Tickled Pink

by Christina Jones

  It is my proud privilege to announce the winner of tonight’s Stars In Their Eyes competition. But before I do, I’d just like to say –’

  ‘Bloody get on with it!’ Steeple Fritton roared impatiently.

  The vicar was making little ‘hurry-up’ motions with his hands.

  Florian looked miffed. ‘Oh, okay. The winner, and it was a very close run thing, and after a recount, and there were a lot of spoiled papers for one particular participant and you actually spell the word P-H-W-O-A-R, ladies, and some of the suggestions I think you’ll find are anatomically impossible –’

  ‘Get on with it!!!’

  Florian frowned. ‘Oh, all right . . . The winner, with no offers of Tantric sex sessions as far as I can see, is Meat Loaf!!! Well done, Norrie Nightingale!!!’

  Lola hugged Posy as the pub erupted once more. Dilys was in tears and Dom trailed his father with the camcorder. Norrie, still in costume, leapt on to the stage, shook Florian’s hand, graciously accepted his prize of a free makeover at Rose Lusty’s and a massage at Tatty Spry’s, then roared into a reprise of ‘Bat Out Of Hell’.

  Neddy Pink joined in on the accordion as Martha and Mary hurled themselves into yet another improvised dance routine.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Posy said to Lola, her lips wobbling. ‘Couldn’t be better. How wonderful for Dad. Bless him. What a lovely end to a totally, totally amazing day.’

  Lola nodded. Well, it had been incredible. So far. But it wasn’t over yet, and as far as she was concerned, the worst was still to come.

  ‘’ere!’ Hogarth lumbered up to the bar. ‘I’ve had just about enough of this. Seeing as you’ve got half the bloody village working in this pub, I thinks you and me should have that chat. Now.’

  ‘Fine. Come through . . .’

  Taking a deep breath, Lola led Hogarth into the back room.

  ‘What the hell’s gone on in here?’ He gawped at the microwave and the toaster and the juicer and the cleanliness and order. ‘You’ve changed everything.’

  Lola nodded. ‘You didn’t say I couldn’t. You didn’t say anything at all. You gave me a free hand and –’

  ‘But all of it, all that malarkey out there, all this noncey stuff in here, it must have cost a bloody fortune.’

  ‘It’s paid for itself about ten thousand times over,’ Lola reached for the ledgers. ‘I’ve kept the accounts. The books are up to date, and you can check with the accountants if you want to.’

  Hogarth flicked through the books, his eyes popping from beneath his heavy lids. ‘You made this much? And this is all profit? Since I’ve been gone?’

  Lola shook her head. ‘Those figures there are only for one month. The first. It gets better. There, and there and there.’ She sat back. ‘What I’ve done is turn this place into a gold mine for you and a focal point for the village. I hope you won’t change it back again, the village needs it so much.’

  Hogarth made a sort of harrumphing noise, still staring at the neat rows of figures and the double underlined profits at the bottom of each page. Eventually he looked up and nodded slowly. ‘You’ve done well, my duck. Very well indeed. The old pub isn’t how I want to see it of course, but I bows to your managerial skills.’

  ‘Thank you. I did wonder if maybe you’d be angry because I’d made so many changes.’

  ‘Mebbe I would have been, if I’d been intending to come back here and take up the reins. But I’m not.’ Hogarth fumbled in one of his stained and raggedy pockets and held out a photograph. ‘Here. What do you reckon?’

  Lola looked at the picture of a young, brown-skinned, pretty girl with her black hair in plaits. Was Hogarth intending to branch out into some sort of escort agency? Or maybe she was a niece? Or a young pop or film star he’d taken a fancy to in his sad and lonely middle-age?

  ‘Um, yes, she’s very pretty.’

  ‘Patricia,’ Hogarth took the photo back and gazed upon it lovingly. ‘My wife.’

  Jesus Christ!’ Lola clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘Oh, Lord, I’m sorry. I mean, your wife? Heavens . . .’

  Of course! Hogarth’s ‘business trip’ had been a visit to one of the more far-flung regions to purchase a mail order bride. Poor Patricia. She must have drawn the short straw.

  ‘Um, and is Patricia with you tonight?’

  Hogarth shook his head. His jowls moved in time. ‘She’s saying goodbye to her family.’

  Oh, how heart-rending. All those thousands and thousands of miles away. ‘In Indonesia or the Philippines?’

  ‘West Bromwich.’ Hogarth looked at Lola as though she were insane. ‘Patricia is the daughter of one of my business colleagues in the Midlands. We’ve been seeing each other for some time. She runs a couple of my shops up there. But now we’ve tied the knot, we’ve decided we’re going to sell up everything else and have just one little foodie enterprise going. And my share of these,’ he tapped The Crooked Sixpence profits with a black-rimmed nail, ‘will help nicely.’

  Lola tried to assimilate all this information and failed. Still, she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. ‘So, you and Patricia are going to open a fast-food caff in Walsall are you?’

  No we’re bloody not. We’re buying a beach bar in Barbados. Which is why,’ Hogarth leaned forward, ‘I wants to give you first refusal on this place.’

  Lola whimpered. It wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t fair.

  Hogarth frowned. ‘There’s a nice little flat upstairs. It’ll need a bit of doing up, mind. And I’m not going to be ripping you off, duck. I’ll only ask a titty little deposit what you’ll be well able to afford out of these figures here. The rest you can get as a loan which they’ll chuck at yer with what you’ve done to this place, and then it’ll only be a matter of going to the magistrates and changing the name on the licence in a few weeks’ time, and away you goes!’

  Oh, if only. If only . . .

  Lola shook her head. ‘Hogarth, thank you. It’s a wonderful and generous offer and I’d love to. I love the pub, love the village, it’s changed my life. But I’m not stopping. I’m going to be moving on, too.’

  ‘Bugger me!’ Hogarth massaged his jowls, I’d have thought you’d have snatched me hand off. Look, duck, I’m going to be around for a couple of days until Patricia joins me. Let me know if you changes your mind. If you don’t, I’ll just put it on the market.’

  He held out a rather greasy hand. Lola shook it. She wanted to cry.

  Back out in the bar, the evening’s entertainment was winding down. Through the open door, the lights of The Memory Lane Fair still zigzagged across the sky, and the noise and shrieks and screams echoed distantly from the common, but the music from the Limonaire had stopped, and Queen Mab was no longer rocking and hissing. Lola could see the frantic packing-up activity going on in the car park.

  Inside, the karaoke had been cleared away too, but no one seemed in any hurry to leave. Steeple Fritton was still clustered in the pub, anxious to make the most of the late licence.

  Posy was beaming and humming to herself as she mixed Bloody Marys for the coven.

  ‘You’ve been with Flynn again, haven’t you?’ Lola said.

  ‘No, not really. Well a bit . . . He’s helping Nell and Jack clear up outside.’ Posy squirted Worcestershire sauce with relish. ‘He thought it might be a good idea to get out of the Adam Ant stuff before Vanessa spotted him. I helped. It was amazing. He’s soooo . . .’ She stopped, completely starry-eyed, and looked guiltily at Lola. ‘Sorry, not what you want to hear right now. So, what did Hogarth say to you?’

  ‘Not a lot. He offered me this place permanently.’

  ‘Oh, wow! That’s ace. That means – oh, no it doesn’t, does it?’ Posy’s face crumpled. ‘Oh, shit and bloody corruption!’

  ‘Exactly,’ Lola said. ‘Couldn’t have expressed it more succinctly myself. Appalling timing, as with everything else in my life.’

  Ellis was pushing his way round the pub, collecting glasses, and Lola allowed herself a moment’s delightful staring.
She loved him. Stupid, wrong, idiot chemistry, but there it was. He was smiling, as she was, but not with his eyes. Life played such damn cruel tricks . . .

  He shoved his way towards the fireplace and was talking to his grandmother. Lola watched as Glad whispered something in his ear that made him laugh. She loved it when he laughed. She didn’t want him to stop laughing just because of her . . .

  Now he was leaning across Glad and talking to Tatty. Bastard. The kiddies were all blissfully asleep in the empty hearth, curled round one another like puppies. Tatty really was a feckless mother . . .

  Ellis was laughing again now. This time with Tatty. Properly. And hugging her. And kissing her.

  Lola’s eyes misted with tears. It was too much. Really far too much. How could he be so bloody insensitive and cruel? How could he do this?

  Posy, also watching, put her arm round Lola’s shoulder. ‘Git! What the hell does he think he’s doing? Oh, holy shit! Now Tatty’s coming over here.’

  ‘Can you serve her, please?’ Lola said. ‘I really don’t think I can bear it.’

  Tatty flicked her spiral curls and jangled her beads. Her smile was ear-to-ear. ‘No, thank you very much, Posy, but I don’t want a drink. I want to say something. To everyone.’

  Lola leaned back against the optics and held her breath.

  Tatty clapped her hands several times, then getting no response, thumped a tankard up and down on the counter top. Eventually the pub stopped yelling at one another and looked at her.

  ‘Hiya!’ Tatty beamed. ‘I just wanted to make an announcement.’

  Lola and Posy exchanged horrified glances.

  ‘I just want to say that as this has been the best day anyone can ever remember, I’ve decided to make it my special day, too!’

  The pub stared at her. Lola stared at the floor.

  Tatty beamed even more widely. ‘I want to tell everyone that I’m getting married! A week on Saturday! And you’re all invited!’

  There were a lot of yells of congratulations, more clapping and foot-stamping, a few whistles, and a great deal of bawdy comments.

  Lola clung on to the bar and still stared at the floor. It was dipping away from her.

  Tatty clapped her hands for silence. ‘Baz and I would like you all to be our guests at the registry office and then afterwards here for the reception.’

  Bitch, Lola thought viciously. Imagining she’s going to have the reception here.

  ‘Lola!’ Posy hissed. ‘Lola! Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course . . .’ She blinked back the tears.

  ‘Lola, she’s marrying Baz. Baz from Basingstoke. Tommy Steele. Jimi Hendrix. The massage oil bloke. She’s not marrying Ellis – oh, God, don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ Lola said, as the tears poured down her cheeks. She sniffed and reached for a bar towel to mop at them. ‘There. See.’

  Tatty smiled beatifically at Lola. ‘Weddings make me cry, too. Still, it’ll be yours and Ellis’s next, won’t it? He’s so madly crazy about you.’

  ‘But the baby . . .’ Lola could hear herself saying the words but had no idea she was actually speaking. ‘Ellis’s baby?’

  ‘It’s not Ellis’s baby,’ Tatty stroked her bump and looked a bit discomfited. ‘I never said it was. I told him I was pregnant, but I never said he was the father. Actually,’ she smiled sheepishly, ‘I was already pregnant when I met Ellis. But I’d thought Baz would be like the others and just clear off, so I, er, carried on . . .’

  Lola couldn’t speak. Neither, it appeared, could Posy. Tatty jingled and rattled a bit more. ‘Ellis is gorgeous, but he never loved me. It was just a bit of fun with me. Not with you, though. He fell in love with you straight away. I knew that, but I also knew that he’d marry me if he thought the baby was his. It would have been lovely, but in the end I couldn’t do that to him, or you. It was just so lovely being with him, and I just kept putting it off until I had the courage to tell Baz and see if he’d be willing to accept his child. If not,’ she shrugged and artlessly flicked back her ringlets, ‘I’d have brought the baby up alone. After all, another one wouldn’t have made that much difference, would it?’

  Lola still couldn’t trust herself to speak.

  ‘But Baz came up trumps?’ Posy said, grinning almost as broadly as Tatty.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Tatty shot a glance towards the wispy bearded one who was now sitting cross-legged amongst the kiddies in the hearth. ‘He’s thrilled about the baby and he’s the first man who has ever wanted to marry me, and I’m the happiest woman in the world.’

  ‘No you’re bloody not,’ Lola and Posy spoke together, and laughed.

  Lola reached across the bar. ‘Congratulations, Tatty.’ She kissed the much-blushered cheek. ‘I hope you and Baz will be very happy. The champagne’s on the house. Posy will see to it. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone I’ve got to talk to. Someone who should be told that I’ve changed my mind about the rest of my life before it’s too late.’

  ‘Ellis?’ Posy grinned towards the beaming crowd round the fireplace.

  ‘No, not Ellis.’ Lola flicked him a lingering smile, then opened the bar hatch and ducked beneath it. ‘At least, not yet. First, I must speak to Hogarth . . .

  Two hours later, Lola wriggled luxuriously on top of her floral duvet and stretched one naked leg out towards the pink-shaded bedside lamp. The muted light played on the three strands of the ankle bracelets. Downstairs, Sunny Dene was still partying, the French doors open to the warm night. The music and laughter floated up into the bedroom.

  ‘Do you want to go and join them?’ Ellis asked, lazily tracing the outline of her ribs with his tongue.

  ‘What do you think?’ She stroked his black spiky hair.

  ‘Probably that the best parties are for two people who have an awful lot of catching up to do.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she smiled contentedly, moving her hand down until it rested on his thigh.

  ‘You do like it, don’t you?’

  ‘I love it.’ Her fingers traced the outline of the intricate tattoo. ‘You know I love it.’

  Tatty was a real artist. The tiny heart surrounded by roses and delicately shaded was like a perfect miniature watercolour.

  Underneath it, in black scrolled letters, it read ‘Goody Goody Gumdrops’.

  Ellis eased himself back up the bed and leaned on one elbow looking down at her. ‘I knew that when you saw it, when you ran through the words of the song in your head, that you’d know . . .’

  And, of course, she had. Eat your heart out, Stephen Sondheim.

  ‘It’s the most amazing thing that anyone has ever done for me.’ Lola smiled at him. ‘But there’s something I have to tell you. Lovely as it was of you to ask me, I can’t marry you.’

  Ellis sat up quickly, looking poleaxed. ‘What? Why ever not? And don’t you dare give me all that old guff about age difference. We’re in love. We’ll always be in love.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I know that. I’m as convinced as you are that this will last forever, even if my forever might not have quite as many years left to run as your forever.’

  ‘Then why –?’

  Lola laughed and pulled him on top of her. ‘Because of your name,’ she giggled in his ear. ‘I can’t be known as Lola Blissit. It sounds just like a stripper.’

  ‘So it does,’ Ellis murmured, kissing her, and glancing at the pale blue carnival princess dress draped across the dressing table where it had landed, and then at the navy and silver knickers and bra hanging recklessly from each of the bed knobs. ‘How very, very wonderfully appropriate . . .’

  Chapter Thirty-thee

  It was three weeks since the carnival. The beginning of July and still scorchingly hot. Tatty had married Baz from Basingstoke. Lola was the landlady of The Crooked Sixpence. Ellis was temporarily sharing Lola’s room at Sunny Dene while they did up the flat above the pub. Hogarth and Patricia had left for Barbados, and Hogarth had given Posy the deeds to the Gear Change shop as a leaving
present. And Vanessa still hadn’t gone back to Boston.

  ‘But what I don’t see,’ Posy wrinkled her nose in total non-comprehension, ‘is why we need to be doing it like this?’

  ‘Because I want to see London,’ Flynn paused in hurling bags and cases into the back of the jeep and grinned at her. ‘Because it’s a nice gesture to run Ellis and Lola to the railroad station. Because they’re our friends and it’ll be great to see them off on holiday. Because –’

  ‘Oh, I know all that.’ Posy scuffed at Sunny Dene’s gravelled drive with the toe of her sandal. ‘I agree with all that. What I don’t see is why we have to get so dressed up to do it.’

  ‘I’d prefer to be undressed too, but on Victoria station we’d probably be arrested. Not that I know exactly how your indecency laws work over here, of course, but back home they frown upon nudity in public places. And my dad was a cop so I know what I’m talking about, okay?’

  She laughed. After all the emotional upheaval, Lola and Ellis were taking a much-needed and well-deserved holiday, and Flynn had volunteered to drive them to the station.

  ‘I’d still be happier in jeans.’ Posy looked down in disgust at her short, strappy, swirly dress and the high-heeled sandals, ‘It’s okay for men. Look at you, drop-dead gorgeous in anything, and black trousers and a white shirt looks perfectly smart-casual. I’m just not a dressy person.’

  ‘You look wonderful. Beautiful. As always.’ Flynn slammed the jeep’s tail door shut and scrunched round to her side. ‘Okay, you want the truth? I thought we might treat ourselves as we’ll be in London. Go to a show and then on to dinner, if you’d like to, that is . . .’

  ‘If I’d like to?’ She stared at him. ‘Really? Really, truly? Oh, wow! I’ve never done that before. That’s definitely worth getting tarted up for. In that case . . .’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, I’ll forgive you. D’you know, I think I could eventually get to like you.’

  ‘And,’ Flynn muttered, running his fingers slowly down her bare shoulder, making love to her with his eyes, ‘if we ever had any time alone, I’m sure I could get to like you quite a lot as well.’