Hubble Bubble

by Christina Jones

  The village hall – decked with morose hand-gummed paper chains in sepulchre brown and dung green, and several sinister, cross-eyed, cotton-wool snowmen made by the baby class of Hazy Hassocks mixed infants – was buzzing. Mitzi, in charge of Bath and Beauty as always, had a zillion things on her mind.

  The wedding plans were going well. She and Doll and Lu had been into Reading and bought The Dress. It was a classical, shimmering, white satin pillar with a white swansdown boa, long white gloves and a rather elaborate tiara. Mitzi thought the dress was ravishingly beautiful but probably far too summery. Doll had said her hot flushes which seemed to have taken the place of morning sickness, would provide more than enough inner warmth.

  Lu had been amazingly acquiescent about her bridesmaid’s dress. In fact, because of Shay, Lu seemed to be wandering about in a pink fluffy cloud all of her own. Speaking of which, she’d refused to wear pink, of course, or pale blue or lilac, but had been reasonably happy with dark-red silk and had even agreed to have some crimson beads mixed with holly and ivy in her braids. As they’d guessed, she’d totally refused to have her hair done for the occasion, but Doll had been happy to meet her halfway. Especially as Lu’s beloved DMs were being replaced by some rather elegant high-heeled red satin stilettos.

  Mitzi had spent ages over her Mother of the Bride outfit, settling eventually for a long medieval-style dress in emerald green velvet which made her feel a bit like Guinevere and set her red hair off a treat. Also, as one of the wedding recipes in Granny’s book was Green Gowns, Mitzi had felt it was very apt.

  Granny Westward’s spikily written addendum hinting that Green Gowns, having aphrodisiac properties and therefore being suitable for weddings, had derived from the countryside expression ‘give a maid a green gown’ which in turn translated into making love to the local village strumpet in the fields, had amused her hugely. She’d shared the snippet with Richard and Judy but felt it was maybe a scrap of information too far for her daughters.

  The vicar had agreed to fit the Christmas Eve wedding in late afternoon between the Carol Service and the kiddies’ Christingle procession; suitable music had been chosen; Otto and Boris had been wonderful about having the self-catered reception in The Faery Glen; and Lance had said he’d foot the bill behind the bar – which, Mitzi thought, was brave of him, knowing the Hazy Hassockers’ ability to consume alcohol at someone else’s expense.

  So really, apart from firming up which of Granny Westward’s recipes would, alongside the already chosen Green Gowns and Dreaming Creams, provide the wedding breakfast, the ceremony was more or less done and dusted.

  Which left Hair, of course, in a scary ten days’ time, and the rest of the Baby Boomers’ ever-growing activities, and her party food business, and the Christmas Day Lunch for the lost and lonely, and of course Joel.

  Mitzi glanced at the clock. Quarter to twelve. Only fifteen minutes before the doors would be unlocked. There was already a queue outside, stamping its feet in the bitter north wind, and blowing on its collective fingers. Tarnia, who was opening the Fayre, should be here at any moment.

  Suggesting they invite Tarnia as guest of honour had, Mitzi thought, been a stroke of genius on Joel’s part. Tarnia, deciding it would be a wonderful opportunity to bring along the High and Mighties that she and Snotty Mark were desperate to impress as a tangible example of their multitudinous good works in the village, had accepted with alacrity. And it meant that activities in the village hall would be safe now for as long as Tarnia still angled for a gong.

  Joel had said that New Year’s Honours recipients were notified some time before the public announcement, so this may well be Tarnia’s last chance to impress. Mitzi hoped Tarnia didn’t realise it. It would be handy to get away with Hair and the Christmas Day feeding frenzy before Tarnia and Snotty Mark reverted to being the Sodding Snepps again and refused to allow the village access to the hall.

  The Bandings, who were never allowed to run a stall, were helping Mrs Elkins from Patsy’s Pantry price the clothes on Nearly New. As they were trying everything on – a slow process because of the cycle helmets – and admiring one another with squeals of delight, it wasn’t progressing very quickly. Mrs Elkins shot the occasional venom-filled glance in Mitzi’s direction.

  Mrs Elkins had sadly taken umbrage over the rumours that Mitzi would be making and baking for village parties. She guarded Patsy’s Pantry’s celebration cake and gala pie takeout business with dogged tenacity. It had made not a jot of difference that Mitzi, over an iced fancy and what passed in Hazy Hassocks for a skinny latte, had assured Mrs Elkins there was room for them both, and Granny Westward’s recipes wouldn’t encroach on Patsy’s Pantry’s very specialised clientele. Mrs Elkins had remained unconvinced.

  ‘Oh, please – no don’t touch those.’ Mitzi was dragged from her mental list-checking by the awful sight of Trilby Man trying to prise the lid from a small Tupperware box. ‘They’re mine.’

  The box contained a few early prototypes of the Green Gowns and Dreaming Creams. Mitzi was going to pop them round to Doll and Brett after the Fayre was over to see what they thought. Of course they needed a bit of work: the Creams looked like lopsided and lumpy snowballs; the Gowns were rather livid green whirligigs – as Granny Westward said the colouring had to be natural, and only freshly collected and squeezed chlorophyll from juicy grasses would do, Mitzi felt she may have overdone the greenness. She certainly didn’t want Trilby Man test-driving one and rushing off into the freezing meadows with the local tart.

  ‘Putting a few choice bits away for yourself, are you? Stallholders’ perks? Stocking fillers for the family? Ah, well, can’t say I blames you, duck.’ Trilby Man stopped trying to open the box and cracked his knuckles. ‘Well, must get on. If you changes your mind about watching the rehearsal later you’ll be more than welcome. And—’ he peered at her ‘—have you done something to yourself again?’

  Mitzi, pushing the Tupperware box out of sight and trying to hide a litre bottle of fluorescent purple Primitive Passion behind a row of talcs, shook her head. ‘Not that I’m aware of. Oh, God – this isn’t another of your cruel-to-be-kind homilies, is it?’

  ‘Uh? Nah. Just there’s a bit of a sparkle about you, if you gets my drift. Probably something to do with that thuggy looking dentist what you’re knocking about with. Well, duck, you enjoy it while it lasts. He’s far too young for you, of course. He’ll be running for the hills the minute he sees you without your all-in-one.’

  Mitzi bared her teeth and growled at Trilby Man’s retreating figure. It was actually something she’d thought herself many times in the wee small hours when sleep eluded her. But she really didn’t need Mr Tell It Like It Bloody Is speaking her worst fears aloud.

  Reasonably trim as she was, and fit for her age, she knew that close up her body was definitely crêpey, definitely dimpled, definitely sagging southwards. Joel may well be happy with her clothed – but naked? Not a bloody chance!

  ‘Christ!’ Mitzi muttered to herself. ‘Who am I trying to kid?’

  ‘Talking to yourself?’ Tarnia’s drawl echoed from over her shoulder. ‘You really ought to get out more, Mitzi. I knew once you’d retired you’d go strange. Living alone isn’t natural.’

  Mitzi looked at Tarnia and groaned. The Botox Queen, clearly going for the festive look, had eschewed her usual pink and was dressed in a tight scarlet 1960s-style suit – all nipped-in waist and pencil skirt – with stilt-high spiky black boots, and looked younger than Lu.

  ‘Hi, Tarnia,’ she forced a smile. ‘You look nice. And I don’t live alone. I’ve got Richard and Judy – and Lu, and Shay a lot of the time these days too.’

  ‘You can’t count animals or your hippie daughter and that scruffy retro boyfriend of hers. I’ve seen ’em together. They look like illegal aliens slouching round the village. You know exactly what I mean,’ Tarnia batted inch-long blue eyelashes up and down Mitzi’s body. ‘You need a man. Mind, you really need to do something about yourself. It’s probably to
o late to catch anyone worthwhile. You’ll only end up with the sad and desperate ones – if you even get that lucky. No wonder you couldn’t hold on to Lance. Mind you, young Jennifer takes care of herself, if you know what I mean. You can never start too early. I’ve exfoliated and moisturised every day since I was twelve.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ Mitzi muttered, really, really not wanting to hear about Tarnia’s, and more especially Jennifer’s, constant quest for eternal youth. ‘And bully for Mrs Blessing Mark Two. Great abs and glutinous maximus apparently. Such a shame her workouts never stretched to her cerebellum. Have you got your speech ready?’

  ‘Speech?’ Tarnia raised her eyebrows. The rest of her face remained glued in place. ‘I’m not making a speech to this lot. My people—’ she waved a skinny, scarlet-taloned hand towards a clutch of overdressed and overfed people who were staring at Lav and Lob wearing most of the Nearly New stall with mounting horror ‘—only need to see me here, mixing with the riff-raff, being charitable. No, I’ll just say I declare the damn thing open and hope to God I get out without catching some sort of infestation.’

  Mitzi grinned. ‘You’ll probably be immune seeing as your Mum is running the tombola.’

  Tarnia, who hadn’t spoken to any of her Bath Road Estate relatives for years ever since she and Snotty Mark had won the pools, gave a little shriek. ‘Jesus Christ! She isn’t, is she?’

  ‘Yep. Along with two of your sisters, Sharleen and Arlene, I think, and your Auntie Ada.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Tarnia shuddered. ‘I hope they don’t get rowdy when I start to speak. Still, I suppose I can always explain them away as jealous hecklers or inbreds or something.’ She tried to furrow her brow and couldn’t. ‘Damn it all. I’ll simply have to keep my people away from that side of the hall then – and don’t you dare say a word.’

  ‘Me?’ Mitzi raised innocent and free-moving eyebrows. ‘As if …’

  ‘They haven’t seen me, have they? The Dregs?’

  Mitzi shook her head in disgust. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. I know they loathe you as much as you loathe them. It’s none of my business. And those aren’t for sale.’

  Tarnia had picked up the small Tupperware box from the trestle table and was attempting to insert her talons under the lid.

  ‘Why not? Aren’t I supposed to purchase something to make it look as though I’m part of this sad affair? Oh!’ The lid flew off with two of Tarnia’s false nails. ‘Shit! Bloody hell! What are these? Bath cubes?’

  ‘They’re sort of cakes. For Doll. Later. Not for sale.’

  Tarnia’s eyes stretched into what would have to pass for an expression. ‘Your cakes? Like those little brownies you made for me? I must say, Mitzi, crap as you always were at Domestic Science at school, you have improved recently. They were – um – rather special. Look, let me have these for my people. I’ve promised I’d buy something from this load of rubbish and I’d trust you more than the rest of the hoi-polloi. Look, there you are – fifty quid in your box – a fairish price for a few fancies, and for keeping your mouth shut about The Dregs being anything to do with me … Deal?’

  ‘No … Yes … Oh yes, I suppose so,’ Mitzi nodded. What did it matter? She could always make some more Dreams and Gowns for Doll, couldn’t she? And fifty pounds was an awful lot of money for the village hall.

  Tarnia stretched her mouth into a smile. ‘I knew you’d see sense. Good girl. Now, let me go and find the others. And remember what I said about taking yourself in hand. Although forget about Atkins. It’s so yesterday. I’ll send you a copy of the South Beach Diet. It might help you lose your middle-aged spread.’

  ‘Oh, sod off,’ Mitzi muttered as Tarnia undulated away to be group-hugged by her cronies. ‘Oh, God!’

  The village hall doors had been opened and with a roar of giddy gusto Hazy Hassocks in buying mode flooded in.

  ‘Wait! Wait! Wait!’ Trilby Man, who had turned into Mr Ubiquitous, screamed into his microphone from the stage. ‘You might be in, but you can’t start spending yet! Put that down!!!! Down! Now! Right – I’d like to welcome our kind benefactor, Mrs Tarnia Snepps, to make the official opening.’

  ‘Huh,’ Mitzi muttered again, fighting a losing battle with a battered box of Tweed. ‘It’ll be Lady Snepps this time next year if she gets her way. Still, if it means the village retains the use of the hall I suppose I can live with that. But I’d still like to think my Powers of Persuasion Puddings played a small part in bringing about the change of heart.’

  Tarnia, beaming beatifically at her cronies, teetered across the stage and wrestled the microphone away from Trilby Man. A few people cheered in a desultory manner. The whole of the tombola stall slow handclapped. Tarnia ignored them.

  ‘I’d just like to say how lovely it is to see you all here today,’ she cooed. ‘And how pleased my husband and I are to be able to allow you to hold all these cosy village functions in our hall. We are, as you know, very aware of the importance of rural communities and will continue to do everything in our power to encourage this. Our home is your home – well, no … what I mean is, the village hall is on our land, but we magnanimously agree that you should share in it and—’

  ‘That’ll do, duck,’ Trilby Man snorted as the tombola stall threatened to drown her out. ‘T’aint the bleeding Gettysburg address. They just wants to get their hands on the crap. Wind it up, duck, there’s a good girl.’

  Thunder faced but still clinging to the mike, Tarnia nodded. ‘So, all it remains for me to do is to assure you that these functions in the village hall will continue, and I hope you spend lots today which will swell the community coffers, and it’s my great pleasure to declare the Christmas Fayre open.’

  ‘Thank the flying figgit for that,’ Flo Spraggs muttered as everyone ignored Tarnia and the village hall suddenly filled with the anticipatory roar of Hazy Hassocks in search of a bargain.

  Never ceasing to be amazed at what rubbish people would buy, Mitzi was hectically busy for the next twenty minutes and the cash in her basin grew rapidly.

  ‘Need a hand?’

  Mitzi, pausing in selling an out-of-date foot balm grinned at Joel. She always grinned at Joel. She couldn’t help it. Despite Trilby Man and Tarnia voicing her own dark doubts, she had no control at all over her mouth – or the rest of her body – when he was near.

  ‘Are you sure? I mean – is this really your sort of thing?’

  ‘Christ, no,’ he squeezed in behind the table beside her. ‘I’ve never been to a jumble sale in my life. Saturday afternoons in Manchester were spent at football or in the pub. This is something else. Yes, madam,’ he smiled at an elderly woman wearing two coats. ‘Bubble bath? The nice orange one? There we go – fifty pence please.’

  ‘Very impressive,’ Mitzi said. ‘We’ll make a stallholder of you yet.’

  ‘Better than trying to remove a very reluctant wisdom tooth,’ Joel said. ‘Which is what me and Doll have spent most of our morning doing. Don’t know which one of us was sweating most at the end.’

  Mitzi winced at the mental image. ‘Ouch. And what about the patient?’

  ‘Oh, the patient was fine. Stretched out, warm, comfy, filled with local anaesthetic, in blissful ignorance. It was the staff who were going through the mill. Oh, by the way, Doll said to tell you she’s going straight home to put her feet up. She doesn’t think she can cope with this.’

  ‘Wimps, my daughters,’ Mitzi smiled. ‘Lu has cried off too. She and Shay have gone to the RSPCA kennels to see those puppies again.’

  ‘And are they still all loved up? Shay and Lu, I mean, not the puppies.’

  ‘To the hilt,’ Mitzi nodded. ‘I’m pleased for them, of course, but it can get a bit much over the toast and marmalade.’

  ‘Not to mention sticky,’ Joel chuckled.

  ‘Hello, young Mitzi,’ Gwyneth Wilkins, wearing a massive, ground-dragging, herringbone overcoat and a woollen headscarf, trundled through the throng, with Big Ida Tomms in a trenchcoat and eyebrow-touching c
loche towering behind her, and a snake of equally elderly ladies bringing up the rear. ‘Good bit of work your young Lu did the other night with them pups. You should be right proud of her.’

  ‘I am,’ Mitzi nodded. ‘And it was all thanks to your tip-off apparently.’

  Gwyneth tried to look modest and failed. ‘Makes a change for us to get it right, you mean? Maybe … but nice to know the dear little souls all survived and the buggers at the back of it have been nicked.’

  As Gwyneth started raking through a basket of bath bombs with mittened fingers, Big Ida reached over her shoulder and scooped up a clutch of face masks. ‘I’ll ’ave these, love,’ she beamed toothlessly at Joel. ‘They’ll do lovely for my godsons’ stockings.’

  Joel, to give him his due, made no comment, but bagged up the face masks and took Big Ida’s money.‘Ida’s godsons are both a bit Graham Norton,’ Gwyneth whispered to Mitzi. ‘Nice boys. Oh, and I must say it was well worth coming along just to see Lady Tarnia Muck doing the opening here. She’s changed ’er tune since she and ’er Marquis decided to go for that there titular thing. I’m run ragged doing security for all the charity shindigs she puts on these days. We’ve been doing self-defence classes, me and Ida, so’s we can cope if things turn nasty. Tai Kwon Do and a bit of kick-boxing. We’ve not quite got to grips with that, though. I’m thinking of taking on a posse to spread the load. Now – what else have you got here?’

  ‘Lots of things,’ Mitzi said, firmly pushing the picture of a whole horde of Fiddlesticks pensioners organising themselves into a sort of Charlie’s Angels on Sanatogen to the back of her mind. ‘And it’s nice to see so many people from the other villages here for our Fayre.’

  Gwyneth, whose chin only just reached the top of the trestle table, pulled a face. ‘Oh, me and Ida always likes to come up to town to do our Christmas shopping. See, when you lives in Fiddlesticks, with its ’andful of ’ouses, if you buys at the local bazaars everyone knows who’s given what. There ain’t no element of surprise. We came over in the minibus with a party from The Bagley-cum-Russett Ladies League of Light.’