It had always just been Tiona and her mother. She had no idea who her father was; didn’t even know if her mother knew. He was never mentioned. From the age of three to fourteen, Tiona had lived in an assortment of grand houses, always relegated to the servants’ quarters by dint of her mother being housekeeper.
Susan Tutton was excellent at her job. She ruled the rest of the staff with a rod of iron. Everything was on time, in its place, as it should be. Crisp linen, gleaming cutlery. Fresh blooms cut from the gardens every day, colour-coded to match the individual decor of each room. She was the mistress of delegation and a stickler for detail. Thus Tiona had it drummed into her from an early age how a grand country house should be run. She learned how to gut trout, pluck pheasants, lay a table for a dinner party, make a proper bed, polish silver, at what temperature to serve wine, how to answer the door and the telephone, how to address servants and trades people. Although it was rather a peculiar existence for a little girl, Tiona had never minded. It was like living inside a film. She would sit in the kitchens and watch with wide eyes as magnificent banquets were prepared. She would peer through her bedroom window as stunningly elegant ladies and immaculate gentlemen rolled up to balls and dances and dinners, dreaming that one day it would be her descending from a stately motor car in her finery.
It was only when she was thrust into the reality of the outside world that she found life difficult. She was usually dispatched to the nearest village school, where she suffered from being not properly posh, yet being one up from the rest of the children as she lived at the Big House. As a result, she found herself misunderstood and excluded. She never had anyone back to play, as it wouldn’t have been considered the done thing, and was never asked back anywhere in return. And her mother was always too busy to worry. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job, running a country house.
When Tiona was eleven, they moved to Overswood Manor in the Oxfordshire countryside, and Tiona went in by bus to Oxford every day to school. Two years passed, during which time Tiona became utterly infatuated with Lord and Lady Overswood’s eldest son, Richard, who needless to say paid her no attention whatsoever when he blew in casually on exeat from Marlborough College. Why would he look at her? She was dumpy, mousy, poor and not even very clever.
At Richard’s eighteenth, there was a massive marquee on the lawn and her mother was more keyed up than ever, determined that everything should run like clockwork. Banished to her bedroom on pain of death, the hapless thirteen-year-old Tiona watched longingly from her attic window as carefree, laughing, confident creatures in strapless taffeta tossed their shining manes over their shoulders and drank copious quantities of champagne that they couldn’t handle. By the end of the evening they didn’t look so glamorous as they charged around having piggybacks from Richard and his friends, also now dishevelled and missing their ties. Tiona crawled miserably into bed. It was torture, being on the fringes of such a decadent and hedonistic lifestyle when she had no hope whatsoever of joining in the fun. Sometimes she wished she had a normal, ordinary family who lived in a normal, ordinary house. Then she wouldn’t have any idea of what she was missing. As she fell asleep, she swore to herself that one day she would have a life like this, that she would be mistress of a country house, with a handsome, aristocratic husband and heaps and heaps of posh, beautiful friends and non-stop parties and endless champagne…
One day, when she was fourteen, Tiona walked back from the bus stop in the village and arrived home to find two police cars in the driveway. Lady Overswood spotted her and escorted her firmly into the library, where she was instructed not to move. Bewildered, she waited for someone to shed light on the situation. Eventually she was rewarded with the sight of her mother being led out to one of the police cars and driven away. Then Lady Overswood and one of the other police officers came in with matching grave expressions to tell her what had happened.
It seemed that Susan Tutton had been embezzling her employers by clever manipulation of the household accounts. Lord and Lady Overswood had no qualms about pressing charges, and the resulting enquiry revealed that Susan had done the same at all her previous places of employment, accruing quite an impressive little nest egg. The judge was entirely unsympathetic to her pleas of being a struggling single mother trying to do her best for her daughter. She had, he said, abused a position of trust. In fact, several.
For the two years that her mother was in jail, Tiona was taken into care. There was no one else to take her under their wing. Her mother had no relatives or friends to whom she could entrust her daughter, and none of their previous employers were going to touch her with a bargepole. She’d ended up in Liversmead House, an unprepossessing sixties building on the outskirts of Oxford that was home for thirty or so girls who were in unfortunate circumstances like herself.
The inmates of Liversmead House were a tough lot whose backgrounds and stories were harrowing and heartbreaking. They were wild and volatile. Cat fights often broke out. Yet for some strange reason, they were intrigued by Tiona, and didn’t exclude her. Due to her accent and manners, they dubbed her ‘Lady Di’, and set about educating her in their ways.
Thus Tiona learned about credit-card fraud, fiddling the DSS – sick benefit, housing benefit – how to tell good drugs from bad, how to turn tricks for men, how to shoplift then take back the goods for a refund, how to pick a lock, hotwire a car. Not that she was planning on using most of the information. But it certainly gave her the tools for survival, because she was going to have to learn to stand on her own two feet.
She left the care home the day she was sixteen. By then, she had lost her puppy fat and become curvaceous rather than dumpy. Her hair had lost its greasy, lank appearance and was thick, soft and bouncy. She didn’t care about her mother, where she was or whether she was coping. Tiona was just looking out for number one.
By using a combination of what she’d learned at Overswood and Liversmead, Tiona carved out quite a little lifestyle for herself. Her Sloaney exterior belied the criminal tendencies underneath. No one ever suspected her of theft or fraud. Her upper-class accent and perfect manners, combined with her feminine dress sense and china-doll prettiness, put her beyond suspicion. Tacking Price on to Tutton to give herself a double-barrelled surname added to the smokescreen. She glided from job to job, carrying out her duties impeccably but always finding a devious way to line her own pocket, moving on well before the alarm was raised, taking with her glowing references. If she’d learned one thing from her mother it was not to be complacent: looking back on it, Susan Tutton had got too comfortable at Overswood Manor, and had become greedy.
She moved around the countryside in search of the ideal town in which to settle. So far she had eschewed Bath, Guildford, York, Cheltenham and Windsor. When she arrived in Ludlow, she knew she’d found her resting place. A country town with a hint of sophistication, that wasn’t either too bumpkinish or pretentious, where she could blend into the background. And it was far enough from London for the inhabitants to have a certain lack of cynicism, so she would be able to operate without rousing suspicion.
She secured herself a position at Drace’s, and soon became Hamilton’s right-hand woman, taking over all the valuations. It wasn’t long before she met the unscrupulous and sexually magnetic Simon Lomax. He wasn’t her ideal man – he was too flash, too rough round the edges, while she wanted someone refined and educated – but they recognized a bit of themselves in each other, a mutual willingness to take risks, and it sparked a chemistry between them. They indulged in several boozy lunches and some filthy sex before hitting upon their mutually profitable scam. Before long Tiona had accrued enough cash out of it for a substantial deposit on a house.
What she never quite realized was that she was the one being compromised by the deal, that she was being manipulated, that she was the only one with anything to lose. For if she had few scruples, Simon Lomax had none, and he was happy to use his hold over her to get what he wanted. For the time being she was hooked on the two needs h
e could supply: sex and money.
Her one remaining ambition was to recreate for herself the lifestyle she had grown up on the edge of. She still wanted to be lady of the house, though her aspirations weren’t as high as they once had been. She didn’t want anything as grand as Overswood; she knew now that the responsibility of a house like that was bloody hard work. One was forever having to let the paying public crawl all over the place or serve teas or open a safari park, which wasn’t the idea at all. Tiona wanted an easy life.
The day she met Christopher Drace, she knew he was the one to give her what she wanted. He might not be titled or extraordinarily wealthy, but she knew she would be able to catch him in her snare. She’d seen Lydbrook House, as Hamilton had often invited her for supper over the past couple of years. To Tiona, it was perfection. She imagined presiding over dinner parties in the dining room, her own little pair of gun dogs sprawled in the hallway, buying a pretty little chestnut mare to put in the long-disused stable block, joining the hunt…
She didn’t worry that Christopher was already married with children. In fact, that almost made it easier. And it took the pressure off her to produce an heir. English men were obsessed with procreation, and Christopher already had two fine, healthy sons who, if her calculations were correct, would be off to boarding school before two years were out – she congratulated herself on planting that seed the evening before.
This evening, as the hands of her pretty carriage clock moved towards midnight, Tiona knelt in front of her doll’s house and opened the doors. They swung open to reveal three elegant floors, all meticulously fitted out in period detail and where she spent long hours living out her fantasies. There was the little Tiona figure – a blonde doll with an array of swishy, elegant clothes. At the moment she was naked, in the rolltop bath, wallowing in her scented suds before getting ready to go out for the evening. Tucked up in the nursery on the next floor were four beautiful blonde children, fast asleep. In the room next door was nanny, thick-ankled and hairy-lipped, as nannies should always be.
And in his dressing room, putting in his dress studs in front of a cheval mirror, was a tall, elegant man with sandy hair. Christopher.
Tiona smiled as she picked him up and walked him into the bathroom.
‘Darling, we’re going to be late for the hunt ball.’ The Tiona doll stepped elegantly out of the bath. The Christopher doll picked up a towel from the rail and came over to dry her. He found her damp, deliciously scented body so irresistible that it wasn’t long before he was pleasuring her on the bathroom floor.
‘You’re gorgeous. Delicious. I just want to eat you all up,’ groaned the Christopher doll, as he brought the Tiona doll to the brink of an earth-shattering climax.
Just then, in real life, there was a gentle rat-a-tat-tat on the door. Tiona’s lips curled into the sweetest of smiles. OK, it had taken him twenty-four hours – twenty-four hours that in her opinion could have been better spent – but she had been confident. If he’d needed time to think about it then so much the better – it meant he’d made up his mind in the cold light of day that it was the right thing to do. Gently, she popped the Tiona doll back in the bath, sent Christopher back to his dressing room, closed the front of the house and went to open her own front door.
He stood leaning against the door jamb, swinging a bottle of champagne between his fingers. Tiona thought he looked divine. He wasn’t classically handsome, but with those long rangy limbs, that boyish smile, that reticence combined with confidence, he was the archetypal Merchant Ivory hero.
‘I wondered if you fancied a nightcap?’
Tiona stood back to let him in.
24
As soon as she’d spotted Jamie leave Olivier’s side and greet the new arrival, Claudia had given an inward cheer and planned her next move. Olivier’s face had fallen like the guillotine, and he’d stalked into the house through the French windows. This was the chance she’d been waiting for. Three glasses of Bucklebury Folly and the Preston brothers’ herbal offerings had numbed her anxiety. The boys had spent all evening telling her she was the most gorgeous female at the party, giving her the confidence boost she needed. She felt quite her old self.
She rose gracefully to her feet, ignoring the protests from the Preston brothers. They were supine on the rug beside her, too stoned to get up. They tugged at her trouser legs, begging her not to go. She kicked them off good-naturedly.
‘For heaven’s sake, I’m only going to the loo.’ Satisfied with her explanation, and urging her not to be long, they fell back on to the rug.
Olivier was sitting cross-legged in front of the fireplace, lighting matches from a box of Swan Vesta and tossing them on to the unlit logs. Claudia flopped into a nearby battered leather chair.
‘Penny for them,’ she said softly.
Olivier looked up.
‘Only a penny?’ he said drily. He wondered if she had any idea of the offer her father had made him earlier in the evening. Judging by her reaction, he decided not, as she looked at him rather oddly.
‘It’s a fantastic house, isn’t it?’ she said, looking round the room.
It was a million miles from Kingswood, with its heavily gilded Italian furniture bought from a swanky showroom in Birmingham, the elaborately swagged curtains – or drapes, as the interior designer called them – hanging off poles as thick as a man’s arm, the plush Axminster carpet that ran through the entire ground floor of the house like Astroturf. Everything was perfectly coordinated – right down to the jardinières stuffed with artificial flowers and twizzly bits of stick sprayed gold.
But in this room, absolutely nothing matched. Faded chintz chair covers were peppered with tapestry cushions trimmed with velvet, billowing striped silk curtains puddled on to the dark oak floorboards, a tartan rug was thrown over the back of a fraying chair. And the walls could barely be seen, as they were totally smothered in works of art in mismatched frames.
‘Amazing pictures,’ said Claudia, somewhat in awe. The artwork at Kingswood consisted of reproduction Russell Flints and garish still lifes of fruit run up by nimble-fingered Taiwanese.
‘Paintings,’ Olivier corrected her. ‘Jamie’s mother did most of them.’
‘It’s really sad,’ said Claudia wistfully. ‘Did you know her? Jamie’s mother?’
‘Yep,’ said Olivier shortly.
‘What was she like?’
Olivier shrugged.
‘She was a vain, self-centred, hypocritical, neurotic bitch.’
Claudia looked at him in horror.
‘You’re kidding?’
Olivier didn’t answer for a second.
‘In my opinion. Most people thought she was a fucking goddess.’
Claudia raised an eyebrow at his bitterness.
‘So is Jamie like her?’ she asked casually. She thought it was better to bring the opposition into the equation, just to gauge his reaction.
‘No,’ said Olivier, very definitely. ‘Jamie’s absolutely nothing like her at all.’
There was silence for a moment. Olivier stared moodily into the fireplace, as if there was some sort of answer lurking in there, and carried on lighting matches. Claudia reached into one of the pockets of her cargo trousers and pulled out an immaculately rolled joint that the baby Preston had given her for a rainy day.
‘Do you want to light this, before you run out of matches?’
Olivier took it from her wordlessly. He looked at it for a moment, remembering what Ray had said about Claudia being in rehab, wondering if this was going to send her hurtling back down some slippery slope. Then he decided he didn’t care. She wasn’t his responsibility, after all.
Rod was sitting back on a pile of cushions, an empty plate beside him and a full glass in his hand, thanking God for giving him the courage.
His dance with Jamie had been interrupted by an insensitive guest about to make his departure who hadn’t recognized the invisible bubble they were in, the enchanted circle that set them apart from everyone else. Bu
t it didn’t matter, because in that precious few moments the twelve years they had spent apart had been reduced to as many seconds. And Rod recognized that the spark he had always felt was missing in his marriage was not totally elusive. It was just a question of finding it with the right person.
He shuddered to think what he would have missed if he’d lost his bottle in the pub and sought solace with Foxy instead. He would probably never have been given the chance again. The slender, silken thread of magic that joined his soul to Jamie’s would never have been reconnected; it would have remained floating unhappily in the air, like a snapped spider’s web, searching in vain for something to latch on to.
Now the two of them were willing the party to end, biding their time, waiting for the moment when they could be alone to rediscover each other. Every now and then Jamie flitted off to say goodbye to one of her guests, who – now it was gone midnight – were starting to drift off, albeit reluctantly. And Rod found himself circulating. He knew quite a few of the people there. He’d done the Prestons’ kitchen, and some of their friends’. Hilly, of course, was thrilled to see him there, and had to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying something indiscreet. She was a romantic old soul, and wise. She knew when two people belonged together.
Half an hour later, Olivier’s mood had lifted. He’d been irritated at first when Claudia had invaded his space, but she was proving quite a welcome distraction. She’d kicked off her shoes and was sprawled over her chair, her legs hooked over one arm, her long, tousled hair hanging over the other.
‘I’ve only been skiing twice,’ she was telling him.
‘Once with school and once with some mates. We had a chalet in Val d’Isère. It was fantastic.’
Wild Oats Page 29
