Last of the Summer Moët

by Wendy Holden

  Chapter Eight

  Kiki Cavendish, manager of the Golden Goose, Great Hording, was out jogging early on Saturday. As always, this jerked her hair, streaked a subtle blonde, out of its signature pencil twist and sent the pencil itself flying. Her reading glasses kept shooting off her recently rebuilt nose and swinging from their chain. She had to stop frequently and replace both specs and pencil, which was annoying. But at least, outside, she felt less agitated.

  The morning was fresh and clear, the fields glossy with dew, the very air shimmering with promise. As Kiki, resplendent in her favourite Muck Sweat designer leggings, crested the hill above the village, the sea tilted towards her like a polished silver plate. Her mind flew instantly to the engraved salver that was to be the prize at the coming evening’s event.

  Behind the toned muscles of her tummy churned a mixture of excitement and dread. Would all go according to plan? It was absolutely crucial that nothing went wrong. At the Golden Goose, everything always had to be perfect, just as Jonny Welsh expected.

  When Jonny had bought the Farmer’s Arms two years ago, it had been, according to him, ‘a grotty village pub full of grotty village people.’ But he had spotted its potential and given it a multi-million pound makeover. Out had gone the swirly carpets, anaglypta and flashing fruit machines. In had come squashy sofas, open fires and retro one-armed-bandits. Floorboards were exposed and varnished and York stone flags laid down. Vintage croquet sets spilled artfully from long wooden boxes. A mini spa was installed, using milk-based artisan beauty products humorously called Smelly Cow. A Michelin-starred chef was recruited and a kitchen garden provided for him by a horticulturalist dripping in Chelsea gold medals.

  But there was something else, too. Exclusivity of the most rigidly enforced type. Not only champagne bars and media rooms, but the assurance that local plutocrats would meet only others on their level as they downed Saturday lunchtime oysters or soaked up Sunday hangovers with braised shin of Suffolk beef. It was a daringly different take on the traditional all-welcoming pub model. But as drawbridges everywhere were being raised over the widening gulf between rich and poor, Jonny sensed, yet again, that he was ahead of the hospitality business curve.

  Kiki had played her part in this success story. And not just by acting as the village’s effective gatekeeper – checking the Approved Guest Names list every time a non-resident circumvented the internet blackout and rang up to book a room. It had also been her idea to provide hand-reared, small-producer bacon sandwiches to read with the Sunday papers, accompanied with ketchup bottles bearing silver lids from Tiffany. Her experience among the sophisticates of the metropolis had taught Kiki that there was nothing the truly rich prized like simplicity. Even vulgarity, if done in a sufficiently witty and tasteful way.

  Now, hot on the heels of the bacon sandwich initiative, she hoped her latest scheme would please Jonny even more. When Kiki had agreed to leave a prestigious London nightclub to run the Golden Goose for him, she had secretly hoped that her relocation package might include becoming Mrs Welsh the Second. She and Jonny had once been lovers, after all, and surely he was bored of his wife by now. It hadn’t happened – yet – but Kiki was sure that with everything she was doing to reinforce Jonny’s position as the centre of village life, he couldn’t fail to see what a good choice she would be.

  Unfortunately, he was not convinced by her latest idea, not yet at least. ‘A pub quiz?’ he had repeated in scorn. For all his business brilliance he sometimes was, Kiki thought, as behind the times as his grey mullet hairstyle.

  ‘Quizzes are massively popular right now,’ she told him. ‘And we could do a brilliant one here. Think about it. Great Hording’s got some of the most competitive people in the country. There’s nothing they’d like more than to show off.’

  ‘You’d better be right,’ Jonny warned.

  ‘Oh I am,’ Kiki assured him, fervently hoping that she was. If the quiz was a success, they might get back together. If it was a failure... but no, that did not bear thinking about. There was no room for failure in Jonny Welsh’s world.

  Something big and green now reared up very fast in front of her and Kiki, heart thudding with fright and leaping aside just in time, recognised the Ocado van. Again. ‘Moron!’ she screamed, relieving some of her agitation and wondering why it was, whenever she attempted to exercise in the lanes around Great Hording, she was almost mown down by this vehicle, which was invariably lost. It was lost now, Kiki could see, as the passenger-side window slid down and the driver, a different one from usual but still grinning inanely, leant over towards her.

  ‘I can haz house of Fred Needle?’

  Kiki eyed him accusingly. ‘You almost killed me.’

  The driver evidently spoke no English. He continued to beam benignly. ‘House of Fred Needle, madam, pliz.’

  Kiki hesitated. Either she could jog off and leave him, or she could give him directions to Addings, the Grade II William and Mary mansion where Richard Threadneedle, deputy governor of the Bank of England, spent his weekends.

  She felt disinclined to the latter course – why should she help this moron? On the other hand, taking the former would only mean the van would fruitlessly circle the village again and next time might hit her properly. Resignedly, Kiki pointed the way down the shaggy-hedge-lined lane to the Threadneedles’ huge double gates, where a winding gravel drive led up to a wisteria-swathed frontage.

  By the time Ocado’s engine had faded into the distance and the sweet sound of birds once more filled the air, Kiki had turned off the lane and was running down a grassy route between two fields. They belonged to Tim Lacey, part of his Hollywood estate. The name served to remind the village – should it forget it for one second – that the vast Lacey fortune had come from a brilliant career directing movies. The films had all been soppy romcoms, most famously Tufnell Park and I Think I Might Be Fond of You. But success was success.

  The elegant Georgian box Kiki could now see below in the valley was Tim’s house, Hollywood Hall. Like most people in Great Hording she found him utterly objectionable, with his cropped white hair and bumptious blue-framed glasses. But he was undeniably a village kingpin and getting his support for the quiz had been crucial. ‘Absolutely, I’m brilliant at quizzes,’ had been Tim’s typically immodest response. ‘I used to beat Nicole and Russell on set at Trivial Pursuit every time. And Nicole’s a member of Mensa, but then, so am I.’

  Kiki, her Botoxed brow now sticky with sweat, was back out on the main road. The next mansion to slide into view was Brybings, the vast new-build Palladian spread where Sergei Goblemov, the village oligarch, lived with his nubile third wife Anna. Anna, who had worked nights in a Vladivostok tank factory before breaking into modelling, had taken to the high life with zeal. Styling herself patron of the arts, her first act in Great Hording had been to commission Zeb Spaw to make an enormous floating sculpture for the Brybings lake. It was thirty feet tall, shaped unmistakably like a willy, made of semi-transparent resin and emitted a neon purple glow from within. Solar-powered, it floated slowly round, banging gently into the banks. As she jogged past, Kiki could see its pulsating violet tip over the estate wall.

  As Riffs, a collection of red-and-white striped brick Victorian Gothic towers, twisty-topped chimneys, gargoyles and finials now appeared, Kiki slowed to a brisk walk. She reflected with relief that she had not had to ask the denizen of this dwelling to take part. The recent departure of former owner Roger Slutt had been greeted with delight in Great Hording, into whose midst the wrinkled ex-rocker had fitted as badly as he did into his trademark tight black leather trousers.

  Kiki now glanced at her watch and forced her reluctant limbs back into a jog. Time was getting on. The Golden Goose staff would have arrived at work and she needed to go through tonight’s requirements again. The food, especially. In a nod to witty authenticity she had decided that pie and peas were to be served at half-time. But the suggestion had puzzled Hervé, the Michelin-starred chef, who had never seen mushy peas i
n his life, let alone made them. His confusion had turned to disgust once Kiki summoned up a picture on her phone. ‘Mon Dieu! I train with Joël Robuchon, for zees?’

  Pavel, the new Polish barman, was an easier proposition. He turned up early, stayed late and worked like a dog, but it was difficult to tell, from his impassive Slav face, how much he had understood of what a pub quiz was. But as the impassive face was also a very handsome one, Kiki was happy to re-explain. There was, as a matter of fact, little she wouldn’t be happy to do with Pavel, but sex was out of the question. She had vowed to herself at the beginning of her career that she would only ever sleep up, never down. Shagging the barstaff was not the route to riches. Unfortunately, neither was shagging the boss, not so far, anyway.

  The next building Kiki passed was the village hall. Outwardly at least this was Great Hording’s least remarkable building. Essentially a long shed with four windows down each side and a simple, wooden double-entrance door, it looked nothing out of the ordinary. But Kiki knew, as did everyone else who lived locally, that ordinary was the last thing it was.

  The uncomplicated exterior of the place was deceptive. This one-storey shack of cream-painted corrugated iron was the focus of some of the most powerful ambition in Great Hording. Meaning, given the nature of the residents, that this simple-looking local amenity was the centre of some of the most ruthless plotting on the entire planet.

  The event around which all this revolved was the annual pantomime, a show with such kudos that there was no one in the entire village who was not desperate to get a part.

  And here, Kiki suddenly saw with a shock, coming towards her down the sun-dappled street bearing a basket, was the person in charge of it. Lady Mandy Chease, wife of West End impresario Sir Alistair and mother of actor Orlando. And, more importantly than any of that, pantomime director assoluta.

  ‘Good morning,’ intoned Lady Mandy in the rich, ripe tones that had coaxed many a local magnate through Aladdin, Mother Goose and, last year, Jack and the Brexit Beanstalk in which the giant counting his euros had brought the house down. In the sort of inspired casting for which Lady Mandy was justly famous, the giant had been played by the nation’s deputy bean-counter, Richard Threadneedle.

  Kiki plastered on her brightest, most unctuous smile. She had never yet been selected for the panto, but she lived in hope.

  Lady Mandy inclined a large head set upon a thick neck. She had piercing eyes beneath dark and bristly brows, a porcine nose and a square and solid frame which the wide-legged trousers she favoured did nothing whatsoever to flatter. ‘We’re all looking forward very much to the quiz night,’ she said in her fruity voice.

  ‘You’re bringing a team?’ Kiki’s voice was sharp with excitement. Lady Mandy, who even in Great Hording saw herself as prima inter pares, rarely appeared in the Golden Goose. She had answered none of Kiki’s emails asking whether she would be interested in entering the quiz.

  ‘Indeed I am,’ Lady Mandy replied graciously. ‘A small gathering of fellow thespians. We’re calling our team “Merely Players”.’

  Kiki laughed rather too long and loud at this. Lady Mandy was staring at her from under her alarming brows. ‘Er, very funny. Um, Hamlet, am I right?’

  ‘As You Like It.’ Lady Mandy closed her eyes. ‘All the world’s a stage,’ she intoned. ‘And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.’ She stopped. ‘Speaking of exits, I had better get on.’ She shook the basket. ‘I’m picking simple country nosegays for the bedrooms of my houseguests. Orlando is coming, of course.’

  Orlando Chease, Kiki remembered, not without an agreeable touch of schadenfreude, had been all set to be the new James Bond. But then it had all gone pear-shaped. Lady Mandy always maintained, in public at least, that the Bond part had been beneath him. But the Golden Goose gossip – Tim Lacey, as always – was that she and Sir Alastair had been livid and Caspar Honeyman, who had got the 007 part, was now a dead man in London’s West End. ‘But I seriously doubt,’ Tim had added gleefully, ‘that he’s exactly desperate to be in Blood Brothers anyway.’

  ‘He’s bringing his new girlfriend, Savannah. Lovely girl,’ Lady Mandy added, complacently. ‘I forget her surname. Mouche? Louche? Something French, anyway.’

  Kiki gasped. ‘Not Savannah Bouche? The film star?!’ But hadn’t Savannah just announced a relationship with South’n Fried, the rapper? ‘Are you sure?’ she asked Lady Mandy.

  Pantomime’s greatest dame was raising her finger roguishly to her lips. ‘All very hush-hush, I understand.’

  Gosh, so the South’n Fried romance was over, already! Kiki felt about to burst with triumph at this tip-off. The whole world followed the Bouche love-life with the most bated of collective breath. And she was in on its secrets! On the most inside of tracks! ‘It’s quite... sudden.’

  ‘That’s showbusiness, my dear,’ declared Lady Mandy. ‘People fall in love very quickly and intensely.’ The great nostrils flared in dreamy reminiscence. ‘I remember when I first met dear Alastair. I was SM at the time...’

  ‘S&M?’ Kiki blurted. Who would have thought it? Lady Mandy in rubber with a whip!

  Lady Mandy looked annoyed. ‘SM! Stage Manager! For a play dear Alastair was directing. He was married at the time, then our eyes met across a crowded set – though actually it was Beckett and quite minimal. Just a dustbin and a tree stump. Anyway, that was that. The rest,’ she added grandly, ‘is theatre history.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Kiki, anxious to make amends.

  Lady Mandy raised her well-padded chin. ‘And dear Savannah will certainly sprinkle some stardust on your little quiz. And on my little pantomime too if I can persuade her to take the starring role in...’

  Kiki held her breath. Lady Mandy had not yet revealed the title of this year’s panto. She hoped it would be Cinderella. With her legs, she would make a magnificent Buttons. Dandini, at a pinch.

  ‘...Cinderella!’

  Kiki gasped. She had to get a part! By any means necessary. She was always left out, and more important people cast. But not this year! Her knees shook as she prepared her speech. The director was alone, there would never be a better time.

  ‘Lady Mandy, I don’t know whether you’ve thought about parts yet, but I—’

  ‘Goodness me, what a marvellous patch of meadow cranesbill.’ Lady Mandy swept off, brandishing her basket. ‘I’ll see you tonight, my dear.’

  Kiki watched the portly rear retreat down the lane and turn off to Promptings, the Chease spread, as it were. Dash Lady Mandy! Or words to that effect. She’d been turned down yet again.

  On the other hand, she knew some top gossip and Savannah Bouche would be at the quiz. What a coup! Even in Great Hording, where top spies, oligarchs, cabinet ministers and bank governors were two a penny. Many of whom had celebrity and aristocratic friends, whose details were all on Kiki’s jealously guarded database.

  But there was fame and there was FAME, and Savannah Bouche belonged to the LATTER category. And she was coming tonight! Jonny was going to blow a gasket. If this didn’t reignite things between them, she didn’t know what would. And then, when she was the second Mrs Welsh, or Lady Welsh by then – Jonny was always lobbying for honours – Lady Mandy could stick it where the sun didn’t shine.

  She was entering the village street now, the last part of her route before she reached home. Glowing with triumph and restored self-confidence, Kiki power-strode past the shops, admiring her lower limbs in their dazzling leggings.

  For someone in her fifties, she looked pretty good. Much better than Nessa Welsh, who was short and ran to fat. Well, she would soon be regretting not taking more care, taking Jonny for granted, imagining he would never divorce her. Ha!

  Kiki paused before the pale-blue-painted portals of the Great Hording Bookshop, and felt a flood of gratification. Dear Mr Delabole had done what she suggested and made a tie-in display. On the shelves in the window were Ben Fogle’s Britain’s Best Pub Quiz Jumpers and Stephen Fry
’s Quiz Quester’s Quinquereme among others. Perfect!

  ‘Good morning, Ms Cavendish.’

  The soft, well-spoken male voice was addressing her from beneath the fanlight in the doorway. Kiki met the mild, intelligent gaze of Peter Delabole. She experienced a significant rise in her heart rate and a powerful rush of heat which defied the moisture-wicking properties of her Muck Sweat designer crop top.

  Peter was tall, handsome and, like her, single and in his early fifties. His eyes were as azure as the paint of his bookshop and she loved the way they crinkled up, combining the suggestion of humour with the far-sightedness of an admiral assessing the horizon.

  ‘Kiki, please!’ she chided flirtatiously. ‘And good morning to you too, Mr Delabole.’

  ‘Peter, please,’ he rejoined, giving her one of his rare smiles. Peter was so understated, Kiki thought, rather longingly. He was the quintessential bookshop owner, in his graph-paper shirt and Shetland v-neck pullovers in shades of sand. He wore cords, but not the violently new, violently red ones favoured by most other men in the village. Peter’s cords were well-worn and usually brown or green. He wore brogues, but ones that looked to have been handed down from his grandfather fifty years ago, rather than hand-built by Lobb just last week.

  ‘All ready for the pub quiz?’ Peter’s smile widened and Kiki’s heart twisted. Perhaps Peter was attracted to her as well. His long blue eyes were certainly lingering on the toned, tanned arms revealed by the crop top with its witty neon piping.

  Rather reluctantly she reminded herself of her rekindled hopes with Jonny. A liaison with a bookshop owner, however charming, was not part of the plan. Remember, she told herself. You only sleep up. Never down.

  ‘Yes,’ Kiki flashed Peter her own assisted-white smile, ‘there’s been an amazing take-up. Even Lady Mandy’s coming.’

  Peter nodded his head of wavy brown hair shot through fetchingly with grey. It was one of the few male heads in the village with its original colour. ‘Lady Mandy was in here yesterday,’ he said. ‘And so was Tim Lacey. It took me most of the morning sweeping up after them.’