Tickled Pink

by Christina Jones

  ‘Yes, of course –’ Posy scribbled frantically, then passed him a sheet of paper. ‘Now, I thought if we just listed what we could offer ourselves, you know, write down our own particular strengths and –’ she glanced up and read his mind. ‘Jesus! You’re so disgusting!’

  Ellis laughed, it was just a thought . . . no? Okay, although I must say I’ve never had any complaints.’

  Suddenly feeling very hot indeed, Posy wrote silently for a few moments. The life skills which she’d listed to Dom on Ritchie and Sonia’s wedding day didn’t seem to have grown at all. None of them would bring money-spending hordes into Steeple Fritton.

  Comparing notes ten minutes later, they’d come up with very little. Leaving Ellis to magic up EuroDisney out of half a page of disjointed jottings, Posy went to the bar for another bottle of wine.

  ‘What you having a meeting about?’ Hogarth snarled. ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Er, no, not really.’ Posy wished Hogarth would warn her when he was going to be chatty. It was quite scary when it happened all of a sudden. ‘We’re trying to think how to put Steeple Fritton on the map – bring in more people and stop Sunny Dene from going bankrupt. Er, you wouldn’t like more punters, would you?’

  There was an explosive roar which Posy took as a no. She scuttled back to the table and had just poured two more glasses of wine when the door creaked open and Lola, looking very glam in black trousers and with a white shirt beneath the black jacket and lots of gold chains, walked into the pub. The Pinks waved their headscarves in thrilled welcome.

  With dismay, Posy realized that Lola had every intention of joining them. Ellis, testosterone flying, had already stood up and was dragging up another chair.

  He grinned. ‘I invited Lola to come along. Didn’t think you’d mind. Three heads being better than one, you know. You two start without me. I’ll just get another glass . . .’

  Posy and Lola stared at one another.

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Lola eventually broke the deadlock.

  ‘Neither do I. When exactly did Ellis invite you?’

  ‘Last week. When he gave me a lift into Reading. I wasn’t going to bother, but I thought if I spent one more night in my room I’d go mad.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your room? It’s one of Sunny Dene’s best.’

  ‘It’s a perfectly lovely room. I have no complaints about my room. I’m just getting rather tired of my own company.’

  They lapsed into silence again. Posy was irritably aware that she again looked like a Marc Bolan clone in her jeans and leather jacket and with her dark curls spiralling all anyhow. Lola looked, as always, poised, elegant and as if she was just about to chair a proper board meeting. She really should try being a grown-up herself one day.

  Ellis plonked a third glass and another bottle of dubious house white on the table. ‘And what have you two come up with?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Okay, well let’s bring Lola up-to-date . . .’ He pushed the notes across the table. They got momentarily caught on the residue of someone’s sweet sherry – probably spilt in 1945.

  ‘Why?’ Posy’s voice sounded very loud. It even stopped the Pinks in their tracks. ‘This has nothing to do with her.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Lola said. ‘I have absolutely no interest in the salvation of Steeple Fritton –’

  Only in other people’s husbands, Posy thought, and glared at her. ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘Because I invited her,’ Ellis interrupted. ‘Because Lola is as rootless and directionless as we are. Because you have to make your own entertainment in a place like this and I not only thought that she would be useful, but that she might enjoy it. I’m actually quite a nice person.’

  Despite her fury, Posy knew she was going to smile. Damn him. He was playing them both. She narrowed her eyes at Lola. ‘And have you come up with some wonderful scheme, then? Something that will put the village on the map?’

  Lola shook her head. ‘Of course not. As I said, I don’t intend to stay here any longer than is necessary. It’s just that until I can find a live-in job then my hands appear to be tied.’

  Ellis perked up at the image. Posy transferred her glare to him instead.

  ‘Oy!’ Hogarth leaned from behind the bar, making the London-weekenders jump. ‘You! Hoity-toity madam!’

  ‘Are you speaking to me?’ Lola’s voice was glacial.

  ‘Yeah. If the cap fits. Did I hear you say you was looking for a job?’

  ‘Well, yes, but –’

  ‘You can have mine if you likes. You looks the part, see, not like them damn kids. Know anything about running a pub?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Posy frowned at Hogarth. ‘What do mean she can have your job? Are you selling The Crooked Sixpence?’

  ‘That I ain’t. Leastways, not yet. But I’ve got other business interests in other places what needs my attention. I’m planning on being gone for a few months but I don’t want to shut this place up while I’m away this time, and I wants someone to keep it running proper.’

  It was the longest speech anyone had ever heard Hogarth make. Even the Pinks were shocked into silence. And Posy was sure she wasn’t the only one who had no idea that Hogarth was Steeple Fritton’s answer to Richard Branson.

  ‘So?’ Hogarth leaned his stomach over the bar towards Lola. ‘You want to discuss it or what?’

  Lola looked around the pub as though someone had just invited her to take up residence on a landfill site, is there accommodation with the job?’

  ‘No. There’s my rooms upstairs of course, but you ain’t having them.’

  ‘There –’ Ellis leaned closer to Posy and whispered, ‘If she accepts the job here, she’ll still be staying at Sunny Dene. Regular money. You can’t complain.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Well, we could discuss it,’ Lola stood up. ‘But it would have to be on my terms.’

  Hogarth lifted the bar flap and ushered her through the debris. ‘Come into my office, then. Let’s put our cards on the table.’ He stopped and glared at his customers. ‘And if any of you wants a drink while I’m gone then it’s tough doodah.’

  The London-weekenders tittered. The Pinks clapped.

  Posy exhaled. Life was very strange. Lola running The Crooked Sixpence? Hogarth having other enterprises? What else could be thrown at her tonight?

  ‘This could be just what we need,’ Ellis said happily. ‘Get Lola in here and the pub might improve a hundred per cent.’

  Posy slowly drained her wine glass, it’ll mean a lot more than that, as long as she cooperates. The Crooked Sixpence could be instrumental in the Steeple Fritton revival plan. Think about it – darts matches, quizzes, a pub football team, theme nights, karaoke. Anything and everything to bring people in from outside on a regular basis and then maybe – oh, I don’t know. Barbecues and barn dances on the forecourt in the summer, and firework displays and well, loads of things –’

  ‘Yeah!’ Ellis’s black eyes gleamed with enthusiasm and he started scribbling things on his sheet of paper. ‘We’d have to have a marketing strategy then, so that everyone knew what was going on. And advertising. I reckon, properly handled, this could be huge . . .’

  But Posy wasn’t listening. It would work, she knew it. She could save Sunny Dene and forget all about Ritchie and Sonia. Well, okay, maybe not forget exactly, but they’d eventually be way down her list of things to fret about. The village would be humming with life and people, Sunny Dene would be in the black and Steeple Fritton would be synonymous with, with . . . oh, she wasn’t sure.

  But she could see it all. All sorts of events building up to ... a day of jollity. A Steeple Fritton Day in the middle of summer . . . There could be a fairground, and competitions and music and lights and noise, and it would be like – oh, like Rio or Notting Hill. In fact, it could be exactly like Rio or Notting Hill if they had –

  ‘A carnival!’ She spoke the words as they formulated thems
elves in her brain. ‘We’ll have a Steeple Fritton Carnival! In June – with events and a huge party and with a procession through the village and floats and fancy dress and –’

  ‘Carnival queens!’ Ellis moved closer to her. ‘We could have a carnival queen competition in the village hall and they’d all wear bikinis and I could be the judge!’

  Posy didn’t even look cross. It would be brilliant – all retro and very villagey and totally wonderful . . . And it could be held year after year, and grow, and people would come from all over the place, and –

  ‘Of course,’ Ellis said, ‘you know you’ll have to get agreement on this?’

  ‘What? From the parish council? Yeah, well they’re not too scary, it’s only the vicar, Clive Bickeridge and a few other old-timers. I’ll deal with them.’

  ‘No, I mean Lola. If she takes over the pub, then you’ll need her to be on your side. The pub will be the hub of everything you’re planning, and if you continue to rub her up the wrong way you’ll have all sorts of problems. Sorry, Posy, but I think you and Lola are going to have to make friends.’

  ‘No way.’

  They glared at one another, then Ellis laughed. ‘Can I hold the handbags then, while you and she slug it out?’

  Posy frowned crossly. Damn Lola. Of course it would be better than Hogarth running the pub, but surely they didn’t have to get on, did they? They didn’t have to communicate at all? Ellis could do all that, surely? If his success with Tatty was anything to go by, Ellis was good with older women.

  The door crashed open, bringing in gusts of icy cold air and spatters of sleet which stirred the dust on the door mat. The London-weekenders looked up and the Pinks, temporarily denied Guinness refills, gave a desultory cheer.

  The newcomer, tall with dark tousled hair, incredible cheekbones, surprisingly slanting green eyes, and wearing denim and leather, sauntered across to the bar like a latter-day James Dean.

  He smiled cheerfully at The Crooked Sixpence’s open-mouthed drinkers. ‘Hi, is anyone serving in here?’

  The American accent sounded amazingly sexy and totally out of place. Posy, who had been rocking on the two back legs of her chair, immediately stopped and bounced forward. ‘Christ! It isn’t Tony Curtis!’

  ‘What?’ Ellis frowned. ‘What him? No, of course it isn’t Tony Curtis. God, Posy, you’re as bad as Gran, thinking that one day there’ll be a superstar in Steeple Fritton.’

  ‘It’s John Cusack!’

  ‘Is it?’ Ellis peered through the gloom. ‘Well, yeah, it could be . . .’

  ‘No,’ Posy shook her head in agitation, it isn’t John Cusack. At least, he isn’t John Cusack. It’s John Cusack who makes me laugh and he looks just like John Cusack and he’s staying at Sunny Dene and oh, wow!’

  ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’ Ellis stood up and beamed at the man by the bar. ‘The landlord is otherwise engaged and the natives are all insane, but I can help you. I’m Ellis Blissit –’

  ‘Flynn Malone . . .’ They shook hands. ‘And that’s real kind of you. I’ll have a JD.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ Ellis slid behind the bar. ‘Hogarth doesn’t stretch to JD. Why don’t you try one of our local ales instead?’

  Whether a local ale would be a reasonable substitute or not, no one ever discovered. Neddy Pink, accordion primed, scrambled through the tables and positioned himself by the bar. With a wheeze and a groan, he slammed into a rafter-raising version of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’.

  While the London-weekenders clapped their hands and slapped their thighs, Martha and Mary Pink whooped forward and with headscarves bobbing and dusty rags flying, leapt into a yee-haw square-dance routine, complete with linked-arm-twirling and Paul Revere yells.

  They were just do-se do-ing to their partners like billyo, when Lola and Hogarth appeared from the back room.

  ‘Excuse me!’ Lola yelled through the mayhem. ‘Would someone mind telling me just what the devil is going on in my pub?’

  Chapter Eleven

  A week later, Fritton Magna was almost exactly as Flynn had imagined it would be. The weather, which of course hadn’t come into the mental picture at all, was an added bonus.

  For three days it had snowed intermittently so that soft billows now made white mobcap toppings across the thatched cottages and low-pitched roofs, and the heaviness had bent the pine trees so that they all looked like Bostonian dowagers with stiff necks.

  English snow seemed very different to the snow in Charlestown, being gentler and smaller and altogether prettier somehow, and only added to the magic of the Dickensian fantasy.

  Flynn’s welcome to Steeple Fritton had come as something of a shock, too.

  Everyone at home had reminded him of the English reputation for being cold and aloof, and told him that it wouldn’t be easy to make friends. Vanessa had said that the women in particular, were bound to be very reserved. So, he just hadn’t reckoned on the warmth of his reception from everyone at Steeple Fritton, especially Posy and Lola.

  He’d taken some pleasure in leaving a message on Vanessa’s voice mail telling her that he was sharing a house with two totally drop-dead gorgeous women who were as friendly as hell and both already in love with him.

  That last bit was a lie, of course, but what the heck more than six months since leaving the States and he was still pretty mad at Vanessa. And they were gorgeous: Posy was like a beautiful tiny rock chick with her spiral curls and her jeans and leathers, while Lola was an elegant ice maiden – a real class act.

  Chalk and cheese, and they didn’t seem to like each other much, but they certainly both seemed to like him. It was very flattering.

  At the B&B, Dilys and Norrie treated him as though he was their own son, the dogs were a dream, and the two old queens who stayed there made him roar with laughter at their camp tales. Even Ellis, who’d seemed to be a bit territorial round Posy and Lola, was really friendly now they’d discovered they had so much in common.

  He would certainly never have had Ellis down for a fellow engineer and steam train fanatic – but they’d been like two kids in a candy store playing with Norrie’s model railway layout that ran through Sunny Dene’s back garden. It was the most incredible set-up that Flynn had ever seen, and to his joy, Norrie had models of all the classic British steam engines, including the Flying Scotsman, Mallard, even Pendennis Castle. And every day, until the bad weather had halted their games, he and Ellis had spent companionable hours routing the trains, devising timetables, and operating sidings and signals.

  The week at Sunny Dene had flown by, and that first night at The Crooked Sixpence – he’d phoned his parents, who were in Norway doing Grieg, and told them all about the traditional folk dancing in the pub which was nothing like he’d seen in the bar in Tralee – had set the tone for his stay so far.

  He couldn’t remember when he’d last enjoyed himself so much.

  And now, at last, he was here in Fritton Magna to meet Great-Aunt Bunty’s solicitor and claim his inheritance.

  They’d arranged to meet outside Fritton Magna Manor, which, in best Agatha Christie tradition, Flynn had chosen to interpret literally, and were now standing in a huddle outside a pair of towering and dilapidated wrought-iron gates while the snow hissed horizontally against their faces.

  Flynn had found no shortage of tour guides for today’s mission. Although Lola had declined the offer to join the party – she was apparently meeting various brewery reps in her new position of The Crooked Sixpence’s temporary landlady – Posy and Ellis, muffled against the cold, had bundled happily into his jeep and they’d been speculating on the short but hazardous journey about what form his inheritance would take.

  Ellis was a newcomer, like himself, so it was only Posy who knew anything at all about his Great-Aunt Bunty.

  ‘She was well-known but very reclusive ... I mean, we rarely saw her in Steeple Fritton. Mum and Dad knew her fairly well. She had some sort of smallholding where she ran an animal sanctuary. She never turned anything away, so i
t was a right old mixture. Still is, I suppose. There was quite a lot in the papers when she died. How she’d left the animal sanctuary to several like-minded friends in the village and enough money to ensure that her work carried on for about five hundred years.’

  Flynn had been relieved by this. He adored animals, but running a sanctuary truly wasn’t in his line of work. Anyway, he was far too soft-hearted to cope with it professionally. So, Great-Aunt Bunty hadn’t left him the business, then. And she must have had pots of money . . . but it obviously wasn’t cash ... Or real estate. The idea of a general store had already been scotched by Posy.

  He blew on his hands as the vicious north wind brought another snow flurry, and wished the lawyer would get a move on.

  ‘Maybe we should wait in the car?’ Ellis suggested. ‘We’re going to be ice blocks if we stand out here much longer.’

  Flynn nodded reluctantly. It made sense – but he loved the cold wind and the snow and the way the village looked like a Christmas card. He wanted to drink it all in and keep it forever.

  ‘Yeah, maybe, but I was just thinking, the inheritance couldn’t be this, could it?’ He jerked his head towards the manor. ‘Great-Aunt Bunty hasn’t left me a stately home?’

  ‘Not a chance!’ Posy had already dived towards the jeep, snowflakes dissolving in her dark curls. ‘Fritton Magna Manor is only a shell and some speculator bought it up years ago to turn it into a health club then went bust.’

  ‘Oh, right. I just wondered why the lawyer arranged to meet here . . .’

  ‘Because it’s the only big building in the village.’ Posy stuck her head out of the jeep’s window. ‘We all know what Americans are like for “big”. Anyway, he probably thought, being a foreigner, you’d get lost without some sort of recognizable landmark.’

  Before Flynn could make some suitably crushing rejoinder about the ‘smallness’ of England, Posy rolled the window closed again and stuck her tongue out at him. He was pulling a face at her just as a sleek silver car purred to a halt behind them. Feeling a stirring of excitement, he gawped as the matching driver – sleek and silver-haired and wearing a sheepskin coat – extricated himself from the plush interior.