“Well, Emma King,” he said, “I’m not being beaten at love by anyone. I couldn’t forget you if I didn’t see you for… for seventy years. How’s that?”
“We’d have to be quite old,” she said, “for you to remember me for seventy years.”
“I’d hang on,” he said. “I’d just hang on if I thought I was going to see you again. One day. I’d wait.”
“Well… you don’t have to.”
“No, I don’t, thank God. I’ll have you with me. For all of seventy years, I hope. I love you, Emma. I never, ever want to spend another hour without you.”
“You might have to spend an hour. Here and there. While you’re banking and I’m doctoring. But after that…”
“After that, it’d be OK. So OK. And you know something, my darling, lovely Emma?”
“No. What?”
“You don’t look old enough to be a doctor.”
EPILOGUE
Abi woke to the sound of rain. Not just a light shower, but proper, torrential rain. Mud-making, wheel-sticking, tent-soaking, barbecue-quenching, spirit-sapping, off-putting rain. Well, she’d said it would. Only she’d kind of thought if she said it enough, allowed for it sufficiently, it wouldn’t happen. Wrong. It had happened.
Well, a little rain had never hurt Glastonbury But then, Glastonbury was… well, Glastonbury. People would go if it snowed. Just to say they’d been there. In Good Company wasn’t famous. This was its first year. Its only year, if Mrs. Grainger Senior had anything to do with it. Mrs. Grainger Junior had more ambitious plans for it.
There had been a Mrs. Grainger Junior for three months now. Three pretty good months. They had got married, very quietly really, on a brilliantly dappled April day, when the sun had shone one minute, and the clouds had regathered the next; when they had walked into the registry office leaving a doomily dark world behind them and come out an hour later into a radiantly blue-and-gold one. Which, as Georgia said, was an absolutely fitting portent.
They had agreed, William and she, that there was no point waiting for very long at all, since there was absolutely nothing to wait for. No complex family to worry about-none at all, in Abi’s case, and while William’s was worrying, it wasn’t complex-no one’s permission to be sought, no need to find somewhere to live. Abi had no desire, she said, for a big wedding; she didn’t want to walk down the aisle in a meringue; indeed she didn’t want to walk down any aisle in anything. She was a staunch atheist. The only thing she believed in, she said, was William, and how much she loved him… which she repeated in her wedding speech-she had insisted on making a speech-and which reduced almost everyone in the room-with a few notable and predictable exceptions-to misty-eyed and foolish laughter.
She said she’d quite like a good party, but not so big she couldn’t dance with everyone in the room; she and William had very few friends in common, and she didn’t want anyone there who didn’t understand what they were doing together.
So there had been about thirty altogether-for a late lunch and then dancing at the Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, which Mr. Grainger insisted on paying for. Abi had wanted to pay for it herself, and not be any further beholden to the Graingers, but:
“Let him,” William said. “It’s his way of apologising for my mother’s behaviour.”
Sylvie was there, of course, with a new boyfriend. He was called Alan Wallis and he worked in the men’s department of Marks & Spencer. When Abi first met him, she told Sylvie she must need her hormones examined, that he was bound to be gay, but Sylvie assured her he was most definitely not; he was brilliant at the business, and in fact so demanding that she was quite worn out by it all. Abi, in a spirit of pure mischief, made him go and ask Mrs. Grainger to dance, but in fact, Alan Wallis had the most beautiful formal manners and had done an advanced ballroom dancing course and steered Mrs. Grainger most expertly round the room, and she was later heard to tell William that he was rather a charming young man and that they had had a very interesting discussion about the rise and fall in the Marks & Spencer share price, and the reasons behind it.
Mr. Grainger was in his turn very taken with Sylvie. “Maybe they could set up a maison à quatre,” Abi remarked cheerfully to William. “That would solve an awful lot of problems.”
William’s brother and sister and their respective families came; Abi quite liked Martin, who was not unlike William to look at, but a lot smoother, but she thought his sister was frightful and was almost moved to feel pity for Mrs. Grainger when she saw her being snubbed repeatedly by her daughter and even more frequently by her son-in-law.
Georgia was there, of course, and so was Merlin; Georgia was interestingly and rather overtly impatient with Merlin, Abi noticed. He was at his most charming and kept paying everyone very lavish compliments; he told Abi she made his heart stop, she looked so lovely, and William that he was the luckiest man in the universe-that really annoyed Georgia-and Sylvie that she danced like the proverbial angel. In the end, Georgia actually snapped at him and told him to stop behaving as if he was in front of-or behind-the cameras. He looked quite hurt, and Sylvie, bored by now with Mr. Grainger, took it upon herself to comfort him, which made Georgia crosser still.
Emma was there with Barney; they were officially engaged now, and Emma had a rock quite as big as Abi’s on her finger. She told Abi privately that she would have given anything to have a quiet wedding too, but her mother had gone into overdrive over the whole thing, and her rating on the nightmare bride’s mother scale of nought to ten was about eleven and a half.
“It’s a bit like you, in a way: Barney and his family are so posh, and me and my family aren’t, and I just can see it all ending in tears.” Abi had told her to elope with Barney, or run away and get married on a beach somewhere, but Emma said she couldn’t possibly do that to her mother. She also, Abi suspected, wanted very much to walk down the aisle in a meringue.
William had invited a few of his farming friends, and their wives, jolly, horsey girls for the most part, who danced energetically long after everyone else had given up, and Abi invited a small number-three, to be precise-of her better-behaved girlfriends, who would be an adornment to the company and could be more or less relied upon not to get so drunk that they were sick or to bring any drugs onto the premises… and that was that.
“And you know what?” she said to William as they undressed late that night in their suite of the Radisson Edwardian hotel at Heathrow, prior to a six a.m. flight to Barbados, “it was exactly how I hoped: everyone seemed happy, most people got on with most people, and even your mother smiled quite a lot.”
William agreed, rather absently; he was goggle-eyed at the excesses of the hotel, with its vast atrium, its marble floors and pillars, its lush palm trees and gilded mirrors, never having seen anything like it in his life.
“I’ve only actually been away three times, twice with Nanny to Frinton and once with my dad fishing in Scotland.”
Abi told him she thought she could probably improve on that.
The honeymoon had been wonderful; they had stayed at the Glitter Bay Hotel, and done all the touristy things: parasailed, surfed, swum with dolphins, and danced to various wonderful bands night after night on various wonderful beaches. And then returned home to the reality of cottage number one.
Actually, Abi was very happy there. She was absorbed with starting her company, planning the festival, learning to ride-at which she proved rather adept: “We’ll have you out with the hounds soon… all two of them,” Mr. Grainger had said with his usual heavy wink-and struggling to cook. After a few weeks of overambitious failures, she gave up and simply served endless enormous roasts, which were easy and satisfied William’s awesome appetite. Mrs. Grainger left her alone for the most part, occasionally arriving at cottage number one with pies and puddings and chutneys and jams-“I know how busy you are; this might help a bit”-which Abi became swiftly grateful for. She knew Mrs. Grainger’s motives were not entirely good, being partly to contrast with her own efforts, but on the
other hand it all tasted wonderful.
And here they were on the morning of the festival, with three thousand tickets sold. “Three thousand, I can’t believe it,” Georgia had said. “It’s amazing.”
Abi told her it wasn’t amazing enough-they needed twice that to make any real money; they were way overbudget on the bands. “But we should get loads more on the day… as long as it isn’t tipping down.”
“You said it would be tipping down,” said Georgia. “You can’t get out of it that easily.”
The best thing was that Barney’s bank, BKM, had agreed to sponsor it.
“Only a rather modest amount, I’m afraid,” Barney had told Abi. “Ten grand, piss in a pot to them, but it should help a bit. And they’ll want their pound of flesh or whatever, be credited on all the publicity and so on. They’re actually rather tickled by it. My boss said he’d bring a few friends if it’s a good day.”
Abi told him she didn’t see ten grand as either modest or a piss in a pot, and that she’d thank Barney’s boss personally in the best way she knew how.
“Best not,” said Barney, grinning at her. “He’s gay.”
***
She got up now, pulled on some jeans, her wellies, and her Barbour-“Who’d ever have thought I’d be seen alive in a Barbour?” she said to Georgia. “But they really do keep the water out better than anything”-and drove down to the site.
It was still only seven, but the place was already full of people. She looked at it from the top of the hill, at her creation, at the transformation of the small lush valley into something so unrecognisably different, and felt a mixture of pride and terror in more or less equal proportions. The cows had been moved out, mildly protesting, a week ago, ousted by a rival herd of huge lorries, massive power lines, tall arc lights, neat rows of portaloos and showers; the brilliant red-and-yellow-striped arena stood at the heart of the site, a flag fluttering from the top bearing the words, In Good Company, a battery of lights above the stage, a rather random array of mikes and other sound equipment standing on it, together with keyboards and drum kits, waiting to be called to order by their musician masters, and even a rather incongruous-looking piano-that would be for Georgia’s friend Anna, the jazz singer, and her daughter-and on either side of it, two huge screens. She parked her car at the site entrance; a couple of portacabins stood just inside the gate. Rosie, the site manager, waved at her and ran over, pulling the hood of her jacket up over her head.
“Hi, Abi. Lovely day.”
“Shit, isn’t it?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve seen worse. Good thing we persuaded William to put down that stone. You’ll need this…” She wrapped a brilliant green plastic strap round Abi’s wrist. “Being Mrs. Farmer won’t get you far today. Green is all areas, for people like us and the bands, yellow for all the stall holders, red for the punters; don’t take it off whatever you do. Security doesn’t take prisoners. They’ve arrived too; they’re in the other hut.”
“OK, thanks. What time did you get here?”
“Four,” said Rosie cheerfully. “So much to do.”
“Four!” said Abi. “I hope we’re not paying you overtime.”
“Course you are. No, it’s fine. My big worry now is Health and Safety; you know they come to do their final inspection an hour before the first band plays…”
“Yeah.”
“They called late last night to say they might be late, got another to do the other side of the M 4. Which is a total bugger; it could hold us up for hours if they find a cable they’re not happy with or something.”
“Yeah, William’s friend who does one of these every year said they once held them up till ten thirty. Oh, God. You’d think there’d be enough of them to go round, wouldn’t you?”
“No,” said Rosie. “And… oh, look, here comes food. I said they could come anytime after seven. They won’t mind the rain; they sell more.”
A small armada of trailer-towing vans was moving down the hill, into the site. “I’ll have to go, tell them where to park. Still happy with what we agreed?”
“Course,” Abi said.
She wondered what on earth Mrs. Grainger might be doing, sent up a small but fervent prayer for a brief, violent, and nonfatal illness, and walked across to a desperate-looking girl at the entrance who said she was in charge of what she called the kiddie roundabouts; one of the trailers had driven into the farmyard by mistake and been unable to turn round, and a very unhelpful woman had refused to move her Land Rover, which would make things much easier. No violent illnesses yet, then, Abi thought, and told the girl to follow her back up the track.
***
Emma and Barney arrived at eleven, just as a very large white van got hopelessly stuck in the mud.
“What are we going to do?” wailed Abi. “It’s going to block the way for everyone else; half the stalls aren’t here yet and-”
“Abi, I’m no farmer,” said Barney, “but a tractor’d sort that out in no time. Where’s William?”
“He’s trying to sort out some problem with the power leads. The supply isn’t enough, apparently; now they tell us-Over there, look…”
“I’ll go and ask him,” said Barney.
He came back grinning.
“He says he can’t stop what he’s doing, but if I could get his dad or the cowman they’d bring a tractor down. Where do I find either of those people?”
“No idea where his dad is. Strangling his mother, I hope. But the cowman-Ted, he’s called-he’ll almost certainly be up in the cowshed. There’s a cow calving; apparently she’s in real trouble; they’re getting the vet; he won’t be able to leave her just to drive the tractor. Oh, God…”
“I can drive a tractor,” said Barney unexpectedly, “if it’s OK with William.”
“God, I don’t know. He loves those tractors. Far more than he loves me.”
“Do you know where I might find one?”
“Well… yes. There’s one parked outside the lambing shed. I saw it as I came down.”
“Take me to it. I’ll risk William’s wrath.”
“But, Barney… Oh, shit. What a nightmare. Can you really drive a tractor? I mean really?”
“I really can. Chap I was at school with, his dad had a farm; we used to drive the tractors all over the place whenever I went to stay with him.”
“But-”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t say he could drive a tractor if he couldn’t, Abi,” said Emma. “He’s awfully clever.”
“Emma, you’d think Barney could drive a rocket into space. I’ve never known love to make anyone so blind.”
“Yes, OK. But-”
“Look, we’ve got to do something,” said Barney. He pointed at the van; the driver had got out and was squaring up to the security guard, calling him an evil nancy boy. The security guard pulled his radio out of his belt and started alternately talking into it and shouting at the van driver.
“Oh, OK. I’ll drive you up there. Emma, you stay here and tell William some lie if he comes over.”
“OK,” said Emma cheerfully.
***
She looked around her. It all looked-stuck van aside-extremely organised.
The food trailers were all in place and putting up their shutters, revealing signs that said things like, Best burgers and Finest fries. A couple of girls were standing by a small children’s roundabout, giving a child a ride; two rainbow-coloured tents side by side announced that they were face painting and willow weaving; someone clearly with a sense of humour was hoisting a large hot-air balloon over the loos that read, In Good Company. A St. John’s ambulance tent was going up; a girl and a man were constructing a large barbecue under a pagoda tent, with a sign that said, Paella: Biggest portions, and a small but determined-looking queue was forming across the valley where the punters’ entrance was.
Everyone seemed to know exactly what they were supposed to be doing and getting on with it. The air was thick with the crackle of walkie-talkies, the hurdy-gurdy music of the
roundabouts, and the occasional burst of rock music as someone checked a sound system. And all the time the picture grew: more vans, more tents, more colour, more stalls. It was astonishing, rather like watching someone doing a giant jigsaw. God, Abi was a wonder. She’d masterminded all of this without any of the histrionics Georgia had brought to it, just got on and done it. William was a lucky chap; she hoped he knew it.
“Oh… William!” she said, realising he was behind her. “Hi.”
“Hi. Everything all right? Abi gone to find Ted?”
“Yes. I… think so.”
“Great. Sorry I can’t look after you properly, Emma. If you want a coffee, the site manager’s cabin’s got a kettle and stuff…”
“William, I don’t need looking after. Did you get the power problem sorted?”
“No, not yet. And that van’s causing chaos. God. If only this bloody rain would stop…”
“I think it is stopping,” said Emma, “actually. Well, it’s much lighter, more of a sort of drizzle, don’t you think?”
“No,” said William, looking up at the lowering sky, “I don’t. Oh, good, here comes Ted now. No, it’s not… it’s Barney. What the hell is he doing driving my tractor? Barney, you wanker, get out of that, for God’s sake; you’ll do the most terrible damage…”
“Piss off, William,” Abi shouted above the din. “Barney’s fine; he can drive this perfectly well, and you’d better get up to the cowshed-that calf’s a breach, and the vet needs help.”
“Where’s Ted?”
“Seeing to another calf. Go on, William, for God’s sake.”
William roared up the track in the Land Rover, with another agonised yell at Barney of, “You break my tractor, Fraser, I’ll have your goolies off.”
“You know what they say,” Abi said, grinning at Emma. “You wait ages for a calf and then they all come at once.”
The Best Of Times Page 57