by Karen Swan
The sky was as pink as a sleeping child’s cheek when they set off, the cream Morris Minor pulling noisily out of the quiet, immaculate, tree-dotted street and heading west towards the M4. Henry was driving, his head bowed low to keep from knocking against the roof as Cassie struggled with reading the map before her car sickness kicked in. A thermos of tea was propped between her knees, and some bacon baps wrapped in tin foil steamed temptingly beside them.
Henry turned on the radio – Radio 4 on account of the soft-spoken programme presenters; Cassie wasn’t renowned for coping well with mornings – his hand automatically coming to rest on her knee and squeezing it gently. Cassie shifted position slightly and stroked the curve of his cheek, remembering their athletics from the previous evening – so much for that early night!
It was impossible to hold hands driving a manual car, but they listened in easy silence as they motored through a slumbering London – enjoying its Saturday-morning lie-in – to the motorways and the countryside beyond. Cassie fell asleep again, the Radio 4 presenters doing their jobs rather too well, dozing through most of the suburbs and missing the stunning vistas of the North Downs. But as the roads grew smaller and more winding, she blinked slowly back to alertness again, far preferring being woken by the sight of heavy-headed oaks and lush wheat fields speeding past the window than the angry red numbers on her alarm clock, shouting ‘5.15 a.m.’ at her.
‘Tea?’ she asked, weakly reaching for the thermos as they passed the village sign for Midhurst.
‘I think we may as well wait till we park now,’ Henry smiled, patting her hand before changing gear and swinging the car through the imposing gates of Cowdray Park, flashing their hospitality pass to the security guard. It was on the nose of eight o’clock and barely anyone else had arrived. In the distance, the castellated ruins of the original great house dominated the outline of the present property where the Cowdray family lived. The two giant polo pitches ran ahead of them, perfectly flat, pristinely striped, as groundsmen buzzed up and down on their specially adapted red machines, scarifying the turf before the thunder of hooves decimated the lawn later on. The grandstands stood empty, the hard green plastic seats folded closed against the strengthening sun, but there were plenty of horseboxes in the competitors’ area and Cassie could see some of the ponies being walked by the grooms, others tethered to the posts, their faces in nosebags. The distinctive smell of leather and manure that Cassie had always loved carried on the air, filtering through the old car’s basic radiator system, and she unwound the window to stick her head out like a happy dog, inhaling deeply.
Zara had beaten them to it, her tall, skinny olive-green Mark II Land Rover bagging the plum spot of the first parking space in the corner – hence the dawn call – meaning pedestrians coming from either the north or west sides would have to walk right past them.
‘Hey!’ she beamed, even that one word clipped with her South African accent, as they parked alongside. She looked very awake and very beautiful as she scampered along the foot rails; her skin was the colour of almonds; big, splodgy freckles peppered her nose and cheeks, and her pale brown eyes always seemed to be sparkling. Anouk thought she could be the most beautiful woman she knew, if only she’d ‘consider her nails’. She was already wearing her usual working uniform of Land Girl baggy dungarees and Peter Pan-collared blouse with boots, her afro kept back from her face with a headscarf knotted at the front. The two of them had decided early on that they would back up the company’s retro branding by dressing in vintage themselves and Cassie’s look was a prim floral tea dress and pinny, her hair rolled at the front, and red cupid’s-bow lips.
Zara was unzipping a safari tent that was tightly rolled to the side of the roof rack so that it looked more like a telescope. ‘What do you think? Good spot, huh?’ she called through their open window.
‘For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been the first to arrive and last to leave any party, Za,’ Henry smiled, jumping out of the car and playfully swatting her off the foot rail to deal with the tent himself. ‘Off. Let me, missus.’
Zara laughed gratefully and wandered over to Cassie, who was still sitting in the passenger seat, now munching hungrily on her bacon butty. A smudge of ketchup was smeared on her chin, her eyes closed with satisfaction as the carbs began to work their magic on her tired body.
‘Worn out, are you?’ Zara cackled, peering in through the open window.
‘Ugh. I am never waking up in any hour that has a five in it ever again,’ Cassie moaned, taking another bite. ‘I bet Jude can’t have been pleased having you roll out of bed so early on the weekend either.’
‘She didn’t notice. She’s like you – she doesn’t so much sleep as die for eight hours every night.’
Cassie chuckled, taking another heavenly bite of the bap.
‘Arch OK?’
Cassie nodded – her mouth full – and gave a thumbs-up sign, accompanied with much relieved head-nodding.
‘Great stuff.’ Zara patted the open window frame with one hand. ‘I’ll start hulling the strawbs. Come and find me when you’re a fully functioning human again.’
‘OK,’ Cassie mumbled with a mouth still full of food, watching with a different sort of hunger as Henry pulled the tent tight over the collapsible aluminium frame, his athletic physique thinly veiled in his faded black T-shirt and jeans as he set to work with the energy of a child on a six-pack of Coke.
She loved it when he helped out at weekends – if nothing else, he was a whizz at popping the champagne corks – but today his presence felt somehow . . . pitiful. Arch was being assessed in a series of tests, so Henry couldn’t ‘fruitfully’ spend his day sitting by his bed and cracking jokes, and it wouldn’t even occur to him to spend the day on the sofa, but there really was nothing for him to do at the moment. The expedition was done, gone, over for this year at least. Henry was trying to be philosophical about it, agreeing with Bob Kentucky’s confidence that there was always next year, but Cassie had caught the pensive expression on his face any time he thought he was alone and she knew he was up in the night, unable to sleep. Because being philosophical and ‘taking it on the chin’ didn’t resolve the pressing – and alarming – issue of what they were going to do for money until then.
She thought of the lump sum sitting in a bank account in her name. It would solve their problems at a stroke, and yet . . . and yet it felt like blood money, as though in using it – relying on it – she was somehow relying on Gil again. Still. And she wouldn’t give him either that satisfaction or power. She couldn’t.
No. It was better to keep Henry occupied at least. Something would turn up. If nothing else, he’d said he could volunteer to teach at a climbing wall, sailing club . . . She watched as he got the safari tent up in minutes, bashing the pegs into the hard ground with ease. At least it was physical work, manly stuff, better for his ego than hulling strawberries.
As if sensing her scrutiny, he straightened up and turned, flashing her a smile that made her heart pivot. His smile turned into a laugh as he pointed to his chin and she remembered the ketchup on her own. She stuck her tongue out before wiping it off with a Kleenex from the glovebox.
After a quick cup of tea, drunk from the blue lid of the bright green flask, she finally got out of the car, ready to assist in the morning’s endeavours. She joined Zara by the back of the Landy, slinging her grass-green ruffled apron on over her dress, and they worked quickly as a team, chatting all the while as they strung up the striped bunting inside and outside the tent, and round the roof rack of the car, set up the champagne-breakfast table, stacked the antique bone-china plates into little towers, bunched the knives, forks and spoons into separate jam jars decorated with ribbons and opened out the antique cream canvas and leather campaign chairs.
When that was done, they took the croissant dough from the cool box and began kneading it into shape, laying the pastries out on trays, ready to bake in half an hour so that they’d still be warm when the first guests started
arriving at ten o’clock.
‘Hey, slacker,’ Zara said, looking up from her duties and finding Henry briefly reading the letters page of The Times in one of the chairs. ‘We’re going to need some crushed ice for the elderflower bubbly. Can you go blag some from one of those hospitality tents?’
‘What’s it worth?’ he asked, folding the newspaper and standing up again. ‘Free drink for me? Free bet on Argentina?’
‘Free kiss from Cassie,’ Zara said, reaching for another tub of dough.
‘Done,’ he said, sauntering over and kissing his fiancée as she sprinkled almonds over the croissants, smiling at the dusting of icing sugar on the tip of her nose. He kissed the tip of her nose too. ‘Won’t be long,’ he said, grabbing the two large silver ice buckets and wandering off.
Cassie watched him go with a small sigh.
‘God, I really hope you two don’t get married,’ Zara muttered with a glint in her eye. ‘Your honeymoon period would be insufferable.’
They were lying on the roof of the car, topping up their tans, when Henry came back forty minutes later.
‘Hey! When I said get ice, I didn’t mean travel to the polar cap to get it!’ Zara quipped, rolling onto her side as Henry pulled the two ice buckets on a trolley behind him. Cassie could barely bring herself to move. The sun, pulsing down on them . . . she was almost asleep again.
He stopped and looked up at them, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. He was smiling delightedly. ‘Za, you’ll never guess who I just ran into.’
‘No, I don’t suppose I will,’ Zara drawled with infinite patience. She had been one of his housemates at university and well knew that he was one of those people who knew someone almost everywhere he went.
Henry paused for a beat, bigging up the reveal. ‘Beau Cooper!’
Zara sat upright in surprise. ‘No way! I thought he was dead.’
Henry laughed. ‘I think he has nearly been, several times.’
‘Who’s Beau Cooper?’ Cassie asked, leaning up on her elbows.
‘Hang on. Let me just get this out of the sun,’ Henry said, pushing the trolley into the shade of the tent, heaving the filled buckets onto the breakfast table and wedging several bottles of champagne into the ice.
Zara twisted back to face her. ‘He was at uni with us. One of the Trust Fund Yahs,’ she said in a low voice, her lovely mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘Way too handsome for his own good, way too much money. Total junkie – had to be revived twice with adrenalin shots, and that’s just the times I know about. He was only allowed to stay on account of his father donating millions to the new law library.’
‘Sounds charming,’ Cassie said wryly, falling back into her sunbathing position. ‘I can’t believe Henry would be friends with someone like that.’
‘Well, I think Henry took a fairly dim view of Beau’s lifestyle, but they’re alike in lots of ways – both of them free spirits, entrepreneurial mavericks, I guess. Neither one of them conforms to stereotypical expectations; they can’t do the suited-and-booted commuter thing. And I think Beau liked the fact that Henry wasn’t some sycophantic groupie. If anything, it was Beau who wanted to hang with Henry.’
‘Well, I’ve never even heard of the guy. Henry hasn’t ever mentioned him.’ But then he’d never mentioned Gem either.
Henry’s face appeared at the top of the ladder, his grin growing as he clambered onto the roof and flopped down in front of them, clearly desperate to share. ‘So . . .’
‘Out with it,’ Zara said. ‘You’re obviously dying to tell us all about him. Does he still look like Byron?’
Henry shook his head. ‘The hair’s even longer now.’
‘Oh my God. Does he still have his own teeth?’
‘Well, I think they’re his,’ Henry laughed. ‘He looks really well, actually. Fit, been working out. He’s lost that . . .’ He strained for the right word.
‘Junkie look?’
‘Exactly. He’s got a tan.’
‘Don’t tell me – he’s just back from Necker,’ Zara sighed enviously.
‘Oz. He’s preparing to sail across the Pacific, all the way to San Fran on a boat made out of recycled bottles.’
‘Sounds suitably mad,’ Zara said.
‘Sounds stupid,’ Cassie echoed.
‘Actually, he’s raising environmental awareness about the amount of plastic floating in the oceans. Did you know there’s a confluence of plastic in the middle of the Atlantic that’s more than twice the size of France? And most of it is just plastic bags and water bottles. One-use stuff.’ He shook his head irritably, his eyes bright, and Cassie watched him with faint sadness. There was a vigour to his movements now that hadn’t been there forty minutes earlier. ‘Anyway, he’s got his own consultancy in San Francisco, mainly doing eco-consciousness camps with the Silicon Valley names, but he thought this would be a great way to really bring attention to such an important and overlooked issue.’
‘Cool,’ Cassie said, thinking she should probably say something.
‘I told him you were here. He’s really keen to see you again,’ Henry said to Zara.
‘Yeah, I bet,’ Zara barked drily. ‘I hope you told him he’s not the so-called cure. He wasn’t then and he isn’t now.’
Henry rolled his eyes. ‘He didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Zara muttered darkly. ‘Oh dammit. I need to get those croissants in the oven,’ she muttered, crawling on her hands and knees towards the ladder at the back of the car.
Henry waited for her to go before pulling himself over to where Cassie was sitting.
‘I said we’d go over. I really want him to meet you.’
‘Oh, Henry, why?’ Cassie scowled. ‘I don’t like the sound of him. I don’t particularly want to meet the guy.’
‘Don’t let Zara sway you. They had a . . . tempestuous thing going on back then for a while. He’s all right.’
‘Well, I trust Zara’s judgement. He sounds like a complete loser.’
‘You trust her judgement over mine?’ Henry asked in surprise.
‘Of course not, but—’
‘Look, he’s not the guy he was at university. I don’t know what Za’s told you, but he’s changed. He’s an entirely different person now. God forbid we should all remain the people we were ten years ago.’
The words were pointed, directed at her and the version of herself that had said, ‘I do,’ to another man. Cassie looked away. Her own recent past felt as disconnected from her life now as an amputated limb.
Henry reached for her hand, squeezing it gently. ‘Come on, Cass, where’s the harm? We’re allowed our pasts, aren’t we? After all, they’re what brought us to here and now.’
She couldn’t argue with that. She, of all people, couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter Nine
She was saved by the bell – their clients arriving early curtailed any chance of meeting Beau, and the three of them were immediately rushed off their feet. Henry played barman, mixing elderflower-champagne cocktails as an alternative to the Buck’s Fizzes, juicing clementines and apples, and brewing up pots of tea. Zara organized the flow of croissants and pastries into and out of the mini oven that had been custom-fitted into the boot of the old Land Rover when it had, apparently, been driven across the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan by the previous owner, back in the 1980s. Cassie played hostess, carrying, pouring, removing and smiling.
She didn’t look up for two hours, but when she did, she was astonished by the scene. The quiet industry of the early morning had been replaced by a heaving, buzzing crowd as the occupants of the glossy cars that now cascaded in rows behind them milled past with curious gazes at the Landy, the bunting-festooned safari tent and retro brunch being dished out therein, their mouths turning up into smiles as they clocked the pile of heels strewn at the bottom of the car’s ladder and the decorated women who had kicked them off, sitting on the roof with bare pedicured feet, sunbathing and laughing with delight.
A deep
male voice was booming incoherently out of the speakers that were set up around the park as ponies cantered over the immaculate grass on the practice pitch, their riders standing in the stirrups and swinging their sticks in warm-up. On the other side of the white posts, spectators sauntered in and out of the shade of the giant sunflower-yellow parasols that had opened like daisies in the sun, as they sipped drinks and delved into their picnics. A few children were running around, playing with miniature polo sticks, which became weapons in their hands, as dogs on leads nosed the ground for dropped bits of burgers.
Henry’s back was turned to her as he worked on crushing the fresh ice block with a pick – from experience, Zara and Cassie had found they couldn’t keep the crushed ice from melting on day-long events; only solid blocks would last – and Cassie watched as a woman in a pistachio silk minidress came over to take one of their business cards from the table beside him. Cassie noticed more than half the cards had gone.
Henry chatted easily to her, resting the pick in the ice like it was Arthur’s sword as the woman tarried, asking questions that Cassie, with growing indignation, was quite sure were just an excuse to flirt with her fiancé.
Henry jerked his head back, indicating towards her and Zara, and both he and the woman turned. Cassie instantly ducked out of sight behind the Land Rover again, not wanting to be caught staring, but of course she had been a vital second too slow and Henry was still chuckling when he ambled over a few moments later.
‘She said she was interested,’ he grinned, laughter in his eyes.
‘Oh, I know she was,’ Cassie said tartly as she scuffed at the grass with her foot, her cheeks stinging with embarrassment that she’d been caught spying and wishing that she could fight back in something more alluring than her winsome pansy-printed tea dress.
‘It’s for her mother’s sixtieth in September. They’re having a garden party for forty people in Dorset.’
She looked up in surprise as he handed over a piece of paper with a name and number scrawled on it. ‘Oh.’