Kissing Toads

by Jemma Harvey

  ‘Of course,’ Nigel continued – he was fond of prefacing statements with of course, demonstrating that something was obvious to him, though no one else was clever enough to see it – ‘of course, the devil-image was originally a symbol of forbidden sex. Christianity has always been about repressing sexuality – the concept of the virgin birth, the cult of female chastity, the notion that fornication was a sin. Jesus was probably more tolerant, but when ideologues like Paul got hold of his teaching they twisted it every which way to suit their own hang-ups. The devil became a label of convenience for the evils of sex, evolving naturally from Pan, a primitive lust-god worshipped by our ancestors with mass copulation at ritual orgies and bacchanalia—’

  ‘I thought they worshipped Bacchus at bacchanalia?’ Roo interrupted. ‘Binge-drinking.’

  ‘An apt comparison. Bacchus was the wine-god, his worship a preliminary to the uncontrolled sexual activity demanded by Pan. The contemporary ladettes, out on the town, no doubt never realise they are duplicating behaviour patterns that were once part of a sacred rite. Of course—’

  ‘Would those be box hedges?’ Roo asked flatly, pointing at the screen.

  ‘Beech,’ I responded, educated by my mother. ‘The soil here is too acidic for box.’

  ‘If we replant,’ Roo said, ‘how on earth will we get them to grow fast enough for the end of the series?’

  ‘We won’t,’ I said. ‘The best we can do is import half-grown ones. You can’t conjure a maze overnight. Remember how long it took the first laird before the hedges were above his head?’

  ‘It’ll be quicker with HG,’ Roo said with an irrepressible giggle. ‘He can’t be more than five foot six.’

  ‘Revenons à nos moutons,’ Nigel said – which means ‘return to our sheep’, or, in his case, goats. ‘I understand he has commissioned a modern replica of the statue to stand, once again, at the heart of the maze. It really is intensely symbolic. The convoluted paths of human relationships leading to a dark centre of venery and concupiscence.’

  ‘What?’ I whispered to Roo.

  ‘Sex,’ she translated.

  You see. More sex.

  ‘Personally, I prefer masturbation,’ I announced, which shut him up for a minute or two.

  ‘Is it really worth it?’ Roo enquired later. ‘I mean, all these long conversations with Nigel, just for a few more minutes in a push-up bra.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘you have to make a few sacrifices for your career.’

  That’s the trouble with Roo. She never has. She’s made her sacrifices for other people, like Kyle Muldoon, who didn’t appreciate them. I make sacrifices for myself, which is much more to the point.

  ‘We could sacrifice Nigel!’ she suggested brightly.

  I gave a wistful sigh. ‘Look, he’s boring, he’s unattractive, he’s a lech. But if chatting him up gets me a better chance to show what I can do as an actress it’s worth it. This is prime-time TV, don’t forget. I could be spotted for a film role, or at the very least a Sunday night costume drama. I heard a rumour they’re casting for a new Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Dude. Something like that sells all over the world. It could be my stepping stone to Hollywood. Spending time with Wannabe-Porsche is a very small price to pay.’

  ‘You may be willing to pay the price,’ Roo said, ‘but I’m not sure I am.’

  ‘You’re my friend,’ I said unanswerably. I knew she was kidding. ‘Anyway, that isn’t what really bothers me. I know it’s weird, but . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It’s the maze itself. Something about it creeps me out.’

  ‘It’s your dramatic imagination,’ Roo said. ‘You keep seeing it as a giant octopus twining people in its tentacles. That’s enough to spook anybody. Try picturing it as a load of two-foot hedges with a statue by Anthony Gormless in the middle.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Angel of the North.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘You mean the new sculpture is going to be twenty-foot high with a giant penis covered in rust?’

  ‘Nigel will love it.’

  ‘Has HG really commissioned from what’s-his-name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Roo said. ‘He might have. International rock stars are capable of anything.’

  ‘This business of the maze is scary enough,’ I said. ‘Don’t make it worse. I wonder what really happened to Elizabeth Courtney? You know, I think we ought to find out. I feel I owe it to her.’

  ‘You’re going all Stanislavsky on me,’ Roo said. ‘It was too long ago. She’s lost in history. All we can do is speculate.’

  ‘I want to know the truth,’ I said. ‘I feel . . . I feel her spirit won’t rest until we do.’

  ‘Don’t start talking like a psychic!’ Roo snapped, unreasonably annoyed. ‘We’ll get enough of that when the researcher turns up. Next you’ll be telling me you’ve heard the castle ghost practising the bagpipes in the wee small hours.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. But memories hang around: everyone knows that. If I really get under the skin of the part, maybe I can kind of communicate with the memory of Elizabeth Courtney.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Roo with uncharacteristic nastiness.

  It occurred to me later that the castle was having a strange effect on both of us. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, as Macbeth would have said.

  Chapter 4:

  Plan and Superplan

  Ruth

  Unlike the movies, filming for television is normally done as fast as possible. Budgets are small, crews expensive, and on a programme like Behind the News traumatised interviewees rarely want to go through their experiences more than once. As far as possible, you got it right the first time. According to Russell Gander, most makeover shows were the same, only without the trauma. (That came later, when people saw what the invaders had done to their homes and gardens.) But The Lost Maze was different. The involvement of Hot God meant far higher viewing figures and a correspondingly bigger budget, not to mention the funds he himself was pumping into the transformation. Then there was the fact that the garden covered a large area and would require nurturing over a considerable period of time. We could cheat by importing certain plants half-grown – here’s one I prepared earlier, so to speak – but nature can’t be hurried, and inevitably we were going to be on location for some while. As it was, a skeleton crew would have to return later in the year to film additional material.

  With the inclusion of historical scenes the proceedings became even lengthier and more complicated. Hearing Delphi had taken the role of Elizabeth Courtney, Hot God expressed a desire to play the McGoogle who had first planted the maze – a viewer-friendly idea whatever the critics might make of it – but actors would have to be brought in for the other parts, and would need to be housed, fed and watered for the duration. With them would come people doing costumes and make-up (Delphi had already demanded a make-up artist before she would set face on screen), though fortunately computerised special effects would provide the period details for the background. All this should have been arranged long before, but the historical touch was a last-minute inspiration, and, in the meantime, the garden wouldn’t wait.

  The series was rapidly sprouting in several different directions at once, rather like bionic ground elder. (I don’t know much about weeds, but as a child I remember Jennifer Dacres complaining that ground elder was the worst.) The scale of the project meant a lot of time had to be spent on planning and deciding where the maze ought to go. Morty and Nigel each had the layout of the grounds on their respective laptops, and whirled the maze from location to location like genies teleporting Aladdin’s palace, arguing constantly about whether it should go here or here.

  I’d feared my lack of horticultural expertise would hamper things, but in fact I realised it had probably influenced Crusty in my favour. It meant I could get on with organising the smooth (or, more often, bumpy) running of the project without getting into the creative squabbles that absorbed everyone else. Crust
y, Morty Sparrow, Russell Gander, Nigel (from the historical angle) and HG himself all had their own ideas, many of them conflicting, and frequently issued contradictory orders to the researchers and other assistants. Trees and shrubs were exhumed which should have been left in place, rockeries were de-rocked, water features drained. Too many cooks, I thought, wondering if HG would lose patience and consign the entire series to the compost heap. And then someone would have a brainwave, or an outburst of enthusiasm, and suddenly they would all be friends again – for ten minutes or so.

  Even Delphi joined in sometimes, drawing on Jennifer Dacres’ know-how to come up with flowers no one else had thought of which would do well in the surroundings. Once the make-up artist had arrived we filmed her wandering round the garden, in Dolce and Gabbana jeans far too tight to allow for crouching or bending, nonchalantly passing judgement on other people’s hard work. The rest of the time she set about charming Nigel to get her role in the historical scenes inflated, charming HG as a matter of principle, and trying to sort out, by telephone and email, the preliminary details of her wedding – like where it should be held, the guest list, the present list, and what religion, if any, they should subscribe to.

  ‘Isn’t Alex a Muslim?’ I inquired wickedly. ‘After all, if his grandfather was Persian . . .’

  ‘His other grandfather was Italian and presumably Catholic, but they both married English women, which toned it down. Foreign genes are all very well but you shouldn’t have too many of them. Alex has just enough to be really good-looking but with a nice English temperament underneath.’

  ‘The English don’t have temperament,’ I said, ‘do they?’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Anyhow,’ Delphi went on, ‘Alex was brought up C. of E. like everybody else, which is the same as having no religion at all. I did wonder about Buddhism, because Lakshmi Macallan’s wedding last year was absolutely beautiful, but I don’t look good in saffron.’

  ‘That wasn’t Buddhism,’ I said. ‘That was New Age retro-hippy bullshit. And that yellow sheath she was wearing wasn’t a monk’s robe, it was Ben de Lisi.’

  ‘Galliano,’ Delphi said abstractedly. ‘But it was still sort of monkish.’

  ‘Not since she had her tits done.’

  Eventually, after a brief dalliance with Westminster Abbey, religion was set aside in favour of a Tudor mansion in Surrey or a castle in Kent. The castle won by a short head, or rather a long hall, large enough to accommodate several hundred guests and a ten-foot train. After that, Delphi spent most of her spare time poring over the invitation list trying to decide which celebrities to include and which to snub, and wondering how she could guarantee HG would actually be there.

  As well as all the TV people, I had to deal with Hot God’s household, whose attitude to the intruders was a mixture of superiority and resentment. In addition to Harry Winkworth, the butler, and the religious Morag there was the original senior gardener, Auld Andrew, his assistant, Young Andrew, a brace of local girls who came in to help with general housework, two minders, two German shepherd guard dogs, a chauffeur/handyman, and Cedric, the chef. Auld Andrew appeared to be about a hundred but was reputedly only in his sixties and had a Scots accent so thick most of his conversation was completely impenetrable, though I assumed he felt his territory was being invaded and was correspondingly bitter about it. Young Andrew was so inarticulate that his attitude, too, was impenetrable. The minders were respectively tall and lean and short and broad, imported cockneys inappropriately christened Jules and Sandy after the camp duo in the vintage radio series Round the Horne, their real names, I learned later, being Julian Crouch and Bob Sandford. Years of celebrity minding had inured them to media invasions, but in the event of war they would be ranged on the side of the staff. The German shepherds, Elton and Sting, were pure cream, desperately affectionate, and irresistible. (‘Trained to kill,’ Sandy assured me, as Sting rolled over to have his tummy tickled.) The chauffeur/handyman was another local, called something like Dougal McDougall, who lived in a tied cottage (though I wasn’t sure what it was tied to) and was the only person who understood the castle’s antiquated wiring system. Problems had already arisen between him and our sparks, but the mutual consumption of large quantities of malt whisky had led to détente, though it had done nothing for Dunblair’s electrics. HG’s renovations had been superimposed on more ancient amenities, and the net result was a high-tech, low-tech, no-tech mishmash of gurgly pipes and shorting circuits. The resident ghosts, I felt, didn’t need clanking chains when there was a temperamental son et lumière already available.

  The most difficult member of staff, however – and, if rank existed at Dunblair, the most important – was Cedric. Full name Cedric Harbottle, he came inevitably from Brighton, spoke south-coast cockney with occasional lapses into French (‘The language of cooking, sweetie’), and lurked in the kitchen like Grendel in his lair. Wonderful food emerged as and when ordered, but you entered at your own risk. Unfortunately, it was a risk I felt I had to take. HG had vetoed the catering truck, saying it took up space and Cedric could handle all our requirements, but someone had to handle Cedric. I didn’t think HG would be happy if his prize chef complained he was being asked to cook above and beyond the call of duty and went on strike.

  Directed by Harry, I ventured nervously into the nether regions of the castle – at least, down a few steps from the rest of the ground floor – into a large room vaulted like a crypt whose huge cold fireplace was equipped with witch’s cauldron and rusting spit, while more spits and antique pans adorned the walls. The effect was curiously reminiscent of the weaponry in the galleries above. In marked contrast, there was an ultramodern range with fan ovens and gas hobs, a shiny new Aga, even a microwave tucked in a corner. Cedric was chopping vegetables at racing speed with the kind of knife that could have split a hair on water. He was a skinny, brown, monkey-like creature with an ugly Puckish face and a malevolent grin, right now not in evidence. Who was it who said: ‘Never trust a thin cook’?

  ‘What d’you want?’ he demanded, without looking up.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you . . .’

  ‘Then don’t. Piss off and let me get on with my work.’

  ‘Look, I know HG has asked you to cook for everyone—’

  ‘He didn’t ask me, he told me,’ Cedric interrupted. ‘He’s the boss.’

  ‘I realise it must be pretty inconvenient . . .’ I wasn’t making much headway here.

  ‘Cooking ain’t inconvenient: it’s my job. Visitors are inconvenient. What do you want?’

  ‘I just came to apologise for all the trouble we’re giving you. Cooking for a few guests is one thing, but an entire TV circus—’

  ‘You’re one of those soft, squishy females who go through life apologising for things which aren’t your fault, right? Sorry for this, sorry for that, sorry for breathing, sorry I don’t drop dead. Women like you get trampled on all the time.’ He had ceased chopping and fixed me with the evil black glare of someone whose ancestry is part French, part Indian, part Chinese, part Welsh – part any race that gives you that level of sloe-black malignance. The knife, sharp as Excalibur, was still in his hand.

  ‘You try trampling on me,’ I said, abandoning diplomacy, ‘and you’ll see how squishy I am.’

  He flashed me a smile full of uneven teeth. ‘That’s better, love. Give as good as you get. It’s the only way to live.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ I said, unnerved by his abrupt volte-face. ‘All the same, I find general courtesy helps too.’

  The smile cracked into a laugh. ‘Courtesy! Posh word, innit? You mean manners. I don’t do manners. Gordon Ramsay don’t do manners, does he? Effing this and effing that and eff you for a rotten cook. I could’ve been on TV like him. I’m the best, I am. Could’ve found yourself working with me, couldn’t you? I would’ve been a star if I’d had a fancy for it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked, suppressing doubt.

  ‘I didn’t fancy it, did I? Smarming aroun
d with Nigella and Jamie-fucking-Oliver, having to put on my make-up to cook in and suck up to a load of celebrity morons. See, there was this friend of mine, he had a friend who was a producer, said I’d be great for the telly. Got the cheekbones, got the profile.’ He tilted his head sideways so I could admire it. As profiles go, it went. ‘And I’ve got this great personality, all upfront fuck-you star quality. But I fancied this job. The boss, he’s the best – biggest rocking fucker that ever was. He’s the best and I’m the best, see? We’re good together. I let him do his thing, he lets me do mine. It works for both of us.’

  ‘I can see it does,’ I said faintly. ‘Well, I’m really glad we’ve cleared all that up—’

  ‘Besides,’ Cedric resumed, ‘my ’eart was broke. Down south, it was. The Scots are right about them – southerners. Shallow, that’s what they are. He was my man and he done me wrong. Come here to forget, didn’t I?’

  ‘You and me both,’ I said before I could stop myself.

  ‘Yeah? Here – you want a bit of cake? I done it for tea yesterday, but nobody ate any. Too busy arguing about their bloody garden. Take a piece –’ he waved a tin at me – ‘I do a mean ginger cake, I do.’

  I nibbled a slice. It was moist, spicy, gingery. In a word, mean.

  ‘What happened with your bloke, then?’

  ‘He got married,’ I said. ‘To someone else.’

  ‘Fucking ’ell. So did mine. Ten years together and he drops me for a fat blonde with a uterus. I want kids, he whines. I wanna settle down, go straight. Huh! He couldn’t go straight if you tied him to a ruler. Ain’t men all shits?’

  Through a mouthful of cake, I agreed.

  ‘How about a drink? You like port? I’ve got the best stuff down here – I tell ’em it’s for cooking. Have a slug.’ He whipped a bottle from a discreet cupboard and poured a glass for both of us. It was a little early in the day for me, but who cared?