by Wendy Holden
"My name's Florence," a well-built lady in a turban with the bone structure of a shire horse was informing a thin, bearded man dressed as a vicar. "I've lived here for what seems like hundreds of years. They should call me Renaissance Florence, really."
"Any idea where the drinks are?" a deep female voice suddenly rasped behind Rosie. An inquiring squawk followed her words. Looking round, Rosie saw she was being addressed by a tall blond woman in a sequined yashmak holding a cockerel.
"That way," shouted a couple of portly ancient Egyptians, pointing down the corridor.
"Shocking," said the lady with the cock, her green silk pants swishing indignantly as she followed Rosie past a display of flat irons mounted on the wall, some antique forks in frames, and a mangle festooned with rustic hats. "Catherine St. Felix told me it was like a bloody Harvester in here and she's right. Though it could have been much worse, apparently—this Grabster woman wanted to put a horizon pool in the ha-ha until the planning authorities got involved. Nancy Brooke-Sullivan by the way," she added, sticking out a hand. "And you are…?"
"Rosie."
"Love the suit, darling. Used to have a similar one myself. Hell's bells, look at this." They were passing through the French windows at the end of the hall and entering Samantha's Arabian Nights marquee. "Must have cost a bloody fortune. Talk about sheikhing it all about."
Rose looked round in amazement. Against the billowing purple and magenta silk walls, palm fronds and flaming torches abounded; across the floor, a foot deep in sand, lay artfully arranged piles of tasseled and embroidered cushions. A noisy throng of people dressed as everything from Tudors to Chewbacca shouted and waved at one another, grabbing handfuls of food from the numerous waitresses. One particularly lascivious Roman, Rosie noticed, was grabbing handfuls of waitress as well. Mark, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, Nancy's cockerel erupted in a flurry of feathers and squawks. It was, it seemed, fighting desperately to avoid the proximity of a passing python wound around Sholto, who also sported a sequined fez and the inevitable mobile clamped to his ear.
"Do you always go around wearing snakes?" asked Nancy witheringly. "Rather off-putting, don't you think?"
"It's tame," Sholto shot back. "Which is more than can be said for that thing," he added rudely, gesturing at the still-struggling bird. "Do you always go around wearing hens?"
Nancy bared her teeth in a dazzling smile. "Oh, I always bring my own cock to parties," she rasped smokily. "Far safer than ending up with some stranger's. Don't you think?"
Rosie giggled.
Sholto sighed theatrically and ran a hand dramatically across his forehead. "What are those doing out?" he shrieked suddenly as a waitress passed with a large bowl of cocktail sausages. "It's supposed to be the Arabian Nights, not a PTA barbecue."
Sholto stormed off, colliding with one of the belly dancers. As the girl swore violently at him, Rosie noticed that her tasseled bra seemed several sizes too big for her and she had a ring through her navel.
"Nancy, darling." Three excited men had rushed up to them. They all, Rosie noticed, wore beards, glasses, and tight cotton jellabas topped off with scarves and hats with large floppy brims. "Where on earth have you been?" they clamored.
Nancy turned to Rosie. "Meet Johnny, Jimmy, and Larry. The backbone of the Eight Mile Bottom Amateur Dramatic Society— even though they're all professionals, of course. As you can probably tell from those luvvie scarves and hats. Darlings, this is supposed to be fancy dress."
"Nancy!" chorused Johnny, Jimmy, and Larry chidingly.
"How can you say that," added Larry, rolling his eyes in mock horror. "You know we were all given our scarves and hats with our RADA leaving certificates. We can't possibly not wear them."
Nancy swept up a passing glass of champagne the size of a vase from a waiter with a ruby glistening in his muscular navel.
"Have that boy washed and brought to my tent," muttered Larry, eyeing the impressive bulge in the waiter's white trousers.
"Hands off," commanded Nancy, taking a step closer to the waiter and giving him a look that even through a yashmak would never have gotten past the film censor. As the bulge in the waiter's trousers increased in size, she threw her head back and laughed throatily, revealing a row of teeth of which someone in their twenties would have been proud.
As the waiter stumbled off, reddening, with his tray, Rosie looked on with admiration. Nancy, though undeniably glamorous, was also undeniably heading toward fifty.
"I don't think he speaks English." Nancy grinned, turning back to the group. "Never mind. You can do what I'm interested in, in any language."
"There ain't nothing like a dame," chorused the three actors in admiration. "Nancy's a dame, you know," Johnny told Rosie. "We're all very jealous. We want to be dames too."
"I didn't realize Eight Mile Bottom was so full of superstars." Rosie giggled, halfway down a vase of champagne and feeling considerably more at ease. This is what she had been missing, spending her entire time at Spitewinter. She had never met these merry sybarites in the village shop even. But then, they hardly looked like Mrs. Oakerthorpe's target customers. No doubt they bought everything by mail order from Fortnum's.
The three actors were looking delighted.
"Well, I was once in a film with Tom Cruise," said Johnny as the others groaned. "It's true." Johnny turned indignantly to Rosie. "I was a transvestite alcoholic and tried to pick him up in a bar."
"In the film, you understand," boomed Jimmy.
Johnny ignored the gibe. "Oh, yes," he continued to Rosie, "money was no object, of course. The bottom of the bar was in Dublin and the top in Rome. I adore Rome, of course. The Eternal City is one of my very favorite places. I love nothing better than standing around admiring old ruins."
"Yes." Larry smirked. "You did rather a lot of that at one time, I seem to remember. At that pub in Shoreditch called Brief Encounter."
Johnny glowered at him and slammed his empty champagne glass on a passing tray with such emphasis that the waiter buckled.
"Well, I once had a scene with Judi Dench," Jimmy announced impressively, amid assorted cries of "Oooh" and "Get him!" "We were supposed to be having prawn cocktail at lunch," he added, "and my line was"—he straightened his back and raised his chin before booming—"'This is the best entree of marine origin I have eaten in nineteen years.'"
"Coincidentally," boomed Larry, immediately stealing what thunder there was, "my own favorite theatrical anecdote also concerns a crustacean. When I was doing Hamlet at Stratford…" He paused dramatically. "When I was doing Hamlet at Stratford" he repeated, "we tried every night to make the gravedigger laugh by putting something silly in the grave. Got him eventually with an inflatable lobster."
"Anyway, enough about us," interrupted Nancy, turning to Rosie, her bejeweled hands clasped elegantly around the stem of her champagne glass. "Tell us about yourself, sweetheart."
"Yes. Tell us. Tell us," the actors beseeched her.
"I'm an illustrator," Rosie said. "I draw and paint pictures. Very dull, I'm afraid."
"How absolutely marvelous," declared Jimmy. "I must say I love a bit of a dabble myself. Do you use very thin brushes or quite big ones?"
"Thin ones usually," Rosie said. "But very thick stiff ones are useful from time to time."
"Hear, hear," said a voice behind her. Rosie whipped around to find herself staring into the red and shiny face of what was clearly a very inebriated man. His drunken eyes rolled lasciviously over her. "Very well put. I have to say I agree." He stuck out a clammy hand. "Guy Grabster. How do you do. You've got the most enormous grease mark on the back of your jacket, by the way."
"Oh, no!" Rosie thought with horror of Mrs. Womersley. "Someone must have pressed up against me with a cocktail sausage."
"Lucky you." Guy sniggered, gazing straight into Rosie's cleavage. "This is obviously a better party than I thought."
Rosie looked around in panic. The Eight Mile Bottom Amateur Dramatic Soc
iety had melted away to watch a muscular young man swallowing fire. "Haven't had anything that hot in my mouth for years," Nancy could be heard observing to Johnny.
She was stuck with this ghastly man, Rosie realized. As Guy clapped a hot, sweaty hand on her back, she groaned. Despite the splendor of the tent surrounding her, the rest of the party was clearly going to be torture. The Marquee de Sade, no less. Where was Mark when she needed him? Where was he at all, come to that?
"Excuse me." Someone suddenly threw his arms around Rosie and planted a kiss full on her lips. Her relief gave way to confusion as she realized it was not Mark who was snogging her but the scruffy stranger she had met at the door.
"Friend of yours?" asked Guy.
"That's right," said the stranger.
Guy shrugged. Just then, his favorite big-breasted waitress, sporting tassels on each nipple, strode boldly up to him offering to refill his cocktail glass from the receptacles she carried in each hand. "I say." Guy hiccuped. "That really is a magnificent pair of jugs you've got there." He put his arm around her shoulders and led her away.
The stranger flashed an apologetic grin at Rosie. "Sorry about that. But you looked as if you needed some help."
Rosie nodded. "I did." She was, she realized, blushing. His unorthodox way of rescuing her from her plight had not been unpleasant. It was a long time since Mark had given her a spontaneous kiss. "Thanks."
Her rescuer grabbed a bottle of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. "Come and sit down." He gestured at a shadowy corner flickering with candles and piled high with embroidered cushions.
Rosie hesitated. "I have to find my boyfriend."
The stranger grinned. "All the more reason to sit down then. He's bound to come past at some stage."
He gestured with the champagne bottle toward the glittering masses eddying around the richly draped and dramatically lantern-lit marquee interior. Watching sultan collide with snake charmer and Bedouin bang into belly dancer, Rosie could see she would never find Mark in a crowd that resembled rush hour at Pantomime Central. This man was right. If Mark was here—and he was, she knew it, he had to be—her best chance of a reunion was to sit tight. Increasingly tight, she thought, as the stranger refilled her glass.
"Know that type," he observed conversationally. "Bit of an arsehole. What my girlfriend used to call MTF. Must Touch Flesh."
Rosie spluttered on her champagne. "What do you mean? You haven't even met him yet."
"Calm down. I don't mean your boyfriend. That guy you were talking to. Bit of a lech."
"Oh. Yes." Rosie suddenly felt exhausted. Her nerves were raw with lack of sleep as well as everything else. If only Mark would make an appearance. Then she could go home to bed, safe in the knowledge that he still walked the earth. She stared hard at the crowd.
"We never introduced ourselves," the stranger said, smoothing out a cushion and gesturing for her to sit down. "I'm, um, Kevin."
"Rosie."
"What do you do?"
"I'm an illustrator. How about you?"
He ignored the question. "An illustrator?" he repeated eagerly. "Can you paint? Portraits, I mean."
"Sort of." The one of her mother's golden retriever painted last Christmas had been very sort of, Rosie recalled. Then there was the birthday one of Mark that, on the grounds of being insufficiently flattering, had never made it to the wall. Come to think of it, Rosie wasn't sure it had made it to the cottage.
"Could you…" Kevin started to say, but he never finished his sentence as, at that precise moment, all hell broke loose.
Chapter Nineteen
The guests were arriving in earnest by the time Mark descended the stairs in as dignified a manner as he could, given the weight of his jewel-festooned turban and the difficulties of walking in tight brocade slippers with turned-up toes. He felt utterly ridiculous. The thought of anyone seeing him like this was horrendous, but he did not dare disobey Samantha. There was the screenplay to consider, for one thing. And there might still be a chance of some Eastern promise later if he did her bidding.
The film project, Charlotte in Love, had now attained full-blown blockbuster status. In Mark's imagination, at least. Following the huge success of Shakespeare in Love, the time was surely right for an exploration of the romantic life of another great English literary figure, the creator of Jane Eyre. He already had a cast in mind. Joseph Fiennes, after all, was born to wear a stovepipe hat, while Samantha had whalebone corsets written all over her. Which would come in handy if, as he planned, Charlotte in Love spawned a whole series of Authors in Love, next up, the similarly underpinned Jane Austen.
As Sholto passed the bottom of the stairs and directed a look of frank appreciation toward his crotch, Mark felt sick. And not only with embarrassment. The pair of ludicrously tight gold trousers had forced the realization, as he struggled to button the waistband, that his previously flat stomach, thanks to all the chocolate chip cookies, was now more cheese board than washboard. The trousers were also agony to wear and possibly ruled out fatherhood on a permanent basis. Having slowly but successfully reached the bottom of the stairs, Mark snatched at a passing champagne glass to drown his sorrows and, he hoped, anesthetize the pain in his abdomen. He launched himself on the variously costumed and screeching crowd.
"Hello," said someone dressed, rather unconvincingly, as a vicar.
Recognizing, through the whorls and refractions of the champagne glass, that it actually was the vicar, Mark lowered his drinking vessel.
"Didn't recognize you. Was looking through a glass darkly," he added, sniggering.
The vicar looked pained.
"How's business?" Mark snatched another brimming glass from one of the constantly passing trays.
"Brisk," the vicar said bullishly. "I've got to go in a minute to attend to a couple of deaths, and there's a marriage to sort out."
"Sort out?"
"Young couple getting wed in a month or so. They want to have 'The Owl and the Pussycat' read out during the service, but I've found out it's only because the groom wants to hear the word 'pussy' in church."
As the vicar disappeared toward the front door, Mark staggered through the entrance to the marquee, narrowly missing a pair of ridiculous stuffed sheep.
"Hi," drawled someone to the side of him. It was the thin girl he had met on the hillside earlier in the afternoon. All traces of tie dye and cobwebs had gone; a silver-sequined yashmak, a glittering silver bra, and a matching skirt split to the thigh were their somewhat spectacular replacements. The bra, Mark noticed, was several sizes too large.
"I know," said the girl, following his gaze. "Made for someone breast-feeding, I guess."
"Breast-feeding who?" Mark gawked at the capacious cups. "The five thousand?"
The girl shrugged. "Dunno. I just sneaked in, grabbed it, and shoved it on."
Somewhere in the foggy depths of Mark's brain suspicion stirred. An unaccustomed flash of illumination struck him.
"You're not really supposed to be here, are you?" he asked her.
The girl regarded him narrowly. "Why you giving me the third degree, man? You a cop or something?"
Mark stuck his chest out and drew himself up. "Actually, I'm a journalist." At the unwelcome remembrance that he wasn't one anymore, he grabbed at another passing champagne vase.
The girl looked unimpressed. "A couple of my friends from school want to be journalists. They're all doing crap media studies courses now. One of them," she snorted, "is writing a thesis on 'The Significance of the Invisible Questioner on The Naked Chef.'"
"Whatsh that?"
"You know. That woman on the program that you never see who asks the Naked Chef all those stupid questions all the time."
Mark nodded slowly, despite having no idea what she was talking about. What woman? Personally, he made a point of never watching the chirpy TV cook in action; along with every other male of his acquaintance, he loathed the Naked Chef with messianic passion and prayed for the day he suffered a fatal a
ccident on his scooter or burst into flames with the friction of sliding down that nauseating banister. Mark hated to think of how rich he must be. And the fact that a mere bloody cook was taking up space in The Times that could be filled by a trained journalist. Like himself, for example. Bastard. He forced his thoughts off the vile subject.
"You at school?" he asked her. She was quite pretty, really, if you didn't look too closely at the ironmongery.
The girl shook her head. "I split. It was a turnoff."
"Why?"
"The drug scene, for one thing. So dumb."
Mark nodded. "Very stupid. I've seen so many careers go down the tube because of too much charlie." He hadn't—not least because salaries at the paper were barely enough to keep the staff in aspirin, much less Class A narcotics. But he wished to appear worldly-wise.
