The scorching midday sun shimmered across a still hungover Fiddlesticks as Zillah made her way towards The Weasel and Bucket. She felt truly awful. Doubly so now since she’d had the row with Lewis. Oh, God. How had it all got so out of hand?
Her long skirt dragged through the grass, the remaining moisture at the roots soaking the purple hem and making her toes slide inside her flat sandals. She couldn’t remember ever falling out with Lewis before. Not over something major like this. He’d been such an easy child, they’d always been friends, there’d never been any of the real bust-ups which other mothers seemed to have experienced with their children. Not even when he was a teenager. Of course, there had been moments – but nothing like this.
Oh, why hadn’t she been honest with him from the start?
Why had she assumed that he’d understand about his father? Why had she always thought it best that he hadn’t known? Simply because she’d chosen to wipe it out of her life, she’d assumed that he would be happy with her decision. And it was one of those things – the longer you left it, the bigger it became, the more difficult to talk about.
Now, she realised, he’d been harbouring all the wrong impressions, seeing her as the villain of the piece. The dumper rather than the dumpee. Seeing her possibly as some sort of flighty floozy who couldn’t, or wouldn’t stay the relationship course. He’d probably built up this picture of his father, heartbroken at Zillah’s defection, weeping nightly over an ancient dog-eared photograph, when of course it had been exactly the other way round.
‘Hiya!’ Fern, bare legged in a short tight white skirt and an even tighter black T-shirt, bounced up beside her. ‘I’ve been trying to catch you up ever since Hayfields. Have you been to see Lewis?’
Zillah nodded. She didn’t want Fern’s exuberant, vital company at the moment.
‘Thought so.’ Fern continued to grin, all big teeth and bursting-with-vitality glow. ‘He had a face like a smacked arse when I passed him just now. Have you had a row?’
‘No,’ Zillah sighed. ‘Not really. Look, Fern, I don’t really want to talk about it, OK?’
‘Whatever,’ Fern beamed. ‘Was it about him and Sukie? Because if it was—’
‘Fern!’
‘Sorry.’ She looked anything but. ‘Off to work, are you?’
Zillah nodded.
‘Likely I’ll be your first customer, then. I’m going to quench my thirst, too. The Motions have just collected Win so I’ve got a few hours free. It’s her work day for cleaning their brass this morning – you know how much she loves cleaning. She’d do it for nothing, but we don’t let the Motions know that, of course. Miserable as sin because she had too much to drink last night. I thought I’d be wrecked too, but I feel great – maybe Cassiopeia will answer me this year … Er – and perhaps I shouldn’t be saying anything about it … Still, I had a great time. Did you? Oh, sorry again – you really don’t want to hear all this do you?’
‘Not really.’
The Weasel and Bucket was waking up as they approached across the green. Timmy was unfurling the umbrellas over the trestles and looked up, grinning at them both.
‘A sight for sore eyes! My two favourite ladies! Cassiopeia must have been working overtime last night.’
Zillah groaned quietly.
Fern giggled. ‘You must have read my mind, Timmy
Zillah looked at her – did Fern fancy Timmy, then? Surely not. He was an entire generation older than her and she’d never given any indication … Well, she was always in the pub, of course, but that was because she had a healthy appetite for Andromeda Ale and anything else alcoholic, and it was the village meeting place and – Fern? Fancying Timmy? No, surely not.
Well, it certainly wasn’t reciprocated, that was for sure. Poor Fern, poor Timmy, poor her – not to mention Lewis – what a stupid mess this love stuff was.
Zillah watched Timmy as he straightened up, surveying the tables, checking that everything was shipshape for his lunchtime clientele. Oh why, oh why couldn’t she be going to give him the answer he wanted.
‘OK, Zil?’
‘Fine,’ she tried to smile, to look natural. ‘Just tired.’
‘Not surprised,’ Timmy grinned. ‘It was a late finish. Good night, though.’
‘Timmy – can we talk?’
‘Course. Look, come on through to the kitchen and I’ll pour you something awash with ice cubes before the ravening hordes start arriving.’ He stared up at the sky. ‘Forecast is for temperatures in the nineties today. Can’t be far off that now.’
‘Any chance of a quickie before you disappear?’ Fern chuckled.
‘That would be liquid refreshment, would it?’ Timmy beamed at her. ‘You wouldn’t be propositioning me, by any chance would you?’
Fern blushed. ‘Me? Er – no – I mean, no – of course not. Er – I just thought if you and Zil were going to be talking I’d like to get my drink in first and—’
‘Damn,’ Timmy gave a mock sigh. ‘For one minute there I thought my luck was in.’
Zillah frowned. Was he flirting? With Fern?
What the heck was going on?
In the stiflingly hot kitchen, Amber replaced the telephone receiver, slipped far more coins than were necessary into the gruesome shell-encrusted money box – a present from Teignmouth – and sighed.
Well, that was that, then. Every one of the agents she’d telephoned, who represented the old soul bands on her list, had told her their clients were either dead, in detox, in prison, or ludicrously expensive to hire. Mona Jupp and Goff Briggs would never fork out even the merest fraction of the cheapest fee she’d been quoted for live music on Harvest Moon.
‘What you want, doll,’ the last nasal voice with the irritating, rising-last-syllable inflection had informed her, ‘is a tribute band? We can do you a nice line in soul tributes? How d’you fancy Beano Dashington and the Flim-Flam Band?’
‘Er – not a lot … Who are they tributing?’
‘Geno Washington and the Ram-Jam Band, doll? For heaven’s sake!’
Ah, yes, she’d heard of them. They were on her list culled from Zillah’s LP collection. She’d already phoned their contacts. Still alive and touring but way, way too expensive. And she couldn’t, really couldn’t, inflict Fiddlesticks with someone who wasn’t anyone calling themselves Beano.
‘They’re very good, doll?’ The nasal voice said inquiringly. ‘Beano is off the sauce now. And you can hardly notice his surgery. And the rumours about the drummer and the all-girl marching band in that caravan at Cleethorpes were exaggerated. What do you say?’
She’d said thanks but no thanks and hung up.
So, that was it. There was one number left on her list – but it was local. Winterbrook. Surely any entertainment agency working in a backwater couldn’t offer anything better than those in London? She could hear the HHLL still chattering shrilly in the library. Oh, why not.?
Shoving some more money into Teignmouth’s gaping mouth, she punched out the final number.
‘Retro Music and Theatre, Winterbrook, Paris, New York,’ a cheerful Berkshire accent informed her. ‘How may I help you, duck?’
For the umpteenth time, Amber explained her mission.
‘Ah, right, duck … look, why don’t you pop over soon as. I can show you the entire retro client list. I’m sure we’ll have something to suit. Are you local now?’
‘Yes, but I’m working. I’m free this afternoon though.’
‘Lovely. We’re on the main drag. Next to the bank. Can’t miss us. Knock three times and ask for Freddo, OK? About three-ish? Great, duck. Look forward to it. ’Bye!’
‘I say!’ the HHLL hostess screamed from the hall. ‘I say! Waitress! We’re ready now!’
The lean-to throbbed with midday heat. All four literary ladies were looking rather moist and uncomfortable. Two of them were eating the Bronte Buns with spoons.
‘They’ve gorn orf,’ a chunky women whose make-up had run into her wrinkles and stayed there, brayed, spr
aying the hostess with slurry. ‘I say, Georgette, they’ve gorn orf!’
Georgette? Amber blinked.
‘It’s not her real name,’ the little-girlie woman whispered. ‘Her real name is Doris. She didn’t think Doris was literary enough so she calls herself Georgette Austen.’
‘Lovely. Most original. And is that the name her books are published under?’ Amber smiled her very best professional-under-duress smile as Mitzi had shown her, while handing round napkins and the least lopsided of the remaining Angelica Angels.
‘Books? What books? She’s never had anything published.’
‘Hasn’t she? Oh, but I thought … that is, I got the impression …’
‘We’re aspiring,’ the little-girlie lisped. ‘On the cusp. We’ve written several massively commercial volumes between us but as yet we’re unpublished. It’s all so unfair, of course. So many rubbish books out there by atrocious authors, when we’re all talented and write much, much better stuff – and so far not a sniff of interest.’
‘Not fair, no, I can see that,’ Amber murmured, circulating as obsequiously as the cramped space would allow. ‘Another Saffron and Lemon Lump, anyone? There’s plenty here.’
The HHLL looked as though what they really needed was an ice-cold plunge pool, but to give them their due, they munched on regardless.
As none of them seemed to be overtaken by wild urges to shed their clothes or anything over the top, Amber assumed that this lot of Mitzi’s recipes contained subdued herbs suitable for soothing the fevered brows of unpublished novelists. Just as well, she thought. There was enough pent-up anger and resentment bubbling under those well-bred vowels without a bit of hedge-witchery thrown in to fuel the fire.
Glancing to make sure the plates were empty and the wine glasses filled – mean so and sos hadn’t even offered her so much as a slurp of chilled white – she dived into the cool box for the Ginger Janite Cake and started to slice.
‘No, no, no!’ Georgette-Doris screamed. ‘Give it some welly, girl! Not little slivers like that! You’ve had the pleasure of my telephone and had absolutely nothing to do for hours – the least you can do is give us a decent chunk.’
Gripping the knife and willing herself not to run bansheelike at Georgette-Doris’s throat, Amber hacked the Ginger Janite Cake into four massive squares. Still smiling manfully, she handed it round, making sure the requisite napkin was folded neatly on the edge of each plate.
None of the HHLL said thank you.
Amber, her mind on the forthcoming meeting with Freddo in the sure and certain knowledge that his retro bands would be along the lines of Winterbrook’s answer to the Wurzels, packed up the debris of the literary lunch as the ladies chomped and mopped. She wondered if she should mention to the HHLL that they all had green faces thanks to the less-than-perfect napkins and the heat.
Nah, she thought, stacking plates into the boxes, best leave it. It had all gone so well. Mitzi would be delighted. No hitches whatsoever.
‘Tart!’ The chunky woman suddenly screamed at Georgette-Doris. ‘Talentless tart!’
‘Bitch!’ Little Girlie rounded on Chunky. ‘Your last reading from your work in progress was remorseless drivel! My dyslexic grandson could have produced better.’
‘Whey-faced cow!’ The up-until-then-silent fourth literary lady stamped a massive foot. ‘How dare you! We have to listen to you drone on and on about your turgid characters and we all know you’ll never be published in a million, zillion aeons!’
‘Sod you lot!’ Georgette-Doris, her inner-bitch well and truly unleashed, shrieked, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin and emerging with emerald lips. ‘I’m the only one here with a modicum of talent. You all do commercial fiction. I’m literary …’
‘Illiterate, you mean, you dozy bat!’ Little-Girlie splattered crumbs of Janite cake over the lean-to. ‘And probably illegitimate to boot!’
‘Whoo-wooo-wooo!’ Chunky wailed. ‘Bitch, cow, bastard, tart! Unimaginative, boring, derivative – ouch!’
The large silent lady had punched her.
Little-Girlie and Georgette-Doris screamed with laughter and piled into the fray.
Amber, diving out of the way, hastily packed up the remainder of the literary lunch as the HHLL fought like hellcats on the floor of the lean-to. She imagined the Ginger Janite had been a touch too heavy on the bodhi leaves as Mitzi had anticipated.
‘Er—’ she coughed politely at the heaving, punching bodies rolling across the lean-to floor, ‘I’m leaving now.’
‘Sod off!’ the HHLL snarled in unison, not missing a punch.
Amber, giggling, fled.
Shoving everything into the back of the van, she drove away from the demure semi as fast as residential double-parking would allow.
Still laughing, she stopped at traffic lights and peered up at the deep-blue sky through the windscreen. ‘I know you’re up there somewhere, Cassiopeia, lass, even if I can’t see you. Well, you’re going to have to pull out all the astral magic stops to beat that bit of herbal witchery. So – what have you got up your celestial sleeve, eh? It’s going to have to be pretty spectacular to convince me that star-wishing is more powerful than Mitzi’s magic, I can tell you …’
Chapter Nineteen
Swinging on a Star
Darting in and out of The Weasel and Bucket with non-stop plates of food and trays of iced drinks, Zillah really didn’t have time to dwell on anything other than the ever-demanding and steadily increasing river of customers. Timmy’s forecast had been correct and Fiddlesticks shimmered in sky-high temperatures. The whole village seemed to have decided that after the excesses of the night before, preparing lunch or making their own cold drinks was way beyond them.
Repetitive cries of ‘When you’ve got a minute, duck!’ and ‘Over here, Zil, love!’ from both inside and outside the pub, meant she could concentrate on nothing else.
‘Handy I turned up when I did this morning, wasn’t it?’ Fern beamed from behind the bar as Zillah rushed in with an order for the Motions. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a barmaid. Next!’
Zillah, balancing three pints of Hearty Hercules and a box of matches on the tray, shoved her way into the kitchen. ‘Three ploughman’s for the Motions, please. Heavy on the pickle for Perpetua.’
‘Gotcha,’ Timmy grinned, working like summer lightning round his kitchen table. ‘Feeling better now, love?’
Zillah shrugged as she balanced the three plates on the tray and managed to get pickle on her thumb. Better? Not really. She’d probably alienated Lewis forever, and she still had to tell Timmy that the Fowey love-nest was a non-starter. Not that the latter, oddly, seemed to be bothering him much.
She backed out of the kitchen with the tray, manoeuvred her way through the jam-packed bar and out into the blinding reflected light. Negotiating the trestles was like an obstacle course, and only two of the Motions were in situ.
‘Slo’s slipped off to the lav,’ Constance informed the entire beer garden. ‘Call of nature – not a ciggie – we searched him before he went.’
Zillah, who knew Slo kept cigarettes, lighter and Gold Spot hidden behind the gents’ third cistern, said nothing.
She straightened up, pushing damp strands of hair away from her face. The stream reflected dancing crystal prisms of sunlight and young and old alike were cooling their feet in the flat brown water. She longed to join them; longed to be young and carefree again and run barefoot through damp grass at dawn and splash through the early evening shallows on deserted sunset beaches, and make love in dark and drowsy secluded places.
Oh, bugger it all!
Ignoring Billy and Dougie’s insistent cries for refills of Pegasus Pale when she had a minute, Zillah slid her feet out of her flip-flops, dumped the tray on the nearest table, and trotted across the road.
Finding a patch of shade beneath one of the willows, Zillah sank down on to the soft short grass, bunched her long purple skirt above her knees, and slid her feet into the stream. Ooooh, bliss. The water wa
s ice-cold, making her shiver with pleasure.
The waterfall of green willow fronds surrounded her, giving her much-needed seclusion: a moment of solitude and reflection. Despite the children with their fishing nets and their jam-jars splashing close to her, no one could see her. Not Timmy, not Fern, not the ever-thirsty Fiddlestickers outside the pub.
Zillah luxuriated in the cool green shade, moving her throbbing feet lazily through the translucent water. So? What on earth was going on?
When she’d arrived, with the annoyingly effervescent Fern, at The Weasel and Bucket earlier and had braced herself to tell Timmy the truth, it had all been rather odd.
‘Tell you what,’ Timmy had said happily, ‘why don’t we give young Fern here a try-out behind the bar as she’s got a few hours to kill? We’re going to be murderously busy today and—’
‘But you’ve always said she’d be useless,’ Zillah had frowned. ‘Too dotty for words.’
Timmy had shrugged, looking a bit perplexed. ‘I know, but a chap can change his mind, can’t he? Not just a woman’s prerogative, Zil, love. And you’ll need a hand – you know I’ve been worried about you getting so tired lately. How about it, Fern? Shall we see how you get on?’
And Fern had dimpled and blushed and almost squirmed with pleasure about this about-face and said yes over and over again.
They’d agreed that it couldn’t be a permanent fixture, of course, because of her job with Win at Hayfields, but on her evenings off, or the days when Win was doing her cleaning jobs, if and when it suited everyone.
Fern had practically danced on the spot and looked as though she was going to kiss Timmy and Zillah.
Timmy had looked as though he wouldn’t mind at all.
And then, only after he’d given Fern a brisk and basic induction on the art of barmaiding with a lot of giggling, he’d grinned at Zillah and suggested they go through to the kitchen for their chat.
And he’d made them both iced coffee in tall glass cups and they’d perched on opposite sides of the vast spotless table and before she could say any of the words she’d been rehearsing so carefully he’d leaned forward and asked her if she’d spoken to Amber about – well – about her part in finding the Fowey love-nest.
Seeing Stars Page 18