Simply Divine (11 page)

'My cleaner's resigned and the flat's an utter tip,' drawled Champagne. 'So I called the Lancaster and they're giving me a suite for free. Told them I'd mention them in the column, so stick them in somewhere, will you? Oh, and mention the beauty treatments. Gucci and I are having the time of our lives. He's having a sauna and a seaweed wrap at the moment, in fact.'

'Is Conal with you?' Jane asked, quietly grinding her teeth. If he felt moved to trash the suite in rock-star fashion, please let him throw the TV at Champagne, she prayed silently. Followed by the minibar and the breakfast trolley.

'No idea where he is,' Champagne barked. 'Haven't seen him for ages. Not since he asked me if I wanted to go to Latvia with him the other day.'

'Latvia?'

'Yah. But I told him not bloody likely, he could go on his own. I mean, I haven't read a review of it anywhere. Might be awful.'

'Oh, I didn't realise it was a restaurant,' said Jane, embarrassed. Another trendy eaterie that had passed her by.

82

'Why, what else is it?' bawled Champagne, sounding surprised. 'A country? Oh. Well, I suppose that explains why Conal's been away all week. I thought there must have been some trouble over the bill or something.'

Weeks passed. Returning to the empty flat and seeing Tom's darkened first-floor windows got every evening off to a bad start for Jane. She had no doubt that Tom was now holed up in aTriBeCa loft with a long-limbed blonde, tapping out a bestseller between trips to Dean & Deluca. Even though she knew he was thousands of miles away, she still saw him everywhere. The world suddenly seemed to be full of tall men with tousled blond hair and deep-set eyes. It was rather like living in Stockholm.

Nick, meanwhile, had faded from her life almost as if he had never been there. He had shuffled round a couple of times to pick up such essentials as his peppery aftershaves, his Queen albums and the set of wooden coat-hangers that had fitted Nick's upmarket self-image better than they had ever fitted into the wardrobe. They had muttered to each other from behind the barrier of a cup of tea. But that was the limit of their contact. It was incredible to think they had ever lived together. And it was terrifying to think she had ever wanted to marry him. Tally, she knew, would sympathise with that.

It was while pondering this that Jane realised she had not heard from Tally for ages. Guilt swamped her. To think she had been spending all this time moping over the loss of a man, when her best friend might have lost her house. She had, Jane realised, agonised, done precisely nothing about finding Tally her Mullionaire.

'Nick's left me,' she told Tally when, at last, the telephone was answered at Mullions. She felt relieved. At

83

least the family, or what was left of it, was still in residence. Jane waited for Tally to whoop with joy. But whoop came there none.

'So we're both young, free and single,' Jane pressed, eagerly. 'Both in the same boat.'

'Yes, except that your mother doesn't keep writing "Go For It" in lipstick all over the Venetian glass mirrors,' sighed Tally. 'Nor does she run up and down the Long Gallery with a net saying she's catching dreams.'

'Oh dear.' Jane's stomach knotted with guilt. 'Listen, why don't I come up? This weekend?'

Tally seemed to perk up at this. 'That would be wonderful,' she said with feeling. 'Then you can see what I'm up against. Can you remember the way?'

'Of course,' said Jane, reeling off a few directions. 'Just round the first bend past Lower Bulge, isn't it? Sharp right or you'll miss it?'

'You can't miss it now,' Tally said dolefully. 'There's a huge, glaring, red For Sale sign plastered all over the front of the gatehouse.'

Having put the phone down, Jane switched on the news and dug a fork into her pasta. She almost choked as Champagne immediately sashayed across the screen, on her way to some premiere with Conal O'Shaughnessy. Foaming at the mouth as best she could with a mouthful of pesto sauce, Jane hurriedly switched over, only to find herself staring into the face of James Morrison the transport minister, taking on the bypass protesters once again.

Jane squinted over her pasta at the screen, hoping to spot Piers. It certainly looked lively. Nick would be furious, she thought gleefully. Hordes of muddy, wild-haired creatures were rushing about the site shouting abuse at the hapless politician. Some were even throwing things at

84

him. It was really rather exciting. Jane could almost hear the thuds and bangs.

She
could
hear the thuds and bangs. She turned down the TV and listened carefully. Above her head, a series of abrupt thumps followed by a crash confirmed that someone was in the first-floor flat. Her insides plunged suddenly downwards like a hi-tech lift, leaving her stomach with a curiously empty and airy feeling. Had he, was it possible, could she entertain the wild hope that Tom had come back?

Swaying on her weakening knees, Jane let herself out of the flat and walked slowly upstairs. Her palms were sweating, her back felt hot and her intestines were surging like a geyser. Her heart thumped with excitement as she tapped at Tom's door.

It was opened by a tall, spotty youth with an unfeasibly large Adam's apple and huge, smeared spectacles. He blinked shortsightedly at Jane. She felt almost sick with disappointment.

'Um, hello,' she mumbled, after a few seconds' shocked silence. 'I'm, er, your downstairs neighbour. Just come to say, er, hello.'

'Hi,' mumbled the youth, avoiding her gaze and tangling black-nailed fingers in strands of greasy hair. He looked a bit like Jarvis Cocker, but ugly. A sweet, fusty and greasy smell hung about him.

'I was wondering,' Jane gabbled, glancing fitfully into the flat behind him where several vast cardboard boxes filled up the sitting room, 'whether you knew anything about the person who used to live here. I'm trying to get hold of him. He, er, left a few bills behind, you see.'

'Dunno,' mumbled Jarvis vaguely. 'Landlord might, but I think he lives in Spain. Want his number? It's

85

somewhere in there.' He waved a white and emaciated arm in the direction of the boxes, piles of clothes and upended furniture heaped in the room behind.

'No,' said Jane, clearing her throat aggressively as she retreated back down the stairs. 'No, it's all right.'

But it wasn't.

86

Chapter 7

Heading west for the weekend at Mullions, Jane derived a brutal satisfaction from making the poor old 2CV go far faster than it could really manage. It soon beat her at her own game, however, by obstinately refusing to stump up the horsepower required to overtake a man who was a Caravan Club Member, had a Baby On Board, believed Campanologists Did It with Bells On and as a consequence could see nothing at all out of the rear window. Which, thought Jane, furious but impotent, explained his snail-like pace but not the reason why he steadfastly and unstintingly stuck to the middle lane.

As a result, Jane arrived at Mullions not mid-morning, as she had planned, but at lunchtime. Tally was right about the For Sale sign. Subtle it was not. As she swung in under the crumbling gatehouse that announced the beginning of the park, Jane profoundly hoped lunch might be over. Mrs Ormondroyd was the kind of cook who believed all vegetables should be boiled to a gluey mass and regarded pastry that rose with profound suspicion. It was no surprise that Tally had considered toasted Mars Bar sandwiches a culinary breakthrough.

It had always seemed odd to Jane that no one in the Venery family seemed to expect their cook to be able to

87

cook. The thinking appeared to be that generations of Venerys had got by on watery Brown Windsor soup and bony cutlets and hadn't come to any harm beyond delicate digestions and a generally fleshless appearance. And what was bad enough for them was certainly bad enough for their descendants. Given what she was expected to eat, it was no wonder Tally was so tall and thin. Looking like a beanpole was certainly the nearest she was likely to come to fresh greens.

And what went for Mrs Ormondroyd certainly went for Mr Peters the gardener, Jane was reminded, as the car bounced over the potholes in the drive. Like his colleague in the kitchen, Mr Peters was a retainer whose prime function, as far as Jane could work out, was to be retained irrespective of what his skills were. Or weren't. A generous critic might assume that Mr Peters' criterion of excellence was what would look good in the park in five hundred years' time as there was no evidence that he was interested in the contemporary landscape at all. His idea of a formal garden was distinctly lax.

Tally's hair-raising descriptions of the state of Mullions had prepared Jane for the worst. So, as the first view of the house slid along her windscreen, she was surprised and relieved to see it still seemed to be standing, more or less in its entirety. Across the shimmering oxbow lake, the pile of mellow stone glowed yellow as butter in the soft sunshine. The leaded glass in the eponymous mullioned windows glittered like slices of diamond, and over the crumbling stable block, the weathercock that pointed the same way no matter what direction the wind came from shone in what was almost a spirited fashion.

As she drove past the rose garden, heavy with overblown, un-deadheaded blooms, Jane looked hard for the

sweat lodge Tally had mentioned, and the mysterious mercurial harp. But there was no sign of either. She turned into the stableyard, which backed on to the kitchen wing. This, for the last hundred years at least, had been the main entrance to Mullions, ever since the massive front door had come off its hinges while being opened to admit Queen Victoria — who, on that occasion, had apparently been amused.

Mrs Ormondroyd came out to greet her, dressed, as always, in a checked nylon overall of violent turquoise blue, her massive calves covered with tights the colour of strong tea. Her large-nosed face with its uneven eyes and spreading ears was, as usual, the deep-creased picture of disapproval and suspicion.

'You're just in time for lunch,' she grumbled.

'Great,' said Jane bravely. 'I was hoping I would be.'

'Well, you might change your mind when you see what it is.' Mrs Ormondroyd scowled, leading the way back into the kitchen. Jane followed, bewildered at this unexpected flash of self-knowledge on Mrs Ormondroyd's part. Had she finally accepted there were limits to her cooking skills?

Inside, the welcome was warmer.

'Jane!' shrieked Tally, clattering over the stone flags like an excited five-year-old. Jane found herself enveloped in a dusty, mothball-scented hug. 'It's so nice to see you,' Tally gasped. 'You look wonderful. Much thinner.'

'Do I?' Tally always said the right thing, but this really was the rightest thing of all. Hoping she meant it, Jane stole a swift look down at herself. Her stomach was a bit flatter, largely thanks to the steep drop in her wine consumption. Opening a bottle just for herself, alone in the flat, made Jane feel like an alcoholic. However, she

89

permitted herself the occasional gin and tonic because she needed the lime slices to counteract the risk of scurvy from her unvaried diet of pasta and pesto.

'You look so smart,' Tally said, holding her at arm's length.

It's only my jeans,' said Jane. Her white shirt wasn't even new. Yet it was newer by a generation than anything Tally had on. Her sharp, bony elbows protruded from a tiny, shrunken pullover. A pair of half-mast trousers ended halfway up her skinny calves. 'Amazing trousers,' Jane said with perfect truth, unable to tear her eyes away from the dark, wide-pinstriped creation that, like the dress Tally had worn to the Ritz, had a faintly antiquated look about them. 'More of your mother's Mainbocher?'

'Oh, these.' Tally looked down. 'No, Daddy's. They're his old school trousers. I found them when I was looking for something to wear in bed the other day. They're very warm. A bit worn out on the bottom, but I expect it was all that caning.' She flashed Jane a strained grin. Her fine, mouse hair was scraped haphazardly back in a rubber band, and there was a more anxious expression than usual in her clear, almost lashless grey eyes. Tally's pale cheeks with their dusting of patrician high colour seemed thinner, which made her snub nose with its red-tinged tip look odder than ever.

Mrs Ormondroyd had stomped off a while ago, but Jane suddenly realised they were not alone in the kitchen. A large, silent figure was standing at the back, making almost imperceptible sounds and movements at the large stone sink. Jane started in shock. It wasn't any old large, silent figure standing there. It was a Red Indian in the finest spaghetti Western tradition.