesh. Without opening his eyes, he reached out and touched back. Touched and caressed. Definitely flesh. Beautiful, pliable, creamy-smooth flesh. Flesh without any clothes. It was her. It was happening. Thank you, Ostara. He reached out with a grateful arm.
A snuffle! Delicious, provocative, almost animal sound! Some movement! She was pressing closer. There seemed to be no end to the flesh. And a complete absence of clothes. Sky-clad already! And a presence of hair. Short hair. Hair that really wasn’t like her hair at all. Actually … bristles.
Florian’s eyes snapped open. He saw flesh. It was darkish. He saw his own arm. It was around the middle of a pig.
He leaped to his feet, for the first time in his devotional life achieving a fluid transition from a half-lotus to standing without putting a hand on the ground. A sound burst out from behind his teeth, something between ‘crumbs’, ‘shit’, and ‘crikey’, but expelled too fast to be a word at all. The pig, concerned for a moment, took its snout out of the ground, looked around, flapped its ears, twitched its curly tail and then carried on rooting for acorns.
‘What?’ said Dido, turning dreamily in his direction. ‘Oh goodness,’ she said, seeing that a pig had come between them. ‘How did he get here?’
She hadn’t seen anything. Phew! Florian’s heart did a back flip, then shock subsided, embarrassment backed off and relief took over. She was fine. She was being terribly brave. Not one of the feeble urban sort at all. Absolutely made for country life. Now she was getting little-girl curious, holding her hair out of her eyes to look at the pig better. Instinctively, he took a couple of strides around the animal’s hindquarters and put his arm around her. For protection, obviously.
‘It looks like one of Oliver’s,’ he said. ‘He’s a friend of mine, he’s got a farm the other side of the village. He’s keeping a few of these. Beccles Black Back. Very ancient breed, probably directly descended from the wild pigs domesticated in the Iron Age. Bags of character.’
/> ‘He looks really happy.’ Dido nestled comfortably into Florian’s shoulder, feeling really happy herself.
‘They love acorns. Their natural diet. That’s probably what attracted him up here.’ The pig, Florian could see, was a female but he sensed magic in the offing and chose not to give way to any more pedantry in case it spoiled the moment.
‘Should we do anything? Will he be safe?’
‘Oh, he’ll be fine. Unless he starts rooting up my vines when he’s had enough acorns. In which case, he’ll be in danger from me. Better go down to the house and phone Oliver, get him over to pick him up. We can shut the gate down there, keep him from wandering off.’
‘I thought we’d materialised him, just for a moment,’ said Dido. ‘People are always telling you that you can create stuff just by meditating.’
‘Not pigs, though. Cosmic harmony, world peace, a new Porsche – that sort of thing … well, some people do it for a Porsche.’
She laughed. He could feel the joyful little earthquake all the way along his arm and down the outside of his ribs.
Since the night was beautiful and balmy, and the moon was huge, it seemed right to spend a little while watching the pig munching in rapture under the oak tree, then set off back to the house. They went hand in hand, slithering down the steep slope, feeling in a bit of a dream state in which everything happened in slow motion.
So Dido slipped slowly to the ground, her long hair swirling around her face like water weed, her captured hand gently dragging Florian down with her, so they settled together into the soft grass, and their arms and legs drifted into the right places and the last tendril of curls slipped away from Dido’s lips and left them perfectly positioned for a kiss. So Florian knew the unknowable moment and made the move when the move should be made, and all the moves after that, so it was quite some time before they at last arrived at the farmhouse and Florian found the right state of consciousness to pick up the phone and call Oliver.
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