‘Oh, no, now what? For heaven’s sake!’ Deep in the quiet depths of the house, a phone was ringing. And ringing. And ringing, ringing, ringing. A mobile phone, with a silly electronic warble. Oliver’s mobile phone. That was his ringing tone, the Nokia tune, the thirteen notes that have driven more sane people crazy than any other melody in history. The most annoying sound detectable by the human ear. Especially at – what was it? – 5am.
Bel, exhausted by excitement and cooking, lulled by the Baileys and Colin Burton’s admiration, had slept right through the pig-catching process. If she hadn’t hated the Nokia tune more than Satan himself, she would never have woken so early. Her bed was soft and warm but … another demanding day of pretending to be a hotel keeper was ahead of her. And she’d forgotten to defrost the croissants. Time to get up.
Oliver’s phone was on the hall table, and it rang again just as she got to the bottom of the stairs.
‘Hello?’ she answered. How the hall echoed! ‘Hello?’ she said again, lowering her voice.
It was Florian. He tried, poor lamb, but there was no mistaking that patrician voice. Rounded but gentle, cooing like an aristocratic dove. Looking for Oliver.
‘He isn’t here,’ she murmured firmly. ‘He’s left his phone here. Do you know what time it is, Florian? Is something wrong?’
Something about Oliver’s voicemail. Then something about a pig.
‘Can’t it wait until morning?’
Something about his vines. The poor boy really was obsessed about his vineyard. Just like Oliver and his farm. As bad as each other. What was it with young men now – why couldn’t they just think about finding a nice girl and getting on with what really mattered in life?
‘Florian, darling, it’s five o’clock in the morning. Can’t it wait a few hours? I can’t go out and find Oliver and wake him up now, when I’ll be needing him to do the breakfasts soon anyway.’
The boy was all confused. He didn’t understand. Of course he didn’t understand. And she couldn’t explain. Not there, on that silly little phone, in the middle of the house. Much too risky.
‘Florian, darling. Just trust me. Leave him a message on his voicemail thing. He’ll get it when he wakes up. It’ll only be a couple of hours. I’m sure the pig won’t dig up all your vines in that time. I’m going to say goodbye now.’
Was that the right button? She pressed several of them until the phone’s screen went blank, then remembered the frozen croissants and set off for the kitchen.
In the house of a woman like Bel Hardcastle, the kitchen feels like the engine room of an ocean liner, perpetually humming with power as the great edifice cruises serenely onwards. Inside the Aga, the unseen heat pulsed on cue, sending the hot water gurgling obediently up the pipes, while the fridge throbbed gently in the corner, the dishwasher cooled at the end of its final cycle and Garrick was snoring in his basket under the table. He opened his eyes as Bel came into the room, and gave her a persecuted look.
Somebody had left a light on. She could see that the room was spotless. It was never spotless when she was in charge of it, and Toni had never been known to clean anything, so those Lithuanian boys must have worked for hours.
‘Marvellous boys,’ she said to herself aloud. ‘Such a good job they’ve done. Poor young things, they must be quite desperate for money to risk their lives to come over here from their own country and work on that farm for next to nothing, and having to live on potatoes in a horrible old caravan. Outrageous! You’ll see, Colin Burton. If you want to get your feet under the table in my house, you’ll have to start treating your people properly.’
‘Ah … they’re over there,’ said a tactful voice somewhere in the shadows. It was the mother of that girl. Wearing a spotless white waffle robe, and sitting at the table having a mug of tea. ‘The boys,’ she said, smiling quite pleasantly. ‘That is them, isn’t it? They’re all over there.’
Bel adjusted her eyes to the half light and made out three sleeping forms on the old sofa at the far end of the room. Toni and Volvo, or whatever he was called, propping each other up with their arms around each other, and the other boy sprawling with his head back and snoring. Dead to the world, all of them. No wonder Garrick was looking peeved. He usually slept on the sofa.
‘They look so sweet,’ said Bel.
‘They were out there running about after those pigs for hours,’ said the other woman. A slight edge in her voice.
‘What pigs?’ asked Bel.
‘I don’t know what pigs. There were dozens of them.’
‘Pink or black?’
‘Both, I think. They made a hell of a noise. Lorries, searchlights …’
Bel’s antennae picked up the transmission. ‘Oh dear, did they wake you up?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am so sorry. I had no idea.’ Bel tried to decide what a real hotel keeper would say. Nothing that might lead to a demand for a refund, she decided. ‘Still, we are in the country. Pigs are apparently quite lively. They do get out of their fields sometimes and of course farmers have to look after their livestock. But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.’
The other woman looked suitably flattered, but altogether far too alert for the time of day. Had she been nosing around down here? Bel was suspicious.
‘Did I hear you say they were from abroad?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Bel. ‘You didn’t hear me talking to myself, did you?’
‘I couldn’t help it. Where are they from?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Help! There was a government minister sitting here in her kitchen with two illegal immigrants! She was going to get everybody into trouble if she didn’t find a way to cover up. ‘They’re students, obviously. Learning English. From … Norwich, I think. It’s terrible what the farmers round here pay these young people.’
‘The farmers? I thought they were working for you?’
‘Oh! Well, they do. Of course they do. They work for me as well. They help out. You know. On the weekends. To make a bit more money. It’s so hard for the young nowadays. When they have these tuition fees and what-are-they-called? The top fees or something. Thousands they have to pay for themselves now, don’t they?’
Immediately on taking up her new job, Clare had mastered the art of disowning responsibility for any and all fuck-ups perpetrated by any branch of government, including, when necessary, her own. She said, ‘Higher education funding is enormously difficult to get right,’ and issued a small, unencouraging smile.
Whew! thought Bel. I’m really getting quite good at all this pretending. ‘Can I make you some more tea?’ she said.
‘I do hope you don’t mind me having helped myself,’ said Clare, willingly handing over her empty mug. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I just fancied a cup. But there was nothing in the room.’
‘Ah – no. Those trays – I don’t do that,’ said Bel. ‘I know I should but I just think they’re so vulgar.’
‘So do I,’ said Clare.
‘So here you are in my kitchen and that’s fine,’ said Bel, making a discreet move towards the deep freeze, which was behind her guest’s back, and extracting the croissants. The kettle boiled and she took down the teapot and made a proper brew.
There are people who can make a pot of tea, pour their own cup and take it away from the rest of the company to drink alone, but Bel was not one of them. To her, a pot of tea demanded to be properly shared, with all the appropriate rituals and conversation. Besides, there was business to be done here. She produced sugar and milk, then took a chair opposite her guest and said, ‘Tell me about your daughter. Does she have a boyfriend?’
Clare flinched at the question, but only slightly. She was in that soft, pale state of vulnerability that comes with being in a strange place and having had too little sleep, and this woman seemed warm and kind and rather silly, so there was not much downside in confiding in her. Besides, no one had treated her like a mother for years.
‘Miranda,’ she began. ‘I worry about her, you know.’
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‘Children,’ Bel agreed. ‘Born to make you crazy. I know.’
‘She’s doing very well, of course, but she never looks happy.’
‘But such a pretty girl. I thought so the moment I saw her. But you want her to settle down, don’t you?’
In about ten minutes, Clare confided feelings she’d never known she had. Tea and sympathy, coming on top of exertion, fresh air, mad March hares and a good dinner, managed to open up a heart that had been slammed shut since its teenage years. It made her feel almost dizzy. And vaguely grateful, to this silly, fluffy woman, with her warm kitchen and her pretty little business. If it was a business. Clare was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t some other agenda. A woman doesn’t acquire the title of Former City Superwoman without a nose for the truth. Nothing you could put your finger on, nothing you could call evidence, just the faintest smell of something not right.
‘So tell me about your son,’ Clare said.
‘Oliver! Well, you’ve seen him, haven’t you?’
‘A very nice young man.’
‘Well, though I say it as shouldn’t, he is a very nice young man. Girls have always been mad about him. But does he take any notice …?’
In about twenty minutes, Bel had covered what she considered to be the core agenda. Oliver was a nice young man. He thoroughly merited a nice young woman, who was guaranteed to live in a state of exalted bliss as his wife and have beautiful, healthy children of which any grandparent could be proud. But he’d given up a marvellous career and a huge salary to buy himself a farm in the country and he never met any women at all. All the young were mad and it was the fault of feminists and the media. Especially the media. Therefore all parents of the young had a moral responsibility to get them wed by any means whatever as soon as possible.
‘I rather thought,’ Bel ventured finally, ‘that he liked your daughter. You know, when you arrived, I thought they were friends already and he’d invited you for the weekend.’
That explains a few things, Clare thought. Aloud, she said, ‘Did you say he had a farm as well?’
‘Just down the road. All organic, you know. At least, it will be, when he’s finished making the soil good again. It was all full of pesticides when he bought the place so he has to spend years waiting for an organic certificate. Lucky he made pots of money when he was working for that bank.’
Only a tiny white lie, she reassured herself. Another of Bel’s talents was thinking while prattling. This was, after all, a government minister. Naturally, no hint of financial crisis would be allowed to escape her lips. But would a minister consider a humble hotel keeper the ideal parent of the ideal son-in-law?
Suddenly, she realised why Clare’s face was so familiar. No, not from the television. No, not from the newspapers. From long, long ago. From the fast-track London girls’school where Bel had struggled to get more than a C for anything, and Clare, the young Clare, had been the queen of the shiny girls, a prefect with a sense-of-humour bypass, the bookies’favourite for head girl and nothing but a blur of speed on prize-giving days.
They had had one single conversation. In all their years of sitting in the same classrooms and suffering under the same PE teachers, the shiny young Clare had deigned to talk to her only once. A perfectly innocent conversation about what they were going to do when they left school. Bel had never understood what she had said that was so wrong, but the queen of the shiny girls had suddenly frozen her out and walked away. Bel had burst into tears and rushed to the locker rooms. And here that shiny girl was, all these years later, in her dressing gown, in Bel’s kitchen.
Revenge was not Bel’s style. She had never liked pain, and plotting revenge made you remember your pain. Better to forget whatever had hurt you and move on. Besides, the price of being shiny seemed to be that you were heartless, hypocritical and hated by everybody. Bel found that she was glad she had never gone to Cambridge or become a millionaire or done any of the things that shiny girls did. She felt stronger for feeling that. Deciding to say nothing made her feel stronger still.
‘Your son must be quite bright,’ Clare was saying.
‘Oh yes,’ Bel agreed, fighting sudden smugness. ‘He was always the top of the class at school. And he got a very good degree, though we didn’t notice that he did so much work.’
‘He didn’t seem like an ordinary waiter.’
‘Well …’ This was the moment. Yes, she had the strength! Mentally, Bel crossed herself and said a prayer. ‘This isn’t an ordinary hotel, you know.’
‘I was beginning to wonder.’
‘It’s really my home. I just … you know, when you arrived … everything seemed so perfect …’ She flapped her hands to signal helplessness. Helplessness in the path of fate.
‘Oh my goodness!’ Suddenly Clare felt cold. Deadly cold. Had she been tricked? Was this some kind of set-up? She looked at the other woman, who seemed particularly helpless but not guilty in the way a party to a political conspiracy would look guilty. ‘You mean … this is your home?’ Clare suggested it in a gentle voice. ‘Have we made some terrible mistake?’
Bell nodded, then put her head on one side and smiled. ‘I suppose. Just a little one.’
No hint of guile here. No, this was not more than an honest misunderstanding. It shouldn’t be difficult to square. Put on a show of humanity, that would do the trick. ‘A little mistake! But you poor woman … you mean, we’ve walked into your own home?’
‘Well, yes, but that’s OK. It was so obvious they liked each other, I just thought, why not go along with it?’
If this gets into the media – no, no, this must NEVER get into the media. Clare had rapidly considered all the angles and saw that the only possible thing to do in this absurd situation was play along with it. If this woman was obsessed with getting her son married … well, there was the answer.
‘But the inconvenience we must have caused you! That dinner, last night. A very good dinner, by the way. Quite sensational. But how …?’
‘Well, they were our own chickens. And the ducks from the farm next door. I always have people over on Saturday evening. I think they quite enjoyed a bit of play-acting, even the Vicar. It was all good fun, really. It’s so quiet here in the country, people like a little diversion. And you were perfect guests of course.’
‘But all the same … I’m so embarrassed.’ A total lie, naturally; a Former City Superwoman was almost incapable of feeling embarrassed. ‘Of course, we must pack our things and leave you in peace immediately.’
‘I refuse to allow it! You’re settled now, and this is a precious weekend for you, to spend some time with your daughter. You can’t possibly waste half a day driving all over the countryside looking for a hotel. Stay! Don’t think of moving! Just be our guests and make yourselves at home. And, who knows? If we leave the young people alone to manage things their own way …’ Bel reached over and gave Clare’s arm a conspiratorial squeeze. ‘Who knows what will happen, eh?’
‘Do you know, I was thinking the exact same thing?’
‘There you are then. You accept. We keep up the whole pretence. I won’t tell my son, you don’t tell your daughter.’
‘But you’ve put yourself out so much for us and we’re total strangers – I insist you let me give you some money.’
Bel issued a flurry of flimsy objections then allowed herself to be persuaded.
They shook hands over the teapot.
‘There,’ said Bel, feeling highly satisfied with her management of the situation. ‘Now you go on back up to bed. You’ve got at least an hour to relax before breakfast.’
Under the table, Garrick turned around in his basket and settled down to sleep again. On the sofa, Juri continued to snore quietly. Tolvo was half-awake, and he had an idea that the angel Toni was awake too. His instinct was right; Toni had been awake for some time, and listening with fascination to the whole conversation.
12. Tally Who?
Carole had curled her long body uncomfortably across the front seat
s of the rental van in the car park of the Sports Hall in Yattenham St Mary. She was stiff and cold. In fact, her nose was so cold the tip was nothing but a button of pain. When her mobile phone rang and she tried to sit up, she banged the side of her kneecap on the steering wheel and sent a nasty twinge up her thigh. The device was in her handbag in the passenger’s footwell.
‘Yes?’ she answered, rubbing her leg through her jeans.
‘Animal Rights Ipswich,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘Was it you I spoke to yesterday?’
‘About the bees?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes. What happened? We had a demonstration but you never showed up.’
‘Saturday’s a big sabbing day for us. Specially yesterday, for the end of the season. Can’t let the scum knock off for the summer without giving them something to think about. How did it go?’
‘Pretty good, I think.’
‘Any arrests? Don’t expect so – police round here, they’re all in the pockets of the abusers.’
‘Well, they called the police, obviously. We had to give names and addresses. The—’ she paused for words, realising she had a new language to learn, ‘the abusers didn’t want to press charges.’
‘They’re clever, they don’t like the publicity, don’t want people to know their filthy business. Anybody hurt? These people, they’re barbarians, they’ll stop at nothing. Somebody pushed me in the chest yesterday.’
‘We’ve got one person in hospital,’ said Carole. ‘They said it was the bee stings but you don’t know, do you?’
‘They come out with baseball bats, fence posts, iron bars, everything. They’re sick people. Sounds interesting, your bee campaign. All power to you. Give us a bit more notice next time, eh?’
‘Right. Right.’ Carole sat up properly and opened the vehicle’s door. Now she was fully awake, the smell of the fox mess in the back of the van was making her feel ill.
‘So, where are you? Are you still in the area?’
‘Yeah. The bastards threw us out of the pub so we’re sleeping in our van. We’re in somewhere called Yattering … Yattenham, is it?’
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