13. Back to Reality
A few hours later, Clare was wheeled into a small ward in the nearest hospital and helped onto a bed. Her arm was braced in a plastic splint. Miranda had stripped off her muddy clothes and a nurse had given her a hospital gown. She felt exhausted and woozy with analgesics, despite which her whole body was a throbbing collage of pain.
‘Take my advice and run away now,’ advised the man on the other bed. He had long hair and an American accent. ‘This place is just awful. Why do you people live like this? No wonder Madonna’s come home to California. Get out as soon as you can. You don’t want to stay here.’
‘You don’t want to stay here,’ said the doctor, switching off the light behind Clare’s X-rays. ‘We haven’t got the facilities to treat this properly. Have you got health insurance?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Clare. The pain was blinding, but she sat bolt upright on the bed, determined not to be disempowered by the patient process. ‘I am insured. But it’s only a broken bone, isn’t it? Why is it such a problem?’
‘This is just a little rural hospital. We can do minor injuries and respite care for the chronic sick. We can’t do operations. This is a messy fracture near a major artery and it needs to be set under a general anaesthetic. And you need to stay in hospital overnight, or ideally for a couple of days until the swelling has reduced. Most of the major hospitals I could send you to round here won’t have a bed. I couldn’t transfer you until Tuesday and we haven’t got an ambulance anyway. So if you have health insurance, you’d better make the call.’
‘Why can’t she go home?’ asked Miranda.
‘Twenty-four hours’observation in hospital is standard practice. There’s a risk of blood clots and we need to keep the injury as still as possible.’
‘Can I get some more of that morphine or whatever?’ interrupted the American.
‘You can treat him,’ Miranda pointed out.
‘Oh, I only have bee stings,’ the American said. ‘And shock. But that was yesterday. They’re going to let me out tonight.’
Rapidly, Clare computed the options. Neither the doctor nor the patient had any idea who she was. Which meant she was safe for the moment, although they did not appreciate the political sensitivities of a minister in a nominally Left Wing government in Britain making use of her health insurance. Nearly as damaging as sending your child to a fee-paying school. Not to mention the danger that somebody would get hold of this hotel escapade. And on top of the negative impact of her speech … heavens, she’d almost forgotten that! No, no, no. Low profile, low profile, low profile, that was the way to go here. And besides, there was the question of Miranda and that young man. There could be an up-side to this, of a sort.
‘I’ll be fine here,’ she said to the doctor, hoping she sounded confident. ‘I don’t want to lose my no-claims bonus, do I?’
‘It’s up to you, of course. This is all we’ve got,’ he said, indicating the hard couch protected by a paper sheet and the flimsy curtain for privacy. The room was small, and bare, apart from a stack of surplus supplies in cardboard boxes at the far end and some antiquated pieces of equipment draped in dust sheets.
‘But Mum …’ Miranda began.
‘I said, I’ll be fine,’ Clare repeated firmly.
‘Whoa,’ said the American. ‘Scary lady.’
‘OK. OK. If that’s what you want.’
‘It’s the best thing,’ Clare said. ‘I’ve thought about it. Trust me.’
‘I said OK.’ And then, feeling guilty about feeling hostile, Miranda gave her mother half a hug on her uninjured side, which was still agony. ‘Shall I bring over your things?’
‘A change of clothes would be a good idea,’ said Clare, trying not to look disdainful as she picked at the utilitarian, much-laundered hospital gown. ‘Why are these things always green? It would make you look ill even if you weren’t.’
Out in the car park, Oliver waited beside his car, in the first phase of a personal epiphany, in which the sufferer blames everybody else. He was a simmering brew of anxiety, remorse and annoyance. The ingredients were added in this order: what if she’s seriously hurt? What if she sues somebody? What if she figures out what’s going on here? This would never have happened if I hadn’t started this lunatic scam. This would never have happened if my mother wasn’t a financial no-brain. This would never have happened if the stupid bitch hadn’t said she could ride. This would never have happened if that evil woman had a scrap of respect for rural life, or rural values, or rural reality of any kind.
At the door of the hospital, Miranda appeared. She was walking briskly on stiff legs like a referee about to hand out a red card. Obviously, she was angry about something. Now what?
‘Can we go back to the hotel, please?’
Cliché, of course, but she did look rather beautiful, especially when her eyes flashed.
‘Sure.’
They got into the car and set off. Be polite, thought Oliver. Be soothing. She’s upset. See if you can defuse this. Whatever it is. You’ve done negotiation training. And you don’t want any trouble until that bill is paid.
‘How is she?’
‘How is my mother? Don’t ask. Don’t ask because I don’t know. I’ve never known how my mother is, or why my mother is, or what to do about it.’
‘I meant, what sort of injury is it?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s not serious. Well, it could be, but it isn’t. She’s got a broken collarbone.’
‘She was in a lot of pain.’
‘She deserves to be in a lot of pain. And she’s determined to stay in there until Tuesday. She doesn’t have to. She pays a fortune in health insurance, she could be in a private ward in a London hospital with marble floors and orchids, if she wanted.’
‘So why …?’
‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know. She said she wanted the experience. Have you got a cigarette?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘I don’t smoke either. Sometimes I wish I did.’
Women! Especially London women. Couldn’t they at least try to make sense? Oliver drove on in silence.
Men! Stupid men! Stupid country, full of stupid men and their stupid animals. Miranda looked out of the window. It was still a glorious day.
While she was in the bathroom of the Rose Room, collecting together the contents of her mother’s wash bag, she heard her phone ring. Who could be calling? The office? Oh, please no. Some friend from London? But nobody she knew stayed in London over a long weekend. Everyone she knew went to Cuba, or Venice or Barcelona. The call register told her it was Dido.
‘Well hello, stranger!’
‘Stranger yourself!’
‘Can you talk?’
‘That’s why I’m calling. He’s out fixing the beehives. Oh, M … he’s so fabulous.’
‘Good.’
‘It’s such an amazing scene here.’
‘Good. Good.’
‘You must come over. You must meet him properly.’
‘Great. Love to. But …’
‘M, darling, I need a favour. They’ve taken his car off to this fox thing …’
‘And you need a ride somewhere?’
‘I need my clothes! They’re all at the pub still.’
‘No problem, but I’ve got to go to the hospital first.’
‘What hospital? Who’s in hospital?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Miranda said. ‘But I’ll make it short.’
Her mother, when Miranda arrived back at the hospital with her suitcase, must have been feeling better because she was back to her old demanding, main-chancing self. ‘We’ve got to pay the hotel in cash,’ she announced, snapping four different bank cards out of her wallet.
‘They’ll take a cheque, won’t they?’ Miranda asked.
‘I don’t want a paper trail, it’s just something else for the media to start twisting. Trust me, Miranda, this is the best way. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find a machine somewhere and take out as much as you
can.’
The nearest cash point was in a town half an hour away, so it was some hours later that Miranda collected Dido at the Château and drove her down to The Pigeon & Pipkin to get her stuff. Her friend was looking more than ever like a wide-eyed child, which was pretty normal for day one of a consummated passion. She put a few items in her bag, then sat on the end of the bed and talked nonstop for an hour, entirely on the subject of Florian.
‘Look,’ said Miranda eventually, ‘when we go to that place, why don’t you invite me in and I can meet him, like you say? I’m not going to sit in that hotel having dinner by myself, that’s for sure.’
‘Why? I thought you said it was a really great place?’
‘It would be awkward, that’s all.’
‘Miranda … what have you done? I know that tone of voice.’
‘Nothing, nothing.’
‘Yes, you have. It was that waiter. Don’t say it all turned to custard.’
‘Yeah, well. I’m not lucky that way, am I?’
‘You said he was gorgeous.’
‘I must have been drunk. He’s just another dickhead, only the rural variety, which is even worse.’
‘He found out who your mother is?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he cared, obviously. Oh, rats.’
‘Well, it was only going to be a bit of fun.’
‘You sounded really … quite keen on him.’
‘Well, I was probably just keen on getting away with something under the mother’s nose. I just thought she was trying to manipulate me and I just wanted to subvert that, I suppose. If you think about it, I should be beyond all that now. And beyond boys, and bits of fun. It’s all just … silly. Isn’t it?’
With difficulty, Dido focused on her friend. Subtly, she was not looking quite like the old Miranda. Sad, slightly, but also brighter, sharper, clearer. ‘You’re changing,’ she said.
‘I feel different,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s been good, being here. You know, I was really enjoying this morning. Until the stupid hunt business, of course. But it was kind of beautiful to watch, until those mad people turned up and Mum fell off her horse. It just made sense, somehow.’
Dido sniffed doubtfully. Florian had explained to her, very gently, that whoever had dumped thirty-eight urban foxes in a field near Great Saxwold had done a very bad thing, and that the animals were going to die whichever way you sliced it, and that the shoot was a more humane end for them than being allowed to starve to death, but she still found the whole idea horrible. ‘I think it’s very tough, all the same,’ she said. ‘People in the country have to do such beastly things. You don’t really want to know about what goes on out here, do you?’
‘Maybe that’s why what I do in London doesn’t make sense. It’s all just so far away from reality. A mass delusion. Millions of people preferring not to know how they’re keeping alive.’
Dido wriggled. ‘You used to think cities were beautiful.’
‘Well, maybe I’ve changed. Cities have to go on and people have to live in them but it’s all about money, really. And people’s egos. Tomorrow in the office, I’m going to have to write a press release about the new paradigm of metropolitan aesthetics and I just think it’s all mad. I can see why people like Oliver hate people like my mother. You might as well be a little plastic man on an architect’s model, for all your life counts with them.’
‘Miranda! You’ve never said that much about any man in all the time I’ve known you!’
‘Will you shut up about men? This isn’t about him. It’s about me. About my life and what I want to do with it.’
‘Sorry,’ said Dido, who could sense the right time to back off, particularly when it was specifically announced to her. ‘Sorry. Well – what do you want to do with your life?’
‘How do I know? Why is everybody asking me all these questions? Will you just get your things together so we can get out of here?’
‘OK, OK. I’m getting. I’m getting.’ And Dido scraped some garments off the floor and some jewellery off the windowsill, and said, ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’
Florian had prepared dinner. It was something he did very rarely, but the overwhelming need to impress Dido was driving him to do crazy things. Amazingly for one so slender, he was a good cook, in the English tradition of eccentric upper-class countrymen. He was not a tidy cook, nor a design-led cook, nor in the least the sort of man who proudly assembles little piles of food with balsamic vinegar dribbled around them. Florian was the sort of man who used butter by the handful and liked to make a pie in a dish as big as a bucket, its inside bubbling with fabulous fragrant stuff and the top covered in a thick, lopsided blanket of pastry.
When it was ready, he took a big spoon, hacked the pie into wads, dolloped onto plates and passed down the table until his lover, her friend, his sister, her husband, her husband’s friends and his five nephews and nieces were all content and so was his lurcher. The dog was far too well bred to come around begging at the table, but when given his own plate he finally felt reassured that his master was still devoted to him, and withdrew after eating to an old leather-covered armchair in the far corner of the dining room.
‘And since this is a special occasion,’ Florian said, nodding at Miranda, ‘we shall open the first bottle of the 2003 Pinot.’
The red liquid was poured into seven glasses and they sipped. And sipped again. And again. Florian held the glass to the light of the guttering silver candelabra in the centre of the table, suddenly looking like one of Caravaggio’s most ecstatic boy angels.
‘Excellent!’ said one of his brother-in-law’s shooting friends, flourishing his glass. ‘Congratulate the wine-maker.’
‘It’s very good,’ said Miranda, making a successful effort not to sound surprised.
‘It is very good,’ said Florian, claiming his right to sound roundly astonished. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘You’ve got rid of that cat’s pee taste,’ said his sister, claiming her right to sibling honesty.
‘Can I try it?’ asked the eldest nephew.
‘Have you got much of this?’ his brother-in-law asked.
‘Have I got much of it? 2003 was a heavily-aspected Jupiter year. Amazing summer. Weather held right through to September. Convinced a lot of people about global warming. We couldn’t pick the grapes fast enough. I’ve got about seven hundred bottles.’ Florian drained his glass, wondering if life could possibly get any better.
‘In that case,’ said the other one of the brother-in-law’s friends, ‘I’d better open a couple more, hadn’t I?’
Manners never desert a man of Florian’s breeding for long, even when he has viticultural medals of honour dancing before his eyes, so he soon turned to Miranda and asked, ‘So tell me, where were you and your mother staying?’
‘The Saxwold Manor Hotel,’ she said.
‘Over in Lower Saxwold,’ Florian prompted her.
‘Um – this is Great Saxwold, isn’t it? I get so confused.’
‘What, this village? Yes, this is Great. The Manor Hotel is over in Lower.’
‘Lower Saxwold is ten miles north of here,’ his sister put in, hoping to be helpful.
‘But our hotel is definitely in this village.’
‘I didn’t know we had a hotel here. I thought the Saxwold Manor Hotel was up in Lower. They’ve taken a few bottles of my Cowslip Sack.’
‘I think I had that last night. But our hotel really is in this village.’
‘Run by two gay blokes with a pair of Dalmatians?’
‘No, run by this nice woman called Bel something, with a mad Labrador. And her son who helps out on the weekends, and some girl with a lot of black eyeliner.’
‘That isn’t a hotel,’ said the sister, before anyone could stop her. ‘That’s Bel Hardcastle’s house. Two stone dogs outside. Lots of chintz.’
‘That sounds right. It must be our hotel. We’re staying there.’
A semi-curdled silence took place. The sister, in all innocence, took
a second helping of carrots, while her husband tried to kick her under the table. The children, sensing adult misbehaviour, sat with widening eyes. The friends, mostly interested in the wine, refilled their glasses. Miranda felt uneasy. Dido gazed adoringly at Florian, wondering what he was thinking. Florian thought: yikes! Mercury quincunx Pluto in here somewhere. The truth will out.
‘How can you be staying there?’ the sister pressed on, rubbing her shin and wondering why her husband had to be so clumsy all the time. ‘It’s just a house.’
‘Well … we are. I mean … there’s breakfast. And room service. And a dining room. And a waiter.’
‘Is Oliver up to something?’ the sister demanded, suddenly feeling pieces of a puzzle falling into place. ‘Florian? Are you men doing some stupid wind-up?’
‘He said his name was Oliver,’ said Miranda, feeling slightly dizzy.
Florian was congenitally inclined to telling the truth and doing good, and now, being in love as well, felt infused with the desire to make everyone else as happy as he was. ‘It wasn’t his idea,’ he said. ‘It was his sister started it. The one with the black eyes? The Goth? It was her idea.’
‘She told us where to find it. When we went into the pub to ask the way,’ said Miranda. ‘We didn’t realise she worked there.’
‘And she told you the way to her mother’s house. Really, her stepmother. Who she’s annoyed with, because she doesn’t like living here. They moved out of London a couple of years ago because she was getting into trouble.’
‘So now she’s getting into trouble here,’ said the sister, who seemed to find this oddly satisfying.
‘But – nobody said anything.’
‘Well,’ said Florian, putting his elbows on the table and running his fingers through his hair while he tried to think of the best spin to put on things. ‘This is all so difficult …’
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