Making Hay

by Veronica Henry

  But he couldn’t. He’d got two lap-dancers to audition, a barmaid to sack and sixteen grand’s worth of cash to put in the bank before midday, when he had the vitally important meeting with Marco Dinari which meant never having to do any of those things again. So instead he smiled his thanks and hurried away before he could change his mind. He’d phone in an hour or so and make sure she was still OK. He’d bought an extra phone specially so that the school could contact him if necessary; he spent so much time on his mobile that he didn’t want the line to be blocked if there was an emergency.

  The two clones looked at each other and dissolved into giggles as soon as he was out of sight.

  ‘My God – they’re letting anybody into this place these days.’

  ‘Could you smell it?’

  They both waved their hands in front of their noses and grinned conspiratorially.

  ‘New money,’ they chorused.

  Damien, who was hovering round the corner just to make sure he couldn’t hear his daughter crying, clenched his fists with fury. He was gutted. Absolutely gutted. It had taken him at least three-quarters of an hour to decide what to wear that morning, and he’d thought he was the epitome of good taste. Apparently not, according to those fat-arsed, self-satisfied cows he’d been talking to.

  ‘What do you suppose he does?’ The one’s voice could have been heard in the next county.

  ‘God knows,’ replied the other. ‘Bound to be something dodgy. Or maybe he’s a lottery winner.’

  She made it sound one up from mass murder. Damien pushed his way angrily out into the road, praying that Anastasia’s classmates weren’t as snotty as their mothers. He hurried to his car, where Rick was waiting to drive him to Bristol, and tried to push the unpleasant scenario to the back of his mind. After all, he’d got a lot to get through if he was going to be back in time to pick Anastasia up at three.

  Keith arrived earlier than usual at work that morning. Elspeth, the brewery’s receptionist-cum-secretary, smiled brightly at him and leaped up straight away to get him a cup of coffee. He was impressed to see that she’d already opened the post and had laid it out in four piles – urgent, non-urgent, file and bin. He liked to see everything, even junk mail, before anyone else dealt with it.

  He took a cup of coffee and walked through into the heart of the brewery. He watched as one of the men slashed through the top of a sack of malt. Keith dipped his hand in and took out a grain, nibbling it to test the quality, and nodded his approval. He loved the sweet, Ovaltine taste that would provide the beer with much of its flavour. Up tipped the sack and the grain fell through into the crusher, a steady stream of rich carbohydrate that would soon be ground into a fine powder.

  He walked through past gleaming copper-lined vats, big enough to hold ten men, that would have been scrupulously scrubbed out the night before. The rich smell of yeast hung in the air as the latest brew fermented, awaiting the moment of perfection before it would be deemed fit for the barrel. Keith prided himself on the fact that he sampled every brew, because that was the only way he was going to become an expert. He had a lot of catching up to do. A year ago he could probably have counted the pints of real ale he’d had on the fingers of one hand. And Mickey and Patrick had been brought up on the stuff – they could tell in an instant if the balance wasn’t right, if the sugar level was too high or too low, if the malt or the hops weren’t of the best quality.

  He went through into the room that he’d designated as a general meeting room not long after he arrived. It had once been a storage area for the sacks of hops and malt, but those had been moved to one of the outbuildings. The bare brick walls had been whitewashed, and a large table moved in which sat eight at the most. It wasn’t exactly equipped with the latest in conference facilities, but there was a coffee machine bubbling merrily in the corner and a flip chart, and Keith had had all the facts and figures that were going to be relevant to the morning’s meeting collated and put in individual folders at each place. One day, maybe, there would be a purpose-built room with soft carpets and designer lighting and PowerPoint facilities, but that was a long way off. There were many more important things to spend money on before that eventuality.

  Keith tried out the head of the table for size, wondering if he was usurping Mickey’s position, then salved his conscience. Someone had to lead from the front and it was never going to be either of the Liddiards, who always seemed to have other preoccupations. It came from having a more exciting life than he did, he supposed. He had to admit that he had nothing much else to think about but work.

  Keith wasn’t a superstitious man, but he did wonder if there was a patron saint of pubs, and if so whether he should offer up a quick prayer, just for luck. Only he knew just how precariously the brewery’s finances were balanced. It didn’t actually frighten him – not most of the time, anyway – because he knew a good percentage of successful businesses were equally precarious. There was no such thing as a dead cert, there was no profit without risk and you had to spend money to make money. The trouble was, they were spending it like water at the moment, and it was his.

  Keith knew exactly what they had to achieve over the next twelve months and there was nothing out of the ordinary about any of the targets he had set. But there was little margin for error. Very, very occasionally, in his more pessimistic moments – which as a good businessman he had to have: you needed to work out your Armageddon in order to make a contingency plan – he wondered what would happen if Barney Blake turned out to be a drunk, or if Suzanna had a penchant for gambling, or if some hideous bacteria crept into the labyrinth of pipes in the brewery and contaminated the whole system, bringing production to a halt. Or, on a more universal level, what if there was another outbreak of foot and mouth, or another September the eleventh. Any of these eventualities could have a serious effect on their profit margins, and they couldn’t afford to just break even. They needed a significant profit in order to continue the brewery’s across-the-board investment.

  Keith had worked out a five-year plan. There was a perfect equation whereby the brewery’s maximum capacity – the amount of barrels they brewed per week – would exactly match the number of pints drunk throughout their ten tied houses, with a bit left over for the small amount of free trade they supplied: the odd working man’s and sporting club and a few free houses. At the moment the brewery was running at about two-thirds of its potential output, so they had to kick the pubs into touch in order to increase the barrelage. Between him and Patrick, they had worked out that they could afford the time and the money (all things going to plan) to upgrade one pub every six months for the next five years, thereby achieving, hopefully, a concomitant upsurge in profit and beer consumption. The refurbishments would encompass a fine balance between maintaining each pub’s image as a traditional local, while simultaneously increasing its appeal to a wider, more affluent market. It was hardly an original formula, but as country pubs were closing at an alarming rate if they chose to remain complacent and didn’t seek means of diversification, it was the only option open that didn’t involve massive risk.

  The Honeycote Arms was to be the template. It would lead the way and establish some sense of house style, though Keith was determined that each landlord should have their own influence, allowing for a sense of individuality. The last thing he wanted to establish was a chain of identikit pubs, yet at the same time if he could exploit the idea of a brand – or at least the idea that a Honeycote Ales pub upheld certain standards – then so be it.

  He had very high hopes of Barney and Suzanna. He knew that though neither of them was a landlord or a restaurateur or had any actual experience of running a pub, between the three of them they had expertise and acumen in other areas. And the Liddiards had generations of the experience they didn’t have. Keith was pretty confident they couldn’t fail, that the way ahead would provide a good living for himself, the Liddiards and the Blakes. But he knew that the road wasn’t necessarily going to be a smooth one and prayed that there was
no eventuality he hadn’t thought of.

  An hour and a half later, Barney and Suzanna walked arm-in-arm down through the village. Honeycote looked like every tourist-board’s dream. Spring flowers were peeping shyly though the wide grass verges that were just on the point of becoming unruly, thanks to the alternating April sun and showers. The biting wind of the day before had blown itself out and the sun had emerged rather self-consciously, looking as if it might nip back behind a cloud at the first sign of trouble. The local stone that had looked rather grey and forbidding yesterday had warmed to a mellow ginger. There seemed to be no continuity of style amongst the buildings: some were handsome, steadfast, perfectly proportioned; others were rambling and slightly shambolic, with Gothic arched door and window frames – Georgian symmetry versus gingerbread chaos. It was saved from total twee-ness by the rugged stone, the alarming dip in some of the rooflines, the bowing of some of the ancient windows and the splodges of bright yellow lichen that liberally studded every available surface. Moreover, most of the houses seemed to be owned by people happy to let their gardens run free as nature intended: there were no severely manicured lawns and hedges, no regimented displays of bedding plants, just a soft verdance throughout – an effect which probably took as much maintenance as a formal garden.

  No one could have walked through Honeycote for the first time and not be utterly enchanted. Even the inhabitants looked hand-picked for their authenticity. A lady in a green quilted jacket walked an elegant pair of Dalmatians. A rosy-cheeked postman cycled his way up the road with a bulging sack of letters. There was even a milkman delivering milk in bottles – a novelty indeed, as for as long as they could remember, Barney and Suzanna had only ever seen milk in cartons. A fat tortoiseshell cat lay on top of a wall observing them shrewdly from between half-closed eyes, as if waiting to report back to the rest of the village that he’d seen the new incumbents of the pub.

  ‘It’s like a film set,’ observed Barney, as the ting of the bell over the door of the post office heralded the exit of the local vicar. A white sports car roared past, its driver clearly in a hurry. Suzanna caught a glimpse of a darkly handsome young man at the wheel, and smiled.

  ‘Right down to the drop-dead gorgeous lord of the manor?’

  ‘So where’s the femme fatale?’ countered Barney.

  ‘Isn’t that me?’ Suzanna grinned. Barney tapped the heel of his hand against his forehead as if feigning forgetfulness.

  ‘Of course. Stupid me. Stunningly attractive girl from London moves to the village and breaks everyone’s heart for miles.’

  Suzanna fell against him, laughing, and he felt his heart skip a beat with joy. He’d just caught a glimpse of the old Suzanna, the one that made up stories about people they’d seen on the Tube, the one that wove elaborate fantasies for them and sometimes pretended to act them out. And already she looked different, her eyes sparkling and colour in her cheeks from the fresh country air and the exhilarating walk, as she made up stories for the rest of the inhabitants.

  Gradually the hotchpotch of houses and cottages that made up the village became fewer and farther between, and they turned down the little lane that led to Honeycote Ales. Soon the magnificent Victorian tower of the brewery itself became visible, topped by the weathervane that always proclaimed the wind to be blowing from the east, as it had rusted up years ago. And underneath the tower sprawled the rest of the buildings clustered round a cobbled courtyard: the offices, the storerooms, the old stables that used to house the dray and the horses – all utterly unspoilt with no sign of extensions or additions, sympathetic or otherwise.

  It was a hive of activity. They could hear the thump of the steam engine that drove the whole brewing process, the barrels being rolled down the long tunnel to the trucks that were waiting to be loaded up, the shouts of men giving each other instructions. Barney breathed in the malty fug that filled the air appreciatively; Suzanna wrinkled her nose slightly, not quite as enamoured, though it was a smell she was going to come to love in time. The whole scene was like stepping back a hundred years. Only a smattering of modern-day vehicles in the car park and a lorry driver chattering into a mobile phone spoiled the illusion; they seemed anachronistic, continuity errors that the director should have spotted.

  They passed the white sports car that had roared past them earlier. Its driver had abandoned it as close to the building as he could, blatantly ignoring the carefully painted lines that indicated designated parking spaces.

  ‘Do you think he’s going to be an arrogant, ruthless bastard who goes round exercising his droit de seigneur?’ Suzanna grinned, continuing the fantasy she’d started.

  ‘No,’ said Barney. ‘He’s probably an ineffectual fop with a weak chin and a speech impediment.’

  ‘God, I hope not,’ said Suzanna fervently. Barney looked at her sideways, amused. He’d forgotten how wrapped up she used to get in the stories she wove; how she used to almost believe them. But before she could elaborate on the tale any further, Keith Sherwyn hurried out with an outstretched hand to greet them and led them inside to the reality of the boardroom.

  In Mandy’s makeshift little office, which had been the object of much resentment amongst some of the other staff, particularly Elspeth, the tiny mobile on her desk chirruped into life, ringing out the tune to ‘Viva España’. Mandy sighed. It was her mother’s ring-tone. Was she up to a phone call from Sandra? She’d have to answer. She’d ring incessantly every five minutes otherwise.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ she said warily.

  Sandra launched into her diatribe without drawing breath. She and Leon, her boyfriend (how could you call a fifty-five-year-old a boyfriend? wondered Mandy), had apparently hit a gold mine. A veritable gold mine. They were setting up Botox clinics up and down the Costa del Sol, raking it in. They needed more people to help. And Sandra had thought of Mandy straight away. When you hit a gold mine, it was most important to keep it in the family; let your nearest and dearest get the first share of the spoils. Mandy pictured her mother in a white coat, bearing down on her patients with a hypodermic full of neat botulism, and shuddered.

  ‘Sorry, Mum. It’s not really my scene.’

  ‘How do you know? You haven’t even been out here to see me.’ The voice dripped reproach. ‘It’s a very good life here, Mandy. Constant sunshine, unashamed luxury. Wonderful people.’

  Privately, Mandy doubted that.

  ‘And it’s about time you found your nitch. You’re not going to find it there, stuck in the depths of the dreary old countryside, working for your father.’

  Mandy wondered what on earth her nitch was. Was it like a G-spot? Sandra droned on relentlessly.

  ‘You’re falling into the same trap that I did. I spent the best years of my life working for my father at the garage.’ She pronounced garage to rhyme with marriage. ‘Then I met your father. That, of course, was my really big mistake. Nearly twenty years I was virtually a prisoner, a slave to the household, making sure everything was just so. It’s a good job I came to my senses. It’s only now I’ve really bloomed. Blossomed. I’ve found my nitch, Mandy, and I want you to find yours.’

  It suddenly dawned on Mandy that what her mother was on about was finding her niche. Ironic, really, because if it was anyone’s fault she hadn’t found her niche, it was Sandra’s. From the moment Mandy had decided to live with Keith when her parents had split up, Sandra had been trying to lure her back, regain her sympathy, and had used every trick in the book that she knew. For months, Mandy had dealt with her mother’s drunken sobbing, tantrums and empty suicide threats when she realized Keith was going to divorce her, that he’d called her bluff and there was no going back.

  Eventually, half a million quid had shut her up. By which time Mandy was drained, had no energy left to decide what she wanted to do now she had finished her A levels, couldn’t even think about going off to university. The last year had been such an upheaval, all she wanted was some stability. Keith had told her to take her time, not rush into anything, and had g
iven her a job in the meantime looking after PR at the brewery. Life thereafter had fallen into a pleasant little rhythm: she’d done up the house for her dad, enjoyed Patrick’s company and was conscientious about her work. But now everyone else had been sorted, she felt it was time to think about her future and what she wanted to do. It was strange that Sandra, who had for so many years been oblivious to her needs, should have put her finger so firmly on the spot.

  Sandra was still babbling on, garrulous, ebullient, effervescent. Mandy didn’t know which was worse: Sandra up or Sandra down.

  ‘Why don’t you come over for a little holiday? It’s glorious. I’m lying here now by the pool on my sun-lounger.’

  Mandy could just see Sandra in a tiger-skin sarong, skin slick with sun oil, admiring her airbrushed toes through the biggest Versace sunglasses she’d been able to find at Marbella airport.

  Mandy might need to find her niche, but she knew it wasn’t in Puerto Banus.

  She looked up and saw Patrick standing in the doorway.

  ‘Look, Mum. I’ll think about it, OK? I’ve got to go.’

  She hung up and smiled at Patrick, who said ‘Listen, Mandy’ in a tone that made her realize he was going to say something she didn’t want to hear.

  He told her, as gently and kindly as he could, that her input wasn’t going to be needed at that morning’s meeting. Suzanna and Barney had enough on their plate; he didn’t want them overwhelmed by having too many people there and there was plenty of time to discuss PR at a later date. And even then, he added, Suzanna and Barney were going to have their own ideas about how to handle the publicity. Of course they’d need her help with the administration – which Mandy knew meant stuffing envelopes. She was effectively being relegated to general dogsbody.