Keith told himself not to get his hopes up. There would probably be a queue of people lining up to console her, not least the Dishonourable Bertie. Keith had watched him surveying Ginny with predatory interest, and he didn’t trust him an inch. Bertie had sold him some bricks when he was doing up his house: quite a few had been unusable. This was, apparently, par for the course when you bought reclaimed bricks, Bertie had assured him, and the price reflected that. But Keith hadn’t been taken in. That distrait, floppy-haired English gentleman act didn’t fool him for a second.
‘Do you fancy coming to Barton Court with me? Get a few things for the garden?’
Mandy shook her head.
‘No thanks. I think I’ll have a bath.’
Keith frowned. She seemed tired, which was strange, given that he’d left her lying on her bed last night flipping through a magazine. He didn’t press it, knowing that he risked having his head bitten off if he showed too much concern. She’d been very moody lately. He wondered if it was late-onset adolescence: she’d never been a particularly stroppy teenager. And he didn’t feel it was quite his place to go barging in, questioning her. For a moment he felt a stab of guilt that she was lacking a mother figure, a gentle, feminine presence in the house. Though he supposed that what she’d never had she didn’t miss: his ex-wife Sandra hadn’t had a maternal bone in her body.
The thought brought Ginny into his mind again. She seemed to be the archetypal mother figure: soft, understanding, but without being too mumsy – just someone that would always be there for you. Then he reprimanded himself. He was running before he could walk. And he was quite sure that Ginny, with a pair of twin daughters on her hands, wouldn’t be chafing at the bit for another addition to the brood.
He picked up his keys. A mooch round the local garden centre would take his mind off things. He was going to look at furniture, now the weather was getting warm enough to sit outside in the evenings. He wanted a nice table and chairs, and perhaps one of those swinging sofa things with a canopy over the top.
Mandy breathed a sigh of relief as soon as Keith had gone. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts; pick over the events of the night before without being disturbed. She’d woken early, at about half seven, but had stayed resolutely under the duvet, clinging on to the residue of dreams from the night before, until she’d heard her father pottering about downstairs, dragging her reluctantly into the real world.
She’d got back last night just before her father – she didn’t want to give him a heart attack, turning up on the back of a motorbike at three in the morning. Rick had been happy to drop her off, and just before she went in the house he kissed her on the cheek, touched her lightly on the arm and told her to take care, before driving away into the darkness.
He left her feeling bereft. And she wasn’t sure why. Because in his presence half of her felt on the edge of danger, with a fluttering sensation that charged through her veins and arteries, like a deranged butterfly rushing from her heart to her stomach making her feel quite faint with longing. But the other half of her felt incredibly safe with him, as if he’d always be there to scoop her up and care for her. It was almost a fairy tale, as if she was a distressed damsel and he a valiant prince that was going to protect her from some evil. Mandy knew this was ridiculous, that there was no evil, and that if there were any both her father and Patrick would be first in the queue to fend it off. But even though she told herself this repeatedly, it didn’t stop her fantasizing. She was haunted, possessed.
Not that Rick had made any overtures to her. Far from it. He’d treated her purely platonically, as a friend, introducing her casually to all his mates who hadn’t made any assumptions, just accepted her as one of the gang. They all seemed to muck in together. And the girls had been as friendly as the blokes. They hadn’t treated her as a threat, an interloper. They hadn’t looked her up and down to check out her clothes. And Mandy wasn’t used to that.
Over the past eighteen months, she had become used to being an object of jealousy, either because of her looks, or because she was with Patrick, or because she had a wealthy father, or because of her position. She never tried to rub people’s noses in it, but she couldn’t help it if she had so many of the things people wanted. And because of it she felt they treated her with suspicion and kept her at arm’s length. As if you couldn’t be rich and pretty and nice. And although she had security, Mandy often felt as if she didn’t belong. It had made her withdraw into herself a little bit, which she knew probably made her seem standoffish. But she didn’t know how to break down the barrier.
Sophie had been her one true ally; the person who she could confide in, who understood her. She missed her dreadfully, because she could be frank and open and honest with her. For even though Sophie had been born into the very society that made Mandy slightly on edge, she had her own hang-ups, about clothes and her weight and boys, and sought Mandy’s reassurance in return. And now, even though they e-mailed each other constantly, they couldn’t share their fears and worries in the anonymity of cyber space. It was the sort of conversation you needed to have holed up in someone’s bedroom while you painted each other’s toenails; a cosy, sisterly sort of chat. And try as she might, Mandy hadn’t found anyone else to fill Sophie’s void.
The girls at the brewery, for example. They went and ate their lunch in the staffroom – Pot Noodles or Slimfasts – and compared notes on sex and weight loss. But if Mandy ever went in, a frosty silence fell. The unspoken assumption was that she didn’t have to worry about excess pounds or keeping a bloke, so she wasn’t part of the club. When she’d mentioned it to Patrick, he hadn’t understood why she’d wanted to be friends with them in the first place. But Mandy wanted to be liked by everyone and was shocked when she wasn’t, for no apparent reason.
She’d been thrown into a completely new world and wasn’t at all sure of her place. By dint of her father and boyfriend, she was at the top of the pecking order, yet her position at the brewery wasn’t powerful enough for her to feel accepted at their level. She was out on a limb, floundering, trying to establish herself and nine times out of ten finding herself chewing on a sandwich alone in her office.
And when she went out with Patrick, with friends or acquaintances of his, people he had known for years, she felt a little bit like a fish out of water. They were perfectly pleasant and polite, of course, but they all had so much in common, had known each other for so long, that she didn’t know what to talk about. Meanwhile, they all fell about laughing at in-jokes and talked about people she’d never heard of. She found herself sitting mutely at tables with a fixed smile on her face, trying desperately to find it all amusing and sparkle herself, but often people just talked over her or at her. Either that or the blokes tried to feel her up while Patrick wasn’t looking. But apparently you weren’t supposed to get upset about it, just give as good as you got. When a decidedly married friend of Patrick’s father had propositioned her at a dinner party once, she’d been horrified. Patrick had just laughed and said, ‘Typical Nigel.’ If that was typical, thought Mandy, she didn’t want anything to do with them.
The only one of Patrick’s friends she’d felt really comfortable with was Ned. Big, solid, jolly, happy Ned, who would never have made a pass at her in a hundred years, and would have planted a huge fist on the nose of anyone who’d tried it on. But he was thousands of miles away with Sophie…
So meeting Rick’s mates last night had been a revelation. They were different. They weren’t bothered about money or what you were wearing. They just wanted to have a good time. Sure, they asked her questions, but not because they were nosy, because they were interested. And they included her in their conversations, valued her opinion. She was accepted for herself, not because her dad was loaded. And when they discussed their upcoming trip to Devon for a weekend’s surfing, they begged her to come with them. Mandy had laughingly said she’d think about it.
All day Sunday, she couldn’t think about anything else.
At six o’c
lock that night Ginny phoned Lucy to thank her for a lovely evening.
‘How did you get on with Keith?’
Ginny realized guiltily that she hadn’t given Keith a single thought all day.
‘I thought he was lovely. He asked me to the point-to-point next weekend.’
Lucy sounded pleased.
‘That’s great. I’d have asked you anyway, but I’m glad you’re going with Keith. He’s… a very good friend of ours.’
She wasn’t going to say any more. There was nothing worse than pressuring people into a relationship. She carried smoothly on.
‘Which is more than I can say for Bertie. I’m so sorry – he can be such a nuisance. He’s like a badly trained dog – you just need to give him a good whack on the nose.’
Ginny managed to laugh it off.
‘Don’t worry – I coped. I think I’m probably far too old for him, anyway.’
‘Don’t be fooled by those boyish good looks. Bertie’s nearly forty and old enough to know better.’
‘Hasn’t he ever married?’ Ginny tried desperately to sound casual, rather than delighted that Bertie was closer to her in age than she’d thought.
‘He was engaged to the sweetest girl ever. Tor Lyndhurst. She was worth about twenty of him – an absolute saint. But they didn’t go through with it.’
It suddenly occurred to Lucy that that was who Ginny reminded her of. An older, slightly plumper Tor. Although in fact Tor would be nearly Ginny’s age by now… But she thought she’d better not mention it. She changed the subject hastily.
‘Anyway, so you’re coming next weekend. Fantastic. We’re doing drinks and nibbles in the hospitality tent.’
‘Should I bring anything?’
‘No, no – it’s a Honeycote Ales corporate thingy – everything’s laid on. God knows why we’re doing it, because I’m sure we can’t afford it. But never mind – just bring yourself and a waterproof. It’s bound to pour; it always does.’
Lucy rang off. Ginny hung up, wishing that she could have asked the one question she couldn’t possibly. Was Bertie going?
Lucy bit her lip as she came off the phone. She was still furious with James for bringing Bertie the night before, even though the evening had gone well. But now the penny had dropped about Tor, she was worried.
Bertie had been a shadow of his former self for ten years now. Sure, he was still a rake, a tease, a party animal, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d never really recovered from being stood up at the altar all those years ago. All in all, thought Lucy, behind his merry exterior, Bertie was a tragic figure. In fact, he’d been dogged by ill luck all his life.
For years before he was known as the Dishonourable Bertie, he was known as Poor Bertie. Not officially, but that was how he was always referred to.
His father was Vincent Meredith III, a hugely wealthy American industrialist who had come to England during the fifties and fallen in love with Christina Lake, a doe-eyed debutante of immense beauty but little brain. They had a whirlwind courtship and a fairy-tale English wedding, after which Vincent decided to settle in London and further his British business interests. Sadly, the latter took up too much of his time, and the one thing that Christina craved was attention. With her looks and her exhibitionist tendencies, it wasn’t hard to find, and she became the life and soul of the London social scene. Their mantelpiece was thick with invitations and inevitably Christina went unescorted. There was talk of if not affairs, then at least dalliances with any number of men. She had been a bombshell before her marriage but now, with a large disposable income at her fingertips, she dressed to kill, setting trends and then moving on, always the subject of gossip and the centre of attention, a breathtaking butterfly.
There was a slight hiatus in her socializing when Bertie was born, but she was soon back in the fray. Only this time her joie de vivre was bolstered up by a combination of pills and booze. Giving birth had messed up her system: she couldn’t achieve her previous high without help, resulting in a number of faux pas. Unable to control her medication, she either went way over the top and became aggressive rather than outrageous, or collapsed and passed out.
Eventually some kind soul had a word with Vincent. His wife was becoming a laughing stock; people were no longer willing to make allowances. What had once been amusing behaviour was now painfully embarrassing. Vincent decided that the only answer was to remove Christina from the environment which provided her social life, and bought a massive pile in the Cotswold countryside, to which the Merediths decamped.
Christina wilted in the country. It held no interest for her. She didn’t know a soul, didn’t want to hunt, didn’t want to play lady of the manor. Bertie remembered her drifting unhappily like a ghost around the house, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Sometimes she fell asleep on the sofa with one alight, and he would have to take it out of her hand, stubbing it out carefully in the fireplace. Life with his mother was a roller-coaster ride. Sometimes she didn’t get up till lunchtime. Sometimes she didn’t get up at all. But on one of her good days, she might button him up in his best coat and call a taxi to take them to the train station, where she would get them on the first train to Paddington. They’d go and spend the day at Harrods, where Bertie would be put in the care of one of the waiters in the restaurant and eat Knickerbocker Glories, while she tried on dress after dress. They’d rush home later, laden with carrier bags for her, and humbugs and liquorice from the Food Hall for him, just in time for her to hide her purchases in the wardrobe before Vincent got back, usually on the next train. For he was trying his very best to be attentive.
But there was nowhere for Christina to wear her pretty dresses.
It was a frosty morning, about ten o’clock, three days into the school holidays one Christmas, when Bertie had crept into her room with a tray of tea and shortbread, hoping that she’d wake up in a good mood and that he could persuade her to go and pick holly. Sometimes she was brilliant fun and would smother him in attention and it would be kisses and laughter all the way. And she’d been good so far this holiday. Plus Bertie had heard on the radio that it might snow. He loved the thought of his mother, wrapped up in one of her glorious furs, taking him toboganning.
The room smelled close and fusty. The curtains were so heavy that it might as well be dead of night. He knew his father hadn’t slept in here, as he’d seen him come out of one of the spare rooms earlier that morning, doing up his cufflinks. Bertie drew back one curtain very carefully, just enough to see what he was doing but not enough to dazzle Christina. He took in a sharp breath. The promised snow was falling, thick flakes that were absolutely, definitely sticking to the ground.
He tiptoed very quietly to the bed and balanced the tray on the bedside table. In doing so he knocked over a bottle, but it didn’t matter – the bottle was empty so no damage done.
He leaned over to see if she was awake. She looked beautiful, her long lashes resting on her cheeks. But very pale.
‘Mummy? Mummy! You’ll never guess what!’
She wouldn’t be cross with him for waking her. Not if it was snowing…
For the next few weeks, all the adults seemed to do was whisper in front of him. Should he go to the funeral? Where should he go on Christmas Day? Should he go back to school? And from then on, he was known as Poor Bertie. All he knew was that a light had gone out in his life. And that the smell of Chanel made him feel sick, sick, sick… He’d stolen a bottle from her bedroom, before it was cleared out, and when he wanted to remember her, he took off the lid and sniffed. It was as if she was there in the room with him. He could reach out and touch her curls, her lips…
Thirty years later, the smell of Chanel still haunted him. He’d scraped through school; there was no hope of him getting into a decent university. His father despaired of him and, wanting to go back to his native America, struck a deal with Bertie. He gave him the Dower House belonging to his Cotswold estate – the rest of which he sold off – twenty thousand pounds to invest in a business and a small
annual income. That way his conscience was salved – whatever happened, Bertie had enough to live on – so Vincent flew back to Chicago with impunity.
To his credit, Bertie proved to be quite entrepreneurial. With the money his father had given him, he invested in a mobile disco with two turntables and a huge collection of records and made a packet DJing at society parties. The business grew and he ended up with two marquees which he hired out and a diary packed full of bookings which gave him access to a stream of pretty girls. By the end of the eighties he was pretty much partied out – cocaine, champagne and coitus uninterruptus. Most people were convinced that he’d end up killing himself. He never quite seemed to know when to stop. His driving licence had been taken away, he’d been banned from most pubs and clubs in London, even those that tolerated the most obnoxious behaviour. He seemed determined to burn himself out. And then one night he was hired to do a twenty-first for a stockbroker’s daughter in Putney. Where he met the birthday girl’s older sister and was knocked off his feet.
Tor Lyndhurst was jolly, sensible and pretty in a plump English rose sort of way, but with appalling milk-bottle legs and no dress sense to speak of – totally removed from Bertie’s usual anorexic fashion victim. She was the sort of girl who’d never forget to pack a corkscrew on a picnic, who always wore white knickers because she thought black ones were rather slutty, who always posted her thank you letters exactly two days after a social occasion. But for all that, she was good fun and a great sport, tolerating appalling behaviour and high spirits without actually joining in herself.
She seemed the most unlikely person for Bertie to fall in love with. And he’d never fallen in love before. He’d told every woman he’d ever touched to expect nothing from him. And he was true to his word. He never phoned, never remembered a birthday or even a social engagement. He lived for the moment, and seemed to have no memory of anything that had gone on in the past. Whether that was through choice or drug abuse, no one could be sure. It didn’t seem to harm his social life, though. When all was said and done, Bertie was amazing company. People wanted to be with him. And, of course, he was incredibly generous.
Making Hay Page 19
