Simply Divine (12 page)

'Jane, this is Big Horn,' said Tally, following th<

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direction of her astonished gaze. 'He's cooking lunch,' she added hastily, as if this somehow explained his appearance. Big Horn turned from his labours and walked slowly towards them, his large, bare feet moving soundlessly over the worn flagstones.

About seven feet tall, and naked from the waist up, he was impressively muscular, with a tan the same strong terracotta colour as Mrs Ormondroyd's tights. Above his deep-set, brilliant dark eyes, his centre-parted hair was thick, black and long, tightly plaited and wound with brightly-coloured thread. Across his torso he sported an impressive array of complex tattoos as well as several necklaces of shells and beads. From the waist down, what looked like a fringed apron of embroidered chamois leather seemed to be all that protected his modesty. Yet he was silently impressive, ready to take on General Custer at a moment's notice, despite being armed with nothing more than a slotted spoon.

'How do you do,' Jane said, smiling.

Big Horn inclined his large-featured head slightly. A faint smile thawed his thick, beautifully-cut lips and he raised one eyebrow a fraction of a centimetre.

'Big Horn and Mummy are on the Ayurvedic diet,' Tally explained, shepherding Jane out of the kitchen. 'They eat to suit their personality. By that reckoning,' she whispered, once they had reached the kitchen passage, 'Mummy's is all mung beans and Chinese worm tea. At least that's what Big Horn's been making all week.'

'How very unflattering,' said Jane. Tf someone was cooking to suit my personality I'd expect lobster and foie gras at the very least.'

'Well, Mrs Ormondroyd tried to cook a chicken,' said Tally, 'but as soon as Mummy saw it, she picked it up and

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started waving it about over everyone's heads. According to her, raw poultry absorbs negative energy.'

Jane giggled. 'And what about negative smells? All those beans must have had an effect.'

'Yes,' confessed Tally. 'I suppose there have been some rather ripe odours about.' She screwed up her snub nose.

'I suppose you could call it,' chortled Jane, 'the Blast of the Mohicans.'

Tally giggled, just as the housekeeper came back down the passage and swept past them, her face as stony as the floor. The sound of her thighs swishing together in their tea-coloured tights faded into the kitchen. 'And Mrs Ormondroyd's been driven to distraction,' whispered Tally.

'I imagine she finds that mini-apron thing of his very distracting,' grinned Jane. 'I bet Big Horn's the most exciting thing to hit the Mullions kitchens since the days they had naked boys turning the spits.'

'I think you're probably right.' Tally pushed back the tattered green baize door at the end of the kitchen passage and stepped out into the Marble Hall, the freezing, lofty space at the heart of the house. The black and white chequer board Carrara which gave the hall its name stretched away beneath their feet. A number of dusty statues on plinths stood desultorily about, while a massive, carved Jacobean oak staircase climbed wearily up to the house's upper floors, sagging slightly as if the effort was too much for it. Which, in some places, it evidently was. Jane spotted, beneath the treads nearest the hall floor, several piles of books that were evidently supporting the whole structure. She had no doubt that some of them were first editions, grabbed haphazardly from the Mullions library.

Adding to the atmosphere of weight and weariness were the Ancestors — Tally's name for the collection of heavily-

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framed oil portraits whose subjects' red-tinged nostrils identified them as Venery forebears. Two loomed from each of three walls, and another four accompanied climbers of the staircase up to yet more portraits in the Long Gallery on the next floor. There was, in fact, scarcely anywhere one could go in Mullions without contemplating the snub-nosed, thin-lipped visage of a long-dead member of the family. The Venerys as a dynasty had cornered the market in bold, unsmiling poses centuries before the likes of Conal O'Shaughnessy had smouldered on to the scene.

Suddenly, a terrifyingly loud and utterly anguished scream from upstairs shattered the brooding silence of the hall. Bits of plaster started to drift down like snowflakes. Jane's hand leapt to her throat as she stumbled towards Tally in terror. It sounded as if someone was being disembowelled, dying in childbirth and being burnt at the stake simultaneously.

Tally, however, looked oddly calm. Bored, even. 'Mummy, doing her primal screaming,' she explained, rolling her eyes in exasperation. 'She does it every lunch-time. It helps expel the tensions of the morning, apparently. But it doesn't do much for the roof.'

As the frantic beating of her heart subsided, Jane raised her trembling vision to the painted ceiling far up in the gloom above. Painted in the Italian Renaissance style by a pupil of Verrio, the ceiling's once-writhing congregation of plump gods and goddesses was indeed looking distinctly patchy.

'Only this week, Triton lost his trident and both wheels of Phoebus's chariot peeled off,' sighed Tally. 'Nymphs and shepherds are coming away all the time. It's falling apart up there. You can barely walk across the floor without causing some disaster among the deities.'

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Jane shot a speculative glance at a wobbly-looking piece of the egg-and-dart moulding which seemed about to detach itself from the frieze which ran round the walls below the painting. One more shriek of Julias might easily result in its leaping for freedom.

'Primal screaming?' Jane struggled with the concept of the former steely lady of the manor bawling her head off. Almost as amazing was the fact that it was before Lunch. The Julia of old rarely stirred from bed before two.

'Yes, it's ghastly/ Tally said. 'The Ancestors are horrified,' she added, waving a long white hand in the direction of the portraits.

'They look it,' said Jane. And there did seem to be a certain, barely perceptible, alteration in their faces. Each painted eyeball, previously passive, now bulged slightly with what might have been horror, and each formerly straight, tight mouth had acquired a definite downward turn.

'Yes, the Ancestors are very shocked,' Tally said sadly. 'The ones in here are appalled enough, but the ones in the Long Gallery practically need counselling. They're nearer to the noise, you see. And it's not just the screaming that's upsetting them. Mummy's been round the whole of Mullions feng shui-ing it, and decided the chandelier in the drawing room was covered in bad chi.'

Jane stared. 'Still, I suppose Mrs Ormondroyd doesn't handle a duster like she used to,' she said.

Tally looked at her sternly. 'Really, Jane, this isn't all some huge joke, you know,' she said. 'Believe me, there's nothing funny about it.'

Jane determinedly turned down her irrepressibly curving lips.

'What is bad chi?' she asked, trying to keep her

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shoulders from shaking; a challenge as they were shuddering from the cold anyway. However mild the climate was outside, inside Mullions the atmosphere was so icy you could skate on it.

'Sort of bad luck, I think,' said Tally. 'Anyway, she's taken the chandelier down and replaced it with a piece of nasty old dried buffalo skin that smells cheesy and looks very odd with the Grinling Gibbons. But the worst is what she's doing in the bedrooms. She's moved the eighteenth-century bed that Queen Victoria slept in and replaced it with a piece of carved bark to counteract what she calls the negative energy of colour chaos emanating from the Gobelins tapestries.'

Jane blinked. Tally was right. It wasn't funny. It was hilarious. Her lips started to quiver again at the corners.

'But at least they haven't built a sweat lodge in the rose garden yet,' she said comfortingly.

'No, but only because they're going to build a yurt on the parterre,' sighed Tally. And Big Horn's practically worn out the lawn with his ritual dancing at dawn. All the telephones in the house stink of Mummy's essential oils, which Mrs Ormondroyd hates. And when Mummy destroyed the vacuum cleaner the other day, Mrs Ormondroyd almost handed her notice in. It was only Big Horn's coming past at the crucial moment with his apron flapping that changed her mind.'

'Why, what was Julia doing with it?' asked Jane, genuinely curious. 'I didn't know your mother knew what a vacuum cleaner was, let alone how to use one.'

'She was trying to hoover her aura,' Tally confessed. 'According to Mummy, hoovering your aura — which is apparently a sort of spirit force surrounding you - draws out all the impurities in your soul.'

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'Like a sort of spiritual spot wash?' Jane was worried she would laugh if she didn't say anything. It was, she could see, truly awful for Tally. Julia had obviously gone completely mad this time. More barking than a pack of hounds, in fact.

'Yes, but in Mummy's case the dustbag burst and she ended up with far more impurities than she started with,' said Tally. 'Including a contact lens she'd lost in the seventies, apparently.'

There was a rustle above them, accompanied by a faint tinkling of bells. Jane looked up, and gasped. 'Julia?' she exclaimed in amazement.

Nothing could have been further removed from the perfectly turned out Lady Julia of old than the pair of brilliant eyes Jane found staring down at her from a tanned, lined and completely unmade-up face. Julia's wild hair looked as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards, and then dragged through it forwards again. What looked like bits of foliage were stuck in it for good measure.

Only Julia's voice was still the same — more cut glass than a factory of Waterford. It took more than a few months' New Ageism, it seemed, to make an impact on a lifetime's Old Money. 'Jane, darling!' declared Julia, as she descended the stairs amid acres of flowing white robe. 'So it
was
you!'

'What do you mean?' asked Jane, almost overwhelmed by the clouds of essential oil scent that floated in Julias wake. She was aware of Tally squirming in embarrassment at her side. Julia took no notice. Her full attention was trained ecstatically on Jane. The intensity of it was unsettling.

'When I looked at the chart at midnight last night, I

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noticed that Mercury was sextile with Venus,' breathed Julia, dramatically. 'Emotional change was in the air. It was
you\' As
Julia patted her cheek, Jane felt her toes curl.

'I see,' she said awkwardly. How exactly did one reply to this kind of greeting? 'Well, it's very nice to see you, Julia. You look very well.'

¹
1 feel
well,' said Julia, clasping her hands in apparent ecstasy. 'I have never felt
quite
so well before. My life was empty and unsustainable and now it's full of truth and spontaneity. Would you like some lunch?' she added.

'Er . . .' Jane prevaricated, remembering the mung beans.

'We're going out,' said Tally hurriedly.

'That's nice,' said Julia absently. 'Well, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot to do this afternoon. Mr Peters is very worried about it not having rained for a while on his roses, so Big Horn and I are going to appeal to the Great Earth Goddess on his behalf and perform a rain ceremony' She wafted off through the door into the kitchen passage.

'Now do you see what I mean?' asked Tally.

Jane put an arm about her shoulders. 'Let's go fpr some lunch at the Gloom,' she suggested, leading Tally back down the kitchen passage to the door. The local pub, the Loom and Bobbin, or the Gloom and Sobbing as Piers had once dubbed it, owing to its mausoleum-like Victorian atmosphere, provided unmatchable therapy for depression. However miserable one was, one couldn't possibly be as dejected as the hatchet-faced regulars draped over the bar.

They drove along in a silence punctuated only by the 2CV's bouncing and jolting over the potholes in the drive. As they passed the lake, Jane glanced over at Mullions. Seen from across the water in the mellow afternoon light, it seemed to be floating serenely atop a great expanse of

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pearl. The rose window in the dining room, rescued from the ruins of a nearby abbey, flashed cheerfully as the sun passed across its ancient panes, and the oriel window by the entrance door bulged happily. The balustrade of Jacobean stonework, which formed the edge of the terrace in front of the house, undulated merrily along the wall and the turrets stood clear-cut and golden against a blue sky. Seen from this distance, it looked the epitome of the power and style of the landed gentry. No one could possibly have imagined that it was collapsing and that the cash-strapped family was having to sell it after four hundred years of ownership. No one, thought Jane, could possibly have imagined there was a Red Indian in there, either, not to mention a New Age lady of the manor. The depressed silence continued as she and Tally passed under the For Sale sign.

'Why will no one ever give you grants?' Jane asked, realising she had never raised the subject before. It did seem odd, though. From this angle, Mullions looked such a jewel. More idyllic even than those posters of sun-soaked castles amid undulating emerald downs that the English Tourist Board put inside Tube trains to upset commuters. 'Surely the National Trust or someone can help out?'

Tally sighed, and made an odd, scraping noise that sounded suspiciously like the grinding of teeth. 'Do you really think I haven't
tried?
she asked testily. 'But Mullions is too run down for someone like the National Trust to take on. And even if they were interested, they would want enormous endowments to help with the upkeep. But they're not interested. Apparently it's not important enough a building.'

'Isn't it?' asked Jane in surprise. 'Why ever not?'

'Oh, something not quite right about the groin vaulting

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in the antechapcl,' said Tally wearily. 'And apparently our spandrels are below par. The Jacobean strapwork's been found wanting, and the neo-classical columns in the hall were, it turns out, made by one of Adam's less gifted pupils.'

Alas, poor Doric,' said Jane, drawing up outside the Gloom and Sobbing.

Tally frowned.

Tally slammed the car door shut and following Jane into the pub.

Inside, the usual funereal atmosphere prevailed. A sullen fire spat in the cavernous hearth and a collection of locals who might have been there since Jane's last visit sat slumped over their pints of Old Knickersplitter, the Gloom's sour, home-brewed ale. Apart from gin and tonic, the pub sold practically nothing else.

'So Julia's still really set on selling it?' Jane broached the subject as she pulled open a bag of cheese and onion crisps so ancient they could well have been the prototype for the brand.

Tally nodded miserably. 'Yes. And the estate agents are egging her on. Even though the place is hardly in a state to sell. The electricity supply is totally erratic — the state of our connections would horrify Mr Darcy. The heating is a joke. You can hear the pipes banging and creaking for miles, but nothing ever makes it to the radiators. And the entire water supply is plumbed with lead.' She shifted uncomfortably on the hard bench they were sitting on.

'Doesn't that drive you mad?' asked Jane.

'No, I suppose it's what everyone in similar houses did at the time . . . oh, I see what you mean,' said Tally. 'Yes, lead piping was supposed to be one of the reasons behind the fall of the Roman Empire. You do go insane in the end, apparently.'

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'Maybe that's what's happened to Julia,' suggested Jane.

Tally shook her head. 'She doesn't even use water any more. She washes her face in pee.'

'No!' exclaimed Jane. She had raised her glass halfway towards her lips. Now she put it down again.

"Fraid so,' said Tally. 'She says that, apart from doing whatever wonders it's supposed to do, it's quick, cheap and warm. Unlike anything that comes out of the Mullions bath taps, she says.' She gazed despairingly into her smeared glass. Old Knickersplitter was an even less cheerful prospect than her mother. 'The fact remains,' Tally finished, 'a damp-proof course and a new roof would do more good than all the feng shui in China.'

Jane frowned. 'We've got to find you this rich man fast,' she said firmly. 'Someone loaded and sexy.'

But the eyes Tally turned to Jane were utterly devoid of sparkle. 'Sexy? It's so long since I slept with someone I've practically sealed up'. Tally sighed. 'And it's too late for the house, in any case. The first person is coming to look round next week.'

'Who?' Jane asked. 'You never know,' she added, determined to see light at the end of the tunnel, even if it was another tunnel altogether, 'it might be someone gorgeous who'll fall for you.' If Tally had a radical makeover in the next few days, got her hair cut and stopped wearing her father's school trousers, there might well be a chance.

'Doubt it,' said Tally. 'He's a pop star, apparently. I can't imagine I'm his type.'

Jane was forced to admit this was not untrue. Tally's idea of contemporary music was probably 'Greensleeves'.

'Still, let's be thankful for small mercies,' Tally sighed. 'At least Mummy and Big Horn won't be there when he comes. They're off for a few weeks, to some ashram in

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California. Apparently Big Horn's going to lock himself in a dark shed for a month and contemplate his inner child while Mummy looks for the wise woman in herself 'Well, that'll be a fruitless search,' said Jane.

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Chapter 8

'What's bitten you?' Jane asked. She had just arrived in the office to find Josh with a face like thunder.

'Only that Luke Skywalker's had an accident ski-ing,' Josh grumbled. Luke Skywalker was the
Gorgeous
astrologer. Or, rather, the astrologer for
Gorgeous.
Even the most flattering of byline pictures had not succeeded in making Luke's unkempt, stringy hair, large nose and doleful eyes appealing. And he probably looked much worse now.