by Wendy Holden
And was that the best possible description of Kegs restaurant? Dismissing the chairs merely as ‘candi-striped’ when they were actually ‘comfortable tub seating in bold contemporary colourways’ seemed an opportunity missed to Jason. As for the gourmet menu, ‘locally sauced’ wasn’t spelt like that, nor was pulled pork one word.
The worst outrage, however, was the description of the honeymoon suite as having ‘a bordelo-like ambiance’. Did Ros Downer even know what a bordello – spelt with two l’s, incidentally – actually was? Possibly not; she didn’t seem like someone who knew much about the excitements of sex, although she’d evidently had it: there was a daughter, Rapunzal. The ‘a’ had always irritated Jason. If she couldn’t even spell her own daughter’s name, what hope was there for the estate literature?
However, the insinuation that the Edenville Arms was a knocking shop really could not be borne. Admittedly, the honeymoon suite looked like one. A professional ‘interiors expert’ called Buzzie Omelet had, Jason considered, gone some distance over the top with it.
While the room’s pink wallpaper and black chandelier were startling, its overwhelming feature was a vast black and purple four-poster bed. This, given the smallness of the chamber itself, appeared like a room within a room. It was of an extraordinary height: the mattress was so far from the floor that assistance was required to reach it. A set of small black wooden steps stood against a violet valance to facilitate entry between brocade curtains lashed to the black painted bedposts with hot-pink tasselled ties.
Jason had confided to Mrs Poultney, the pub’s formidable cleaner, that it all reminded him of the inside of an underwear drawer. Mrs Poultney’s eyes had bulged and she’d said she didn’t know what sort of underwear Jason had in his drawer, she was sure.
At the memory of the redoubtable cleaning operative, Jason took a swift nip from the half pint of beer he had concealed under the counter next to the telephone. It was past twelve and a busy lunchtime too. And the Earl, a fair employer, did not begrudge staff little treats like this to keep them going.
But it would take more than a free swig of beer to eradicate the effect of what Ros Downer had said about the Edenville Arms. ‘Bordelo-like ambiance’ indeed.
He would take action, Jason decided. He’d had more than enough of Ros Downer, with her flicky hair, lozenge glasses and psychotic passive aggression.
He would make an official complaint. He would pick up the telephone and call Angela Highwater.
He would, he knew, have to tread carefully. Angela might be the estate’s Director of Human Resources but she was also Ros’s close friend. Jason had not been in post very long, but it was long enough to know that the two of them were as thick as thieves. Though he doubted that even the dimmest thief was quite as thick as Ros.
He dialled. Angela was on answerphone. ‘You hev reached Ingila Haywater, Dayrector of Hewman Resources for the Pemberton Estate . . .’
‘Angela? Jason here,’ the manager began. He felt his resolve ebbing. Perhaps complaining about Ros was a bad idea after all and it was safer to just put up with it.
There was a clattering noise and Angela picked up. She had been monitoring the call, Jason realised with a stab of alarm. Now he was committed to the complaint he wondered whether he really wanted to make it.
‘Jase!’ exclaimed Angela, in her usual voice. ‘Any news?’
Jason had been quick to grasp the Angela form. In order to get anything out of the Director of Human Resources you had first to offer her tribute in the form of gossip. And here Jason was at an advantage; his position as manager of the estate gastropub offered him the perfect opportunity to gather interesting information about guests.
He was therefore one of Angela’s most valued contacts. However, as Jason well knew, he was only as good as his last story. Fortunately, quite a decent one had only just fallen into his hands.
‘A woman from London rang up to cancel her honeymoon,’ he told Angela. ‘She was supposed to be coming today. Can you imagine?’
Jason, who had a soft heart, had felt sorry for the bride. She had sounded devastated about the collapse of her wedding.
‘Well, I bloody well hope you told her she couldn’t,’ was Angela’s robust response. ‘All cancellations have to have twenty-four hours’ notice.’
He should, Jason reflected, have known better than to expect sisterly feeling from this quarter. Angela was as hard as nails.
‘I did tell her,’ he said. ‘And then she rang back and said that she’d decided to come after all and was bringing a friend with her instead.’
‘What sort of a friend?’ Angela’s voice was suspicious.
‘Another woman.’
There was a triumphant exclamation from the other end. ‘A likely story! It’s a gay wedding and it has been all along. She just didn’t want to admit it. So she pretended her straight wedding had broken down and got her friend in that way.’
Jason marvelled, not for the first time, at Angela’s ability to impute malign motives to the most innocent of people and situations.
‘Why wouldn’t she want to admit it?’ he asked. ‘This is 2016. It’s perfectly legal for two women to get married and go on honeymoon.’
He was rewarded with a contemptuous snort of laughter. ‘Hm,’ Angela said, mock-wonderingly. ‘Let’s think, shall we? Let’s say you were gay . . .’
Jason felt cold, suddenly. He had, he realised, walked straight into this. He had only himself to blame.
‘Or that one was gay,’ Angela apparently corrected herself. ‘Might one necessarily want others to know? Or might one wish to conceal one’s true, um, leanings? As it were? Hmm?’
Jason did not reply, even though it was horribly obvious what Angela was referring to. He was, he knew, widely suspected of homosexuality, although no one ever said so to his face.
And if he was gay, Jason felt, he would have no difficulty admitting as much. He would be out and proud. But his leanings were, even in his own mind, hopelessly confused. It was the not knowing that was the problem.
‘They’re also bringing a child,’ Jason added, trying to set the train of the conversation back on its original rails.
‘Two lesbians and a child!’ Angela exclaimed excitedly. ‘Must be a turkey baster job.’
Jason thought this remark as inaccurate as it was tasteless. But he knew better than to say so. Disagreeing with Angela was fatal. At her worst, she was both thin-skinned and vindictive. This, combined with the undoubted power she wielded as Director of Human Resources, made her the original enemy who you had to keep closer than your friends.
He moved the conversation on to shopping, which Angela loved. She aimed to move with the times, and her clothes reflected this. Despite being north of forty, she invariably dressed like a partying teenager, with hair and make-up to match.
‘I’ve found a great new site,’ Jason said. ‘Called Urban Fox. They do underpants with Latin mottoes.’ He had slipped this in with the expectation of making Angela laugh, but he could tell from the momentary silence that it had fallen on stony ground.
Then she came back angrily: ‘Don’t talk to me about underpants. Don’t talk to me about men full bloody stop.’
Jason guessed that Angela’s repeated attempts to seduce the local lothario had still not met with success. Personally he wondered why she was bothering.
Angela was an influential woman, even if her personal style wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. She had money and power, which she did not generally wield wisely. But at least she had it, whereas the man in her sights was a skint jobbing gardener whose jobs changed every five minutes.
The object of her affections, Dan Parker, lived in a battered council house on the local sink estate. Angela, meanwhile, lived in a flat in a converted mill in the nearby town of Chestlock. Hers was the penthouse and Angela was proud of having got it
for a knockdown rate after the development ran into problems. The mill had, in its heyday (if that was the word), been noted for its cruelty to children, and the first wave of flat purchasers had complained about the gloomy atmosphere. Angela had been impervious to it and had therefore cleaned up.
‘How dare bloody Dan not be interested in me?’ Angela was fuming. ‘I’ve got men queuing down the street.’
Jason politely let this gross exaggeration – if not outright untruth – pass. The person who had them queuing down the street was, for some unfathomable reason, Dan Parker. What so many women saw in someone who could at best be described as strong and silent, Jason could not imagine.
Jason’s main objections to Dan were managerial, however. He was a pest so far as the Edenville Arms was concerned, parking his filthy old van in the car park and eating his sandwiches on the terrace in blatant contravention of the sign ‘These Tables Are Reserved For Customers Eating Pub Food Only’ – a sign which, as it happened, had been put up specifically to discourage Dan Parker.
‘And I’ve heard he’s carrying on with that Birch Hall woman,’ Angela fumed. ‘The scrawny one who looks like a dug-up corpse. What’s she got that I haven’t?’
Jason knew the woman in question. She was half of a couple who occasionally came in for a drink. Angela was right, the woman did look post-mortal: extremely pale and thin, with long black hair. ‘Her husband’s an actor, is that right?’ he asked.
Grimly, Angela assented. ‘He’s on tour at the moment, which is why Madam’s getting her oats.’
Jason decided to change the subject again. The preliminaries were now over; they could move on to the matter in hand.
He took a deep breath and crossed the fingers of his free hand.
‘Angela, my darling,’ he purred, employing the urbane manner he knew she appreciated, ‘I’ve got a little teensy-weensy problem.’
‘Join the effing club,’ Angela responded tartly. ‘How would you feel if Dan Parker passed up the chance to be with you? On second thoughts,’ she added nastily, ‘forget I said that.’
Jason’s response to this was a dignified silence.
‘Point is,’ Angela went on, oblivious, ‘he’s supposed to be one hell of a shag. And I’ve got needs.’
Jason had heard about Angela’s needs. Usually late at night after several large glasses of Chardonnay. He made another attempt to steer the conversation in the direction he wanted.
‘I’ve got a complaint,’ he said, deciding to stop beating about the bush. This got Angela’s attention immediately. There was nothing she enjoyed more than a good complaint. Well, almost nothing.
‘Tell me all about it,’ the Director of Human Resources ordered. ‘Ructions in the kitchen, is it?’ It was obvious from her tone that she was anticipating the opportunity to unflatteringly dissect the characters of everyone who worked there.
‘Ructions, yes,’ Jason said evasively. ‘But not in the kitchen.’
He knew that Angela would not appreciate criticism of her close friend. Yet there was nothing else for it. Bordelo-like ambiance indeed!
He steeled himself for the plunge. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said gingerly, ‘that I’ve got issues with Ros’s new brochure.’
He was immediately interrupted by an exclamation from Angela.
‘Ros! Don’t talk to me about bloody Ros,’ she cried angrily.
Jason unfolded himself from the brace position he had automatically taken. His heart rose. Was Ros in trouble with Angela? ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘Ros,’ Angela ground out through evidently gritted teeth, ‘has just had her job removed from her. That’s all.’
Jason was amazed. ‘You mean you’ve sacked her?’
‘Not me!’
‘Then who?’
‘His bloody Lordship.’
‘The Earl? He’s sacked Ros?’
‘Right over my head as well,’ Angela snarled. ‘I’m the Director of Human Resources.’
‘Well, he is the Earl,’ Jason timidly pointed out. ‘He does own it all.’
Angela ignored this. ‘It’s an insult to me!’ she spat out. ‘A resigning issue, frankly.’
Jason’s heart shot up his throat. He could hardly breathe because of the great hope that filled him. ‘Do you think you will?’ he ventured, crossing his fingers, knees, even his eyes.
‘I’m thinking about it,’ Angela said tightly, but Jason could tell that she wasn’t.
‘What did he sack her for?’ he asked, realising with relief that his own complaint was now redundant and he need not go into it.
‘Said that she’d made a complete mess of the bumf,’ Angela snarled. ‘Said that she couldn’t spell or write. That she was practically bloody illiterate.’
Jason was fighting the urge to cheer. He had always liked the Earl, who seemed just as Earls should be: dignified but understated, grand but un-pompous. Certainly a good deal less grand and pompous than Angela.
‘The spelling is a bit hit and miss,’ he ventured.
‘Yes, but Ros is dyslexic!’ Angela thundered back. ‘Dyslexic people have issues with writing and spelling!’
It was the first Jason had heard of this and it rendered him briefly speechless. Why would you give a job which relied heavily on written communication to someone who could not write or spell? It turned out that the Earl had asked the same thing.
‘I reminded him,’ Angela said stiffly, ‘that the Pemberton Estate is an equal opportunities employer.’
The Earl, Jason now learned, had singled out particular passages in the brochures to support the case for Ros’s dismissal. ‘Bordelo-like ambiance’ was the main one.
‘Was it Ros’s fault if she didn’t realise what a bordello was?’ Angela demanded now.
Yes, thought Jason, but didn’t say so. He was gratified to hear that the Earl had also taken exception to the description ‘chief leisure experience curator’.
‘He needs to move with the bloody times,’ Angela raged. ‘Ros was just using contemporary language, that’s all.’
Jason said nothing.
‘What’s that noise?’ Angela demanded. ‘Sort of panting?’
It was Jason on the other end, punching the air.
CHAPTER 17
Dylan was finally out of hospital and in astonishingly good shape, considering. Thanks to the skill of his surgeons, the scars had healed amazingly well. You had to look closely to see that anything had happened at all. He was, Dylan knew, incredibly lucky.
Now he could pick up where he left off and get on with his life. Except that he couldn’t. A black, angry gloom had descended.
People were constantly asking him what he would do next, but he could answer this only in terms of what he had no intention of ever doing again. Top of this list was writing.
‘You can’t mean it, dear boy,’ Julian said, so purringly it was obvious he was worried. ‘It’s not possible that you’re never penning another mot.’
‘I’ve never meant anything so much in my entire life,’ Dylan countered flatly.
‘But think about it, dear boy. What am I to tell Eve?’
Since their acrimonious exchange in the hospital, Eve had not been in touch at all. She, at least, seemed to have got the message. He had imagined she had told Julian about it, but Julian had not mentioned it. Which did not mean that it hadn’t happened; Julian could be selective like that.
‘Tell Eve whatever you like.’ Dylan did not care if he sounded rude. He liked his agent, but Julian’s refusal to accept his decision was as maddening as Eve’s had been. He was never writing again, and that was that. He just wasn’t an author; perhaps he never had been. The whole thing had been smoke and mirrors. Smoke, definitely.
The other thing that Dylan was definitely, under no circumstances, ever doing again was being
involved with a woman. Mostly because of Beatrice. While the official verdict was that the fire was accidental, and he was outwardly content that it should be, Dylan secretly had no doubt that it was arson. Beatrice had been behind it and had tried to kill him from sheer jealous frustration. Not for nothing had she been smouldering and with a fiery temper. He had frequent nightmares in which she was strangling him whilst clad in a wetsuit, flames coming out of her eyes.
But there was also the blonde in the station. At first, when his memory of the events at Paddington was still unclear, he had been haunted by her face. He knew he had done something awful to her. He also knew that he had not meant to do it – whatever it was – but that she believed he had.
Gradually, as more of the details came back to him, Dylan’s view changed. While Beatrice was clearly the villain of the piece, the blonde was far from blameless. She had made the first, disastrous move; coming up to his table and talking about All Smiles. He had genuinely thought she knew who he was, and by the time he realised that she didn’t it was less embarrassing to carry on than to alert her to her mistake.
The blonde had been at the root of it, really. Had he and she not talked, Beatrice would never have found them together. She would not have put on that last, insupportable display of jealous rage and he would not have finished with her on the spot. Perhaps, had that not happened, Beatrice wouldn’t have set his house on fire and he wouldn’t have been in hospital at all. And Charm Itself would now be safely at the printers, about to launch on an expectant world.
Dylan wished he could tell the blonde what the consequences of her action had been. How he had suffered. While she, presumably, had got on with her life and forgotten all about him.
So work was over. Relationships were over. The only question remaining was where – or not – he was living. Not at home, definitely. His parents, much as he loved them, were driving him mad. His mother was obsessed with the idea of cheering him up, not understanding that he would never be cheerful again and it was unreasonable to expect him to be.
