‘No, lovie. Of course not. But it would be better than nothing. Especially,’ Jan let out a little sob, ‘if I’m to lose my job!’
‘Shouldn’t have been smoking in the playground,’ remarked Sinead.
The others glared at her. They’d forgotten about Lorraine, who had got hold of the magazine and was flicking through with interest.
‘Aren’t they lovely and bright? The pictures? Lovely Jerry in his costume. I’ve never seen him in his costume. I’ll ask him to wear it tonight, in the pub.’ She flicked to the picture of Sinead. ‘Have you had an operation, Shania?’
Elaine snatched the magazine from her hand.
‘Has the Colonel seen this? And Jerry?’
‘Not yet.’
‘They must! We will convene a meeting without delay.’
***
A few days later, a minibus bearing the motto ‘Gently Rising Community Transport’ on its side chugged down the M4 in the rain. Ted was at the wheel, with Elaine behind him, calling out helpful instructions about deploying his windscreen wipers and avoiding puddles. Other seats were taken by Sinead, Jan, Jerry Brewer, Colonel Markham, Valerie Tipperton and Lorraine Watford. Lorraine hadn’t been invited along; however, with her usual unerring ability for being where she wasn’t wanted, she had stumbled across them all boarding the minibus early that grey morning. She’d even made them wait while she popped back home for a banner.
‘The idea is to make a protest, Lorraine, lovie,’ explained Jan from her position on the floor as they pulled away from the village green. She’d called in sick to school and was keeping out of sight until they were out of the village. ‘We’re going to picket the offices of the magazine until that woman apologises.’
Lorraine looked dubious. ‘Like the miners? I didn’t like the miners. They were nasty to Mrs Thatcher.’
‘No, not like the miners.’
‘It’s a peaceful demonstration,’ explained Colonel Markham. ‘A legitimate means of making our feelings on this disgusting article known.’
‘Yes,’ continued Jan. ‘So, your banner isn’t quite in tune with the mood, dearie.’
Lorraine had it unfurled across her lap. Beside a large-scale print of Cliff Richard’s face, the words ‘I love Cliff’ had been crossed out and replaced with ‘Lovely BRIGHT Pictures.’
‘Do you see what I mean, lovie?’ pressed Jan. ‘We don’t think the pictures are lovely at all. We think she’s been rather naughty, tinkering with them like that.’
‘Yes,’ sneered Sinead. ‘Meant to be a protest. Not a vote of thanks.’
The light seemed to break through the clouds of Lorraine’s mind. She reached into her bag, drew out a marker pen and above the words ‘Lovely BRIGHT Pictures’ added ‘Down With’.
Jan patted her hand. ‘Much better, lovie.’
At one o’clock, after a couple of hours waiting for the RAC to fix their overheated engine on the hard shoulder of the M4, they pulled up in a dingy side street in Acton, tense and argumentative. Jerry was bemoaning their lack of satnav, Elaine was pointing out we hadn’t needed satnav to win the war and Colonel Markham was trying to make sense of a dog-eared A to Z. Sinead was painting her nails and Valerie was trying to dissuade Lorraine from making menacing gestures at passers-by through the window.
At two o’clock they’d made it as far as Knightsbridge and parked up, to give Ted a break and refuel on Elaine’s copious supplies of sandwiches, scotch eggs and cake. Jerry Brewer and Colonel Markham were washing it all down with a couple of beers at the back of the bus.
Three thirty saw them involved in a road-rage incident near Russell Square. Ted had accidentally cut up a man in a white van who had retaliated by overtaking and pulling up in front of them. Getting out of the van with a menacing look, he had demanded they get off the bus. A nervous Ted, Colonel Markham and Jerry Brewer had disembarked, followed by Lorraine, who broke the sticks of her Cliff Richard banner over the stranger’s head and hopped back on the bus. The men scrambled back on behind her, Ted firing up the ignition and slamming his foot on the accelerator. The bus careered down the nearest street which turned out to be one-way. As a result of their attempts to extricate themselves, they found they were heading west rather than east.
At three forty-five they pulled over for Ted to recover from a delayed panic attack brought on by the road-rage incident. Jerry and Colonel Markham stepped out for a breath of fresh air and were eventually tracked down in a nearby pub, in suspiciously high spirits.
At four fifteen, Valerie noticed that Lorraine was no longer on the bus.
At four forty-five Lorraine was discovered holding a one-woman protest with her I Love Cliff (Down With Lovely BRIGHT Pictures) banner in the pouring rain outside an art gallery.
At five o’clock Jerry Brewer pointed out that they would have to start heading back if he was to have any chance of opening up that evening.
***
It was a sad and jaded bunch which unpacked themselves stiffly from the minibus onto the village green that night: even the Colonel and Jerry’s high spirits had faded. Everyone was annoyed with everyone else, and particularly annoyed with Lorraine. They were about to disperse with a few terse words of farewell when Elaine stopped them.
‘Friends! Comrades! Don’t let’s let this one small molehill of an obstacle become an Everest! Yes, we have failed to make our peaceful protest outside the offices of that pernicious magazine today. But we will have other opportunities of making our feelings plain. I vow to you all, here on our hallowed green, that I shall find a way to punish that shameless London hack! We bucolic battlers shall overcome the urban usurper!’ She knew usurper didn’t quite work but it slipped off the tongue so well she hoped no one would notice.
Ted beamed and nodded, full of renewed hope, while the others mumbled non-committal something-or-others and scuttled off home through the drizzle.
Chapter 26
The champagne cork popped, startling a nearby moorhen, and Noblet poured the foaming liquid into glasses. He handed one to Alice, leaned back awkwardly on one elbow, and beamed at her.
‘Well, this is very pleasant. I can see why you would count it an element in a perfect day.’
They clinked glasses and she turned to unpack the rest of the picnic on to the blanket.
The final assignment for the two remaining candidates had been to organise what they would consider to be a perfect day; all expenses to be defrayed by the de Beebles. Piers – dropping round to apologise, with a long-suffering Cecily – had suggested she should claim that her perfect day consisted of a trip to New York with unlimited spending money. She had ignored this mercenary counsel and decided to play it straight. Her perfect day probably wouldn’t be the most exciting, but it would be representative of her. And after all, she didn’t want to marry Noblet, so she didn’t need to impress him. She didn’t want to marry Noblet… so why was she still taking part in the interview process? The answer, if she delved into her deepest soul, began with an H, ended with a Y and intruded upon her every waking hour.
She hadn’t heard from Henry since the day he’d stumbled across a pants-clad Piers at her cottage. Not a word. What could she expect? He’d kissed her under the influence of too much champagne, perhaps; had done the gentlemanly thing and brought her equipment back, but the sight of another man in her house had been enough to extinguish whatever faint interest she had inspired in him. Time and again her fingers hovered above his number in her phone contacts but at the last moment, embarrassment and self-doubt overcame the urge to explain.
When the call had come through, asking her to plan her perfect day and to coordinate arrangements with Henry’s PA, she had accepted on instinct. It gave her a legitimate link to Henry, however tenuous. And the knowledge that her competition was Mia took the pressure off. It would be a competition in name only.
Alice’s final interview kicked off at eleven o’clock with a walk along the river. She had spent the previous day making picnic food, and the hamper now groaned a
t the seams with pies, salad, cold meats, home-made chutney, a ripe Brie and various other delicacies. Far too much for two people, in fact. Which was lucky, because as she approached the meeting point that morning, she discerned not one but two men waiting for her.
‘Morning!’ Noblet approached briskly, one hand extended as if he were greeting his opponent in a duel. ‘Good morning, good morning! Beautiful day.’
She shook his hand and agreed.
‘Er – you know my brother, Henry?’ He waved a hand in Henry’s direction.
Alice felt her treacherous cheeks turning pink as he stepped forward. The way he couldn’t quite meet her eye as they shook hands was discouraging.
‘Brought him along as an independent adjudicator,’ Noblet was continuing. ‘Second pair of eyes on the day, you know.’
‘Despite the fact,’ Henry remarked, finally making eye contact, with a look that suggested they were sharing a private joke, ‘I won’t be there on subsequent days such as the day after the wedding and every single day after that.’
Noblet pshawed and waved this away. Alice was torn between a thrill of pleasure at the warmth of that look – and despair, as he casually wrote himself out of her theoretical future.
Alice’s hamper came with four sets of crockery and cutlery, so once they had arrived at the picnic spot, they were all able to eat and drink without difficulty. Noblet devoured the food with gusto.
‘This pie,’ he said, holding up a slice of the Wiltshire ham and egg variety, ‘is the most superlative pie I have ever had the good fortune to eat. Hands down.’ He regarded the slice in awe before wolfing it down as if he might incur a time penalty if he ate any slower.
The eating continued, punctuated with similar exclamations from Noblet and awkward thanks from Alice. Henry, taking his role as independent adjudicator seriously, remained silent, sitting a little apart from them on the blanket. When most of the picnic was in Noblet’s stomach, it seemed to strike him that he should be finding out more about his prospective wife than how much of her cooking he could eat in one sitting.
‘So, er, Alice,’ he said, shaking out his napkin and brushing some stray crumbs off his trousers. ‘This is your idea of a perfect day?’
She confirmed that it was.
‘Good-o. Nothing like a picnic on a summer’s day.’ He lapsed into silence. The day was humid and the call of the woodpigeons as soothing as a lullaby. His eyelids drooped.
Henry coughed.
‘Yes!’ yelled Noblet. ‘Yes, as I was saying, nothing like a picnic.’
He helped them all to more champagne.
‘Now. Tell us about yourself.’
She looked horrified.
‘What – erm, what would you like to know?’
‘Oh, anything, anything,’ replied Noblet. ‘What you like to read, favourite subject at school, brothers and sisters, that kind of thing.’
Behind him, Henry rolled his eyes.
‘I’ve got a sister,’ Alice blurted, latching on to his last question. ‘She’s a doctor. She’s got a new boyfriend, Piers.’ Summoning up all her courage she looked over at Henry. ‘I think you might have seen him, Henry, at my house. He got drunk at the pub, had an argument with my sister and she chucked him out. So he turned up at mine, threw up all over himself and stripped down to his underpants.’
Henry sat up a little straighter. ‘That must have been… awkward for you.’
‘I was bloody livid, if you must know! Anyone might have thought… Anyway. He’s very contrite and Tom got him back by throwing up in one of his deck shoes while Piers was passed out at my kitchen table.’
‘Who’s Tom?’ Henry asked, with an expression that suggested he was losing track of the hordes of vomiting men in Alice’s life.
It must have been the champagne that made her reply, ‘Just a little ginger guy I picked up a few years back.’ They both looked blankly at her. ‘He’s a cat! Tom’s my cat,’ she said, joining in their relieved laughter.
The afternoon passed pleasantly and without incident: a long walk through meadows, woods and down country lanes culminated with afternoon tea at a café in a nearby village. Noblet and she spoke about issues of mutual interest, such as the quality of the jam in the cream tea, until it was time for them to be deposited back at the Hall for the evening’s activities.
Having been shown by Sally to a room where she could shower and change out of her muddy things and into the turquoise strapless dress Mia had given her the night of the makeover, she paused in front of the mirror. For a moment she allowed herself to fantasise that she would be going downstairs to meet Henry, and that they would be spending this evening not as part of a bizarre interview process, but as two people who found each other attractive and enjoyed each other’s company. It was a dream which evaporated as she descended the grand staircase to find Noblet’s jovial face upturned to meet her.
‘Jolly good!’ he greeted her. ‘Excellent, excellent, time for the next bit of tomfoolery!’
Henry, appearing through one of the doors leading off the hall, stopped dead.
‘You look lovely,’ he said, and then a momentary expression of annoyance passed across his face, as if he had spoken without thinking.
He looked lovely too, she thought, his light summer shirt revealing a tantalising glimpse of tanned skin at his throat. She turned back to Noblet. He looked – well – he looked dishevelled, and as if he may have had one or two fortifying drinks.
‘So then! What do you have up your sleeve now, may one ask? Not that you have any sleeves, of course.’ He paused, and she could almost see him burrowing around in his memory banks for a suitable compliment. ‘Very becoming gown, that.’
She smiled. ‘Thank you. I don’t think anyone’s told me my dress was “becoming” before. I feel like I should curtsey and say “lawks”.’
Noblet looked confused as Henry laughed and led the way into the drawing room.
Once inside, Noblet turned to her, eyebrows raised in surprise.
‘This is your evening activity?’
She nodded. ‘Well, the first one, anyway.’
On a small table between two high-backed chairs near the grand fireplace, was a chessboard.
‘Chess, eh? Keen player, are you?’
‘I love it,’ she said. ‘My father taught me to play when I was little and I suppose I was a bit of a geek at school, I was in the chess club.’ Perhaps Cecily had been right, the way to a man’s heart was not through his chessboard.
‘Very good, very good,’ nodded Noblet, seating himself in one of the chairs. ‘I may be a bit rusty but I know the rudiments. I hope I’ll be able to give you a game of sorts.’
Fifteen minutes later he sat back, forlorn. Picking up his glass he wandered over to the decanters and splashed a triple measure of brandy into it.
‘I knew I was out of practice, but that was shocking. I was putty in your hands. Take my cap off to you.’
Alice fiddled with a rook. She hadn’t meant to beat him so quickly; the plan had been to drag it out, make him think he had a chance. But once she got a chess piece in her hand, she couldn’t stop herself. Noblet was muttering something about moving on to the next bit of nonsense when there was the sound of someone clearing his throat.
‘May I?’ Henry took the chair recently vacated by his brother. Alice caught the challenge in his eyes and her pulse quickened.
‘Oh yes!’ said Noblet, his brow clearing. ‘I forgot! Henry can give you a game. What was it you were, Henry – school chess captain or something?’
‘Under twenty-one county champion,’ said Henry, and the match was on.
Sally, looking in half an hour later with a plate of nibbles, was surprised to see the would-be husband snoring in an armchair while his brother played chess with the interviewee. Neither of the players so much as glanced in her direction while she was setting down the platter and clearing away glasses. All Alice’s faculties were trained on the board before her. The man opposite was no longer Henry, he was an
opponent, and a damn good one at that. She hadn’t played against someone this good for years and it felt great.
Noblet snorted and woke himself up. Looking around blearily, he said, ‘Still at it, you chaps?’
Alice moved her queen. ‘Just finishing.’ Looking Henry in the eyes, she smiled and said, ‘Checkmate.’
He leaned over and shook her hand. His palm felt cool and smooth.
‘Well done. I’ll be expecting a rematch one day.’
‘You’re on.’
Noblet stretched and stood up. ‘So, what’s next?’
A rusting white moped buzzed up the long driveway and stopped in front of the Hall. Sally handed over some cash, took the white plastic bags and hurried off into the kitchen. Once ensconced in comfy chairs with steaming plates of curry, rice, dahl and naan on their laps, Alice explained.
‘This is the best Indian takeaway in the world, ever. The chef is a genius, cooks everything from scratch, none of that soaking meat in brine rubbish. They don’t normally deliver further than the outskirts of Pantling but I’ve known him for years and he makes an exception.’
Noblet was loading his plate but Henry raised his eyebrows towards the television. Their chairs were grouped around it.
‘Oh yes,’ Alice added. ‘My perfect evening is Indian takeaway from The Mango Tree in front of my favourite film, Leon.’
Noblet looked blank.
‘It’s about a serial killer and a little girl.’
Blankness turned into doubt.
‘Oh, I’m not explaining it well, let’s just put it on.’
They all sat back with their plates of food, the lights were dimmed and the film began.
Chapter 27
‘No, no, no, no, no.’ Sinead looked again. ‘No. Can’t be. No!’
She sat on the edge of the bath and glared unseeingly at the geometrically-aligned set of towels hanging over the heated towel rail. What was going on with her life? She was Sinead: her life happened the way she planned it. This was all wrong. This weekend she should be taking part in the final interviews to become Lady de Beeble. Instead of which, that pathetic cow Alice Brand was up at the Hall in her place while she, Sinead Desiree Dumper, had been booted out at the second-round stage. Not only that, but if this stupid bit of plastic was correct (and the fact that it was the fifth stupid bit of plastic she’d tried meant it probably was), she was pregnant. Up the duff. With Derek’s child.
Lord Seeks Wife: A hilariously funny romantic comedy Page 23