by Unknown
‘Don’t be so unromantic.’ He pulled back on the first cargo strap to snap it tight, bracing his legs against the car so that he looked like a sailor mending rigging.
‘I don’t want to be romantic!’ she howled, knowing that there was absolutely no point. Nothing was going to happen between them.
‘You made that abundantly clear on Sunday.’ He reached for the second strap and lassoed it over the roof. ‘When you announced that we were going to – now, how did you so delicately put it? – “fuck each other’s brains out”?’
Ellen glanced nervously at the lane in case anybody was within earshot. ‘Was that why you left?’ she asked hoarsely.
He looked at her over the roof, his eyes giving nothing away.
‘I thought that’s what you wanted all along,’ she muttered.
‘Maybe, at first,’ he sighed, ‘but it’s like wanting to be mortal then finding you have no voice.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The Little Mermaid.’
‘I told you. I don’t know the story.’
‘I’ll tell you it over supper. We don’t have time now.’ He fixed the second strap.
She sighed, defeated by his indomitable mood. It was the same mood she’d left him in the day before, and she didn’t understand it at all.
‘All this must have cost a fortune.’ She looked at the bags with their designer tags.
‘Don’t worry, it’s all going back tomorrow. I told the department store that I was borrowing it all for a fashion shoot for Cotswold Living mag.’
‘That’s fraudulent.’
‘Not as fraudulent as using your credit-card details for security.’
‘What?’
‘You really shouldn’t leave your drawers open.’ He smiled easily. ‘I have a wonderful head for figures.’
‘What’s got into you?’ she demanded.
‘Oh dear.’ He blinked up at her. ‘Am I straying from the straight and narrow?’
Ellen drove Spurs to Upper Springlode in silence while he smoked a cigarette broodingly beside her, the window wide open so that ash billowed around them, flecking his expensive suit. He turned the stereo on full blast and kicked his foot against the glovebox in time to Robbie Williams’ ‘Let Me Entertain You’. It was partly like driving a small, sulking, hyperactive boy, Ellen decided – and partly like driving a wild animal.
When Rory opened his cottage door, he was wearing nothing but a grubby towel and had a toothbrush poking out of his mouth. Spurs thrust several of the carrier-bags at him and muttered something in his ear, then jumped back into the jeep and told Ellen to drive on to the pub car park.
‘This really is his idea.’ He was kicking the glovebox in time to the Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ now. ‘I’d never suggest something so completely crass as the surprise he’s got lined up.’
‘What is it?’ she asked.
But Spurs had spotted Keith, the bearded landlord, waiting for them in the car park and jumped out before Ellen had pulled up.
‘I’ve kept it for you like you asked,’ Keith greeted them cheerfully, beckoning them into the beer garden, which was already full of evening drinkers enjoying the sunshine and the views.
Ellen and Spurs carried the boxes to the furthest cluster of trees, beside the bubbling stream that gushed noisily from the spring, masking the sound of conversations nearby. In a clearing on the bank was a lone table, quite hidden from the rest of the garden, on which Keith had placed a handwritten reserved sign.
‘Bring Dilly to this table at half past eight – no later,’ Spurs told Ellen, taking her wrist and glancing at her watch. ‘That should give me enough time to lay everything out and get Rory in place. And don’t forget to change into your costume.’
When Ellen lifted the tissue paper on the first of the boxes Spurs had left with her, she wondered what on earth Rory had cooked up that required Spurs to wear a slick suit and her to dress in . . . She gathered it up and walked to the mirror . . . This. Oh, wow! Layers of white chiffon fluttered against her in the breeze from the open attic window.
It was heaven. But how on earth did you put it on, she wondered.
She was crouching on the carpet searching frantically for her strappy sandals when Dilly arrived downstairs, complaining bitterly the moment she was through the door. ‘Ellen! Can I have a quick shower? Mum’s been hogging the bathroom for the last hour, slopping around like a great hippo saying she needs to soak away her stress to get into the right frame of mind to spend the night reworking the bust. I couldn’t get in there. Ellen!’
‘Help yourself,’ she called down the stairs.
A few minutes later, hair still in a shower cap, Dilly trailed scented drips into the room and ground to an amazed halt. ‘Bloody hell! Like, bloody, bloody hell!’
‘What’s the matter?’ Ellen smoothed the chiffon nervously.
‘Oh, God, can you make me look that sexy? No, forget it. I could never look that sexy in a million years. Bloody hell.’
‘You like it?’
‘You are so beautiful. I had no idea you could be that beautiful.’
‘Get outta here.’ Ellen laughed. ‘It’s just a posh frock.’
She looked in the mirror again, still uncertain that she had the balls to go anywhere dressed like this. The layers of bias-cut chiffon clung delicately to every curve of her body, like steam from a shower. The long bell sleeves constantly slipped over her worriedly adjusting hands as the dress fell off each shoulder in turn. Slashed almost to the waist in front, it barely maintained her dignity with a few fragile cross-laced ribbons, but the narrow margin of fabric that separated her nipples from the wide expanse of brown chest shifted dangerously if she so much as breathed.
‘It suits you so perfectly,’ Dilly was burbling excitedly. ‘Not sure about the shoes, though.’
Ellen looked down. ‘The ones that go with it don’t fit and I can’t find my strappy sandals.’
‘Oh, Hamlet chewed them up. Sorry. I meant to tell you yesterday when I brought the rest of your stuff back. I can give you the money if you let me pay you in instalments. You will still lend me something, won’t you?’
She smiled. ‘Take your pick.’
Dilly looked at the clothes spread out on the bed and her face lit up.
‘Dilly!’ Ellen burst out laughing when she started to pull on her choice. ‘You don’t want to wear those. They’re only there because I just took them off.’
‘I love them.’ Dilly buttoned up the ancient denim cut-offs that Ellen almost lived in. ‘These are far more me than dresses and high heels. I’ll leave those to old bags like you and Mum.’
Ellen went to swing a good-natured thump at her shoulder, but stopped when her boob fell out of the great cleavage divide.
‘You’ll have to watch that.’ Dilly sniggered, trying on a bootlace top while Ellen tucked herself back in.
Ellen looked at her reflection dubiously. ‘I thought Cinderella was the one who got to wear the beautiful dress, not the fairy godmother.’
‘Eh?’ Dilly abandoned the bootlace top and pulled on the gypsy shirt, holding Ellen’s red suede bustier up against it and tilting her head at the mirror. ‘Do you think this would look too tarty?’
‘No, it’ll look great. Like a medieval wench.’
‘So where are you two going on to tonight?’ Dilly started to put the bustier on over the gypsy shirt. ‘Mum says you’re taking Spurs out to dinner while Rory and I are at the pub.’
Ellen helped her do up the studs at the back. ‘I left it to Spurs to decide.’
‘Must be somewhere really fancy to merit a dress like that. Maybe Tewcott Castle, where you watch the jousters and eat roast hog? Spurs could joust for your honour.’ She sat more upright so that Ellen could reach the lowest studs. ‘Actually,’ she added, ‘now I think about it, I’d really rather have liked Rory to take me somewhere like that tonight. I know the Plough is more familiar, but it’s not very . . . special, is it?’
‘You said you wanted
to go somewhere he could be relaxed,’ Ellen reminded her, ‘so that you can get to know each other properly.’
‘I know, but it’s just a bit odd, isn’t it, that Rory and I are having our first proper date together in a smelly old pub and you and Spurs – who are just friends – are probably going out somewhere really amazing?’
Ellen looked into the mirror over her head: both boobs had fallen out of the flimsy fantasy dress now. ‘If there’s magic between you, it doesn’t matter where you are,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘The simplest of places can seem like paradise. You just have to look into each other’s eyes and forget the real world exists.’ She remembered her first long, hot weekend with Spurs when every time she’d looked in his eyes the world had disappeared, as had her desire to go and see it.
‘God, Ellen!’ Dilly sneered. ‘That is so, so schmaltzy. I thought I was a hopeless romantic, but you should hear yourself. And there was me thinking you were a super-cool surfer chick.’
Ellen caught her own eye in the mirror. ‘I’ve been accused of being completely unromantic.’
‘By whom?’
‘The man I looked at and forgot the world existed.’
‘He can’t have seen you in that. If I was wearing that dress, Rory would never look me in the eye. He’d be far too distracted, poor darling. Mind you, he’s a bit of a shoe-gazer, so I must be prepared. Perhaps you should rethink your footwear too?’ she reminded Ellen kindly.
As Dilly jumped off the bed to start trying on Ellen’s small collection of mostly clumpy, urban-chic footwear, Ellen spotted her neon pink diving fins leaning up against the old wardrobe. Perfect for the Little Mermaid. She started to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ Dilly looked up from strapping on Ellen’s red wedges.
‘Nothing. I’ve just realised I’ve been swimming against the tide.’
‘You can drop me here,’ Dilly insisted excitedly, as they drove into the Plough car park.
‘I said I’d see you to your table.’ Ellen checked her watch. They were bang on time.
‘It’s just a pub, Ellen – more’s the pity.’ She pulled a goofy face, jumped out and checked her face in the wing mirror.
But as they walked into the beer garden, it became apparent that one part of it, at least, wasn’t just any old pub. Ahead of them, an avenue had been created with sparklers poked jauntily from the grass, all of which spat and frothed their hot little shards far more brightly than the sun sinking behind the trees. Several tourists had whipped out cameras and started forming a small crowd to either side of the burning path that led into the secret grotto where Rory had reserved a table.
‘Bloody hell!’ Dilly started to laugh, turning to Ellen. ‘Did you know about this?’
Carefully keeping her hands clamped to her side to stop her tits popping out, Ellen shook her head and indicated for Dilly to follow her.
Breathless and babbling eagerly, she followed Ellen along the fizzing corridor, waving happily at her audience. And then, as they walked under the tree canopy and into the privacy of the little streamside bower, she let out a shriek of delight.
The ordinary picnic table had been transformed. Now set beneath a tented garden pagoda, it was swathed in silk sarongs and covered in hurricane lamps glowing with every colour of candle. Crystals dangled from the branches to either side, creating dancing prisms of light in the clearing as they caught reflections from the stream. A small self-important Jack Russell, wearing a bow-tie, was sitting on one of the bench seats.
Waiting beside the table were Rory and Spurs. The former had a fiddle pressed under his chin, the latter a guitar slung round his neck.
Dilly and Ellen looked at each other as the duo launched into ‘Will You Come To The Bower’, both men whistling the tune and the Jack Russell barking along.
‘Shut up, Twitch, you’re ruining it,’ Rory hissed, out of the side of his mouth, as the bow danced on the strings. Dressed in a retro black suit, with a long-lapelled flowery shirt unbuttoned to the chest, very clean floppy blond hair and pointy-toed boots, he had transformed himself from the stable tatterdemalion into the ultimate young rock god.
Ignoring him, Twitch barked all the more. Dilly clapped her hands in delight and rushed over to gather him up and start dancing along to the tune.
Just for a moment a bewildered, laughing Ellen caught Spurs’ eye before he looked fixedly at his frets once more. Purple tie loosened and hair flopping over his face as he struck out the chords, he was disturbingly unfamiliar again, showing aspects of himself he’d never even hinted at.
‘This is so, so cool!’ Dilly danced around. ‘I’m going to have the best night ever!’
As soon as the song was over, Spurs twisted the guitar round to his back on its strap like a banderol, made a quick bow, then took Ellen’s hand without looking at her.
‘Enjoy yourselves, kids. We’ll pick you up later.’ He led her back down the spluttering sparkler path, ignoring the excited cheers of the other beer garden occupants, some of whom had noticed that Ellen’s chest was threatening to stray out of its chiffon because Spurs was towing her along at such speed.
‘Quietly understated for a first date, huh?’ he said, when they reached the car and collapsed against it.
‘Certainly different.’ She pressed her hands together and lifted them to her chin so that she could discreetly pop her assets back into place.
‘Oh, it’s cheesy as hell, but the boy wouldn’t be told once he latched on to the idea.’ Spurs was shaking his head in amusement. ‘I tried persuading him that the musical turn was too much, but he had his heart set on it.’
‘It was good. I didn’t know you played the guitar.’
‘Aunt Til taught us to play Irish jigs at family parties – much to my mother’s pique.’ He looked at his fingers. ‘Rory’s sister played the tin whistle, and Aunt Til was a demon on the bodhran.’
‘Well, Dilly loved it. She loves it all.’
He pulled the guitar from around his neck and put it into the back of the car, not looking at her. ‘And you?’
‘I’m sorry I doubted you.’ She hauled the slipping dress back on to her shoulder.
‘All Rory’s idea.’ He swung the door shut.
‘And the costumes? Were they his idea?’
‘No.’ He checked that the door was shut properly, then tweaked his shirt cuffs from his jacket sleeves in a curiously formal gesture. ‘They’re for a different show. I have a lot more style, you see.’
At last he looked up at her from under his brows, his face expressionless. ‘It suits you.’ He nodded curtly.
It was hardly in the premier league of compliments. It was years since Ellen had worn anything so dressy, and she felt deeply self-conscious in the little bare-fronted number. She felt even more insecure when the dress chose that moment to plunge off her shoulder once more and reveal a tiny crescent of dark areola before she retrieved it. ‘I think the usual method is to attach toupee tape to stop things falling out,’ she mumbled.
‘I think the usual method,’ he said calmly, ‘is to wear it the other way round. The criss-cross bits were at the back on the mannequin.’
‘No?’ Ellen looked down and laughed. ‘I’d better go and change it round in the loo.’
‘Wear it like that,’ he insisted. ‘It looks much better.’ Then he looked down and saw that she was wearing clogs. ‘Was there something wrong with the friendship shoes?’
‘I couldn’t walk in them.’ The very high, strappy mules had been three sizes too big.
‘I got an eight.’ Spurs was indignant. ‘That’s what was written in the trainer you threw at me. I still have it.’
‘Those trainers are American – an American size eight is an English five.’
‘Trust the Americans to exaggerate.’ He glared at her tatty clogs. ‘I bet Big Foot just has slightly high insteps. Couldn’t you have found something a bit smarter?’
‘Hamlet chewed up my best shoes. I’m sorry.’ She tried not to laugh at his indigna
tion. ‘Are you supposed to be the footman or something?’
‘Almost,’ he said grumpily, crossing the car park to a big barrel full of blue irises and tugging a bunch. Keeping one for himself, he handed the rest to her before opening the jeep’s passenger door. ‘Your carriage awaits.’
‘I thought I was chauffeur?’ she asked uncertainly, clutching the pilfered flowers.
‘I’m in the driving seat now.’ He attached the iris to his lapel and pulled his signet ring from his little finger. ‘Hold out your hand. No – the other.’
She held out her left hand and he slid the ring on to her third finger, the Constantine crest facing into her palm so that only the plain gold band showed.
‘This evening,’ he closed her fingers tightly round the ring, ‘it’s the cygnet’s turn to become a swan.’
Ellen looked up in confusion.
‘It’s a fairy tale, Ellen.’ He pressed his lips to her fingers. ‘The ring’s on your finger – and bells on your toes are part of the costume.’
‘Are we morris dancing?’ she asked.
The smile almost gobbled up her fingers. ‘Tonight I’ll try anything for you. Even that.’
‘Mr and Mrs Gardner. Many, many congratulations!’ The maître d’ fluttered around them. ‘Have you had a splendid day?’
‘Wonderful, thank you.’
‘On behalf of all the staff at Eastlode Park, may I wish you a very enjoyable evening with us? If you’d care to go through to the Green Drawing Room where my colleague will bring you complimentary champagne . . .’
Ellen clutched her irises tightly to her exposed chest as she followed the waiter through to the grand reception room, Spurs’ hand on her back. ‘Mr and Mrs Gardner?’ she hissed over her shoulder, already feeling the cold sweat of deceit prickling in her hair.
‘Yes, darling. You’ll have to get used to your new name.’ He spoke through a fixed smile, silver eyes dancing around the room.
Such was Spurs’ magnetism and charm that the historic hall’s staff were completely won over by him and his pretty bride, despite her strange choice of footwear. Waiters rushed over to set coasters and bowls of finest Japanese crackers on the dainty walnut and ormolu table between two velvet-backed Chippendales.
