Honeymoon Suite

by Wendy Holden

  In Kegs, Juno was getting to grips with her fish knife. ‘It’s really clever, the way it slides under the skin.’

  Her mother, meanwhile, was looking at the restaurant entrance. ‘That man again,’ Rachel said mildly.

  ‘Who?’ Juno looked up from her kipper.

  Nell’s head reared up from her sausages. ‘What man?’

  ‘That man. With the dark hair. The one we saw yesterday. When we got here.’

  Nell had wrenched herself round, but there was no sign of Fake OutdoorsGuy. The lobby was empty. ‘There’s no man there,’ she said fiercely.

  Rachel stared at her. ‘Calm down. What’s the problem?’

  Nell had no intention of saying. She reapplied herself to her sausages, although her appetite seemed to have gone.

  ‘Why are you so red in the face?’ Rachel probed.

  The other side of the lobby, in Pumps, Dylan was finally ordering his breakfast. ‘I’ll have the full English,’ he said to a plump teenage waitress.

  ‘You mean the Earl’s Breakfast.’

  ‘Doesn’t the Earl want it?’ It was a silly joke, but he was feeling quite giddy with hunger. ‘I bet everyone says that.’

  ‘No, you’re the first.’ The waitress, rather surprisingly, seemed genuinely amused.

  ‘What’s in it?’ Best to check that the Earl wasn’t a grapefruit-loving muesli-eater.

  ‘It’s the, like, full English breakfast we serve here?’ The waitress began to recite. ‘The Earl’s favourite herb pork sausages, eggs from the Countess’s Burford Browns—’

  ‘Great.’ Dylan had no idea what Burford Browns were. ‘Bring them on.’

  In Kegs, Nell had regained her appetite. The soothing effects of a full English were amazing. She had quite calmed down from the agitation caused by Rachel’s possible sighting of Fake OutdoorsGuy, and the earlier suggestion that she should leave London and move to Edenville.

  ‘Do you think the Earl really eats that every day?’ Juno was staring at Nell’s plate. ‘He must be very fat. I bet he bursts out of his waistcoats.’

  ‘Do you think he wears waistcoats?’ Nell threw herself into the exchange.

  ‘Red ones with big gold buttons,’ Juno said confidently. ‘And a crown. Can we go and see him?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know him personally,’ Rachel put in. ‘But we could have a look at his house. It’s open to the public and it’s not far away. We could walk over after breakfast.’

  ‘Is it a big house?’ Juno wanted to know.

  ‘Massive,’ Nell assured her.

  ‘Does it have those beds with curtains? Like we slept in last night?’

  ‘Bound to have.’

  ‘I like beds like that,’ Juno said. ‘When I grow up I want to marry a prince.’

  Rachel rolled her eyes. ‘So much for my efforts to bring her up as a feminist socialist,’ she muttered to Nell. Aloud, she said to her daughter, ‘You should want better things than that.’

  ‘OK,’ said Juno equably. ‘I’ll marry a king.’

  Dylan’s breakfast had arrived. He stared down at it, recognising a work of art. Two plump, glistening, tight-skinned sausages with lovely brown grill marks, a pile of magnificently oily-looking mushrooms and a heap of deep-yellow scrambled egg, marbled with white. The bacon, gloriously unburnt, was thick, pink and majestic, edged with perfectly frazzled rind.

  Dylan reached for the jug of Worcestershire sauce and prepared to tuck in.

  CHAPTER 25

  Armed with one of Jason’s maps, the girls had set off at a smart pace. Soon they had left Edenville behind; only the pointed church spire could still be seen over a shoulder of green hill. Now they stood at the top of a field of glossy grass sparkling with buttercups and daisies.

  ‘Wow,’ said Rachel. ‘Imagine living here.’

  Nell slid her a sharp glance, but the remark did not seem aimed in any particular direction. Rachel’s eyes were on the wide river winding through stately groups of trees. The water shone like polished silver. Groups of very clean sheep stood expectantly about.

  Juno was squinting through her spectacles. ‘Even if I spend all day looking I won’t be able to notice every different bit of loveliness.’

  The women laughed. They walked on.

  ‘There’s the house!’ Juno shouted, as they emerged from a small copse of oaks. Nell placed her hand over her eyes to look. The sun was beating down strongly now.

  It spread before the water like a curtsey, sun flashing on the rows of long windows. There were pillars along the front and, on the roof, a pediment filled with lounging gods and a balustrade topped with urns.

  ‘They’ve got gold flames in them,’ Juno said wonderingly. ‘They must have painted the stone.’

  Behind and around them stretched the gardens. There were temples, statues, terraces, flights of steps.

  Juno was up ahead, anxious to meet her prince or king as soon as humanly possible. The river curved round again and the house loomed once more before them. It was closer now. You could see the carving on the columns, the swags of stone fruit and flowers, the flowing robes of the gods and goddesses.

  ‘Do you think the Earl’s in there, looking out at us?’ Juno wanted to know.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What do Earls do all day?’

  Nell and Rachel looked at each other.

  ‘Count their piles of money?’ Rachel suggested.

  ‘Have baths in champagne?’ grinned Nell.

  ‘Go fox-hunting?’

  ‘Polish their crowns?’

  ‘Have lunch with the Queen?’ Rachel again.

  ‘Order their servants around?’

  Juno considered all this. ‘And then what do they do in the afternoon?’

  The house itself was reached through a triumphal arch with a porter’s lodge. There was even a porter in it. ‘Hello, young lady,’ he said to Juno.

  ‘He was wearing a bowler hat,’ she said wonderingly, as they walked up the drive. ‘I didn’t realise people really did that. Is that where he lives?’

  A large, wide door admitted them to an entrance hall. It had a huge open fireplace and two rows of thick columns marching down the centre. The ceiling was painted with classical figures; Juno was squinting up at it. ‘What’s going on up there?’

  Rachel looked up. ‘Something mythical. Not sure what.’

  ‘Lots of bare bottoms,’ Juno remarked with relish.

  There were cash desks on each side, and, at the far end, a small group of people apparently waiting for something. Nell went to pay.

  ‘It’s just the Insider Tour this morning,’ said the large woman behind the till whose badge read ‘Visitor Welcome Operative Marlene’.

  ‘Three for that, then. What’s the Insider Tour?’ Nell asked.

  Marlene slammed the till drawer back in. ‘It’s a New Visitor Experience,’ she said, emphasising the capitals. ‘You’re taken around by a former estate employee. Idea of our late lamented marketing director.’

  ‘Late lamented?’ gasped Juno eagerly. ‘You mean she’s dead?’

  An expression of what might have been longing crossed Marlene’s heavy face. ‘She’s been, um, moved on.’

  ‘But that’s a good idea, isn’t it?’ Nell asked.

  ‘You’re telling me. She were a disaster. Made a right mess of—’

  ‘No, not the marketing person. I meant the former employee thing. Showing us round. It sounds fun.’

  Marlene fixed her with a baleful eye. ‘Depends which employee.’

  A sharp sound rent the air. Someone was clapping.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’

  ‘Here we go,’ Marlene muttered, as Nell and Rachel turned round.

  An old man had materialised and was standing at the
top of the shallow flight of stone stairs. He wore a battered tweed jacket and had a large hooked nose. Mutton chop whiskers of a Victorian exuberance sprouted from each side of his weather-beaten face and the look was finished off with gap teeth and a hanging lip.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ repeated the old man in his grating voice. ‘Let me introduce meself. I’m Bert Blood, retired estate carpenter. Worked on this estate forty-four year,’ he added. ‘Man and boy.’

  ‘Why’s he showing us round?’ Juno hissed loudly. ‘Why isn’t it the Earl?’

  ‘He’s bathing in champagne, remember,’ Rachel reminded her.

  Bert Blood gazed fiercely at Juno. ‘I’m warning you, you better bloody listen. And bloody keep up. I leave stragglers behind to get lost.’

  ‘He said bloody!’ stage-whispered Juno delightedly.

  Something made Nell glance behind her. At the cash desk, Marlene had sunk her head in her hands.

  Bert Blood marched them up some steps and across a marble-floored hall into a huge, high-ceilinged room. Gold blazed from the thick, heavy picture frames, furniture and cornices of the ceiling, which featured more plump and naked rears. ‘That’s four so far,’ Juno said with satisfaction.

  From among the tour group, a smart old gentleman in a sports jacket cleared his throat. ‘Who’s that?’ He pointed at a portrait of a doe-eyed young Georgian in very tight white trousers.

  Bert Blood curled his lip. ‘Fifth Earl. Never married. Were of A Different Persuasion,’ he added, his contemptuous tone showing exactly where he stood on such Persuasions.

  Some other brave soul now asked about a painting over the fireplace. It was of a dark-eyed woman in a tight red dress and looked as if it were painted in the early twentieth century. ‘Lady ’Arriet,’ revealed Bert Blood.

  ‘She’s very beautiful,’ ventured the brave soul.

  Bert twitched his hanging lip. ‘She were. Then. Right bloody misery when she got older, though. They say that whenever she smiled a donkey dropped dead in Blackpool.’

  ‘Maybe it’s counter-intuitive,’ Nell whispered to Rachel. There seemed little explanation for Blood’s grating voice, acid observations and ferocious gaze.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Refreshingly irreverent. A change from the usual forelock-tugging.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Rachel conceded doubtfully.

  Bert had led them into the dining hall now. More paintings, more gold, more bottoms. ‘Seven!’ squeaked Juno. ‘This is better than counting Christmas trees!’

  A huge dining table was set for twelve. Bert was explaining the order of precedence. ‘. . . if you were at’ back you could die o’ starvation afore ye got sat down.’

  Rachel nudged Nell. ‘I wonder what they say about him on TripAdvisor?’

  Afterwards they recovered at the café in the stable yard. This, they agreed, was much more the thing. A smart serving area dispensing soups in sunken tureens and sandwiches and cakes in refrigerated units filled the space formerly occupied by ducal carriages. The seating area was in the actual former stables, divided by wooden walls and with hayracks above.

  ‘Such a shame,’ Nell said, pushing her fork through the frosting on her cupcake. ‘The house is beautiful and really interesting, and all you get is that horrible old man.’

  ‘I counted twenty-six bare bottoms altogether,’ Juno declared, plunging her spoon into the whorls of cream atop her hot chocolate. ‘Mostly in the dining room.’

  ‘They should do a Bottoms tour,’ Nell said, smiling at Juno. ‘It would be a lot better than Bert Blood.’ She forked in some cake. ‘They should do a lot of things, really. Rewrite all their brochures, for a start. I was looking at them in the hotel room. They’re practically illiterate. If Pemberton was my client,’ she added longingly, ‘if I still had Vanilla up and running, we’d give them an entire overhaul. They need it. They’ve got to have good commercial literature here. Pemberton’s a twenty-first-century retail enterprise and there’s so much to sell. Shops, cafés, outdoor events, pubs, holiday cottages. And yet they’re all being represented so badly. Outdated letter fonts, bad page design, off-putting colour, really boring and badly spelt copy.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why they’ve got rid of the marketing person,’ Rachel remarked lightly, watching Juno skim off her frosting.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard that woman on the till. They’ve got rid of the Director of Marketing.’

  Nell hadn’t made the connection, but now she remembered.

  ‘Could be an opportunity,’ Rachel grinned. ‘For you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Nell exclaimed. ‘They’re hardly going to offer it to me.’

  ‘You’d be perfect. You’ve got all the right experience. And all those ideas. Wouldn’t you like to do it?’

  ‘Oh, I would!’ The project was so clear to Nell. If only she still had her own business and could pitch for the work! It was exactly the kind of branding job she had shone at. ‘I wonder if they do it in-house or whether it’s contracted out.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask them?’

  Nell frowned at Rachel. ‘You’re not serious.’

  Rachel smiled back. ‘I am perfectly serious.’

  Her friend, Nell thought, was gung-ho to an almost oppressive extent sometimes. She could never see the reason why not, even when, as here, it was glaringly obvious. ‘Because they’re bound to have someone else by now and—’

  ‘They might not have.’ Rachel popped in the rest of her cupcake.

  ‘—and I live in London, not up here,’ Nell finished, exasperated. It was impossible, why could Rachel not see? She did not work for the estate on the one hand, or live anywhere near it. And she no longer had her marketing business on the other. The state of the Pemberton literature was nothing to do with her.

  Juno was begging to visit the stable-yard shops. ‘It’ll just be full of chutneys and teabags,’ Rachel warned her. ‘And kneelers for gardening in wipe-clean William Morris.’

  ‘Why did William Morris need wiping clean?’

  ‘Coming?’ Rachel asked Nell, who shook her head and gestured at her unfinished cupcake. It was an excuse; she just wanted time to herself. The exchange about the marketing had been irritating.

  She watched Rachel and Juno though the café windows as they made their way across the yard. Juno, serious in her spectacles, was almost the same size as her petite mother, who stood out from the elderly crowd with her jeans, layered plum-coloured tops and purple-red hair lifting gently as she walked.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  A man in late middle-age was standing before Nell. He was smartly dressed and very tall and thin. Strands of grey hair were combed across a freckled pate and he regarded her with mournful eyes which sloped to the sides of his face.

  ‘I do hope you don’t mind me interrupting you.’ His voice was deep and fruity. ‘But I just happened to overhear your conversation. Bottoms.’ He flashed her a broad and unexpected smile which revealed wonky teeth.

  Nell shrank to the wall and her interlocutor looked concerned. ‘Please don’t misunderstand me. I meant the tour your young friend was mentioning. Looking at the ceilings and so on. Jolly good idea.’

  Nell nodded, still eyeing him cautiously.

  ‘I was also interested in what you had to say about Bert Blood. Did you really not think he was terribly good?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Nell, wondering who this was. A fellow visitor, perhaps? ‘He was pretty awful,’ she added, in the interests of full disclosure.

  Her companion sighed. ‘We’ll just have to put Bert Blood down to experience. I must say that I had my doubts all along. He used to terrify me as a child.’

  Nell was surprised. ‘You live here?’

  ‘Yes. And I work here.’

  He must, Nell concluded, be some sort
of manager. Country estates were full of posh old chaps like this. They had tied cottages. Perhaps he lived in Edenville.

  ‘Now there was something else that you mentioned I’d like to hear more about. The estate literature. How exactly do you feel it could be improved?’

  Nell wondered how she felt about being so comprehensively eavesdropped. Especially on this subject, after the disagreement with Rachel.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s up to me to say,’ she said, looking towards the courtyard shop and wishing she had gone with the others after all.

  Her companion now produced a smart brown leather folder which he unzipped, producing from inside handfuls of brochures and flyers. He spread them out on the table and Nell was struck anew by the terrible photography, awful shoutlines and uninspired, badly spelt body copy.

  ‘I’d be so grateful if you could tell me what you think,’ he said with polite longing. ‘Perhaps you could have a quick look through while I get you another coffee?’

  Nell looked up; there was something almost pleading about the sloping, melancholy eyes. He really wanted her views. This, and his air of wonderful courtesy, was irresistible.

  By the time he came back, carefully carrying her cappuccino, Nell had firm opinions on everything from the farm shop flyer to the booklet advertising the weddings service.

  He listened to her intently, asked more questions and for a happy half hour Nell felt she was back at Vanilla PR, briefing a client. She was so good at this! She had not realised quite how much she missed it.

  He took careful notes of everything she said, writing in a leather-bound notebook with a large black fountain pen. He had style, certainly.

  A helicopter could be heard now, thrumming overhead. The sound seemed to trigger something in Nell’s companion. He looked startled, glanced at his watch and leapt to his feet. ‘Awfully sorry . . . have to dash . . . guests for lunch . . . please don’t get up . . . it’s been wonderful talking to you, Miss, er . . .’

  ‘Simpson. Nell Simpson,’ Nell said, wondering what sort of estate manager had lunch guests who arrived in a helicopter.

  He was zipping up his folder. ‘Thank you for all your insights. Hugely appreciated. I hope very much to see you again.’