We piled ourselves and the various boxes containing our place-cards, menus, goodie bags and all the rest into a taxi and set off. Daisy was frantically tapping away on her BlackBerry trying to look busy and efficient, but when I sneaked a glance over her shoulder I could see that she was texting her mates, egging them on to turn up towards mid-afternoon and avail themselves of some free food and drink.
“Now, Ellie,” Daisy said in the annoying mistress-to-minion tone she had taken to adopting with me, “when we get there I need you to get straight on with laying out the stationery and gift bags on the tables. The florist will be there already, but you need to make sure that everything is placed correctly, according to the plan I gave you yesterday. You did print it out, right?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“Now the gates open at ten, so we’ll expect our guests to start arriving any time from then onwards. They’ll be served white peach Bellinis or tea and coffee with pastries – make sure the caterers don’t make the Bellinis too strong, we’ve only budgeted for two dozen bottles at that stage. After the first match, lunch will be served, then the main match begins at three. Make sure you are on hand throughout to mingle with the guests and answer any questions.”
“Yes, Daisy,” I said through gritted teeth. This was about the fifteenth time she had told me all this, and since I was the one who’d written the copy for the itineraries that were going to be displayed on all the tables, and printed them out, and mounted them in white cardboard folders and tied black ribbons around them, you’d think she would realise I could recite it in my sleep. But she was in full flow.
“Cucumber coolers will be served throughout the afternoon – and remember we had to fork out for real Pimms, so make sure they’re heavy on the lemonade – together with red and white wine and sparkling water. Then we’re serving more champagne with tea and cake at five, then cocktails will be served as the evening function kicks off at half six, and we’re expecting it to finish at about eleven. Then you’re free to go. Clear?”
“Yes, Daisy,” I said.
“Now, I will be making sure our celebrity guests have everything they need, and I will need you to focus on the corporate tables.” Typical Daisy, I thought – she was probably hoping to get off with some former boy-band star, or claim a supermodel as her new best friend. “There’re the boys from McCarthy Robinson – bankers always know how to party – and the Rawlinson lot…” on and on she went. I managed to tune her out, and looked out of the window at the lovely green English countryside sparkling in the early morning sun. It felt like ages since I’d seen daylight.
“Here we are,” Daisy said unnecessarily, as the taxi crunched on to a smooth gravel driveway.
I don’t want to exaggerate, but the next two hours were purest hell. The marquee company had turned up late, which had had a knock-on effect on the furniture hire company, who had only just finished assembling the tables and arranging the chairs around them when we arrived, and still had to swathe each of the 150 seats in white covers and tie them with black chiffon ties. And until they’d done that, the florists couldn’t do their thing because they’d be in the way, so they were standing around drinking coffee. The mobile mixology people claimed that there was a national shortage of cucumber, so people were going to have to be limited to one wedge per glass of weak Pimms. The caterers claimed the same, and said they’d had to replace the cucumber sandwiches with watercress, which meant the menus were all wrong. Plus they’d somehow managed to mislay a gross of avocado and crayfish tartlets, and had dispatched their most junior skivvy back to their HQ to rustle up a substitute, which meant that they were running behind on getting the breakfast pastries arranged on their platters. And Daisy discovered, as I could have warned her she would, that her heels immediately sank into the grass, severely limiting her mobility, so she was forced to stand in one place bashing out texts on her BlackBerry and shouting at everyone.
Eventually, against all the odds, the marquee was ready, and I must say it did look lovely. The tall vases of black and white calla lilies (the black ones were really a sort of dark maroon, of course, but they did look very nearly black, especially as the light wasn’t very good), the snowy tablecloths laden with sparkling cutlery and glasses, the buffet table groaning with breakfast pastries – it was all really impressive, like a posh wedding. Even Daisy seemed satisfied.
“We’ve just got time for a coffee,” she said, “Then we’ll need to be on hand to greet our guests.”
“Black or white?” asked a waitress, wielding a coffee pot, and I can honestly say I never wanted to hear those words again as long as I lived.
In due course the VIPs started parading in, the women in crotch-skimming skirts and high heels – Daisy’s choice of outfit wasn’t as outlandish as I had thought – the men in loud blazers and flannel trousers, and everyone in designer sunglasses. I stood at the entrance to the marquee with a smile fixed to my face, going, “Hello, so glad you could come, please help yourself to tea and coffee. Welcome, please help yourself to tea and coffee,” on and on.
Then one of the loud-blazered men paused in front of me, took off his Bulgari shades and said, “There you are, Ellie!”
It was Oliver. “What are you doing here?” I stammered. “You aren’t on the guest list.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “But my mate Algie is, and when I heard you were going to be here I persuaded him that he had better things to do on a lovely sunny day like this. Will you let me in anyway?”
Of course I said yes, and went dashing off and found Algernon StokePemberton’s place card and switched it with a hand-written one with Oliver’s name on it, and he introduced me to a few of his banker friends, but we couldn’t really chat because Daisy texted me and told me that Bliss Newham wanted Vitamin Water, and what Bliss wanted Bliss must have, so I rushed off to find some. Bliss, of course, was one of our VIP guests, and since she’d appeared on the front cover of US Vogue the previous month, and we were hoping to get her for our Autumn/Winter campaign, she needed to be kept sweet. As well as being extremely beautiful, with enormous turquoise eyes and black hair that she wore with the sort of brutally short fringe only those with perfect bone structure can carry off, she was known for being ‘somewhat temperamental’. This of course was a polite way of saying that she was an absolute bitch, and when I returned with the hard-won Vitamin Water (none of the stalls around the polo ground sold it, and I’d been about to get into a taxi and travel the eight miles to the nearest Tesco Express to buy some, when I’d spotted a family unpacking their picnic, and lo and behold, it included several bottles of Vitamin Water, and I persuaded them to sell me one for a tenner. Cheap at the price, I thought, remembering to ask for a receipt to add to my growing folder of expenses) she told me it was the wrong flavour, and she’d just have a small glass of champagne instead.
By this time our marquee was heaving with VIP guests, all talking in loud voices and braying with laughter, and with the first polo match about to start, Daisy and I were faced with the task of herding them all outside, which we did. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a polo match. I hadn’t, and I’d sort of assumed it would all be posh boys on horses cantering aimlessly about, a bit like fox-hunting only with a ball instead of a fox. I was broadly opposed to the idea in principle, both because it didn’t strike me as a particularly egalitarian sort of sport, and because I’m uncomfortable with using animals in that way. But nothing could have prepared me for the speed and downright violence of the game. The poor horses were galloped furiously from one end of the pitch to the other, looking really tiny underneath the huge, heavily padded men who rode them, forced to crash into each other, their heads pulled around by vicious-looking bits and cruel spurs thumping into their sides. I stood and watched, feeling sick with revulsion and tension – but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Although every part of me thought how wrong and terrible it was, I was nonetheless captivated by the speed and excitement of it, even though I hadn’t a clue about the rules and
I couldn’t really figure out what was going on or who was winning. I’m like that with sport generally, I’m afraid – Ben once tried to explain the offside rule to me and after about ten seconds I glazed over, and to this day I couldn’t tell you what it is.
Most of the horses were various shades of brown – bay and chestnut, I suppose you’d call them – but there was one little grey one, even smaller than the others, that seemed to almost fly as its rider urged it after the ball.
“The field is six hundred feet long,” said a voice next to me, “and they’ll often gallop the entire length of it at forty miles per hour, several times in each chukka. That’s why they have so many horses – they have to change them often, it’s exhausting for them.”
I looked around and saw Oliver next to me, and realised that I had been frantically clutching his duck-egg blue and magenta-striped arm. I loosened my hand with difficulty, and moved away, leaving a sweaty patch on his sleeve.
“Isn’t it awfully cruel to the horses?” I said.
He shrugged. “Hard to say. It’s better than it was – you used to see really excessive whipping and use of spurs but it’s more tightly regulated now. It certainly isn’t a game for wimps, human or equine.”
I winced and grabbed his arm again as a huge brown horse crashed into the small grey one, sending its rider flying. “Jesus!” I gasped.
Oliver laughed. “This is just the warm-up game, the one this afternoon will be much faster and harder. Polo ponies are valuable animals – the riders don’t take stupid risks with them.”
“They look like pretty stupid risks to me,” I said. “Do you play?”
“Can’t,” he said, “I’m left-handed and you have to be right-handed to play polo. If you had some clown like me waving a mallet around on the wrong side, it really would be dangerous.” He grinned at me. “I hunt, though. Foxes, not just beautiful women.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” I snapped. “Could you be any more of a cliché?” But I smiled, and couldn’t help feeling a spark of desire ignite inside me at the compliment, and the way he’d said ‘faster and harder’ had left me slightly breathless, as if I’d been doing the galloping. Behind my sunglasses, I stole a long look at him. Even in the ridiculous blazer, he was gorgeous – his lightly tanned skin, the long fingers holding his glass of champagne, the soft wing of hair falling over his forehead.
“You don’t have a drink,” Oliver said, “Can I get you anything?”
“I’m working,” I reminded him. “I’d better go and chivvy the caterers – we’re meant to be serving lunch in half an hour. I’m just the help here, remember, not an honoured guest like you.”
“Promise you’ll watch the match with me this afternoon,” Oliver said. “By then everyone will be too pissed to care if you’ve deserted your post.”
I looked around for Daisy, and saw that she was being chatted up by a spotty boy whose band had reached the X Factor finals – Daffyd Someone, I think his name was. Anyway he was the crush du jour of women under twenty-five up and down the country, and I figured Daisy would be properly distracted for the next while.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Thankfully the caterers seemed to have got their act together after their earlier blip, and were marshalling trays of tartlets, carving great lumps of rare beef and assembling rather twee nouvelle-cuisine style vegetables. There’s something about the sight of a little bundle of carrot sticks tied together with a chive that always makes me imagine the cook biting off any rogue overlong ones, and the idea makes me feel slightly queasy. Anyway, they could bite away as far as I was concerned, as long as everything made it on to the tables on time. Not that much of it was likely to get eaten; very few of our guests looked like they’d had a square meal in several months.
On a sudden whim, I found my placecard at the table with our jewellery sponsors, the drinks people and a couple of the Black & White directors, and I found Daisy’s, which was at the table next to Oliver’s, and I swapped them around. Daffyd Whatsisname was at the table next to the dull corporate one where I’d originally been sitting, so I told myself I was doing her a favour. Then I brushed my hair and dusted on some face powder and bronzer and slicked a coat of coral gloss on my lips, and went to the bar and claimed a glass of champagne. After all, looking after the VIPs was work, and Oliver was a VIP, so I wasn’t neglecting my duties in any meaningful way at all.
We spent the rest of the day together. When a plate of roast beef was plonked down in front of me, Oliver came over all authoritative and got the waitress to bring me a chicory Wellington instead. When Bliss Newham was spotted heading out of the Portaloos with a suspicious smear of white powder on her perfect, curling upper lip, Oliver distracted the paparazzi by pointing out that Daffyd and Daisy had disappeared together behind what he told me were called the pony lines. When the afternoon polo match got too hardcore for me to bear to watch, Oliver took me off for a wander round the grounds. And when the trophies had been presented to the winning team and the sun was sinking behind the polo field, the VIPs started stampeding back into the marquee for cocktails and yet more food, and the DJ fired up his decks, Oliver took me in his arms and said, “Please will you dance with me?”
“I don’t dance,” I said, elbowing him away. “Besides, I’m working.”
The truth was, though, there was very little for me to do. I checked that the cocktail people had everything they needed, made sure the caterers were on track to produce sausages, fried onions and crusty rolls at nine thirty, instructed the DJ that he must wrap up by eleven, without fail, no matter what anyone said, because this was the countryside and we wouldn’t be forgiven if the neighbouring sheep failed to get their beauty sleep. Then I checked my face and brushed my hair yet again. Thanks to some magic undercoat stuff I’d found in Rose’s makeup drawer, my foundation was still in place and my eyeliner unsmudged. I looked poised and glossy, and even, in my pink dress, a bit glamorous. So I went back into the marquee and found Oliver, who had returned to his table and was drinking champagne, surrounded by his mates. I sort of hovered on the periphery, feeling like the fat girl at a school dance. But as soon as he saw me he stood up.
“Right,” he said, “I’m leaving you lot to it and taking Ellie outside to look at the moon.” And he grabbed a bottle of Black & White sparkling wine and two glasses in one hand and me in the other, and the next thing I knew we were outside the marquee in the warm and silent night.
“So are you still working?” Oliver asked, “Or have you stopped, and can you play?”
“I’m still working,” I said. “Officially I’m on duty until eleven – that’s more than two hours still to go. And when I’ve finished I expect I’ll be too tired for anything except sleep.”
“Pity,” Oliver said, picking up a strand of my hair and twisting it around his fingers. “This is far too lovely a night to work. But I’m your guest, and a very important and demanding one, so I think you’ll have to entertain me for a bit.”
I laughed. “What kind of entertainment would you like? I can’t do magic tricks or stand-up comedy or the dance of the seven veils, I’m afraid. I can recite the whole of Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol, but I think that might get a bit dull after ten stanzas or so.”
“I can do magic tricks,” Oliver said. He took a pound coin out of his pocket. “Here – when I count to three, grab the coin out of my hand.”
He was as eager as a little boy, and I realised he was a bit drunk, so I played along.
“Okay, go on,” I said.
He waved the coin around a bit, going, “One… two… three…” and of course when he got to three and I made a grab for the coin it had vanished.
“Impressive,” I said.
“I’m not done yet,” Oliver said. “Hold out your hand.” I did, and the coin dropped from nowhere into my palm.
“How did you do that?” I asked, laughing.
“I’m a banker,” Oliver said. “Moving money from place to place is
what I do best.”
“I know it’s vulgar to ask,” I said, “but are you incredibly rich?”
“Incredibly,” Oliver said. “But not as rich as I’m going to be.”
“Why?” I asked. “Are you plotting some evil scheme involving shattering the economy of third-world countries and sending commodities prices spiralling and making your fortune out of world famine, the way bankers do in books?”
Oliver laughed. “We’re not that cool in real life,” he said. “I’m going to get richer because that’s what I do. I like money. I like manipulating it, and I like how it allows me to manipulate the world.”
“Okay, now you sound like a Bond villain,” I said.
Oliver put on a cod Russian accent and said, “Good evening, Ms Mottram. We’ve been expecting you.”
I was just about to launch into a spiel about how that line doesn’t actually appear in any of the films – a little gem of trivia I learned from Ben, who is a bit of a cinema nerd. But I didn’t say anything in the end, because that was when Oliver kissed me.
The kiss seemed to go on for a long, long time, and everything about it was perfect: the still, moonlit night, the music drifting out from the marquee, the scent of crushed grass that still lingered around the polo field. Oliver himself was perfect too – his kiss had a breathless urgency that infected me, so I kissed him back just as fiercely, tangling my fingers in his soft black hair as I’d dreamed of doing for so many months, feeling the hard length of his entire body pressed up against mine, smelling the trace of some sort of aftershave or cologne or something on his skin – it smelled a bit of lime and a bit of leather and totally of Oliver, and left me reeling with desire.
It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend Page 20
