by Jemma Harvey
Anyway, it didn’t matter what Hot God looked like, though I was a bit daunted when he said he didn’t have champagne.
‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I never did. It upsets my guts.’
Too much information. Icons aren’t supposed to have guts (or cataracts). They’re supposed to be made of celluloid and live for ever.
Winkworth presented me with a vodka and diet tonic; good anticipation, but it didn’t excuse his attitude. I took a restorative gulp and set about fascinating my host, turning on sparkling charm in bucket-loads (or whatever sparkling charm comes in). Roo had told me Dunblair was informal but I’d still dressed up a little, in a fluted skirt of jade-green velvet and a long sweater sewn with feathers whose deep V-neck showed off my cleavage and the leftovers of my ski-tan. As far as I could see, HG appeared to be appreciating both. Then a woman with the face and personality of a drystone wall intervened, wielding a glass bowl.
‘The children o’ the ungodly shall burrn in the fires o’ heil,’ she announced. ‘Ha’ some peanuts.’
This could only be Morag the housekeeper.
‘She’s a character,’ HG said indulgently.
He would probably say the same of the grinning butler, I thought, my enthusiasm for rock icons cooling abruptly. In my opinion there were far too many Characters in Dunblair. Then Morty gatecrashed the conversation, and it turned to flowers.
The fact that Morty had started his career as a voice-over on paint commercials hadn’t prevented him from becoming an authority on all matters horticultural. With such series as Earth Works, Sparrow in the Garden and the appallingly twee House Sparrow (including interior design), he had become a household name, rather like lavatory cleaner. He had done several books, mainly remarkable for large colour photographs, much deplored by my mother, who hated the modern tendency to turn a garden into an outdoor room and thought nothing should get in the way of the plants. But he hadn’t had a regular slot on prime-time TV for nearly a year, and everyone knows viewers have short-term memory loss. After all that booze and drug-taking I would have expected HG to be the same, but instead they both plunged into a passionate exchange of floral chit-chat, Latin names whizzing to and fro like ping-pong balls. ‘Lavandula conservatoria . . . Floribunda ponderosa . . . Gossiporia austropossum . . .’ You get the picture. My mother always says men love to get hold of a little knowledge and show it off. It’s a guy thing.
I don’t need to do homework. When I want to sound expert, I simply ring Mummy and ask: ‘What’s that awfully pretty yellow flower you’ve got growing down by the pond?’ or ‘What was that blue stuff that did so well the other winter despite three blizzards and a deep freeze in May?’ and she comes up with the answers. Then I can impress the hell out of people who think I’m just a camera-friendly bimbo. Mummy may not have been great at parent–child bonding, but, when it comes to gardening expertise, she’s better than a whole library of reference books.
At dinner we were joined by Russell Gander, the director, and the discussion veered to the historical re-enactment scenes, and which bits of history we were going to re-enact, and how. Should we go for a misty effect of muted colour, slow-motion movement and subtle music, or strong dialogue and dramatic action? Or both? Nigel was determined to script the scenes and Russell was equally determined to prevent him, on the grounds that no academic can write anything using words of less than four syllables. As neither could state his intention openly the discussion began to bubble with suppressed feelings, like a volcano with a plug in the cone. Both of them used phrases like, ‘If I might be allowed to add . . .’ and ‘Let me just mention . . .’ and similar ominous lines. I was sitting next to HG but he got drawn in, leaving me few opportunities for conversational sparkle. I grew increasingly pissed off, Roo looked amused, HG talked about the exploits of the McGoogles as if he had bought the ancestors with the castle, and Morty tried cheerfully and vainly to bring the subject back to himself. Nigel’s nose was twitching like the nose of a shrew on the trail of whatever shrews eat, and Russell was beginning to sound trenchant, a defender digging in for a long siege. I got bored.
Here I was – romantic Scottish castle (if you excluded some of the décor), huge international rock star – bored. Bored, bored, bored. There was a moral in there somewhere, if you do morals. I don’t. The awful butler caught my eye and gave me a wink. A wink! Who did he think he was?
I assumed an expression of suitable hauteur and forced my attention back to the table.
Later, I phoned Alex, but he was watching Failed Celebrity Diets and had evidently resolved to take no interest in Hot God or anything at Dunblair.
The next day the crew arrived, taking root in the village of Lochnabu and horrifying the locals by offering their teenage children spliffs and drinking the pub dry by the end of the week. Everyone was upset except, of course, the teenagers – and the pub landlord, who had never made so much money in his life. According to Roo, he made a point of looking gloomily resigned, borrowing from Morag’s repertoire to declare that they must dree their weird, and the Bible bid them welcome the stranger, and give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, especially the latter.
‘Does it?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Roo said. ‘Nor, I’m prepared to bet, has he.’
She was signing for a parcel at the time, addressed to Dorian Jakes, spots and all, who was a weekly boarder at Gordonstoun, so was only around from Friday night to Sunday. He had proved to be both gawky and geeky, expressing himself mainly in grunts and ponging faintly of nervous sweat and tea tree oil. Thinking of Morag & Co, I reflected that even rock icons have weirds to dree. Particularly if you’ve produced children in a careless fashion over a period of far too many marriages.
The parcel, Roo said, was a sun lamp. For the zits. I hoped it would work.
Meanwhile, Crusty, Morty and Russell (an old gardening hand who had directed Earth Works) were drawing up plans for the future of the grounds which HG would then criticise and discard. The cameraman filmed the castle, inside and out, in its natural state – except, of course, for any parts decorated by Basilisa Ramón. The sound recordist chain-smoked dope and had a close encounter with a ghost in a false beard who made various damaging allegations about skeletons buried in the maze and the illegal activities of past McGoogles. We suspected the landlord of the Dirk and Sporran, who knew when he was on to a guid thing. Several minions, some theirs (local lads), some ours (aspiring producers, directors and presenters), began digging, breaking up the frozen earth and uprooting unwanted vegetation. One of them found some bones, which got everybody excited, until they were identified as those of a dog which had belonged to the castle’s previous owner. The camera truck, catering truck and other trucks blocked the access road and traumatised HG’s security staff, accustomed to stalking the grounds in splendid isolation. The electrician blew a fuse and plunged the entire castle into darkness at five o’clock one evening.
In short, for any TV team on location, business as usual.
After an exchange of phone calls with my mother, I came up with a list of exotic plants which would thrive in the prevailing soil and climatic conditions. Crusty knew my secret, but Morty was upstaged and HG hugely impressed, and my stock skyrocketed. In between, I changed my toenail polish three times, made long telephone calls planning my wedding, and refused to go on camera without a make-up artist, mainly as a matter of principle, since I’m perfectly capable of doing my own. But if you let people treat you as anything less than a star, pretty soon you won’t be one.
Eventually, they imported make-up and wardrobe people to sort out hair, costumes and so on for the re-enactment scenes, so I appropriated one of those.
I realised that in order to be sure my role was substantial enough to properly showcase my talent, I would have to cultivate Nigel Wallaby-Porpoise, despite his nose. (Chin, eyes, and other features.) As resident expert he had won his point and was allowed to script the scenes, provided Russell totally rewrote the dialogue afterwards. I
found him in the room he had taken over as a study, two-finger typing on his laptop.
‘I hope you don’t mind my interrupting,’ I said, knowing he wouldn’t. What chinless academic would object to being chatted up by a beautiful television star? ‘I wanted to talk to you about my role as Elizabeth Courtney.’
His little face brightened, looking at once perky and pleased with himself. It was pathetic really. He actually thought I fancied him. Men, no matter how clever they are, have a major blind spot about their own sexual attractiveness. They want to go out with gorgeous women but it never occurs to them that their own gorgeousness might not match up.
‘I want a chance to really get under the skin of the part,’ I went on, pulling a chair up beside him, much too close. ‘I think she was a great tragic heroine. I mean, she and Alasdair were so much in love. He defied everyone to marry her, he rejected the fiancée his family chose for him, and then to lose her, on their wedding night . . . you must see what a brilliant story it is. But it won’t be deeply moving unless the viewers feel they know her a little first. We need plenty of scenes to show how beautiful she was, how special.’
‘We-ell . . .’
I fixed wide eyes on his face. ‘You do see what I mean, don’t you?’
‘Of course. Of course. Elizabeth was a rather interesting character, in fact. Her father had been in trade. That was another reason why the McGoogles didn’t like her – lots of money but no class – and she had a very advanced education for a woman of her time. She wasn’t a conventional beauty, but she was very sought-after because of her inheritance. They say she’d already declined a baronet and jilted the son of an Earl when Alasdair came along. Elizabeth fell violently in love with him on sight – he was extremely good-looking – and he seems to have reciprocated, though he probably had an eye on her fortune as well.’
‘We won’t mention that,’ I said firmly. ‘Or her downmarket background. We’ve got to show that he adored her, otherwise it won’t be a tragedy when she dies. As I see it, she was this amazing free spirit, wild, unconventional, stunningly lovely, a natural aristocrat despite her birth, pursued by every man who knew her yet spurning them all for this dashing young laird from the Highlands. We need to see them meeting in England, falling in love. She follows him to Scotland, they marry in the teeth of family opposition, under the vengeful gaze of her rival, and then she vanishes for ever. Swallowed up in the . . . the labyrinthine tentacles of the monstrous maze.’
‘I wouldn’t say it was monstrous, precisely,’ Nigel demurred, looking slightly bemused.
‘Of course it was,’ I insisted. ‘I can just picture it, this giant dark thing, all looming black hedges and narrow paths twisting and turning, ensnaring people, devouring them.’ I shivered, carried away by my own fantasy. For a moment I visualised it sprouting outside the castle, gloom-laden and doom-laden, like those walking trees in Lord of the Rings, waiting, ominously, to draw us all in. Not just a collection of pathways and hedges but a living thing with a will and purpose of its own.
‘What an imagination you have!’ Nigel said. ‘We must talk more. I’m doing a book – factual, of course, but extrapolating from history into a more novelistic form to really bring the past to life. Something of a departure for me. I must say, I would welcome your input. You obviously have the true dramatic vision.’
I smiled sweetly. If he wanted my dramatic vision, he would be wax in my hands. And while Russell might rewrite the dialogue, the scene structure should stay – in whatever form I wanted.
‘I’d love to help you,’ I said. ‘With the book and the re-enactment scenes. It would be a privilege.’
It was only when I got up to leave that I saw Winkworth lounging in the open door – butlers aren’t supposed to lounge, for heaven’s sake – having evidently heard at least part of the conversation. He stepped aside a fraction too slowly, so I had to hesitate before I swept past. There was a knowing look on his face which I didn’t like at all. I wondered if he was going to try and throw a spanner in the works (why or how I wasn’t sure), but he only gave me a slight, sardonic bow before turning back to Nigel.
‘I found the drawings you wanted to look at . . .’
Having committed myself to charming Nigel, I was stuck with it. I had to endure several lectures on Elizabeth Courtney, only daughter of a self-made millionaire (cue further lecture on how much richer you had to be to achieve millionaire status in those days) who died when she was sixteen, leaving her in the wardship of her uncle. Her aunt came from higher up the social stepladder and was determined to elevate her orphaned niece still further, using what contacts she had to push Elizabeth into the upper echelons of society. Elizabeth’s vast wealth and naturally elegant manners carried the day, and she became one of the most courted heiresses of her generation. The earl’s son was a suitor so desirable that when she turned him down flat her aunt, said Nigel, extrapolating furiously, must have been horrified, doubtless threatening to wash her hands of her obstinate niece. A nameless laird from a family which, though ancient, was relatively impoverished would have been no substitute. It must have taken considerable courage for Elizabeth to defy her own relations (said Nigel) as well as his. And then tragedy struck, and Alasdair went off to the colonies, as they did in those days, joining his cousin in darkest Africa to do his bit for the British Empire. He bade farewell to the fiancée he had abandoned and to his mother, neither of whom he would ever see again. Lady Mary McGoogle, despite her opposition to the marriage, mourned her daughter-in-law of a single day so deeply she wore black for the rest of her life.
In darkest Africa, Alasdair formed alliances with the cream of the natives and fought battles with the less creamy ones, showing himself generally resourceful and heroic, before dying of a fever probably brought on by his broken heart. His mother looked after the Dunblair estate until her own death three years later, after which his cousin, the sole remaining heir, returned to live there. Alasdair’s discarded fiancée of years before wasted no time in marrying him.
‘What was she like?’ I asked, genuinely curious.
‘She was the local beauty,’ Nigel said. ‘An admirer wrote that her complexion rivalled that of the rose and her hair was as black as the wing of a crow.’
That didn’t mean much. According to gossip at the Dirk and Sporran, gleaned by Russell and the crew, Morag had been a local beauty once, complexion, hair and all.
‘After Alasdair deserted her,’ Nigel went on, ‘she wouldn’t look at another man – until his cousin came to Dunblair eight years later. It may sound a little prosaic, but possibly there was a family resemblance which attracted her.’
‘Perhaps she wanted to marry the castle,’ I suggested, ‘not the man.’
Roo, who was with me at the time – I had begged her to be my chaperone – said suddenly: ‘Alasdair got rid of the maze and then went to darkest Africa, right?’
‘Exactly,’ Nigel affirmed. ‘He is said to have burned the hedges himself, going round afterwards to dig up the roots. There was a statue at the centre, a bronze of the Greek god Pan, though some said it was meant to be the devil, and he had it melted down. He wanted nothing to remain.’
‘It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’ Roo said. ‘I mean, you’d think he’d have destroyed the maze because he was intending to stay and he couldn’t stand to look at it. If he was planning a kind of voluntary exile, he wouldn’t see it again anyway.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ I said. ‘He hated it. He blamed the maze for Elizabeth’s death. It was this dark evil thing which had enmeshed her in its tentacles and swallowed her up. Maybe he hoped to find some trace of the body.’
‘Possibly,’ Nigel said, ‘but he didn’t. The destruction of the maze is well documented. Servants helped with all the digging and burning, and the statue was far too heavy for one man to move.’
‘I still think it was a lot of trouble to take,’ Roo persisted, ‘when you’ve made up your mind to leave shortly after.’
‘Maybe he hadn’t made
up his mind,’ I said, using my dramatic imagination. ‘Maybe he destroyed the maze, thinking this act of revenge would somehow ease his suffering, only it didn’t, and he realised he would have to go away – far away – perhaps for good.’
‘Here it is,’ Nigel offered, indicating his laptop. ‘This is my reconstruction of it, based on historical accounts and the sketch plan HG found.’ The screen displayed a 3-D image with bright green hedges and a tangle of paths. Like that, it didn’t look monstrous or horrifying, just a routine puzzle like something in a children’s book. He swivelled the map, shot down a path, and brought us presently to the centre, where a squat god Pan stood on a plinth, leaning on a staff with a two-pronged head.
‘Pan ought to have pipes, surely?’ Roo said.
‘No drawings of the statue survive,’ Nigel explained. ‘But there are a couple of references to it which describe it as holding a staff or double-pronged spear. Hence the confusion about its identity. Of course, the physical concept of the devil probably derived from the pagan god anyway. Nowadays we think of Pan as a woodland deity, mischievous but benevolent – a Puck-like figure. But he was also the god of lust and madness. I’m sure you’ve both seen those male fertility statues with their exaggerated genitalia. They’re goat-legged too – representations of Pan. The goat and its mythical counterpart, the satyr, are both associated with unbridled lasciviousness.’
I wondered if he was leering at me; the thought of Nigel leering was definitely unpleasant – but decided not to look, just in case.
It’s curious how often academics talk about sex. They start off with something serious, like a piece of history or a computerised representation of a maze, but somehow pretty soon their exposition gets around to shagging, though they think if they use big words, like lasciviousness, they can still pretend their interest is purely intellectual. I had hoped Roo being there might discourage Nigel, but we were on to overgrown dicks already.
