S.T.A.G.S.

by M A Bennett

  Esme looked at The Dress as if she smelled something bad. ‘God, no,’ she said. ‘That won’t do.’ My face must have fallen, cos she said hurriedly, ‘Don’t worry. They’ll have something for you at Longcross.’

  I laid The Dress tenderly on the bed. ‘Even dresses?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  I felt I needed to make a joke. ‘Are they Henry’s?’

  She laughed. Not the bitchy laugh I’d heard so many times behind my back, but a nice, open sound. ‘So,’ she said, arranging herself cosily on the bed, one long leg under her, the other dangling to the floor. ‘That’s clothes sorted. What d’you want to ask?’

  I sat on the other side of the rejected clothes mountain and spread my hands wide. ‘What happens? What happens at the weekend?’

  ‘It’s such a larf,’ she said, just as Henry had. ‘The gamekeepers pick us up at five sharp from the entrance. It’s not a long drive; Longcross is in the Lake District, about an hour south. Good hunting country, you see. You’ll have time to wash and dress when we get there and then there’s a formal dinner in the Great Hall. Then on Saturday it’s the stag hunt, Sunday is the pheasant shoot, and on the holiday Monday it’s trout fishing on the lake.’

  Jeee-sus. For the first time it was occurring to me that as well as all the fancy-pants country-house weekend stuff, I was actually going to be required to shoot things, and I wasn’t at all sure how I felt about that. I know this makes me a total hypocrite, as I’ll happily eat meat and wear leather, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to end the life of a beautiful creature just for fun. A stag, I mean; fish are pretty ugly, so I wouldn’t exactly cry if I caught one of them. ‘Do I have to … you know … kill stuff?’

  Her perfect eyebrows shot up. ‘Well, of course you should try. No point hunting if there’s no kill.’ She laid a hand on my arm. ‘But in point of fact, novices rarely make a kill on their first weekend. So don’t worry too much.’

  ‘Thing is,’ I said, ‘I’ve never even held a gun, or even a fishing rod. I won’t know what to do.’ If I was honest, the one thing worse than killing a beautiful animal would be looking like a total fool.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘There are dozens of gamekeepers on the estate, not to mention loaders and beaters and pickers-up. Masses of people to tell you what to do.’

  I had no idea what most of those were, but I listened politely. ‘At every step there will be someone experienced on hand to help you. And if blood sports aren’t your thing, well –’ she smiled again – ‘there’s the social side, isn’t there? There’s a formal dinner every night, and marvellous shooting lunches, and cocktails and tea. It’s enormous fun.’

  My stomach back-flipped again, but I nodded readily.

  Esme’s eyebrows knitted with concern and she leaned forward. Her hand was, somehow, still on my arm. ‘Has that been helpful?’

  It had been actually. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘The cars come at five. The headkeeper’s driving you. He’s a perfect poppet.’ She got up from my bed in one fluid movement and flipped her hair from one parting to another. It fell perfectly. ‘See you tonight. Dinner’s at eight. Travel safe.’ At my door she did this neat little wave, flapping just the finger part of her hand.

  ‘You too,’ I said.

  Of course, I look back now and think exactly what you are thinking. What a sap I was to let that witch paw through my clothes and tell me what to wear. But you have to remember that those few moments in my room with Esme was the most conversation I’d had all term. I was starved of friendship. And, back then, it seemed as if that was what Esme was offering.

  Still, I did have a little seed of rebellion within me, even then. When the door shut behind her I put The Dress in my case.

  chapter six

  The chapel clock chiming five told me that I was a little bit late getting downstairs.

  I’d been tonging my hair so that it fell really straight and shiny, and then dragged my case downstairs to find that a mean, mizzling rain was falling, just enough to have made it absolutely pointless me tonging my hair at all.

  I could see a convoy of racing-green Land Rovers already moving off slowly down the drive. For a moment I panicked; I thought I’d missed my ride. (So ironic. Of course, now I wish I had missed my ride.) I’d presumed from what Jesus had said when I’d received The Invitation that I wouldn’t be the only newbie going from STAGS – surely I’d be travelling with the other unknown guests, or even the Medievals? But it was OK – there was one Land Rover still standing in front of the steps. A massive stocky man stood leaning on the bumper. It was impossible to tell his age from his weather-beaten face – he looked like that guy from Guardians of the Galaxy, the one who is basically a tree. I couldn’t really see his hair as he was wearing a flat tweed cap. He had on a checked shirt and a sort of quilted green waistcoat. He was smoking discreetly, his cigarette curled in the palm of his hand like a sixth-former hiding it from the Friars.

  ‘I’m Greer,’ I said, much more breezily than I felt.

  He touched his cap, unsmiling. ‘Howdo,’ he said, a northern, contracted version of the greeting Esme had given me upstairs. Usually a northern accent comforts me, but not this time. He was about as unfriendly as he could be. Unhurriedly he took a final drag on his cigarette, squinting his eyes at me and against the smoke, then ground it out on the sole of his heavy walking boot. He tucked the stub neatly in the pocket of his waistcoat.

  He put out his huge nicotine-stained hand. I nearly shook it, the way I’d shaken Esme’s, before I realised he was offering, in his curt way, to take my wheelie case. I rolled it to him and he slung it in the back of the car, slamming the boot loudly. I considered making a joke about riding shotgun, thinking it would be witty to say this to a gamekeeper, but he didn’t seem like a jokey kind of guy; plus he opened the back door for me. Then he got in the front and started the engine. As we drove away I turned for a last look at the school. And this I particularly remember: every single window in the place had a face in it. The whole school was watching the chosen ones go. Even the Friars.

  As we headed down the drive, only the fact that we were following the other estate cars reassured me that I wasn’t, in fact, being kidnapped. The headkeeper drove in absolute silence, concentrating on the road ahead. Once we got out into the real dark of the country, we would, at times, fall behind the others on the winding roads. Then it was as if my silent driver and I were the only people in the world. When I was a kid and my dad used to let me sit in the front seat of his camera truck – I guess we were both lonely – I used to think that tail lights were creepy red eyes watching me in the dark. Tonight whenever I caught sight of those red eyes, I felt ridiculously relieved. I watched the back of the gamekeeper’s head. He drove easily, one big hand on the wheel, cap still firmly on his head, saying nothing. I assume the Land Rover had a radio, but he didn’t put it on. I could have done with some stupid cheerful tunes. I didn’t know any of the new releases since the phone ban, but the silence was really starting to freak me out. I tried desperately to think of something to say to start a conversation, and fell back on the old British fail-safe. ‘D’you think we’ll have nice weather this weekend?’ I asked.

  ‘’Appen,’ he grunted. There didn’t seem to be any point in probing him further. So I gave up and tried to see out of the window, wiping the misted glass with my sleeve. Being late October, it was already night. I knew from Esme that Longcross was somewhere in the Lake District. ‘Good hunting country,’ she’d said. And in fact as I peered out I could see, between the massive dark hunched mountains, glassy moonlit lakes, which would appear for an instant and disappear again like hide-and-seek. I don’t know how long we drove for. (There was no clock on the dashboard, I don’t wear a watch and, of course, no phone.) It can’t have been much more than an hour, but it felt like ages. The silence seemed to get louder and louder, becoming so oppressive it almost made me want to scream. My nerves were stretched to breaking point. But just as I felt I couldn’
t bear it any more and I was going to have to ask him to pull over, I saw a shining beacon in the darkness. There, in the distance, was a constellation of lights, like a huge ocean liner in the black sea of hills.

  If I’d had a chatty car journey, in company, with the radio on, the sight of Longcross would have reminded me to be afraid. As it was, after an hour in the dark with the taciturn gamekeeper, I saw the approaching lights with nothing but relief.

  It didn’t occur to me at the time that that might have been part of the plan.

  chapter seven

  Henry was waiting in this kind of panelled hall, standing with his back to a roaring fire.

  He was alone except for a couple of lazy Labradors, who were dozing on the hearthrug.

  I was quite relieved that clearly I wasn’t expected to meet his parents straight away, and relaxed a bit. Everything about my host and the room was welcoming, his smile as warm as the fire, his gold hair glinting. Henry was wearing a long-sleeved rugby top and these sort of red-coloured jeans. He was not exactly more handsome than he was at school – he was probably the only pupil at STAGS who actually looked good in the black Tudor coat – but different. More … grown-up. He suited the room though, just as he suited STAGS.

  The room wasn’t half as forbidding as I’d expected Longcross to be. There were rows of wellies and walking sticks and fishing rods and an old wetsuit propped around the walls – it was quite cluttered really. There were yellowing sporting prints of old-fashioned people doing old-fashioned sports hanging from the panelling, including huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ of course. And above Henry’s head, the inevitable stags’ heads gazed down with their glassy eyes.

  Henry saw me. ‘Greer!’ he said. He came halfway to meet me, and kissed me once on each cheek; not those stupid air-kisses that posh people usually do, but proper kisses, lips to skin. The greeting threw me a bit, since he’d never before made any contact with me beyond that touch on the arm.

  ‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

  ‘Changing. Come and get warm. Sorry it’s so beastly cold.’ He rubbed his hands together briskly. ‘Good for the huntin’ though.’ He turned to his headkeeper, who was looming respectfully behind me.

  ‘Ah, Perfect. I see you conveyed Miss MacDonald safely.’

  Perfect – for that, unbelievably, was his name – took off the tweed cap, which was apparently not glued to his head, and curtly nodded his balding, greying dome.

  Henry smiled at me. ‘Did he talk your head off, Greer?’

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say to this, but thankfully I wasn’t required to give an answer; Henry then turned to the gamekeeper himself. ‘Perfect, did you talk Miss MacDonald’s head off?’

  The headkeeper scratched his chin. ‘’Appen.’

  Henry threw back his head and laughed, showing all his white teeth, and even Perfect looked like he might, for his master, almost have broken into a smile. It was obviously an acknowledged joke between them.

  ‘All right. Check the gun room for tomorrow, would you, Perfect?’

  Perfect nodded again and disappeared. Henry turned to me. ‘Listen, you’d better go straight up if you’re not to be late. I hope you don’t mind dressing for dinner.’

  I wasn’t quite sure what the alternative was. To come down to dinner naked? So I just said, ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Good. We gather for drinks in the drawing room at seven thirty, and dinner is in the Great Hall at eight.’

  I turned around on the spot. ‘Isn’t this the Great Hall?’

  ‘God, no,’ he said. ‘This is the Boot Room.’

  As I was processing the fact that the boots at Longcross enjoyed better accommodation than my dad and I did in Manchester, he touched a bell, Gosford Park style, and a middle-aged woman appeared.

  ‘Betty, show Miss MacDonald to her room. Where did you put her?’

  ‘Lowther, sir.’ The maid had the same accent as Perfect.

  ‘Lowther. Is the fire lit?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir. Is that everyone now, sir?’

  ‘That’s everyone. Would you like a cup of tea, Greer?’

  ‘I could murder one,’ I said thankfully.

  His smile stiffened a little, and I wondered if I hadn’t been quite genteel enough. ‘Tea up to the room, Betty.’ I noticed that he didn’t say please or thank you.

  But the maid didn’t seem to mind. ‘Very good, sir.’ She sort of stood back and put her hand out to show the way – apparently I was to go first, even though I didn’t know the way; some sort of pecking order, I suppose.

  I went to pick up my case, but Henry put out his hand. ‘Leave that,’ he said. ‘I’ll have someone bring it up.’

  Apparently posh people don’t carry their own stuff. I began to enjoy myself, especially when Henry took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Sincerely. I’m so glad you’re here.’

  My room – I suppose I should call it Lowther – was gorgeous. And massive. It was like the best hotel suite in the best hotel you could possibly imagine. I walked all the way around it, which took some time.

  There was an enormous dark wood four-poster bed, with heavy rose-coloured curtains and bedclothes. On the walls there seemed to be material instead of wallpaper, with very faint gold leaves sort of stencilled on it. There were rugs out of Aladdin on the floor. The windows had clear panes at the bottom, stained glass at the top. There was one of those fireplaces which is so old it has a date on it. (This one said 1590.) And, get this: it had a roaring little fire already burning in it. There was no TV in the room, as there would have been in a hotel; in fact I never saw a telly the whole time I was at Longcross.

  Actually nothing in the room was new, when you looked closely. The rugs were a bit threadbare and the gold leaves on the walls had thinned and faded, and one of the panes in the window had a silvery crack right across it. But the room screamed heritage and class and quality, and as such it had the inevitable hallmark of all those things – a stag’s head on the wall above the fireplace, his dark glass eyes flickering in the firelight as if he still lived. And here’s something you wouldn’t get in a hotel room. On the bed, almost camouflaged, lay a dress. It was the same colour as the rest of the room, a dark rose. As I picked it up it sort of slithered, and it was heavy. Quality again. I wondered, irrelevantly, what Henry’s room was like.

  The maid left me to get the tea, which she brought in, just as I’d imagined, on a silver tray. A young bloke about my age followed her with my suitcase, which he deposited in the middle of the rug. And then a third person entered the room: tall, blonde and beautiful. It was Charlotte Lachlan-Young, the second siren.

  Charlotte was wearing a beautiful frock – no, you couldn’t really call it a frock; it was definitely a gown. She skipped forward and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Greer, isn’t it.’ It was a statement, not a question, as if she was telling me my name. I took a step back when she released me. If Henry’s kisses were surprising, hers were definitely an over-the-top greeting since she’d never directly spoken to me before. ‘It’s so great you could come. Welcome to Longcross.’ She said it as if it was her house, and then I remembered that I’d heard at STAGS that she was some sort of cousin of Henry’s. I suppose she thought that gave her the right to act as hostess. It was weird though – I would’ve thought it was for his mum to greet me this way. But I supposed I would meet her at dinner. Charlotte went on. ‘Lowther is the sweetest room; you’ll get such a view in the morning.’

  And that first sentence told me exactly how Charlotte differed from the other Medieval girls. She spoke as if everything she said was in italics. She was perpetually enthusiastic and gave everything a special emphasis. I could see how it would quickly get on your nerves. The maid poured the tea into little pointless china cups, through this tiny little silver sieve, a world away from the big hand-warmer mugs my dad and I used, filled with dark reddish builder’s tea. While she poured, Charlotte sat cosily on the bed, flipping her hair from one parting to the other as Esme had done. It t
oo fell perfectly. ‘Oh, is this your dress for tonight? Gosh. It’s perfect. That colour with your dark hair. Yum.’

  I noted that the maid handed Charlotte her cup of tea first, and me second. ‘Betty, you are a darling. Tea!’ She turned to me, wide-eyed, as if the drink had just, that moment, been invented especially for her. ‘Just what I needed. How was the journey? Who drove you?’

  The tea tasted weird and weak, like washing-up water, and the cup was really thin. I felt that if I closed my teeth on it suddenly, I would take a bite out of it. ‘Perfect picked me up.’

  ‘Oh, the headkeeper. He’s an absolute poppet.’

  That was exactly what Esme had said. I could only imagine that poppet was Medieval-speak for miserable bastard. ‘Yes, he was a prince,’ I said ironically. ‘Really put me at my ease. You know Taxi Driver? Well, he was like Robert De Niro in that. Except a bit less chatty.’

  Charlotte widened her eyes at me and jerked her head towards the maid, who was pressing her thin lips together. I wasn’t sure what she was signalling, so just kept quiet. At that moment, though, the clock on the mantel – Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast – chimed and Charlotte screeched. ‘God, look at the time!’ Now you’ve had your tea –’ I’d had one sip – ‘you should think about getting changed. Drinks at seven thirty in the Drawing Room.’

  Regretfully I set down my china cup.

  Charlotte held up the dress and shook it, as if she was a matador and I was a bull. ‘Cinderella time.’

  Neither she nor Betty showed any sign of leaving, so I had no option but to strip down to my undies with them standing there. Perhaps this was how rich people rolled. Perhaps it was Savage to mind undressing in front of others. I wriggled into the dress with their help – at that point I had to admit I was grateful they were there. That was when I remembered seeing the film Elizabeth and watching Cate Blanchett as the queen just standing there with her arms out and letting her ladies dress her, frock, rings, everything. That was why rich people didn’t get dressed alone. The clothes were so tricky they needed help.