by Wendy Holden
The theme seemed quite random to Lulu, who was not to know that Ruaridh McBang had acquired the artefacts from a Clearances-themed hotel which, unsurprisingly given its location, had failed and closed within days of opening. This had been a mere few weeks ago, just before his death.
Lulu and Torquil were now in the lounge, whose artfully battered armchairs and aged volumes were, Lulu felt, an inspired contrast with the raw concrete walls on which paintings of dogs dressed up as people were displayed to witty effect. She also liked the bamboo bar and the medieval thrones. South’n Fried would too, she knew. A good throne was something all rappers appreciated. She stroked the wood, smiling.
Torquil immediately spotted an opportunity. ‘Did I mention that the thrones aren’t included in the sale?’ he said lightly.
Lulu, who had been walking off in her jewelled mules, now screeched to a halt and put her hands on her metalled hips. Her sunglasses swung suspiciously round, accompanied by a great swathe of hair.
‘Not included in price?’ All her dealmaking instincts now came to the fore. ‘Roddy told me price was all in, hmm?’
‘But it is his assistant Fiona who is handling the sale,’ Torquil countered smoothly.
Lulu ignored this. ‘One price for all estate,’ she insisted steadily. ‘Include postbox, ruins. Thrones.’
Torquil wondered just how far he could push this. He could tell this multinational bimbo was interested; also that she was hugely rich. It went without saying that she would be attracted to him; women always were. Foreign ones especially. They could never resist his polished British charm.
He placed a long finger on his handsome jawline. It was beaded with sweat – the heating had gone into overdrive, but amazingly this woman actually seemed to like that too. The new system was as over-hot as the original castle had been over-cold, but with any luck, Torquil thought, the expense and discomfort of it would soon be someone else’s responsibility.
In what evening light managed to make it through the smoked-glass windows, his signet ring shone with the crest of the McBangs: a pair of crossed axes (Banh meaning ‘battle axe’ in Old Norse).
‘Ah,’ Torquil purred, flashing his most winning smile. ‘I’m so glad you mentioned the ruins. The postbox is certainly included. But the ruins?’ Regretfully he shook his full head of dark shining hair. ‘I’m afraid not.’
Lulu’s sunglasses flashed indignantly. ‘Not ruins? Why not?’
‘A relic as venerable as the Scary Tower,’ the McBang of McBang went on, ‘is for sale separately. Not as part of,’ he hesitated before enunciating with a notable frisson of disgust, ‘a job lot.’
Lulu eyed him balefully through her enormous black lenses. Okay, so he wanted to barter. That suited her. Business had always been done that way in her family, whether it was bargaining for almonds on the medieval rivas of Venice or buying an out-there former leisure establishment in twenty-first-century Scotland. She could barter with the best of them.
‘Scary Tower?’ she demanded.
‘Don’t worry, it’s not haunted.’ That would have been extra, Torquil thought to himself.
‘Then why called Scary Tower, hmm?’
Torquil, who could be rather patronising, now put a blue-velvet-covered arm around Lulu. ‘It’s named after my great-great-great-grandmother, Scary Mary McBang. She’s the battleaxe on our coat of arms. She was quite insane and locked in the tower for life. Our very own Monster of Glamis. Every grand family needs one.’
Lulu wriggled out of his clutches and stamped hard on his toes with her wedge heels.
‘Ow!’ yelped McBang.
‘Is Scary Tower in sale or no sale!’ stormed Lulu.
Torquil gave her his most dazzling smile. ‘You’re beautiful when you’re angry.’
The wedge-heeled foot stamped again. ‘I beautiful all the time! Tower part of sale, yes?!’
Beneath his patent pump, embroidered with the McBang axes, Torquil’s foot was throbbing. ‘Very well. If you insist.’
‘I insist!’
They were standing in the hall of Bangers, an expanse of brown carpet into which was woven, at regular intervals, a bright orange letter B. This stood not for the hotel name, as might be supposed, but Butlins. Ruaridh had found it in a skip near Skegness.
A number of glass-topped cases stood about. Torquil’s father had bought them for a song from a venerable provincial museum that was being dismantled prior to closing. They held the few McBang relics that Ruaridh hadn’t sold off: some painted miniatures of unimpressed-looking people, some mould-spotted pieces of correspondence, a couple of musket balls and flint axe heads. Lulu stared at them, thinking that even if these were in the sale she didn’t want them.
A case in the corner now caught her attention. Lulu saw an eyelet. Some satin. A ribbon. She tottered towards it, intrigued. The very last of the sunset was now slanting through the smoked-glass windows. It was falling upon the most fabulous piece of corsetry this side of the Jean-Paul Gaultier catwalk. Madonna would give her eye teeth for it. Lulu would too.
‘Is amazeballs!’ she exclaimed, running the rest of the way to the case and gazing in wonder. The corset was beautifully made and would, Lulu calculated, be a perfect fit. If she let the laces out to their full extent, that was.
She shuddered as, now, Torquil McBang came up behind her and started caressing the chains on her shoulder. ‘Like that, do you, you naughty girl?’ the laird murmured approvingly. ‘Ow!’ he added, as Lulu applied her wedge heels forcibly to his foot again.
She glared at him and nodded at the case. ‘What is that?’
‘A particularly fine set of vintage corsetry, reputedly belonging to Flora MacDonald,’ answered McBang, his face still distorted with pain.
‘Flora MacDoughnut!’ Lulu exclaimed. That settled it. She had already encountered the famous Scottish heroine once. The fact that Flora MacDonald’s underwear was in residence here meant it was Fate.
‘My husband related to Flora MacDoughnut, hmm?’ she told McBang, proudly.
A condescending smile rippled Torquil’s smooth features. ‘My dear, who isn’t? The Blessed Flora’s relations are probably the biggest demographic group in Scotland.’
Lulu was indignant. ‘But my husband really related, hmm? Professor McPorridge from University of the Highlands and Islands—’
‘Oh God, not him again.’ Her host groaned. ‘If I had a pound for every person…’ Seeing Lulu glaring at him, he seemed suddenly to realise that he was midway through a sales negotiation which might now not happen.
Instead, he grinned oleaginously and waved at the case again. ‘Flora left them here at the castle after an unexpected night of passion with the 11th Chief of the McBangs. It was shortly after this that she went to rescue Bonnie Prince Charlie, on the run from Butcher Cumberland’s avenging Redcoats.’
Lulu nodded absently. Her mind had already slipped from the corset’s historical dimension. She was now considering the transformational physical dimension that those brutal-looking whalebones would give her curves. It was always the underwear that made an outfit come alive.
The McBang of McBang seemed to read her mind. ‘She was a fine figure of a woman, Flora, by all accounts,’ he offered. ‘Come to think of it, she was probably exactly your size.’
Got her! Torquil thought, seeing an expression of desperate longing flash across Lulu’s sunglasses. The woman was clearly gagging to try the corset on, but he’d make her wait until the contract was signed. In the meantime, there were plenty of diversions.
‘Perhaps you’d like to relax in the Sheep Dip?’ Torquil suggested.
‘Sheep dip?’ echoed the outraged Lulu. ‘No, I am not wanting to, actually.’
The McBang of McBang smiled. ‘A nod to the estate’s past, if you’ll forgive me. The Sheep Dip is the name of our high-end luxury hotel spa. Turn left by the Las Vegas pinball machines and go downstairs.’
Lulu brightened. This was the first she had heard of the spa which was a definite plus, espec
ially this far north. It wasn’t as if you could just pop across the road to the Berkeley, where she usually went for her pampering.
‘In the meantime,’ Torquil went on smoothly, ‘I’ll go and instruct the staff to prepare supper. I’ll see you in the dining room an hour from now.’
The staff was himself, and supper the local bargain supermarket’s finest. But Lulu wasn’t to know that. Nor was that strange silent assistant of hers who followed her mistress about with a quizzical expression. The Gromit to Lulu’s Wallace, Torquil thought derisively.
Lulu’s sunglasses lit up. She had started to feel rather peckish, it was true. ‘Is Scottish seafood, hmm?’ She loved Scottish cuisine. Salmon, prawns, langoustines, oysters, that delicious fish soup called Cullen skink. The meat was excellent too, especially those wonderful Aberdeen Angus steaks. Beneath the rattling chains of the Jacob Marley, Lulu’s stomach started to rumble.
‘Seafood and champagne, yes,’ confirmed Torquil. The prawns were Madagascan and the smoked salmon Norwegian; the champagne, meanwhile, was prosecco which he’d funnelled back into Dom Perignon bottles. The oldest trick in the book, but one that never failed to work.
While Torquil went happily off to decant the dinner from its packaging and stick it in the microwave, Lulu and Vlad headed for the Sheep Dip.
Chapter Eighteen
Laura, meanwhile, was still looking for the castle kitchen she had been promised supper in. She seemed to have been roaming round and round Glenravish for hours. She been past the tweedy Victorian hunters at least four times, and was beginning to lose all hope.
The lights were still off. They had come on again for about a second, just at the point Laura was getting used to the dark. Now all was pitch black once more.
Now, in some new twist, she found herself in the hall where she had first entered. The wall-mounted weaponry glinted menacingly in the moonlight sliding, sword-like, through the arrow-slit windows. The sight absolutely terrified Laura. Trying to stiffen her sinews made no difference; they were already taut with fear. She stood in the darkness, her heart thumping in her ears.
There now came a loud, Frankenstein-like buzz, followed by a surge of electricity. The lighting, on what must be full power, registered painfully on Laura’s eyeballs. After so much darkness it was like looking straight into the sun and when, finally, her vision returned to normal it fell on something entirely unexpected.
Standing against the empty fireplace, below a particularly fearsome arrangement of axes, was a slim, fine-featured woman in her early sixties. Her clothes were striking, to say the least. She wore a blue-and-white striped pie-crust-collar blouse, red needlecord knickerbockers and shiny white plastic pixie boots. Her eyes were ringed with bright blue mascara, two nuclear explosions of blusher were firing on each cheek and she wore lashings of heart-attack white lipstick. Her look was completed by a single string of pearls and a Princess Diana hairdo, hot-tonged at each side into vast blonde wings.
She looked like something from a 1980s costume exhibition at the V & A. But who in the world was it? Laura had expected to meet Sandy McRavish.
‘Hwah hwah hwah,’ the woman brayed, exposing huge white teeth. Her laughter was like a thunderclap. ‘The electricity here’s a bugger,’ she went cheerfully on in tones that were pure Sloane Square. ‘It’s already killed two electricians who tried to fix it.’
Her speeches were delivered at a continuous and impressive volume and without pause for breath. Laura could only stand and stare.
‘Anyway – completely thrilled to see you, darling – Sandy McRavish – lady laird of the estate.’ Extended now at Laura was a right hand laden with enough glittering metalwork to fill a window display in Tiffany’s, circa 1982.
A great, crashing sensation now filled Laura’s head. It was the sound of things sliding into place. ‘You’re Sandy McRavish?’ she gasped. ‘I thought you were a man.’
‘No, I’m a woman,’ Sandy cheerfully countered. ‘A 100 per cent rooting-tooting, copper-bottomed female. Well, not literally copper-bottomed.’ She reached behind to smack her cherry needlecord rear. ‘But you know what I mean.’
Laura swallowed. This was a setback, no doubt about it. Goodbye to Baroness McRavish. She sighed slightly, thinking of the lovely red velvet and ermine robes. If she wanted to live in Scotland, she would have to find another way. Either that or return to Plan A: rescuing Society and the jobs of her staff by writing advertorials about Glenravish.
‘I suppose it was the name,’ she faltered. ‘Sandy McRavish.’
The great hairspray wings nodded. ‘Sandy – Alexandra. Back in the early eighties, all us girls in the King’s Road had boys’ names. We were gender neutral before gender neutral was invented – hwah hwah hwah.’
She paused to sigh fondly at the memory of the glory days of nearly forty years ago.
‘Good times, great music,’ she said, shaking her head but not her hair, which remained rigid. It was obvious to Laura that her hostess was back in the eighties Eden of London SW1. ‘The only hair gel was Woolworth’s “Country Born”, which looked like leftover napalm from the Vietnam War. And no self-respecting chap would go out of the house without three white stripes across his nose like Adam out of the Ants.’
Laura had now come to terms with the fact that sex was definitely off the menu, along with a title and life as lady of the manor. Nonetheless she liked Sandy. She was friendly and immediate and clearly thrilled to have a visitor, which was unquestionably endearing. Life at Glenravish Castle was lonely, Laura guessed.
‘Must pick up some booze,’ Sandy exclaimed as she led Laura out of the hall. She pushed open a door in the side of the passage and Laura found herself following the needlecord knickerbockers down some dimly lit stairs.
At the bottom, huge arched vaults stretched away into the distance. This place was clearly the business when it came to wine cellarage. A wood-framed thermometer on the wall proclaimed the temperature a perfect thirteen degrees.
Isolated though it was, life here obviously had its compensations. The first section contained oak barrels of undecanted port, sherry and madeira. Enough, as Sandy said, to fuel Wellington and his army during the Peninsula War. Laura wondered whether she thought that particular skirmish had been fought in Scotland. It was hard to tell; Sandy spoke in an endless stream in which fact, fiction and fantasy were gloriously and deafeningly combined.
Sandy led on from Wellington’s barrels into a decanting and tasting area, with an array of oenophile weaponry laid out across an ancient oak table. Laura eyed a sharp-looking cutlass. ‘To uncork champagne!’ Sandy declared, fishing out a bottle and thwacking its head off with the zeal of a Tower of London axeman. Laura decided not to mention Vlad’s patent method. There were too many guns on the wall of the hall and her hostess might decide to give the idea a whirl.
Glass in hand full of riotous bubbles, she was beginning to feel much better. Truly, champagne was a wonderful thing.
Sandy had now brought her to a series of illuminated cabinets displaying the castle’s impressive collection of bacchanalian silverware. Beaten trays featured grape-festooned scenes of cavorting putti, leering satyrs and the omnipresent Bacchus himself, looking well pleased with the mayhem he was provoking with the products of the vine. There were also silver goblets of great beauty, each reflecting the aesthetics of their age and most especially the joys of drinking.
‘Gorgeous,’ Laura muttered to herself.
‘Oh, those old things. Used to call them the “tin pots” when the old folks dragged them out for parties. Been in the family for centuries.’ In one giant eighties swig, Sandy knocked back the rest of her champagne.
Laura, reminded of Lulu, wondered how she was getting on at Bangers. Without a mobile signal it was impossible to know. Lulu could be terrifyingly efficient, especially combined with Vlad. She had probably bought the whole place and already returned to London.
Sandy’s pie-crust collar was disappearing further into the vaults. Laura followed to find,
with a sense of awe, that they had arrived at the cellar’s pride and joy – its collection of fine wines.
Chalked on the dusty crossbeams above were the names of France’s finest grape-producing areas – Bourgogne, Bordeaux, Loire – and some notable vintages – Château d’Yquem, with its ne’er cloying Sauternes sweetness, Domain du Vieux Telegraphe, the big daddy of the Rhône, and, the holy of holies, Petrus, with its curious pre-Renaissance script. The bottles, dark and mysterious, were piled satisfyingly in the respective recesses, gleaming dully in the light of a single dusty bulb.
Laura felt an atavistic surge of pride at these masterful products of the vine, the surest sign of France’s fundamental greatness despite its chequered and troubled history. De Gaulle might have cracked that joke about the ungovernability of a country with 246 types of cheeses, but what could be more glorious than a nation with so many hundreds – thousands, maybe – varieties of wine?
A memory from her childhood suddenly returned. She was in Chez Ginette, the bar downstairs from her grandmother Mimi’s Montmartre flat. It was a simple place made yet more simple by the fact its decor hadn’t changed for fifty years and maybe not even before that. And yet it was in here that Laura had learnt so many important lessons. Quite literally, as Chez Ginette had often been where she had done her homework, tucked away in the corner at one of the little wooden tables. But she had discovered other things here too, things that had stood her in good stead ever since.
She closed her eyes, calling up every detail. A zinc bar, with unsteady wooden high stools. A mirrored wall behind it, sectioned in squares, creating odd-angled snapshots of the interior opposite, which habitually confused and dazzled committed drinkers. Above, football pennants so faded one could no longer see what the teams were hung from a ceiling brown with nicotine and age.