In Search of Love, Money & Revenge

by Hilary Bailey

‘Sit down,’ Annie said quickly. ‘I’ll get you a menu.’ She went to tell Vanessa what was happening. On the whole she thought it might be better to put up with the party, since Geoff looked belligerent. But if Vanessa wanted the party to leave Edward would have to eject them, even if it meant a row in the restaurant.

  However, when Annie went into the kitchen Vanessa had already seen the party. ‘Take their order,’ she said grimly. ‘We’ll take their money.’

  ‘Is the girl Cindy?’

  Vanessa nodded. ‘Champagne on the house,’ she said. ‘Act generous – let them worry I’m putting something in the food.’

  ‘You’re not going to …?’

  Vanessa shook her head. Annie handed round the menus and began to uncork the champagne. ‘It’s on the house,’ she said.

  ‘On the house?’ Sam Abbott said doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ Annie said. She poured the champagne, smiled, said, ‘I’ll come back for your order,’ and departed, confident that the party was, as Vanessa had predicted, a little worried by all this generosity.

  ‘Well, to success,’ she heard Geoff Doyle say as she left the table.

  ‘The voters of the Savernake Estate,’ said Abbott, lifting his glass.

  Vanessa had been listening. ‘This means they’ve won the vote,’ she declared. ‘I suppose Abbott’s fixed Geoff a nice little contract so he can keep Cindy in silk knickers.’ She took two plates of profiteroles to a couple in the corner of the restaurant, ignoring the table in the middle.

  ‘We’re going to be rich, rich, rich, aren’t we, Geoff?’ said Cindy in a clear, childish voice.

  Vanessa put down the plates, spoke pleasantly to the customer who had spoken to her, and returned to the kitchen with dignity. ‘Rich, rich, rich,’ she mimicked to Annie in an undertone.

  Annie, closing the dishwasher, said, ‘You’re all right, aren’t you, Vanessa?’

  ‘I’m not frightened of Geoff Doyle any more,’ Vanessa said. ‘I know what he is, and it’s no good. He’s a bully. I just realised when he came in. I don’t have to live with him any more. He doesn’t pay my bills. And if he misbehaves Edward can deal with him.’ She added, ‘And do you know what? I think he’s celebrating too soon. I can feel it in my bones. Anyway, Joanne, Alec and me are well rid of him and all his works.’

  Annie went back to the table to take their order.

  ‘About time,’ said Cindy. ‘I’m starving.’

  Annie, pad in hand, stood waiting.

  ‘Well, darling, what’s it to be?’ said Geoff.

  While Cindy thought, Geoff lifted his head from the menu and said, ‘The vote going our way is a nice bit of news for Mr Vane, too.’

  Annie had to pretend she knew of Julian’s involvement with Savernake Developments. She didn’t succeed. She said, ‘Then I hope he’ll be able to repay the money he owes me,’ and wished she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it if I was you. That’s a very expensive lady he’s got in tow,’ Geoff said. ‘Let’s see – I’ll take the duck pâté, so will the lady – Sam?’

  It was plain that Abbott was now feeling uncomfortable. He was not naturally spiteful, and, with Savernake Village going ahead he might want to renew his offer for the Arcadia. He said hastily, ‘I’ll have the same. And a bottle of wine.’

  Geoff suggested one, Cindy another, Annie let them flounder. ‘Shall I just take your order to the kitchen and come back?’ she asked. ‘Give you a moment to decide.’

  ‘Can’t tell the difference between port and whisky, Geoff Doyle,’ observed Vanessa. ‘It’s all put on. Mind you, whatever you bring, he’ll send it back.’

  They called them SIBs, send-it-backs, men who compulsively returned the wine saying it was the wrong year, or corked, or too cold, too warm or not cold or warm enough.

  Geoff sent the wine back, twice, and told Abbott a dubious joke while Annie waited for the order for their main course. Hearing this, Vanessa made a point of taking their order for dessert, something in her neutral gaze preventing the curvaceous Cindy from ordering any and Geoff Doyle from looking at her at all. Nevertheless, they laughed a lot and toasted each other merrily. Cindy mentioned Portugal and the Bahamas loudly and talked about a new car, a Mercedes. Geoff suggested brandies, but Abbott had had enough. When he’d finished eating he announced that he was going home. Geoff and Cindy seeming unprepared to sit alone at the Arcadia, the party broke up.

  ‘Is service included?’ Geoff asked Annie as he let fall from a leather pouch a long roll of credit cards, as if asking her to admire a card trick.

  ‘No,’ Annie told him, bending respectfully to hand him the bill.

  ‘Well, what’s it worth then?’ Geoff asked Cindy.

  Cindy pouted. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Entirely up to you, sir,’ Annie said.

  In the kitchen the phone rang. It was the vicar of Bridgetown confirming the marriage of Simon Fellows and Josephine Jones a year and a half before, and the christening of twins a few months later. Annie thanked the vicar and apologised to Geoff and Cindy for keeping them waiting when she returned. Looking at Geoff she wondered, as she took his credit card, whether the discovery of Sim’s heir would make a difference to the Savernake Village project. What if it led to the discovery of Sim? Sim would be able to cancel the project if he wanted to. Could it be, she wondered, that Vanessa’s instinct was right, that Geoff Doyle’s celebration was premature, that he – and Julian, for that matter – might be in for a disappointment?

  Her parting smile alarmed Cindy. ‘I’m sure they put something in the food,’ she whispered when they were outside.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said her father. ‘They wouldn’t risk it.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t like her face when we left,’ Cindy persisted.

  ‘Shut up, Cindy,’ Geoff said, leading the way to the car. He hadn’t had as much joy out of the evening as he’d hoped for, and though he didn’t believe he’d been poisoned, or even given an overdose of laxative at the Arcadia, he felt indigestion coming on.

  Vanessa and Annie shook hands briefly as they swept up. ‘He didn’t enjoy it as much as he thought he would,’ Vanessa said, grinning.

  A knock on the door after the last customer had left and they had carefully locked up was Ben’s.

  ‘What a day,’ groaned Vanessa wiping down the kitchen counter.

  ‘Still, Geoff looked sick when he left,’ Edward volunteered from the doorway. ‘D’you put something in his food, then?’

  Ben nursed a brandy. ‘I can’t see any problems for him or anyone else associated with the project,’ he said gloomily. ‘Joe Banks got that vote through pretty cleverly. First they stop the owners of flats and houses on the estate from voting at all. Then they hold the ballot in mid-August, when the biggest number of people – tenants entitled to vote – are on holiday, and, since anyone who doesn’t vote against the project is counted as having voted for it, there you are. About two hundred people own their houses or flats, so they aren’t eligible to vote. Another two hundred are away for one reason or another – holidays, doing seasonal work away from home – and people who never vote for anything didn’t vote this time either. And that’s how the Savernake Estate’s gone to the developers. Only about fifteen per cent of the people actually voted to accept the bid. All the rest voted against or didn’t vote at all. It’s incredible, but it happened. It’s the law.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ Annie said, horrified.

  ‘It is. There’ll be an appeal to the Department of the Environment, but as they’ve already overruled the council, taking no notice of the adverse report and insisting on the vote, how much chance does the appeal stand? The people on the estate are going to have to go.’

  ‘So if Sim’s dead his child Joseph is part-owner of Savernake Developments, which means he’s evicting his own aunt and grandmother,’ Annie said as she swept the floor.

  Ben nodded and ran on obsessively, ‘Les Dowell’s mad now. He’s going to start trouble, marches, representations. The whole
council’s furious. What are the residents on the other estates going to think about this? Did you know almost a third of Kenton’s on council property. There could be real trouble.’

  Vanessa, putting glasses back on to shelves, said, ‘What do you mean – riots?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Vanessa said. ‘Well, that’s the end of the Arcadia. No one would come here again.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t happened yet,’ said Annie.

  When Annie got in she found Tom asleep in an armchair. He woke and said, tiredly, ‘I’ve put them on a mattress in your room. They’re asleep at last. They’re very healthy, active children and they keep each other awake. I feel more sympathy now with that woman, Arlette, and her mother. I don’t know how they managed. No wonder she was frantic.’

  ‘The Savernake Estate’s voted to sell itself off,’ Annie reported. ‘But the vote was rigged.’

  ‘Nigel will be laughing,’ Tom said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Annie. ‘The vicar rang from Barbados. It looks very much as if the twins are Sim’s legal children. It’s been an odd evening.’ She described Geoff Doyle’s visit to the restaurant.

  ‘My God,’ said Tom. ‘But it’s been eventful here in its own way, I can tell you.’ He yawned. ‘We’ve got to try and find Arlette, but whatever happens, let me tell you, the twins’ll have to go to Durham House. They’re nice children, very happy, very energetic – but they need full-time care.’

  ‘What if they reject them at Durham House?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Tom told her. ‘Look – like it or not, Annie, I’m going to have to sleep with you tonight. You won’t want to be alone if they start waking up.’

  They went upstairs. ‘Don’t forget Pickering’s coming tomorrow,’ Annie warned.

  ‘I’ll deal with him,’ Tom said tiredly.

  ‘I don’t know about sleeping with you,’ she yawned as they went into the bedroom. Studying the twins, on their mattress in red and blue pyjamas, she changed her mind. They looked alert and active, even in their sleep. ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you’d see it like that,’ he told her. In bed he muttered, ‘About John Woodford – he was upset, well, in fact, he was crying. He only wanted – just once,’ he said, ‘I had no choice. Can you understand?’ He looked at her, but Annie was asleep.

  23

  A Country Fête

  Two huge red-and-white-striped tents stood on the lawn at Durham House, one for teas, the other for the flower and vegetable show. A smaller tent housed a fortune teller and there were booths for clay pigeon shooting, a coconut shy, a merry-go-round for small children, a candy floss stall, a hamburger stand, cake and homemade jam and bring-and-buy stalls. The sun shone. Jasmine, wearing a pink and white cotton dress and a straw hat, stood beside the organiser on a small platform with bunting tacked round the bottom. Having nervously thanked everyone, in a small voice, for coming, warned the mothers of small children not to let them go near the lake and hoped everyone would enjoy themselves and spend freely for such a good cause Jasmine declared the fête open. Nigel, at the front of the small crowd, cried, ‘Hear, Hear,’ and led the thin clapping.

  Jasmine and Nigel wandered off to buy a cake and a bottle of wine from old Mrs James – aged eighty-three and still running the annual fête cake stall – and walk about a bit before returning to hide in the house. Jasmine stopped to talk to Mrs James, then to Nigel, ‘Can you believe it? Mrs James has a vine in her greenhouse from which she regularly gets enough grapes for three bottles of wine a year.’

  ‘I say,’ Nigel said. ‘Why don’t we buy one?’

  ‘I keeps those for myself,’ said the old woman firmly. ‘You can choose between elderberry, gooseberry and plum.’

  There were shrieks from the children on the merry-go-round, the hum of voices from the tables outside the tea-tent, the crack of the rifle range, the thud of the coconut shy.

  Inside the big tent, where flowers and vegetables, cakes and preserves, labelled with the producers’ names, lay on trestles, local experts cast brooding eyes over roses, cauliflowers, sponges, quinces and jars of jam. The tent was hot, and smelt of vegetation.

  Jasmine fled from the humid marquee and bumped into Al Dominick and Claudia Fellows.

  ‘There used to be a band,’ remarked Claudia.

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ Jasmine replied.

  The local MP, Arthur Fairclough, came up. His wife, in a flowered hat, said to Jasmine, ‘So sad about Sir Bernard.’

  She responded, ‘Thank you for your kind letter.’

  Music of the thirties, the tango, ‘Tea for two’, ‘Summer time’, came from amplifiers mounted on the back of a truck. A small boy with a balloon bumped into her. Jasmine felt detached, as if she really wasn’t there. Mrs Fairclough said, ‘I do hope you’ll come to dinner with us before the House goes back into session. After that I never know where Arthur’s going to be, or when.’

  Sam Anstruther was at the rifle range, holding a rifle and demonstrating to Al how to compensate for the pull of the tricky barrel and still hit the target. ‘I can’t see what I’d do with a giant panda if I won it,’ Al was saying. ‘Have you got any use for a giant panda? Well,’ he said looking round, slightly depressed, ‘this is certainly typical.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why I’m here,’ Anstruther confided to his compatriot. ‘I’m here because I cannot in any way get hold of Mr and Mrs Browning, the parents of Jasmine Fellows. Now, they have—’

  ‘I know. I heard about the suitcase—’

  ‘What use can it be to them?’ Anstruther appealed. ‘Lodged at the rear of a damp closet, probably being eaten by mice? The papers in that case could make a contribution to scholarship, but they won’t let anyone see them. They’re hanging in there – can you explain that to me?’ He shook his head. ‘It does not make sense.’

  ‘Guess not,’ Al said. ‘Well, maybe it makes sense to them.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sam Anstruther said.

  ‘Do you know they’re definitely coming?’ Al asked.

  ‘Jasmine said they were but who knows?’ replied Sam Anstruther.

  Al Dominick shook his head. ‘Better you than me, friend,’ he said sympathetically.

  Inside the house Lady Mary sat on an old chair in her sun-filled room, hearing the music and the sound of voices. Her thin hands in her lap, she thought about Sir Bernard. When her sister brought her in a cup of tea, she said, ‘I didn’t like Bernard.’

  Lady Margaret put her finger to her lips and said ‘Shh, darling. Of course you didn’t. Many of us didn’t. But you mustn’t go about saying so.’

  ‘I’m not going about, Margaret,’ her sister said. ‘I’m here, with you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Margaret said. ‘I thought you’d gone potty for a moment. Would you like some cake?’

  ‘Is it old Mrs James’s?’

  ‘No. Mrs Bleasdale’s,’ replied Margaret.

  ‘In that case, I think I will,’ said Lady Mary. ‘Such a relief not to have to open that fête and buy one of those boring cakes.’

  Lady Margaret again laid her finger to her lips and said, ‘Shh, Mary. You mustn’t start saying these things. People might start calling you eccentric, or say it’s shock, but others will just call you mad. You don’t want that, do you? Of course, it’s time to begin to think what you do want.’

  ‘I shall have to come to terms with my memory of Bernard first,’ Lady Mary announced clearly.

  ‘Well, quite,’ her sister said.

  ‘And someone had better find out what’s happened to Sim,’ Mary said.

  ‘They’re doing all they can.’

  ‘You don’t need to talk to me in that soothing voice, Moggins, not any more,’ Lady Mary said. ‘I clearly see Sim has not been found, that Bernard died in ambiguous circumstances and Nigel is on the verge of a breakdown. None of this is very satisfactory, to put it mildly. In idle moments I wonder exactly how and where I went wron
g …’

  ‘Mary,’ interrupted her sister reproachfully. ‘You mustn’t—’

  ‘In idle moments, I said,’ Lady Mary continued staunchly. ‘But here we are with the family in a bad spin no one seems capable of correcting, and somehow it has to be stopped.’

  ‘But how?’ asked her sister.

  The amplifiers which had been playing ‘Temptation’ cut off and a voice began to announce the results of the fruit and vegetable show. At the side of Durham House Juliet Browning in a cotton dress, sandals and an old straw hat, came through the kitchen door and spoke to an irritable Mrs Bleasdale who was handing a bucket of water for the tea urn to the lady from the WI.

  ‘She’s not to be disturbed,’ the housekeeper said crossly.

  ‘I’ve got to see Lady Mary, Mrs Bleasdale,’ Juliet said firmly. ‘It’s very important.’

  ‘You can deal with Lady Margaret then,’ said Mrs Bleasdale, turning her back.

  Juliet went through the cool corridor connecting the kitchen to the rest of the house and up the beautiful curved sweep of stairs to the first landing. Beside a portrait of an old man in a long Tudor robe, holding a book, she knocked loudly on a thick door and opened it slowly. ‘Mary,’ she called. ‘It’s Juliet. I’m sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘Please come in,’ said Lady Mary. ‘I’ve been telling Margaret I feel ready to be disturbed now. Or disturbing. Do sit down.’

  Juliet sat and took Lady Mary’s hand. ‘There’s some rather strange news for you,’ she said. ‘Not bad news, though.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Lady Margaret levelly. She remained standing and did not offer to leave.

  ‘It’s hard to know where to start,’ began Juliet. She drew a deep breath. ‘Annie and her friend Vanessa and Tom Pointon arrived this morning with two small children, twins, a boy and a girl of about one. They’d been dumped on them at their café by a young woman who said she was their aunt. She said she and her mother had been looking after them but now they wanted to go on holiday. They’d be back to claim them later. Then she disappeared.’ Juliet took a deep breath. ‘Look, Mary – Annie’s found out where they live, and even what travel agents they used, but they can’t get any more details. In the meantime they have the twins and it looks very much as if what the girl told them about these children is true.’ She paused. ‘It may shock you,’ she said.