Kissing Toads

by Jemma Harvey

  ‘No chains. But I think I’ve heard the pipes once or twice, faint and far off, when I’ve woken up before dawn.’

  ‘Maybe you did,’ I said. ‘Some villager practising beside the loch in order to get the right atmosphere.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He smiled, deepening the lines in his cheeks. It occurred to me that in an elderly, wrinkled sort of way he was attractive. Charisma. Charm is superficial and beauty fades, but charisma only increases with time. HG had buckets of it.

  Whoops! I was being thrilled, if not overawed. I tried to look at him through Dorian’s eyes – an awkward father who wouldn’t act his age, constantly dating women who were too young for him. Still cavorting on stage occasionally, thinking he could dance – the ultimate horror for any teenager is their seniors wriggling around to old pop songs. Put that way, a rock-star dad would be about as embarrassing as a parent could get. Hot God’s pelvic lunge was famous, but, to his son, it would probably be excruciating. Mind you, at his age it might well be excruciating for him too.

  The voice of Morag broke in on my thoughts. ‘Ye shouldna mock the powers o’ the dark,’ she intoned in a superb Scottish brogue that rolled off her tongue like porridge. Sooner or later, I deduced, she’s going to say: ‘We’re all doomed.’ It was inevitable.

  ‘Morag’s very religious,’ HG offered.

  I’d never have guessed.

  The conversation moved on to matters historical and horticultural, with Nigel Willoughby-Purchiss holding forth authoritatively on the gap between legend and fact. After dinner, I was promised a sight of the long-lost plan of the maze, carefully restored from a few lines on ageing and discoloured paper to a feasible sketch of the layout.

  ‘It’s incomplete, of course,’ HG said, ‘but Nigel reckons there will be clues in the terrain to help us fill in the gaps.’

  ‘The ground will be uneven,’ Nigel elucidated. ‘There will be little ridges – dips, nuances – which only the trained eye can perceive.’ Clearly his was the trained eye in question.

  ‘Ye would do better tae let the ghaisties lie,’ Morag remarked predictably, pausing as she tidied the tea things.

  ‘I keep her around for the atmosphere,’ HG explained when she had left. ‘I suspect she plays up to it, but that’s okay. At least she provides an authentic feel of Scottish drama.’

  He didn’t just want the castle, I reflected, he wanted the whole package. We weren’t here just to replant the garden: we were bringing Birnham Wood to high Dunsinane. (This wasn’t the last time that particular metaphor would come into play.) And Macbeth is supposed to be unlucky. Suddenly, like Morag, I experienced definite qualms about the omens.

  Before dinner, Dorian took me to check out the ghost. The oldest part of the castle boasted bare stone walls, narrow uncurtained windows, heavy oak beams plainly added as an afterthought and vaguely military wall decorations, including a moth-eaten banner and something which might have been a claymore – if a claymore was what I thought it was (a sort of chunky two-edged sword). The banner was embroidered with the arms of the McGoogles: a cow rampant – ‘Lochnabu means lake of the cow,’ Dorian explained knowledgeably – confronting what looked like a giant horned dachshund.

  ‘It’s a dragon,’ Dorian said.

  ‘It doesn’t look very dragonish to me.’

  ‘Either that, or it’s a cross between a dog and an iguana . . .’

  ‘What about the ghost?’ I asked. ‘Does it run screaming through the hall, or wash its hands in someone’s blood, or what?’ My mind was still running on Macbeth.

  ‘It gets very cold,’ Dorian said, a shade defensively.

  ‘It’s March,’ I pointed out. ‘There’s a north wind blowing. This hall stretches far beyond the range of your father’s new central heating.’

  ‘The fire always goes out.’

  I gazed at a huge chilly fireplace. ‘Chimney needs sweeping? Probably draws badly. Jackdaws nesting in there somewhere, I expect. I don’t know much about chimneys but I’m told jackdaws like to nest in them.’

  ‘You get this creepy feeling . . .’

  ‘I get a creepy feeling in nightclubs,’ I said. Dorian was looking crestfallen, and suddenly I felt like a wet blanket. ‘Sorry. I’m just not a ghost person, I suppose. Do we know whose ghost it is, and why it’s meant to haunt the place?’

  ‘Not exactly. Morag says the spirits of all those who died in the maze will sleep until it’s replanted, so it can’t be one of them. Of course, these old Scottish clans were always having feuds and murdering each other. It could be practically anybody.’

  Myself, I can’t see the point of being a ghost. Just hanging around the same place for hundreds of years, scaring people. I’d find better things to do with my death. Perhaps that’s why I have trouble believing in them. It isn’t the phenomena that fail to convince, it’s the motivation.

  ‘We’re calling in a psychic researcher,’ Dorian went on. ‘Major Beard-Trenchard suggested someone, I think.’

  ‘I’ve heard.’

  ‘Dad says if there’s a troubled soul here it should be set at rest.’ Nice to know a rock icon could be as susceptible to paranormal bullshit as everyone else.

  ‘And if Morag’s right,’ I said flippantly, ‘when we replant the maze, we’ll be up to our ears in spectres.’

  Dorian managed a chortle. (You shouldn’t say a boy giggles: giggles are for girls. A chortle will do.) An icy draught came from somewhere, raising the hairs on my nape. But icy draughts were to be expected in an antique castle at the tag-end of winter.

  ‘Who’s the psychic researcher?’ I asked, as idly as I could. ‘Some woman with purple hair and jewellery made of melon pips?’

  ‘It’s a man,’ Dorian responded. ‘Ashley somebody. I don’t remember exactly.’

  Maybe it was the icy draught which made me shiver. Suddenly, Dunblair Castle didn’t seem so much fun any more.

  I had known it would happen, of course. If you make a bad impression on someone, and you say to yourself, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll never see him/her again,’ they’re absolutely guaranteed to become a major part of your life within a month or two. I had always suspected Fate was a malevolent goddess, and now I was sure of it. Worst of all, I found I wanted to show Ash that he was wrong about me – that I do care, I do have compassion – but my chances of showing compassion in the luxury castle of an ageing rock star were practically nil. At Dunblair, compassion simply wasn’t in demand.

  Damn Kristof Ashley. I knew a craven urge to jack the job in then and there and flee south – a reaction out of all proportion to the circumstances. I had to get a grip.

  It really was awfully cold in there. And gloomy. The tin-can light fittings and magenta sheep hadn’t penetrated this far. I almost regretted them.

  ‘Can’t you feel it?’ Dorian said, clutching my arm. ‘Like . . . this eerie chill, giving you goosebumps.

  For once, I didn’t say anything cynical. There was a chill, and my geese bumped.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I responded.

  Delphinium

  Roo met me at the airport, driving a Millennium Mini from Hot God’s garage. ‘It’s the only normal car he’s got,’ she said. ‘He bought it for Dorian, I gather, only he hasn’t passed his test yet.’

  ‘Who’s Dorian?’

  ‘Son. Sixteen. Not sure which wife.’

  I’d been doing a little homework on Hot God, and I made a mental calculation.

  ‘Should be the model – Tyndall Fiske. Neck and legs like a giraffe, big nose, own hair a yard long. Good-looking in an ugly sort of way. After the split she got mixed up with some cult in America living out in the middle of nowhere and growing their own vegetables and not having proper sanitation. I remember reading about it. Is Dorian like her?’

  ‘Spots,’ said Roo.

  ‘Yuk. Must be awful for Hot God, having a son with zits. I mean, it reflects on him genetically. Roo, I’ll never get all my luggage in here. Couldn’t you have borrowed a bigger car?’

  ‘Big
cars make me nervous,’ Roo said. ‘HG offered me a cream-coloured Bentley, but I was afraid I’d scratch it.’

  ‘Let’s get this straight,’ I said. ‘You could’ve picked me up in a Bentley, and you chose a Mini?’

  There are times when I despair of Roo.

  In the end, I left two suitcases at the airport to be collected later, and crammed everything else into the back of the car. Roo complained she couldn’t see out of the rear window, but, as I said, there was nothing there but a load of landscape. We drove for hours (or what seemed like hours) through more and more landscape, the kind that looks good in pictures or as background in Christmas cards. I can never figure out why some celebrities want to go and live miles from anywhere, when you can be a recluse perfectly happily on a gorgeous estate about an hour from London, and all the people who want to invade your reclusion can do it much more easily from mainline stations or after a short drive down a motorway. After all, there’s no point in being a recluse if the world doesn’t want to beat a path to your door, is there? Should I ever decide to take up reclusivity I shall do it somewhere civilised, like Wiltshire or Gloucestershire, out of sheer consideration for my fans and media colleagues. Which shows I’m really a very unselfish person, whatever people may say.

  The castle stood beside a lake (or loch) and looked wonderful, like something out of Disney, all funny little towers and roofs like upside-down ice-cream cones, with a row of crumbling battlements in the middle and a big arched doorway like something in a cathedral. I was a bit disappointed there wasn’t a moat, but I suppose they had the lake instead. (Of course, with his kind of money Hot God could have moved the castle somewhere more convenient, like Surrey, but not the lake.) It looked like a real Cinderella castle, and although I’ve met my Prince Charming I couldn’t help thinking it would be a great place for Roo to put on her crystal slippers and dance with Mr Right. A sixteen-year-old with spots didn’t sound a promising candidate, but there were bound to be others.

  ‘Did you say Nigel Thingummy-Whatsit was here already?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Is he as unattractive as you said?’

  ‘Well,’ said Roo judiciously, evidently trying to be fair, ‘after three or four wee drams his chin does look slightly less receding, in a poor light.’

  ‘What’s a wee dram? It sounds like some kind of Scottish loo.’

  ‘It’s a measure of whisky.’

  ‘Horrible stuff.’ I shuddered. ‘It’s the colour of wee, too. They’d better have champagne.’

  We’d parked outside the castle and various minions appeared to take my luggage. In the lead was a man who was clearly the welcoming party: just under six foot, gingery-fair hair, grin. I don’t like gingery hair: it’s invariably accompanied by ginger eyelashes, and everyone knows villains in novels have ginger eyelashes. And I don’t like men who grin. Sophisticated guys smile; grinners are always laddish, beer-guzzlers, football fans, too red-blooded for comfort. I knew I was leaping to conclusions – the guy couldn’t help his hair, though he could help the grin. It was the kind of grin that says, How about a quick one?, and I don’t mean a drink. I wondered who he was.

  ‘Harry Winkworth,’ Roo supplied. He shook my hand. His grip was rather too firm, almost a squeeze, though not quite.

  ‘Hot God’s PA?’ I hazarded, for Roo’s private ear.

  ‘Butler.’

  Butler? The butler was grinning at me? As it happens, I’ve never had a butler, but I know how they’re supposed to behave. At school, Sapphira Fox-Huntley’s family had a butler: he was about a hundred and wouldn’t retire and her mother did all the lifting in case he hurt his back. And Alex’s father has a butler at the country house, only he’s Middle Eastern and looks so sinister he could be running a spy ring on the side. But I’ve seen period films and read a couple of Georgette Heyers, and real butlers are dignified, unflappable, preferably elderly, and should never show emotion. As for this Harry Winkworth person, his grin might be merely familiar rather than suggestive, but he had no business to grin at me at all. It just wasn’t butlerish.

  He picked up a brace of baggage in the offhand manner of someone with serious muscle and offered to show me to my room. I said ‘Thank you’ in a cool, repressive way and from the tail of my eye I noticed he grinned again, for all the world like a bloody Cheshire cat. Was he too yobbish to know when he was being snubbed? I followed him into the castle, a bit disappointed that Hot God himself wasn’t there to welcome me, but, on the other hand, glad I would have the chance to change and reapply my make-up before making a stunning first impression.

  Roo had warned me about the décor but my mind was elsewhere and it wasn’t till I got to my room that I received the full impact. Here, Mrs God had gone all folksy and ethnic. Devil masks on the walls with malevolent expressions – not the sort of thing you want staring at you when you’re getting undressed – tasselled spears and shields upholstered in animal skins, carved wooden furniture with batik print cushions, an eight-foot teak giraffe lurking in a corner. The bed had a frilled canopy with sweeping muslin curtains, suspiciously like mosquito netting, supported by a set of primitive female statues of the sort who have tits to the navel, huge round bellies and buttocks like a hippo. And glancing through a half-open door into the en suite, I saw a mural of bright green jungle with a waterfall cascading down towards the bath taps and a leopard skulking in the undergrowth.

  The whole room looked as if it had been done over by Changing Rooms on acid.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ I murmured faintly. ‘I haven’t got my malaria pills. Isn’t there somewhere a bit more . . . subdued?’

  ‘All the ones with bathrooms have been allocated,’ the butler said cheerfully. ‘This is the African Bedroom. HG thought you would like it.’

  ‘He did?’ Well, at least he had put some thought into the accommodation chosen for me, even if he had the artistic taste of a gorilla.

  Still . . .

  ‘What are these?’ I enquired, indicating the tit-and-bum carvings. In my horror at the décor, I had forgotten I was supposed to be putting Winkworth in his place.

  ‘Fertility goddesses,’ he said. ‘HG thought they would be in keeping with your image.’

  ‘What? I’m not fertile – I mean, I’m not pregnant or . . . or anything, and I don’t have a figure like an overinflated balloon!’

  ‘You present a gardening programme. That makes you a kind of modern goddess of fertility – or at any rate of fertiliser.’

  That did it. He was taking the piss, I knew he was taking the piss, he knew that I knew, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I assumed an air of quiet dignity guaranteed to reduce him to the nonentity he really was.

  ‘Thank you so much. If you would just send the maid to help me unpack . . .’ I’d never needed a maid to help me unpack; I’m quite capable of unpacking myself, but in a place like this it would be fatal to show it.

  ‘There isn’t one,’ the Cheshire cat said smugly. ‘A couple of village girls come in and clean, but not till tomorrow. You could have Morag the housekeeper, only she’s got religious mania so she’ll probably disapprove of you. However, if you don’t mind a jeremiad on the minimalism of your underwear . . .’

  I gave him a look that would have fried an egg.

  ‘In that case,’ I said, abandoning dignity for something more forceful, ‘you – you personally – can bring me a pot of tea, lapsang souchong, with lemon and no sugar, and two aspirin.’ I glanced round the room again, wincing. ‘No, a bottle of aspirin. And sleeping pills. Lots of sleeping pills. I’m going to have very bad dreams in here.’

  ‘Jumanji.’ he said. ‘You know, that film about the jungle board game that came to life. Watch out for the giraffe: it could turn nasty.’

  I turned my shoulder on him by way of dismissal and presently I heard the door shut. I unpacked hastily, noticing that several of my things needed ironing. On Gilding the Lily I’d had a wardrobe assistant/hairdresser/make-up artist who saw to it I looked pressed, st
yled and beautiful every time I appeared on camera, but here, Crusty had said, I wouldn’t need one, since Hot God had such a large staff. Ha! I thought. Some staff! Did religious mania allow time for ironing?

  Roo arrived at the same moment as my tea, and I sent Winkworth off to fetch a second cup, rather glad that he would (probably) have to walk a long way to get it.

  I encountered Hot God for the first time that evening. We assembled in the Relatively Normal Drawing Room for pre-dinner drinks. There was no sign of the spotty Dorian, but Crusty was there, Nigel Willoughby-Purchiss, and, of course, Mortimer Sparrow, who’d arrived shortly after me. It wasn’t an impressive array of male talent. Roo’s a kind person and I realised her description of Nigel’s charms had, if anything, erred on the side of generosity. Morty is a pin-up for middle-aged women who see him as a cosy, guy-next-door type; he has a fair, rumpled look which he thinks goes with his metier, a thickening waistline hidden under a succession of baggy jumpers and sweatshirts, a wife no one ever sees and a bad case of roving hands. He greeted me with an enthusiasm which was a mixture of lechery and hypocrisy and was then deflected by Roo, who bore up nobly while he talked to her about how famous he was, how difficult it was being famous, and how good he was at making allowances for non-famous colleagues, particularly if they were young, female and attractive. He must be really worried about his career, I thought, to be pushing himself so hard.

  Hot God arrived last. It’s always a shock when you meet someone like that – someone who’s been in the public eye much of his life, constantly photographed at twentysomething, thirtysomething, fortysomething – and discover they’ve got old. Icons are supposed to be immortal, beyond the reach of wrinkles and sags. Hot God hadn’t grown fat; instead, he seemed to have shrunk. His skin – his whole body – had crumpled, as if he had spent too long in the bath. Roo had warned me about the eyepatch, but he had removed it. One eye was still a bit pink and puffy, though the other retained a little of the demonic twinkle he used to show on stage. Not that I’d ever been to any of his concerts; I know his classic hits because everybody does, but that’s about all. I’m not one of those people who sit listening to music for hours, or go around plugged into a Walkman looking brain-dead. I like music to be there in the background where it belongs. Of course, rock stars are something else. Rock stars are a major social asset, like royalty, as long as you don’t have to listen to them play.