Honeycote (42 page)

‘No. I didn’t.’ James couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘I didn’t do anything and I’ve regretted it ever since.’

‘Oh.’ Patrick was intrigued, wondering which one of James’s girlfriends it was. He’d never seemed particularly enamoured of any of them. Perhaps it was someone from long ago.

He was taken aback when his uncle took him by the arm and urged him fiercely: ‘Whatever you do, Patrick, don’t make the mistake I made. Don’t let her go.’

Lucy eventually left the hospital in a taxi at about seven o’clock that evening having been reassured by the consultant that Mickey was out of danger, though not pain, which as far as she was concerned was just how she wanted it. She’d left him with a curt promise to return in the morning, and she could sense his relief before she’d even gone out of the door.

When she finally got home, she felt as if she had been away for days, although incredibly it had only been just over twenty-four hours since she and Mickey had confronted each other in the drawing room. The house stood stiffly to attention. It was immaculate on the surface. James and the girls had done their best to establish some order. It had given Sophie and Georgina something to do. But on closer inspection a multitude of sins had been hidden. Glasses and plates had been put away badly washed. Things had been put back in the wrong place. Lucy felt just the same. Calm and order on the outside but mayhem within.

It was wonderful to see the girls. They fell on her with hugs, and although she knew she should be reassuring them, she took strength from the fact that they were desperate to reassure her, running her a bath, bringing her pyjamas that they’d warmed on the Aga, making her boiled eggs with lots of toast. At one point she wondered how keen they’d be to fuss over her if they knew the truth, that she’d been screwing their uncle, but she banished the unsavoury thought from her mind. Thankfully James had made himself scarce, once he’d established that Lucy was happy to stay on her own at the house. He’d brought Pokey back, for protection. And Patrick was there, though at the moment he was brooding in his room. She could hear the moody, swirling sound of Radiohead coming through the floor: dark, gothic chords that matched his state of mind.

She thought Sophie looked pale. She’d barely touched her own egg.

‘Are you OK, sweetheart?’

Sophie nodded rather unconvincingly. Georgina looked sharply between the two of them, opened her mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut again. A tear sprang out and trickled down Sophie’s cheek, plopping into her egg.

‘Daddy
is
going to be all right, isn’t he?’

‘Of course he is, darling. You know he is. The consultant said he’s badly injured, but he’s out of danger. Honestly, there’s nothing to worry about. We can go and see him in the morning.’ That’ll be something to look forward to, she added to herself. She smiled reassuringly at her daughters, thinking that what she really needed was some time on her own to think, without anyone breathing down her neck.

Later that evening, when Sophie and Georgina had gone to bed, Lucy and Patrick shared a bottle of wine. Each of them was secretly desperate to go to bed, to mull over their respective dilemmas, but there were serious issues to be discussed. Not least the brewery.

They debated Keith’s offer to help. Lucy had thought he was just being kind, but when Patrick reiterated his offer, and pointed out the advantages, she realized that it was in fact a lifeline. She herself didn’t have a clue what to do. The brewery had clearly reached crisis point, and Mickey obviously wasn’t fit to make any decisions. Not that he had been before the accident, she thought bitterly.

For a moment, she wished she’d paid more attention to the business side of things over the years. Not that she envisaged herself taking over like some Danielle Steel heroine. She knew she hadn’t been put on this earth to become Businesswoman of the Year. But at least if she had some clue as to the brewery’s needs, she’d have a better idea of where to guide it.

She and Patrick went over the options.

‘The thing is, Keith’s seriously loaded. And he’s interested. When are we going to get another chance to attract an investor? This is an ideal opportunity for him to get the measure of things.’

‘That’s what worries me. Who knows what else your father’s shoved under the carpet?’

‘What’s the alternative? James isn’t really interested in the brewery. He never has been. It’s all he can do to turn up to the AGM.’

Lucy nodded. More than anything, she wanted to keep James away from the heart of the operation. The boundaries were too muddied as it was; she didn’t want things any more complicated than they already were.

Perhaps an objective opinion, an unbiased figure at the helm, would be the best all round. And she was pretty sure that Keith could be trusted. He might just be the one to turn Honeycote Ales around. She and Patrick agreed they’d ask him to come on board, even if only temporarily, just to see them through this sticky patch.

Two days later, an emergency board meeting was held in Mickey’s hospital room, much to the agitation of his consultant. Mickey felt like some ailing head of a Mafia clan, as Keith, Patrick, Cowley, Lucy and James sat round him on plastic chairs.

The idea was that Keith should take over as acting MD, with reference to Mickey at all times, and of course Cowley, who was a tiny bit anxious at the unconventional nature of the proceedings but whose gut told him that Keith was good news. He’d done some digging on the quiet; the bloke was as sound as a pound. Patrick was to be promoted to brewery manager, but was essentially at Keith’s beck and call. James was on hand if necessary as a sounding board.

In the meantime, Keith was to be given the books for the past five years, which he would no doubt go through with a fine-tooth comb, and it was agreed they would meet a month from now in order to discuss his possible investment.

They toasted the new alliance with polystyrene cups of tea from the canteen. It went without saying that Mickey wasn’t allowed a sniff of alcohol, so no one was tactless enough to suggest champagne.

When they’d all gone, Mickey lay back on his pillow with a sigh of relief. He’d been in immense discomfort all the way through the meeting, and had done his best to concentrate, but it was clear to everyone present that he wasn’t fit to make any sort of management decision for the moment. But he couldn’t help feeling elated at the way things had turned out. He’d got away with it: escaped, if narrowly, death, bankruptcy and divorce, all in one fell swoop.

Yes, he’d definitely landed with his bum in the honey. And he’d learned by his mistakes. This time he was going to keep his nose to the grindstone, keep on the straight and narrow, keep his nose clean – every single cliché in the book.

He didn’t dwell too long on just how boring it might be.

21

Keith Sherwyn didn’t really believe in fate, kismet, any of those airy-fairy hippy theories. Life was what you made it and that was that. But he did think it was uncanny that he’d ended up at Honeycote Ales, for he had a strong feeling that they were made for each other, that this was where he belonged and that some unseen force had guided him here. Yet no matter how charming the brewery was, he could see that the writing was on the wall, that it was on the brink of disaster – and it was up to him to pull it back.

It didn’t take him long to decide he was going to put his money in, because every day the brewery languished without investment it plummeted further beyond redemption. And Keith was a man of action, a man who trusted his own gut feelings, not to mention a man more than ready for a new challenge. The investment would have to go in phases: an initial injection with the ready cash he had available, followed by a more substantial dollop when the sale of his business went through. But a gentleman’s agreement was made – because he knew that Mickey was, deep down, a gentleman, even though he’d lost the plot a bit – so that Keith could implement changes immediately and not have to worry about waiting for tedious legal i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed. He wanted to play with his new toy straight away.

So, for the first time in years, Keith found he was enjoying life.

His training as a plumber helped him assimilate the brewing process more quickly than he otherwise might. He struck up an immediate bond with Eric Giles, the general handyman-cum-engineer, whose initial wariness soon wore off as soon as he realized that Keith was as crazy about Honeycote Ales’s industrial heritage as he was, and had no intention of whipping out some of the more antiquated workings and replacing them with sterile stainless steel efficiency. Eric stressed repeatedly that even a minor change could alter the perfection of the brew as it was, the original recipe for which had been handed down by Mickey’s great-grandfather and was kept under lock and key. Actually, it wasn’t at all, it was in a plastic folder in the brewery office for all to see, but it made a nice legend.

Keith quickly came to the conclusion that nothing at the heart of the brewery was going to need touching. He was a firm believer in ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. It was what happened after the beer was brewed that was so wrong. There didn’t seem to be any system in place for selling, marketing or promotion whatsoever. It was complacency that was the problem, an inbuilt arrogance that assumed that a perfect product meant profit. But implementing a marketing plan was going to be a long and complicated business. In the meantime, it was a question of patching up the damage that had already been done and boosting morale.

The first job he had to do was to go and reassure Ted and Eileen that their livelihood was safe. When Patrick had told him that Mickey was planning to sell the Honeycote Arms, Keith was horrified. In his opinion, that should be the last of the pubs to go – it bore the company name, for heaven’s sake. It was an integral part of the brewery’s history. It was there to be capitalized upon, exploited, made a flagship. It was decisions like this that were so wrong.

He’d phoned ahead to tell Ted and Eileen he was coming. He arrived to find them defensive, wary, and did his best to put them at their ease.

‘I want to let you know that you’re a valued part of the team. And that on no account is the pub going to be sold. On the contrary, we’ll be investing in all of the pubs over the next two years. Substantially. We’re going to be working on a complete refurbishment plan. A new corporate image, so that there’s some continuity across the board – but allowing each pub to retain its own identity.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Ted. ‘And I’m glad to hear it. But actually, Eileen and I have decided we’ve had enough. We reckon it was for the best. It’s time we had a change – we’ve been here twenty years. We want to semi-retire. Run a B&B somewhere, so I can go fishing and Eileen can put her feet up.’

Keith was anxious to establish that there were no hard feelings and assured them that if they changed their minds it wouldn’t be too late. And when he’d gone, Ted and Eileen agreed that you could tell he was a good sort, the sort you could trust. He wouldn’t shaft you when you least expected it, not like Mickey Liddiard.

Three days after his accident, Mickey was in agony. He was up to his eyeballs in painkillers, but they did nothing for the icy disdain with which Lucy was treating him. He’d hoped being on the brink of death might elicit some sympathy from her, but as various of his skeletons insisted on falling out of the cupboard, so the nails were driven deeper into his coffin.

When she’d found out from Patrick and Keith about his plan to sell the Honeycote Arms, she’d been outraged. When she’d found out that he’d been three times over the limit when he’d smashed Patrick’s car, and was likely to be banned from driving for two years, she was furious. And when he was off the critical list and had to be moved out of his private room on to a ward, she discovered he’d cashed in their private health insurance. As the nurses fussed round him, tucking in his blankets ready for him to be wheeled on to a general ward, she let rip.

‘I give up, Mickey. I give up. What else am I going to find out? You’re a liar!’

‘I’ve never told you a lie, Lucy.’

‘Let’s not split hairs. You’ve hidden things from me. Deliberately concealed them. And that’s not what marriage is about, in my book.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not half as sorry as I am.’

‘Please, Lucy.’

Mickey indicated the two nurses, who were exchanging scandalized glances over his head.

‘I don’t care who knows. I’ve already been made to look a fool ten times over.’

As the porter arrived to move him, Lucy gathered up her things and stalked out.

‘Giving you GBH of the earhole, is she?’ consoled the porter. Mickey shut his eyes.

‘I deserve it.’

‘She looked so pretty and nice, as well. Mind you, they’re often the worst. My wife, she looks like a Rottweiler but her bark’s worse than her bite.’

Mickey took little comfort from this and wondered miserably if things were ever going to be the same again. At least Sophie and Georgina still loved him. Mind you, they didn’t know the half of it. But they’d been coming in as often as they could and took turns reading to him from the new Dick Francis he’d got for Christmas. Patrick was too wrapped up with Keith to visit very often, and Mickey didn’t think he’d quite forgiven him for smashing up his car. He wondered if he could bribe the porter to nip out and get him a bottle of something to take the edge off his conscience, but then he remembered the consultant’s warning. No booze. His liver was already looking rather sorry for itself and his body had enough to cope with. There was nothing left but prayer, and Mickey had always felt uncomfortable asking any favours from God, whom he suspected would want something in return that he couldn’t give.

After her outburst, Lucy sat miserably in the car park, waiting to calm down before she drove home. She was so confused. She did feel betrayed and let down by Mickey, but deep in her heart she knew she’d done wrong as well. It was guilt as much as hurt that had made her overreact. Things had moved so fast she hadn’t had time to reflect on what had happened between her and James. She’d made sure to keep him at arm’s length over the last few days, but she was only putting off the day of reckoning. You couldn’t really sleep with someone after twenty years of friendship and not discuss it with them. But Lucy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think. All day long her mind whirled, as she went through the motions of keeping the house and the family together. Thank God for mundane chores and horses that needing mucking-out. There was always something to do in order to put off facing up to reality.