Blowing It
Page 12
Mac, meanwhile, had the excuse of an urgent meeting with Doug at Charisma’s management office in Soho. It was an appointment that apparently required an entire day if it was also to accommodate the lunch at the Wolseley, a lot of good claret and enough music business insider gossip to send him home feeling that a chair was still kept for him at the table of rock music’s dysfunctional family.
And to be fair, he did have a genuine reason for his absence. It seemed the Charisma website gossip had been pretty much accurate.
‘There’s a possible cover version of “Target Practice” on the cards,’ he’d told Lottie. ‘Movie rumours; they’re talking Keanu Reeves, possibly Angelina Jolie.’ He was careful not to sound excited by the prospect – the moment you started thinking about what might happen, the faster the mists of possibility wafted away again.
Lottie could hardly object to such a heady mix, although versions of it had surfaced a few times before only to vanish the way of distant dreams. Whether anything came of this one or not, in terms of whether to stay at home or go to the meeting, it was game, set and match, no question. Who, in their right minds and in sight of the need for a pension fund, would – for no more personal effort than a signature on a contract – swap the possibility of a song they’d written years previously being used to play out the end-titles of a film that was odds-on for a dozen Oscar nominations? At the very least it meant a hefty fee plus performance royalties for years to come from every country in the reasonably civilized world. Only a demented fool would say, ‘No thanks, I haven’t got time to talk terms, rights and royalties. I’ve got to point out the finer aspects of our antiquated electrics to a smooth-talking bloke from Digby, James and Humphreys.’
The initial walking-round-the-house bit was now over, fairly painlessly as the sleek young estate agent (‘Harry-delighted-to-meet-you’) had a fine and tactful line in saying ‘Mmm’ in a way that didn’t sound too damning and in reasonably positive nodding, entirely in the direction of a stubbornly uncommunicative Clover who had stamped about with a face like fury. Now that they’d reached the tea-in-the-kitchen stage and Lottie no longer had to concern herself with dreading an outburst of horror on Harry’s first impression of Sorrel’s burglary-ransack of a room, she had a moment to wonder why Clover had volunteered to come all the way down from Richmond at all (and by train too – her car being in for a service) if what she’d intended to do was be appallingly rude and unhelpful. She thought she’d got over that one after the morning with Susie. For once, when it would have been most welcome, she hadn’t even brought one of her cakes – certainly to underline her protest that this whole house-sale thing was a vast mistake. Lottie, embarrassed, considered it a dire shame her daughter was too old to be sent out to sit on the stairs until her sulk was over.
Clover, across the heaps of travel books that covered the kitchen table, now stared sullenly down at the back page of that day’s Guardian on which she’d doodled a child-like square house, thick squiggles of smoke billowing dangerously from its chimney. What, exactly, Lottie considered, had been the point of Harry-delighted-to-meet-you trying so hard to get Clover on-side? Perhaps he fancied her. Perhaps he had a genuine passion for moodily pouting blondes who could barely be bothered to say hello. If so, he wasn’t making much progress, though Lottie couldn’t fault his efforts. So far, in the hour he’d been looking round the house with the two women, all his remarks on the house’s many good selling points had been addressed to Clover, as if she had personally been responsible for the quality of the oak floorboards or the intricacies of the carved panelling on the stairwell. Lottie had once or twice been close to reminding him that Holbrook House wasn’t actually Clover’s to sell and that Lottie was the one who needed to be cajoled, smiled at and persuaded of Digby, James and Humphreys’ success at flogging choice Surrey properties. But she felt rather sorry for him. What must the poor man have thought of Clover, trailing round after him and Lottie in a silent fury while they went from room to room, discussing en suites and favourable vistas? Clover’s only contribution to the afternoon had been a savage pillow-straightening after Harry had sat for a moment on Sorrel’s bed to make a note about the strange dark stain on the ceiling.
But then, Lottie conceded, if he’d flannelled her like that (‘Lovely newel post, silky quality, don’t you think?’, addressed to Clover as he stroked the knobbly carved wood in a manner queasily close to suggestive), she’d take against him too. It wasn’t really his fault: Lottie just wasn’t keen on his type. She didn’t trust people who felt they had to smarm themselves up to look professional. He had over-whitened teeth. He carried a distinctly cosmetic aroma and had clearly spent about the same amount as Clover on having his highlights done. His dark grey suit had a sky-blue and white polka-dot lining that the firm’s senior partners would probably think was pretty racy and bordering on the Jonathan Ross. She imagined him at night, peeling off his house-sales persona along with his clothes. Perhaps what he really liked was to sprawl on the sofa in a wife-beater vest, slobbed out with boxed pizza, belching into cans of lager to a background of heavy metal. Unlikely.
‘Of course we shall be describing the house as “important”.’ Harry tapped another note (presumably also ‘important’) into his Blackberry and smiled hopefully across the table at Clover, who continued to ignore him.
‘Important,’ Lottie now repeated, stifling giggles at the term. ‘Is that an example of estate-agent speak? It seems an odd word for a house. Wouldn’t “comfortable, lived-in, secure, airy, light”, simple terms like that, be rather more descriptive, less abstract?’
Or in this case, she thought to herself, dampish, dated, decaying, if anyone was looking for the truth. Either way, whoever would feel encouraged to buy a house based on it being described as ‘important’?
‘No, believe me, we’d definitely class this as “important”, Mrs MacIntyre.’ Harry leaned forward a little, looking serious, and Lottie felt a moment of alarm that he might be about to pat her hand as if she was his slightly doolally grandmother.
‘Important is absolutely the word,’ he emphasized. ‘It covers both the quality of the building and the scarcity of this type of property. Of course it varies. A century older and we’d use “distinguished” or possibly even “imposing”; two centuries or more comes under “historic”.’
‘Right. I get it.’ Lottie was impressed at his seriousness (she’d bet he earned zillions in sale commission) but couldn’t resist a tease, even though Clover, beside her, was now huffing with impatience. ‘So where does “stately” come in?’
Harry gave a small, dismissive laugh. ‘Actually, it simply doesn’t,’ he explained patiently. ‘That, frankly …’ and here he twinkled at her in a way that seemed far too avuncular for his early thirties years, ‘… would be considered rather … er … coach party.’
That was it, Lottie thought. She definitely didn’t like him. She thought tenderly of her mother and her much-loved Friday trips to the great – presumably ‘historic’ – houses of the nation. She wasn’t having her memory put down, albeit unwittingly, by this oily young fool. Now, time-wasting as it may be, she’d have to choose another agent. It would involve going through all this again, through pointing out that the turquoise and green glass tiles in the emerald bathroom might be cracked and dulled but they were original; that all the fireplaces were fully functioning ones (so long as the rooks weren’t currently nesting) and that the panelling in the hall was actually fir wood, not the more traditional oak. Mac could take the next turn, Angelina Jolie or not.
Clover spoke at last, challenging Harry. ‘But it’ll be ages till the house is actually sold, won’t it? Big places like this, well, they don’t exactly shift in days, do they? Could be months … years even?’
She gazed unblinking at him and he smiled back in a way that made Lottie sure he’d spent his entire career being tactful with the hopelessly ignorant.
‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘Houses like this don’t come up every day of the week.
You’ll find there are people out there willing to trade their souls for a genuine Lutyens. Even …’ Lottie, amused, watched him hesitate, daring him to add what he’d so obviously been about to blurt out: ‘even one in as dire a condition as this’.
‘… I mean, especially, one with potential for a certain amount of updating, if you don’t mind me saying, Mrs MacIntyre. Planning consents notwithstanding, of course.’
‘No, I don’t mind at all,’ Lottie reassured him. ‘I’m sure anyone would want to tweak a place to make it feel like their own. We did.’
Notwithstanding? Whoever, under sixty and not conducting a court case, used terms like that?
The house would take more than a tweak these days, she now considered; more like a huge shove. Why had she never before noticed the way the east-wing chimney leaned? Was it something recent? One good storm and they could all be killed. The chimneys on this house were massive things.
‘Yes. Um, exactly,’ Harry agreed, shifting slightly and looking across the room to the six-foot-square painting of a naked Lottie dancing in a field of buttercups, beneath an orange and purple sunset. Her body may have been entirely exposed in it, but the patch on the wall where the plaster had fallen off was successfully covered.
Lottie grinned and followed his gaze. ‘One of my better efforts, that one. Do you think I should leave it as a moving-in gift for the next people?’
‘Oh, you painted it yourself?’ Harry’s eyes opened wide and his face went a shade more pink. ‘Goodness! It’s … er … really—’
‘It’s really terrible,’ Clover snapped. ‘You’ll have to take it with you, Mum. No one else in their right mind would want to live with it.’
‘Don’t get in a stress, Clover, I was only joking.’ Never mind sending her to sit on the stairs, Lottie’s fingers now itched to give her daughter a slap.
‘Well, I can’t tell, these days. After all, Ilex and I thought you were joking about selling the house.’
Harry stowed his Blackberry in his briefcase and turned to Lottie. ‘And have you decided on a property to move to? Perhaps DJH could help you there? What sort of place were you looking for? Something smaller, a whole lot easier to manage, I assume?’
Lottie minded the assumption, but then to be fair she’d mind whatever he said, now she’d taken against him on behalf of her mother. Why smaller? Did he have her and Mac in mind for a snug warden flatlet in a retirement development? Or something with a ready-fitted stairlift and one of those strange, walk-in baths, all prepared for an infirm old age? It would be (please God) a long, long time before they were ready for all that kind of kit. She was tempted to invent an impulsive move to a palatial French chateau complete with fully functioning champagne vineyard, or to a swish New York apartment in the Dakota Building, alongside Yoko Ono and a selection of movie stars who were generally thought to be already dead, but decided the truth would do just as well.
‘No. We’re not looking for anywhere else to live, not for a while anyway. Mac and I intend to travel a bit. Well, a lot actually. We’ll simply put everything we want to keep into storage and take a long, long trip around the world’s wonders. At any given moment, you’ll find that somewhere in the world it’s party time!’
Harry looked confused, and Lottie could see he was clearly picturing sedate middle-aged drinks gatherings, like golf-club ladies’ night functions, events that differed only as to whether the host nation was hot, cold or temperate. She decided to enlighten him a little.
‘You see, there’s always so much going on, all the time, all over the world. It’s just a matter of getting on a plane and going along to join in the fun! You can start in the Philippines in January with the Kalibo Ati-Atihan, party on round the world for the rest of the year then get to Thailand for the Koh Pangan full moon party in December. See? A fabulous year of festivals, carnivals and celebration.’ She could see Clover raising her eyes ceiling-ward, but ignored her.
‘And then, you see, forget the Olympic Games – too dull and worthy,’ she said, leaning forward to hold his attention. ‘Have you ever heard of Naadam?’
‘I can’t say I have. What is it?’ Harry looked professionally interested, if slightly worried. Clover simply looked, which was, this difficult afternoon, an improvement.
‘Well, it’s three days of Mongolian traditional sports held in Ulaanbaatar in July: wrestling, archery, horse racing and so on. It’s a centuries-old event, and first properly organized by Genghis Khan, can you believe? It’s also a time of festival and fireworks, music and food and dancing. Absolutely not to be missed! You younger ones, you really should get out more.’
Harry smiled nervously, looking across to Clover for some kind of sign that Lottie wasn’t crazy.
‘Right, OK.’ Clover sighed, closed her notebook and stood up, ready to leave. ‘So far with your plans, Mum, that’s the Genghis Khan games, the thing where the whole town rolls about in squashed tomatoes in Spain, some Junk-what’sit in the Bahamas—’
‘Junkanoo,’ Lottie corrected her, then turned to Harry. ‘That’s another amazing festival, starting on Boxing Day. Fabulous costumes, apparently. And,’ she reminded Clover, ‘don’t forget the Pushkar camel fair in India.’
‘Oh how could I have forgotten that one?’ Clover groaned. ‘I’m sure you’ll come home with some lovely new pets.’
‘It all sounds … er … brilliant. Um … meanwhile …’ Harry brought them back to the matter in hand. ‘Meanwhile there’s the question of what I’m here for. Of, er, a potential value for this house. Obviously I need to write up a proper proposal for the sale, if you’re sure you’d like me to go ahead, but …’ He now looked at Lottie uncertainly, clearly, she could tell, wondering if he’d been entirely wasting his time on a mad, idle dreamer who could at any whimsical moment completely change her mind and instead turn the house into a refuge for abandoned cats. He was probably already mentally concocting an invoice for an afternoon frittered away.
‘But I can, I think, assure you that you’re going to be looking at a figure well into the top end of the close to three million mark.’ He twinkled again, anticipating a joyous reaction.
‘Really?’ Lottie said, as matter-of-factly as she could. She actually felt almost breathless at the amount but refused to let Harry have the satisfaction of seeing her behave like one of the hopefuls on The Antiques Roadshow who has just been told that the battered tin toy they’ve brought for a valuation will auction for more than enough to put little Hermione through boarding-school.
‘Well, that’s quite good,’ she conceded, starting to gather up the used teacups. ‘We should be able to take in the Sossusvlei National Park as well, then.’
Clover and Harry looked blank. ‘It’s in Namibia,’ Lottie explained. ‘A beautiful, desolate place with absolutely nothing in it. Nothing but sand and colour and camelthorn trees. Magnificent!’
Somewhere easier to manage, Lottie thought, as she slammed the crockery into the rusty dishwasher, she’d give him bloody easier to sodding manage.
Clover had found the grace, at last, to attempt to be pleasant. It had, given the way she’d behaved, been really kind of Harry to offer her a lift back to London and really kind to insist on going out of his way, via Richmond, so she would get home in good time to collect the girls from Mary-Jane.
Slowing down to negotiate some roadworks on the A3, Harry asked tentatively, ‘Tell me if I’m out of order but do I get the impression you’re not terribly keen on the house being sold?’
She smiled, accepting that given her open hostility, it was a pretty brave question.
‘Sorry – was it that obvious? I’ve been a total bitch all afternoon, haven’t I? Now I’m out of the house I feel really bad about that.’
Harry’s hands gestured on the steering wheel. ‘Well, obviously your family politics are nothing to do with me, but to be honest, I don’t think it’s me you need to apologize to. Still, I expect you had your reasons,’ he ventured, shooting her a small and rather sexy grin.
‘Clever answer,’ she conceded, smiling back. ‘You must know that makes a person want to talk about it!’
‘Really?’ He laughed. ‘I had no idea, honestly! And please don’t tell me if you’d rather not.’
‘Now you’re making it worse! OK – all I’ll say is that my parents have a bit of a track record in spur-of-the-moment decisions on fairly major issues.’ She hesitated. After all, Digby, James and Humphreys knew perfectly well who their client – potential client – was. She also knew that although estate agents claimed they were going to treat you with the utmost discretion, there could always be someone bored with typing up house details in the back office who might want to make a bid for a bit of holiday money from calling up the showbiz gossip pages of the tabloids. She could just see a small derisory piece about her dad, something smirky along the – untrue – lines of him having to sell up to make ends meet. They revelled in that sort of story, anything that smacked of formerly rolling-rich rock stars biting the humble dust of insolvency. It would be graced by an ancient onstage photo of Mac from his bearded and beaded days, probably with Lottie alongside, all pre-Raphaelite hair and skinny in a gold kaftan.
‘So …’ Harry ventured as he approached the Kingston roundabout. ‘Does that mean that you think they haven’t really thought things through? Are they not really serious about selling?’
‘No, no – they’re serious all right. They’re always serious – till the next project.’ Until it all goes horribly wrong, she thought. She wasn’t going to say that – her conscience told her that, tabloids or not, it came under ‘disloyal’.