‘Get her – it’s that woman, look! She’s covered in paint!’
A bare-chested boy made a lunge at Lorraine but she picked up her empty paint can and bounced it off his head before galloping, surprisingly quickly, off the green and up the hill towards the church. One or two people set off in pursuit, but in bare feet and still half-asleep they soon gave up. The last they saw of her was a large bottom wobbling up the lane, enormous polka dot knickers visible through the paint-splashed white linen trousers.
***
Later that Saturday morning, Alice was sitting on a stool behind the counter of the community shop daydreaming about Henry de Beeble when a strange man sauntered in. Removing his midnight-blue fedora, he dropped it on the counter and, resting his elbows beside the hat, leant towards Alice and asked, ‘Where are you hiding Geriatric Van Gogh? Red Hand Gran. Where is she?’
Alice shook her head, bewildered.
‘Geriatric what? I’m sorry, I’ve no—’
‘I know what these little close-knit communities are like, I grew up in one. So don’t try and pretend you’re not covering for her.’ Picking up an apple and biting into it with an amiable grin, the stranger waited for Alice’s response.
‘That’ll be forty pence, please,’ said Alice primly, holding out her hand, ‘and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The stranger looked her up and down while crunching away at his apple. Finishing it and dropping the core into Alice’s outstretched hand, he conceded, ‘Fair enough. Maybe you don’t know anything. Let’s start over. I’m Jay.’
Looking from Jay’s proffered palm to the core nestling in her own, Alice dropped the fruit in the bin and wiped her sticky hand as best she could on her jeans.
‘Alice. And what are you talking about?’
‘Unlikely as it may seem, not everyone in this village is in favour of our impromptu campsite on the village green. We awoke this morning to find our tents being defaced by an old dear in white slacks.’
‘Defaced?’
‘Large red crosses painted on the sides. Now, I’m not denying that some of them have benefited from a splash of colour, but mine was a pink and violet Cath Kidston and the red clashes horribly. I’m quite depressed if you must know. That tent was my pride and joy.’ He picked up a chocolate bar and unwrapped it. ‘It was a birthday present – first time out of its little flowery canvas bag.’
As he seemed genuinely dejected, Alice decided not to mention that the bill had now risen to £1.20 and instead murmured something consolatory.
‘So who is this menace, do you know?’ asked Jay, when he had finished the chocolate and handed the wrapper to Alice.
‘What did you say she looked like?’
‘Blonde hair, sticking up in all directions. Didn’t get much of a look at her face but she was a spectacles aficionado. Resembles a butternut squash from behind. White slacks. Polka dot underpants. Runs like a pregnant rhino.’
‘Oh.’ Even before the description there’d been little doubt in Alice’s mind about the identity of the culprit, but now it was indisputable.
‘I think I know who you mean. It sounds like Mrs Watford.’
‘Bingo. And where does Mistress Watford live?’
‘Why, what are you going to do?’
‘It’s alright, I’m not planning on going round there with my heavies and doing the old dear over. I want to have a chat, see if I can’t bring her round to our way of thinking. Employ a little diplomacy to improve relations between natives and pioneers.’
‘I wouldn’t bother. You won’t get anywhere. She’s a bit, well….’ As Alice tried to think of a tactful phrase her eye fell on a bag of mixed nuts. She jerked her head towards them.
‘How disheartening. I did so want to practice my diplomatic skills. Maybe I’ll try them on you instead, dear Alice.’
‘Me?’
‘That’s right. We can strike a blow for homelander/foreigner relations. Show them all that we won’t let boundaries get the better of us.’
‘Well…’
‘I’ll meet you in that quaint-looking pub on the green, eight o’clock. Bring your tam-o’-shanter.’
‘My what?’
But Jay had gone, warbling ‘Cheerio’ over his shoulder and swiping a packet of salt and vinegar crisps on the way out.
Chapter 7
Jerry Brewer and his belly stood at the back door of the Lion and Lamb, surveying the busy beer garden with an air of complacency. The air was scented with woodsmoke and blossom; a violet haze on the horizon supported a darkening sky of indigo blue and, in the lush countryside all around, tiny noises signalled the night creatures coming to life. Jerry wasn’t pondering the beauty of the evening, however, he was totting up the night’s takings, and his belly was proudly watching him work. The past couple of weeks had broken all records. He’d had to order in extra deliveries from the brewery and many of the kitchen staff were working double shifts to keep up with the orders of steak and ale pie and sausage and mash that flooded in regardless of the heat. Jerry nodded at one or two disconsolate regulars, squeezed onto tables that they would usually have spurned, their regular spots having been nabbed earlier in the afternoon by prospective interviewees and their hangers-on. A few of the villagers were hobnobbing with the outsiders: something which to Lorraine Watford’s mind would have been marginally more reprehensible than collaborating with the Nazis in 1940s Paris. There was that little mouse, Alice Brand, sitting with the tall, tasty piece Jerry had spotted around the place a few times and a camp-looking bloke in a silly hat. He wondered what they were talking about, but upon his belly growling at him, he resumed his mental book-keeping.
***
Jay complimented Mia on her surname and asked if it was made up.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘If I’d made it up, I would have gone for something interesting, like De’Ath.’
‘Wild’s pretty interesting,’ said Alice Brand, wistfully.
‘I grew up in a commune. We were all called Wild. It was about being free spirits instead of someone else’s property.’
‘You grew up in a commune?’ asked Jay and Alice in excited unison.
‘Much less outrageous than people imagine. No naked dancing in the fields, as far as I can remember. Apart from when I was about two, but I didn’t know any better then…’
Alice was fascinated. ‘But didn’t your parents mind that you didn’t have their surname?’
‘Well… That’s a complicated question. I have several parents – four mothers and three fathers. But all of them believed in what the commune stood for: they were happy for me to be called Wild.’
‘But your biological parents?’ insisted Jay. ‘They must have had more say than the others.’
‘I don’t know, I never knew which were my biological parents,’ said Mia with a smile. Raising her glass, she continued, ‘but Wild I am and wild I’ll stay, so here’s to free spirits and free love.’
‘Free spirits and free love,’ they chorused – Jay and Mia at the tops of their voices, Alice rather less so. They all clinked glasses and downed a good portion of their drinks.
‘So where was this commune?’ asked Jay.
‘In the countryside outside Nice.’
‘And how about you, Jay? You must have grown up somewhere rural?’ hazarded Alice. ‘I remember you said you knew a bit about living in a close-knit community.’
‘Do I.’ Jay pushed his fedora back on his head and crossed his forearms on the table, flicking cigarette ash into an empty glass. ‘The things I could tell you would make your blood curl.’
‘Curdle, don’t you mean?’
‘Curl,’ insisted Jay, prodding the air with his cigarette for emphasis. ‘Curdling’s nothing, curling’s far worse.’
‘What kind of things?’ coughed Alice as she breathed in a cloud of second-hand smoke.
‘Wife swapping. Affairs. Sadomasochism. Incest.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘But enough about me…’
The e
vening wore on and Mia and Jay were getting on like a house on fire. So much so that Alice felt like a spare part. Am I so boring? she wondered. The drinks kept coming, the conversation kept flowing, and the electricity kept buzzing between Mia and Jay. At one point Jay was at the bar, and Alice heard herself saying to Mia, somewhat in the tone of a jealous lover:
‘Well. You and Jay seem to be hitting it off.’
Mia looked at her, a sleek, dark eyebrow raised. ‘He’s funny. I like him. Don’t you?’
‘Oh,’ retaliated Alice with a hollow laugh. ‘I like him, yes. Not as much as you do, clearly.’ Somewhere deep inside her, a sober Alice was cringing.
Mia gave her a funny look and then turned her attention to Sinead Dumper, tottering across the road in a cotton tea dress and court shoes.
‘Look, here comes Princess Diana.’
‘Mmmm,’ agreed Alice, absently. ‘She’s wearing a lot of that kind of stuff at the moment. I think she’s trying to make a favourable impression on Lady Caroline.’
‘And I’m absolutely sure she is. Subtle as a brick but I love her for it.’ Standing up and waving, she called out, ‘Sinead! Over here!’
Sinead’s eyes darted around, picked out Mia, and a mixture of surprise, resentment and fury spread over her face. She hesitated for a moment and then headed towards their table.
‘I didn’t know you knew her,’ Alice said.
‘I don’t, yet.’
As Sinead approached, Mia beckoned her over and charmed a neighbouring group into lending them a chair.
‘Hi there! You don’t know me, my name’s Mia.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ snapped Sinead.
‘Sit down, won’t you? Jay’s gone to the bar but we’ll send him back – what are you drinking?’
‘Can’t stay, sorry,’ said Sinead in her best supercilious manner. ‘Meeting someone. Thought you wanted to say something to me.’
‘I did. How much I admire your style and hope to get to know you better,’ replied Mia with a winning smile.
‘Oh. Thanks.’ Sinead’s expression suggested she harboured strong suspicions that she was being made fun of, until Mia’s gaze, clear and frank, thawed her an infinitesimal amount. ‘I might be able to come back later. After I’ve met… my friend.’
Mia clapped her hands. ‘Oh, I do hope so. It would make my evening – please try.’
Sinead’s suspicions seemed to spring back to life – but again she was confronted by that open countenance and candid smile.
‘Well. No promises. Have a nice evening.’ She stomped off again, having spat an ungracious greeting at Alice without looking at her.
The two sat in silence for a moment until Alice spoke.
‘She despises me,’ Alice observed, into her wine glass.
‘What do you think of her?’
Alice hesitated and then dug down into her soul to tap previously unmined depths of negativity.
‘If you want the truth, I don’t like her very much.’ She experienced a little thrill of surprise as she heard those cutting words hanging in the air. Her sober self looked pointedly at the empty wine bottle and shook its head.
‘If you don’t like her, why care that she doesn’t like you? You wouldn’t want the good opinion of someone you loathed, surely? What would be the point?’
‘Loathed is a strong—’
‘The trick with people like that is to see them as entertainment,’ explained Mia, waving away her qualms. ‘Think how dull the world would be without them. Don’t take her personally, just sit back and marvel.’
Alice wondered with a jolt if that was how Mia saw her. Reassurance came instantly, however, with the thought that she wasn’t interesting enough to be classed as entertainment.
The evening progressed, time passing unnoticed by Alice, who was wrapped in a cosy blanket of alcohol-induced fuzziness. A general air of debauchery had settled over the beer garden of the Lion and Lamb. Staff were struggling to keep up with clearing away empties and some had given up, leaving towers of pint glasses curving into the sky, fairy lights twinkling off the dregs of lager inside. Tables were overflowing and people spilt onto rugs on the floor, eating illicit picnic food smuggled across from their tents.
‘So is this a serious ambition, Jay?’ asked Mia. ‘Marrying Lord de Beeble?’
‘God no, the man’s a boor, have you seen him? No, this is just a jolly old trip to the country to kill some time.’
‘Before what?’
‘Before… I don’t know, the next thing.’
‘Do you have a job?’ asked Alice, conscious that she was enunciating her words very carefully and yet they still sounded like they were pushing their way out through a mouthful of pebbles.
‘No need, unfortunately. Grandpapa made a fortune in light bulbs and left me and my brother a trust fund each. Not enough to live in luxury but too much to force me to get a job and stop floating around the country looking for a purpose to my life.’
‘Ooh, very deep,’ chuckled Alice before glancing at the sombre faces around her and realising she’d hit the wrong note.
‘What kind of purpose are you hoping to find?’ asked Mia.
‘A vocation? A passion? Love? Any of the above,’ he murmured, fiddling with a cigarette stub in the ashtray, then throwing it aside.
‘Love?’ repeated Alice. ‘So you’re hoping to meet someone here, even if it’s not Lord be Deeble?’
Something was wrong with that sentence, but she’d work out what it was later. Jay was forcing a smile, sensing he was dampening the mood.
‘Jesus H, whatever gives you that idea? I’m not ready to plight my troth, I prefer to play the field. I’m only twenty-seven, after all.’
‘Are you? I’m going to be thirty on Wednesday,’ said Alice, slurping the last drops of wine in her glass.
‘This Wednesday? Are you having a party?’ asked Mia.
‘No. I expect we’ll have a family dinner.’
‘Come on, it’s your thirtieth. Why don’t you have a party?’
Alice fiddled with the stem of her glass.
‘I don’t enjoy parties – you have to do all the organisation and then you don’t know if anyone will come, and if they do everyone looks at you and…’
Mia waved these objections away.
‘You don’t need to worry about anything. Jay and I will organise it, won’t we Jay?’
Jay had been staring at the ashtray but at the sound of his name raised his head.
‘Erm. Pardon?’
‘See, Alice? You won’t need to do a thing,’ said Mia, smiling her dazzling smile.
***
Ever since Henry had described the village hall meeting to her, Saskia had been aware of the germ of a genius idea beginning to sprout in the layers of fertile compost in her brain. Something about the way Henry had described the different characters at the meeting had fired her imagination. How about, mused her genius, an article on English eccentricity? Setting the great wilderness of the human mind against the tidy cultivation of country gardens, tea rooms, duck ponds and chocolate box cottages? She could combine it with a fashion piece while she was down there. It was all coming alive in her imagination now – models clad only in St. George’s cross knickers, whimsical headpieces made to look like roast dinners, models dressed as punks sitting atop red phone boxes, English designers, English photographers, English models – it would be the English Eccentric Issue. Something, some uncharacteristic modicum of tact, whispered to Saskia that it might be best not to mention to the villagers themselves that she was doing a piece on eccentricity, though. No, traditional village life, that would be her cover.
She phoned Henry to tell him the good news.
‘Babe, I’ve had the most outrageously brilliant idea. It’s The Vacuum.’
Henry was lounging in the garden at de Beeble Hall, scanning the papers, pleasantly drowsy from the heat of the sun.
‘What’s that, darling?’
‘I’m going to come and stay with you at th
e Hall and—’
‘I know, darling, we’re seeing you on Friday night. Looking forward to it.’
‘No, I’m going to drive over on Wednesday afternoon with Joel and Annabel. I’ve had an idea for an article. I’m excited about it, babe.’
‘Great. I’ll let Martyr know you’ll all be here for supper on Wednesday.’
‘Oh yeah – can you remind her about my gluten and dairy intolerances? She seems to have a problem remembering stuff like that. Last time she made lasagne – that’s like death to me, you know? Maybe she could do a salad - alfalfa sprouts, pea shoots?’
‘Mmm,’ said Henry, non-committally. ‘Drive carefully and I’ll see you on Wednesday, OK?’
‘Ciao-ciao, babe, ciao.’
***
After dinner on Wednesday night (lobster bisque, beef wellington with dauphinoise potatoes and tarte tatin, much to Saskia’s voluble chagrin), Henry, Noblet, Saskia, photographer Joel, and Annabel, Saskia’s assistant, spread out around the terrace, letting their food go down and sipping post-prandial tipples. Noblet was sitting apart from the rest and sulking behind a newspaper. Annabel sat on the steps, drinking vodka and messing around on her iPhone. Joel picked up his drink and set off to investigate the garden in the gathering dusk. Saskia stood behind Henry as he lounged in a chair, stroking his hair and watching Joel.
‘Did you miss me, babe?’
‘Mmm.’
‘I missed you. It was weird not having you there when I got home. I mean, I was out most nights – but when I wasn’t, you know. I’d had a shitty day on Monday and didn’t have anyone to tell about it. That was when I tried calling you and your phone was off, remember?’
‘Sorry about that, darling. Flat battery.’
‘Yeah, so I had some houmous and carrots and called Katie instead.’
‘I see. So you missed me for a bit, until you got hold of Katie.’
Saskia bent down and kissed the top of his head.
‘Silly. Katie can’t take your place. I missed lots of other things. I missed you massaging my feet. I missed your cooking…’
Before Henry could respond, they heard Joel calling up to the house from somewhere down near the lake.
Lord Seeks Wife: A hilariously funny romantic comedy Page 8