The Party Girl's Invitation

by Karen Elaine Campbell

  She did a double take. About as vulnerable as a pit bull, Crystal, never underestimate the old lady; rule number one. Maybe the women in her family were the more ruthless after all. Mum had not been a shrinking violet either, that was for sure. She had made her own decisions. “OK, I’ll do the one meeting for you, but as far as fighting your battles, you can count me out.”She downed the last of the liquid in her glass in one gulp, and set the glass on the polished surface of the mantelpiece, “Now, time for bed. Norma has already gone on up. How am I supposed to get you up those stairs then?”

  Chapter 3

  Party Blues

  Crystal replaced the phone on the cradle carefully, and glanced across the room at her gran. She’d been sitting by the fireside nodding in her favourite chair, with her glasses askew on the end of her nose for a while now. If only she’d do as the doctor instructed and take the painkillers that he’d prescribed, she wouldn’t be quite so tired during the day. She had finally dropped off to sleep, by the look of her, so Cousin Lolly and her problems would just have to wait.

  Lolly had wheedled and whined down the phone line for the past twenty minutes, and Crystal realised that the majority of the situation could have been avoided. Apart from the company who hired out the marquees, which had just gone into administration, Lolly had brought most of the other complications down on herself.

  ‘Do we need to hire glasses?’ Lolly had asked. ‘Of course’, had been Crystal’s terse reply, ‘Unless you want hundred and fifty year old Edinburgh Crystal and priceless family heirlooms out on the back lawn for the guests to drop in the river’. By the time she’d finished, Lolly was in tears.

  Highly strung and emotional at the best of times, her older cousin couldn’t be expected to cope with such things, but then aunt Vera wasn’t much better either. It was no wonder gran had been overseeing the whole thing for them. When she’d mentioned the amount they had to spend on the wine list it all became clear, any idiot would know that two hundred bottles of champagne would cost more than that. They’d been introduced by a mutual ‘friend’, to a dodgy character by the name of ‘fly’ who was rumoured to have gypsy heritage.

  Crystal though it was all a con and the scrawny little fellow, with long stringy hair and wispy moustache had invented this persona to make himself appear more interesting, but anyhow Lolly had been innocently intending to buy the party booze from a gang who were importing the stuff through Dover in the back of a horse box it would seem. The gang had been pretty successful for months now, sheer cheek and pure dumb luck had all played their part, but right now they were detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure and answering questions for HM Customs and Revenue. Lolly was lucky that she’d only placed a deposit, ‘in cash, luv’, how gullible was that? In her favour, she’d not actually taken delivery of the goods yet, and was considered a hapless victim by the local constabulary, so hadn’t been called forward to explain her involvement as yet, but might be needed later. Half of the landed gentry in the county were on the guest list, the party was to be the ‘event of the season’, it was all a true embarrassment in the finest sense of the word.

  “Are you going to enlighten me then, or shall I just sit here and wonder?”

  Crystal jumped. “Oh, I thought you were still asleep.”

  Gran rearranged the spectacles on the end of her nose, putting them straight, automatically. “I was, before the phone woke me. What’s up with Lolly now then? Forgot to order the glasses, did she? I told her to do that, weeks ago. Had some damn fool idea of using the antique ones from the attic, silly girl, said that real crystal would look better on the tables. Don’t know where she gets these high fallutin’ ideas from, she only went to the local high school, same as the rest of you. Of course, the boys did boarding school for a while, until the money ran out, but Lolly didn’t. Perhaps that’s her problem, always did have grand ideas.”

  Crystal didn’t really know where to start. “She’s come up against a few setbacks gran. There’s a problem with the marquee and the champagne, for starters. She wanted you to fix it for her. I said you were sleeping and you would call her back, later.”

  “I haven’t got time for all that now, it was all sorted out ages ago. I need to focus on my campaign with Jazz and the board. I’m not having it you know, all these new measures he’s come up with. I already did the guest list and the other arrangements for Lolly, she only had to book a marquee and some glasses and decide what she wanted to eat. Oh, and that reminds me, the printers have had trouble with the menus, they rang last week, but I haven’t had time to get back to them yet, that needs taking care of. She’s messed up the flowers too. Doubled up the numbers somehow, maths never was her strong point.”

  Crystal winced.

  Gran didn’t wait for an answer, she was off again, “The bloody man has set this meeting for the day of the party, I’m sure he’s done it on purpose. Thinks my mind will be occupied elsewhere, and he can just slip through the changes without anyone noticing. I’m wise to his game.”

  Now was probably not the time to go into details, but if she left it any longer, it would be an even bigger mess by the time gran did get around to tackling the whole thing. Best find out what she was up against first, with the board. “So what do you need to do for this meeting then? Whoever has called the meeting needs to give you the facts, so that you can investigate and exercise intelligent judgement on the points which are being debated.”

  “Yes, yes. I know all that. Bob reckons that Jazz was talking about the old folly on the phone the other day. Checking out if it was listed and asking questions about planning permission and such like. If he thinks he’s going to flatten the folly and use the land there for houses or such like, he’s going to have a fight on his hands. Capability Brown designed that area of the grounds hundreds of years ago, and the parkland has remained unchanged for at least a century since then, and the old folly predates that, it should be with the National Trust, not being bulldozed to make way for rabbit hutch houses.”

  “Ah.”Crystal could see why her gran was irate. The land had been in her grandfather’s family for generations, and they were very proud of their heritage. The parkland was not much more than a swamp really and had never been considered by the family as particularly valuable, but these things changed over time. There was no proof to the family claims that the world famous landscape gardener had been involved in the work on their property anyhow. Her mother had tried to research it many years ago, but as far as she knew had not found a valid connection that would stand up to scrutiny by historians. The shape of the parkland and the historical photos formed part of the trail, some of the broad oaks in the park had been there for generations and the ash trees down by the river were tall and had been there as long as anyone could remember, but nothing had ever been confirmed. Her mum and dad would never have been able to build the factory on such a site if it had, so every cloud had a silver lining.

  Gran was waiting for a reply.

  “Are there any other ways to raise the cash that we need?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care. He’s already stripped the building and sold off everything there that had any value, that’s not what we hired him for. The scrap man could have worked that one out, at a tenth of his salary, if we’d asked him.”

  Perhaps we should have asked him, Crystal thought, but was wise enough to keep her observations to herself. Instead she replied, “Perhaps we should come up with an alternative plan then, and distract Jazz, then he won’t want to touch the folly after all.”

  “You’re surely a distraction girl, and make no mistake,” was her gran’s tart reply.

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she countered, with a small smile. She’d had enough of those games to last a lifetime, and was not getting pulled into that one around here, thank you. Against her will, her eyes welled, and she leaned forwards abruptly to shield her face with her hair. She really must get a grip of her life. Her gran wasn’t to know, of course, but she was still very ra
w on the emotional front right now.

  “That’s not how it looked from my front window the other night young lady. I do have eyes in my head you know.”

  “Gran, we went over this before. He gave me a lift home because the bike doesn’t have any lights and I gave him a quick peck on the cheek to say thank you,” she lied.

  “So why did he cycle all the way over here, at ten o’clock this morning to return the bike then? Desperate to see you, he was.”

  “He did? Ride the bike over, I mean. Oh, I didn’t know.”Crystal couldn’t imagine Jazz folding himself double and putting himself out enough to ride the ancient old ‘shopper’ along the country lanes from the factory to her gran’s front door.“Are you sure? He probably just put it in the back of his car and drove it here, maybe he was passing anyway,” she dismissed. As far as wanting to see her, he most likely wanted to get rid of the bike quickly to make sure she didn’t turn up at the factory unannounced again.

  Gran gave her a long level look, but didn’t say any more on the subject.

  Crystal was quiet for a moment, as she weighed up the consequences of leaving the party arrangements and the board meeting to her gran. Had Jazz really set the meeting to coincide with the party, or was it just coincidence? Either way, the timing couldn’t be worse. She knew the answer, of course, but did she really want to take it on? One small party, she could do that with her eyes closed, the last ‘gig’ she’d set up had been in front of thousands. It would be a good way to showcase her abilities, might help to set her new company off on the right track. She knew she’d do it, there was no-one else here to fix the mess.

  Gran was waiting. She’d come to the same conclusion too, it was obvious really from the look on her face.

  She threw her hands up into the air. “OK, OK, I give in, I’ll do it. Just don’t expect Hyde Park and all of the trimmings OK? It’s a long time since I did any of those venues. This will just be plain and simple, and Lolly can pull her weight too, this is all her problem after all.”

  “So, you’re going to be around here for the next few weeks then? What about London, have you really finished with this jet setting promotional lark?”

  “Yes Gran, I have. I’m not going back. Wild horses couldn’t drag me there. I’ll tell you the story some day, but not today, not now.”

  Gran nodded. “Leave the board to me. I’ll figure out what we need to know. You take the party and I’ll do some digging into Mr Silver and his past. There must be something there that we can use.”

  Crystal was horrified. That was the last thing she needed. They wouldn’t have to dig too far into her own past to have a field day, and that was definitely not the way to proceed in this game.

  “Um, no Gran,” she insisted, more vehemently than she might otherwise have done. “We don’t play dirty, that’s not the way. My father would not approve,” she added, by way of explanation. “He may have died and handed the firm over in a bit of a mess, but we’ll see it through if we all pull together. Cold hard business facts, that’s what we need. Let’s stick to the basics, shall we?”

  Gran sniffed elegantly.“Alright, for the moment, have it your own way. If this doesn’t work we may have to re-think our plans,” she added darkly.

  An hour later, showered and dressed in her favourite Manolos and those scruffy old jeans again, Crystal glowered moodily at the bike. She really was going to have to do something about that, and no mistake. As transport went, it was highly unsuitable. There was an intermittent bus service, or she could call a taxi, but there were problems there, with both options. The bus only came through the village once an hour in each direction, and then you had to change at Chippenham or Bath, depending on where you were headed, it was a very slow process. Alternatively, Bernard’s brother, Bob, ran the only taxi firm for miles around, so if you got into one of his cabs your movements were likely to be the topic of conversation by the regulars down at the ‘Dog and Duck’ over a pint of ‘best’ and a bag of crisps, nothing was sacrosanct around here. Local curiosity would wane in time, and she’d be left alone to manage her own affairs in her own way, but for the moment she could bet that she was ‘hot topic number one’, and make no mistake.

  A few streets away, in his small whitewashed cottage, next to the duck pond and right beside the only other bus stop in the village, Bernard sat down on the couch and reached forwards to grasp the large plate of cheese sandwiches that Maude thrust in his direction. He had a good view out of the small front room window from here, and he liked to keep an eye on what was going on outside his own front door, while he ate his lunch.

  “Ta, love,” he grunted, as he settled his bulk more comfortably on the top quality, blue draylon covered cushions. “I was talking to Bob earlier, I bumped into him down at the paper shop, when I went to pick up the milk,” he commented, taking a large bite from the thick ‘doorstep’ of fresh crusty bread.

  “Oh, ah?” Maude replied, as she sat down next to him and opened a packet of cheese and onion crisps, deftly removing the top of her sandwich to insert a few of the crisps in on top of the pickle and the cheddar, fitting the lid back on and squashing the whole lot down, to crush the crisps.“What did he have to say for himself then, he back at work yet?”

  “Said his back’s better.” Bernard took another mouthful of his sandwich. “He reckons that blonde bit of stuff I saw up at the factory, cosying up with the boss on Friday, could have been Hetty’s granddaughter. She’s back from the States, so he said. Gave her a lift in his cab on Saturday, so he reckons.”

  Maude rearranged the crisps in her sandwich. “That would be young Crystal, then. I thought she had some fella out there in America, what’s happened to him then, did she bring him back here with her?”

  “I didn’t ask. From the view I got of her the other night, I wouldn’a thought it, if it was her of course. The boss pulled y’on missy right up close he did, when he thought I was out of sight. He’s not one to let the grass grow under his feet, that’s for sure and she weren’t complainin’ none, I can tell ya. I reckon there was a few sparks flyin’ there, if you get my drift.”

  Maude raised her eyebrows. “That’ll not please madam. She’s had a bee in her bonnet about him up at the factory ever since he first arrived. Had a dinner party on Saturday night, Hetty did, and didn’t invite him you know, so Maisie says. I bet it were Crystal alright. Maisie said she’s come home. Gone all blonde and tarty, Maisie says.”She thought for a moment, “Though Maisie’s got no clothes sense anyhow, so I don’t know how she’d know anything about it, and Crystal were always a blondie child, right from a baby, if you recall?”

  “Oh ah, that she were. Bob brought her home from the station, Saturday, she’d been down Bath shoppin’. She couldn’t have brought much stuff with her on the plane, cos he said she came back with bags full of clothes. Dresses and such like, he recognised some of the names, right fancy stuff.”He paused, and squinted out of the window. “Eh-up, looks like that’s her comin’ along the road now. How do these youngsters walk in those heels, eh? She’ll give herself bunions before she’s fifty, I’ll bet. I wonder where she’d be goin’ now then?”

  Maude sniffed, “How would I know? I heard that she was up at the churchyard yesterday, paying her respects to her parents, according to the vicar. She won’t need many of those party dresses around here though, there’s ’owt to do here of an evening, a pair of wellies would be more sense, if you ask me. There’s the Hunt Ball coming up, if Lolly ever gets around to fixing things. Maybe Crystal’ll take that over for her, she were a fancy event organiser, weren’t she? It might get set up proper then, if she does. Last year were a right fiasco. The pig were cold and the drinks hot. Old Major ‘huff ‘n’ puff’, got right cross with Lolly and she blamed Hetty, do you remember?”

  “That was the only highlight of the evening. Oh, apart from young Jeremy throwing up in the fountain, of course. Hetty was seriously cross with him. I overheard him tellin’ a few of the lads in the canteen about it after, he thought it
was a real joke.”

  Maude laughed. “Mark and Ruth hadn’t been married long, I bet that were a real eye-opener for Ruth, she was brought up proper like, a real lady was her mum. Bet she wondered what she’d let herself in for, taking on that lot. Now Crystal’s back, things will liven up around here for sure, she always brought out the worst in Jeremy. The terrible twins we used to call ’em, do you remember?”

  Bernard went back to chewing on his sandwich. “I bet we don’t know the half of it, love, either.”

  Maude smiled, fondly. “What a pair,” she said. “Now, hurry up, finish that off, there’s cake for afters. You don’t want to be late back for work now, do you? That Mister Silver doesn’t strike me as a man who will take much messing about. They reckon he’s a real taskmaster.”

  “He won’t bother me too much, just so long as I do my job. I got brownie points on Friday night for turning up quickly when he called. I’d already de-activated the alarm on the front door before he got there, made me’self look good, that did.”

  “You’re a good man, Bernard. He’s lucky to have you.”

  Bernard smiled and scratched his belly through his shirt.“I do me best, dear, I do me best.”

  Cousin Lolly looked older and slimmer, a bit more sleek than Crystal remembered. She’d always been the tubby one in their family, dark haired and doe eyed and usually dressed in jodhpurs or last year’s cords, she’d never had much of an eye for style. She’d been a placid and peaceful child, if a little on the slow side. She’d taken the blame many a time for Crystal or Jeremy and their childhood capers.