Wild Weekend

by Celia Brayfield

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  Contents

  Celia Brayfield

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. A Maiden Bid

  2. Beyond the Cocktail Apron

  3. The Smell of Real Money

  4. Hi. Goth. Ick.

  5. A Bailiff Calls

  6. Finding the Right Occasion

  7. Checking In and Checking Out

  8. Sting City

  9. Enter the Easter Bunny

  10. Free Bees

  11. Pigging Out

  12. Tally Who?

  13. Back to Reality

  14. Settling Up

  Celia Brayfield

  Wild Weekend

  Celia Brayfield

  Celia Brayfield is a novelist and cultural commentator. She is the author of nine novels. The latest, Wild Weekend explores the tensions in a Suffolk village in homage to Oliver Goldmsith’s She Stoops to Conquer. To explore suburban living, she created the community of Westwick and explored mid-life manners in Mr Fabulous And Friends, and the environmental implications of urbanisation in Getting Home. She has often juxtaposed historical and contemporary settings, notably eighteenth century Spain in Sunset, pre-revolutionary St Petersburg in White Ice and Malaysia in the time of World War II in Pearls. Four of her novels have been optioned by major US, UK or French producers.

  Her non-fiction titles include two standard works on the art of writing: Arts Reviews (Kamera Books, 2008) and Bestseller (Fourth Estate, 1996.) Her most recent is Deep France (Pan, 2004) a journal of a year she spent writing in south-west France.

  She has served on the management committee of The Society of Authors and judged national literary awards including the Betty Trask Award and the Macmillan Silver PEN Prize. A former media columnist, she contributes to The Times, BBC Radio 4 and other national and international media.

  Dedication

  For Fenella, in memory of many wild weekends.

  Epigraph

  Wild Weekend

  A story set in a village in England, in the very near future

  1. A Maiden Bid

  The auctioneer said: ‘Lot seventeen.’

  Motes of dust drifted in the light from the mock-gothic windows. A few people were sitting on some of the hard chairs facing the auctioneer’s podium, but none of them moved. A few more, maybe ten of them, stood around the margins of the floor as if they didn’t want to get involved. None of them stirred. Towards the back, in the shadows under the room’s empty gallery, there was a cough.

  Oliver Hardcastle, a man used to outbreaks of mass frenzy on an hourly basis, was impressed. ‘See,’ he said to himself, ‘you’re in the country. People know what’s what. They’re down-to-earth. Grounded. Rooted. In balance with nature. People here don’t wear themselves to frazzles running around chasing massive profits that are only virtual illusions existing in electronic space anyway. These people are real.’

  ‘Lot seventeen is Saxwold New Farm. Farm buildings comprising a two-bedroom cottage of traditional brick and flint, with a recent pantile roof, set around a concrete yard with a barn of the same construction, plus a concrete-block general-purpose building.’

  Farm. Farm. What a beautiful word it was. What a beautiful thing it would be. What a beautiful life he would have when the farm was his. Oliver’s feet began to creep along the scarred floorboards, unconsciously taking him towards the front of the room, inspired by his eagerness to own the farm, and be real, and be one of this crowd who were listening to the auctioneer and knowing what they knew and saying nothing.

  ‘One hundred and twenty-one acres, nine fields of handy sizes within a ring fence.’ Acres! Acres! The true and ancient measure of England! He would have acres, rolling acres, and he would care for them and cultivate them and stride over them and be a proud, free man who owned his own land and supported his own being, instead of a slave in bondage in a cube farm, who toiled for global masters and lived off the labour of other slaves, a mass of humanity even more wretched than he, the people who produced his food, whose faces he would never know.

  ‘With—’ The auctioneer paused to check with the paper in his hand. ‘Fifteen acres registered for Arable Aid.’ And as if to gloss over this minor embarrassment, he picked up speed again and continued, ‘All the main services are connected. Approached by a farm lane off the B237 through Yattenham St Mary, and the lot includes farmhouse itself partly demolished since the fire of 1997.’

  Around the auction room, a few heads nodded. Yes, we know. Evidently, everyone in the room knew Saxwold New Farm, the lane to it, the concrete-block general-purpose building (useful size, that), the cottage and the ruined farmhouse. Everyone in the room remembered the fire of 1997 and knew how it had started, and why. Helluva blaze, they could have seen the smoke from Ipswich.

  Everyone knew the score except the youngish bloke standing over at the side, the one in the waxed jacket that was practically luminous with newness and had never been scratched by a thorn or splattered by a tractor in its extremely short life. The youngish bloke clutching his bidding number with eyes lit up as if he had backed a horse in the Grand National and was watching it come in six lengths ahead. Another wallet from London looking for a weekend place for Lucy and the sprogs. His sort didn’t want to know. That bloke was Oliver Hardcastle.

  The auctioneer drew a deep breath. ‘Who’ll start me off?’ he appealed. ‘Who’ll start me off at four hundred?’

  Oliver looked around the room, at the faces which were far better than him at giving nothing away, faces reddened by the wind and pinched by the cold outside, chins drawn down into jacket collars as if to stop the mouths from speaking up, hands stuffed into jacket pockets to prevent them getting loose and giving way to expression.

  ‘Four hundred,’ the auctioneer pumped up his optimism. ‘Four hundred, ladies and gentlemen.’

  More dust settled on the carved mahogany garland over the main door. Somebody coughed again. Somebody else coughed. The auction was taking place in February, peak season for viruses. The first cougher got a couple more in.

  ‘Four hundred now,’ the auctioneer repeated.

  ‘Stuff the bloody tax,’ growled a voice at the back of the room.

  Some murmurs of congratulation for this opinion. The reason for the sale had been advertised, the list of lots proclaimed it. By order of the Inland Revenue, meaning their bailiffs had seized the property in lieu of unpaid taxes. That much Oliver had learned already.

  Oliver felt his heart beating. He had bought a shirt, a soft shirt in lumberjack checks, mostly brown, to go under the waxed jacket, and his heart was thumping so hard that it felt as if it was going to pop off the shirt buttons. Not less than four hundred, surely? Here he was, a man whose daily grind involved unleashing tidal waves of wealth around the globe without a twinge of anxiety, and he was standing in a country auction room on the edge of cardiac arrest for less than half a mil sterling. Amazing.

  ‘Three hundred, then,’ the auctioneer conceded. ‘Who’ll start me off at three hundred?’

  The coughing had stopped and a judgemental silence began to set
tle like a rain cloud spoiling a summer’s day.

  ‘Three hundred?’ The auctioneer raised his eyes to the back of the room, then flourished his arm in triumph. ‘Three hundred! At the back, there, thank you, sir.’

  A few heads turned. A few people looked at Oliver, not that he noticed. A few chuckles resounded and above them a loud and cheerful voice accused, ‘You took that off the wall, you bugger.’

  The auctioneer blushed. He was a man of thirty-ish, pale-faced, with a thin neck standing loose in his shirt collar. The flush of shame spread in seconds.

  The man standing next to Oliver smiled. It was a smile of boyish delight, such as was frequently seen in 1950s advertisements for chocolate bars.

  Then, sensing bewilderment by his right elbow, he leaned towards Oliver and whispered, ‘He means the auctioneer made it up. Imaginary bidder. They do it to get things moving when the room’s a bit cold.’

  ‘That’s a fantastic price,’ argued the auctioneer.

  ‘Too right, it is,’ agreed the cheerful voice of his challenger. ‘Your fantasy price, you mean.’ Oliver saw that the voice belonged to a broad man who had spread out over several seats in the front row, turning round now to spar with the rest of the audience.

  ‘It’s worth a whole lot more,’ the auctioneer said, his courage fading as his embarrassment bloomed.

  ‘But where’s the money going, eh? That’s the question, isn’t it? Bastards put old Frank out of business, didn’t they? Damned if they’re getting my money for that.’

  Some growls of approval greeted this explanation, and the broad man turned around on his seats to see the extent of his support.

  ‘There’s a reserve set,’ the auctioneer explained. ‘Below three hundred I cannot go. They’ll be selling in London if it don’t fetch the right price here.’

  At the word ‘London’, distaste rippled through the room like a seismic disturbance. ‘Of course,’ Oliver explained to himself, ‘they want to keep the land in local ownership. But when I’m the owner, I’ll be local, so that’ll be OK. What they’re afraid of is some pension fund snapping it up.’

  The broad man turned around again, agitated.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ he pleaded to the nearest rows of onlookers. ‘Don’t you go looking at me.’

  ‘Go on, Colin, you know you want to.’ This was from the boyish smiler beside Oliver, who spoke in a pleasant light tenor and an accent as hopelessly posh as a Wimbledon announcer.

  ‘Yeah, go on,’ agreed a few other voices.

  ‘More trouble than it’s worth, it’s got to be,’ the broad man said at once. ‘Frank was a good enough farmer. If he couldn’t keep going, nobody could.’

  ‘So, gentlemen.’ The auctioneer regained his fragile authority. ‘Do I have an opening bid? At three hundred thousand pounds, Saxwold New Farm?’

  Oliver’s heart threatened to crack open his ribcage. He took a grip on the white laminated card bearing his bidder number, and twitched it.

  ‘Three hundred? Anybody?’ The auctioneer was looking everywhere but at him. Oliver raised his card blatantly, then felt panic and waved the card above his head at arm’s length.

  ‘Over here,’ called the posh speaker, distinctly surprised.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, for the last time of asking …’ The auctioneer had his gavel hand in the air and was scanning the far horizon.

  ‘Over here,’ called the posh voice again, waving to catch the auctioneer’s eye.

  ‘Oil’ The broad man heaved himself to his feet to get the auctioneer’s attention and pointed in Oliver’s direction. ‘Over there. You’ve got a live one.’

  ‘Oh gosh, so sorry,’ the auctioneer mumbled, dropping his programme as he apologised. ‘Are you bidding, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oliver, hearing his own voice hoarse with relief. ‘I am bidding.’

  ‘Three hundred thousand pounds, then?’

  Oliver nodded and flashed his card definitively at shoulder height.

  ‘Thank you, sir. I have an opening bid of three hundred, can I hear three-fifty?’

  ‘Get over yourself,’ the posh speaker suggested.

  The auctioneer persisted. ‘Any more? Any advance on three hundred thousand pounds? Are we all done?’

  ‘Course we’re all done,’ said the broad man over his shoulder, for now he had turned around again and was leaning over his chair-back, eyeballing Oliver with bullock-like curiosity.

  ‘To you, sir, gentleman at the front here, let me just get a note of your number, gentleman at the front, on a maiden bid, Saxwold New Farm at three hundred thousand pounds … sold!’

  For an instant, a heart attack seemed like a real possibility. Something in Oliver’s chest leaped like a salmon, his ears buzzed, the room went misty and he felt dizzy. A farm. He had bought a farm. He was, technically at least, a farmer. His dreams were about to come true.

  A hand as subtle as a spade slapped him on the shoulder, and its partner, he realised, was advancing to be shaken. They belonged to the broad man, who had heaved over in his direction through the startled crowd.

  ‘You’ll be just down the road of me,’ he said, curiosity radiating uncontrollably from a red face embellished with a craggy nose.

  ‘Don’t tell him that,’ the posh one advised. ‘He hasn’t signed the cheque yet.’ He was a willowy individual who seemed to sway as he spoke.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Oliver said, shaking the spade-like hand as firmly as he could.

  ‘Not half as pleased as I am to meet you,’ said the broad man, only partly joking. ‘They were all on at me to buy old Frank’s place, but I’ve got enough to get on with of my own. So you’re welcome and good luck.’

  Oliver wanted to ask what had happened to old Frank, but the moment did not seem right.

  ‘This is Colin Burton,’ said the willowy one. Even in the gloom of the auction room, you could still see that his pale face was thickly freckled and his hair was worn in a ponytail. More like a romantic poet than a son of the soil. ‘His land is next to yours. And I’m Florian Addleworth. You’ll find me up the road, other side of the village.’

  ‘Oliver Hardcastle,’ he introduced himself.

  ‘So, welcome to Saxwold.’

  ‘Thank you.’ So much, thought Oliver, for all that stereotypical rubbish about country people keeping to themselves and resenting strangers and having bad manners. I’m getting downright social grace here.

  ‘You’ll be weekending?’

  ‘Er, no. I hope not. I’ll be living on the farm.’

  ‘Don’t mind us,’ said Florian, the willowy one. ‘We’re just nosey.’

  ‘That’s us, all right.’ The broad one was watching carefully, to see how much prying was acceptable among the middle classes.

  ‘So you’ll be living on the farm,’ Florian prompted. ‘And …’

  ‘Yes and … well, and farming. I hope.’

  ‘Farming?’

  ‘Farming, eh?’

  ‘You can come over and laugh at me any time,’ Oliver proposed.

  ‘We’ll do that, don’t you worry,’ said Colin.

  ‘You’ve farmed before?’ enquired Florian, as if this would be the only possible excuse.

  ‘No. Never. Not yet. So it’ll be a bit of a learning curve.’

  ‘Learning curve,’ Colin repeated, as if delighted to have discovered such an apt and tactful expression. ‘Well, we all gotta go through them sometime, don’t we?’

  ‘Lot eighteen,’ called the auctioneer, with a stern glance in their direction. ‘Lot eighteen, arable land at Bungay, with planning permission …’

  ‘You’ll come and have a drink?’ Colin suggested, rolling back a step like a wary steer in case the suggestion was badly received. ‘You’ve done that before, I hope.’

  ‘Oh yes. Great,’ said Oliver. ‘Er, yes. Great.’ He shut up, suddenly fearful that whatever he said was going to brand him as everything he himself despised, and allowed his new neighbours to conduct him out of the auction room and
off to a pub, with a short courtesy stop at the office for the signing of the cheque.

  ‘I am a farmer,’ he told himself, his hand trembling with ecstasy as he signed his name. ‘I’m a farmer. I’ve cracked it.’ And he felt good, as if for the first time in his thirty-four years his planets were lining up for the great cosmic conjunction that would propel him inevitably towards a real life.

  ‘You’re going to do what?’ asked the Managing Director of his bank when news of his leaving flashed up to board level.

  ‘Farm,’ said Oliver, smiling because he still couldn’t stop, even though the cheque had cleared and the deeds to Saxwold New Farm were on his desk at home. ‘I’ve bought a farm and I’m going to be a farmer.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said the MD, not smiling.

  ‘I can afford to be,’ Oliver pointed out.

  ‘Nobody can afford to be that crazy.’ The MD still wasn’t smiling. ‘Don’t come back here when it all goes pear-shaped. You were a very promising analyst, we fast-tracked you from the day you joined.’

  ‘Yes,’ Oliver agreed. ‘And I am grateful.’

  ‘You’ve had the highest bonuses in our UK office. You were going to be promoted to the board in six months. And this is all you can think to do.’

  ‘It was all I ever wanted to do,’ Oliver told him.

  ‘Pity you didn’t share your thoughts with us a bit earlier.’ Now the MD was looking downright sour. ‘We wouldn’t have wasted our resources if we’d known there was going to be a loyalty issue.’

  ‘Which is why I didn’t tell you,’ Oliver said. ‘And anyway, you never asked. Nobody has ever asked me what I really wanted to do. Nobody here can imagine anybody wanting to do anything other than work for this bank and get big bonuses.’

  ‘So what’s your problem?’ asked the MD, moving from sour to thunderous.

  ‘It’s your problem,’ Oliver informed him. ‘I haven’t a problem in the world, right now.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said the MD again. Oliver decided it was time to clear his desk and leave. His colleagues watched him in silence.