by Ivan B
The Soulmate Agency
Ivan B
Published: 2010
Tag(s): "Romance" "Dating" "Love"
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Published by barlebooks.net©2010
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Prelude
Ben drove his tiny lilac Daihatsu Charade down the narrow leafy Norfolk county lane carefully following the instructions on the glossy sheet of paper lying on his passenger seat. Eventually he passed the promised pair of ivy clad oak trees and came to the entrance he was searching for. He swung left under an ivy clad gatehouse that spanned the wide entrance and stopped. The elegant and pristine heart shaped gold-lettered red notice board informed him that he was now at the entrance to Minton Hall, home of The Soulmate Agency, but his eyes were looking elsewhere. They peered out through his brown wire-framed spectacles at an immaculately kept curving white gravel drive at the end of which, at least half a mile away, stood a fair imitation of a stately home. He swallowed as if he was about to be sick and considered his options. He could turn back and put this expedition down to a bad idea, just a foolish whim that was never meant to be fulfilled. On the other hand he’d spent £2500, in advance and without the chance of a refund, to stay here for a five days and experience ‘a unique and unsurpassed week of self-understanding while searching for the ultimate soulmate.’ Considering his monthly stipend that was an awful lot of money to throw away. He put the car into gear and edged forward, after all he could always leave before the week was up. And who knows, there was always the off chance he might meet the woman of his dreams. He smiled to himself; “pigs might fly,” he muttered, “pigs might fly.”
Chapter 2
The Briefing
The large lounge that looked like a film set for some period drama was cooler than everyone expected, it being a fine summer’s day. However, no-one complained as they all had other things on their mind, namely what happened next. Currently everyone was sitting in a small circle of ten armchairs, each armchair having beside it a small octagonal oak table containing a small silver pot of coffee and a discrete plate of biscuits. The armchairs were identical, being of the large winged ‘club’ design and upholstered in that fine old slightly cracked dark brown leather that ensures both comfort and snugness. The only exception was the tenth armchair as this was of the upright ladies design and upholstered in smooth light green leather. The nine brown armchairs contained four men and five women in a neat alternating pattern, all trying to look at one another while not being seen to look at one another. The last armchair contained, as subconsciously agreed by all the men present, the most beautiful woman in the room. Elegance and pose was written in her every move and action, beauty was written all over her from the off-ivory super-smooth skin to the voluptuous blue eyes via the perfectly shaped mouth. The exquisite sculptured face was topped by deep brown hair that was cut close to the head and yet appeared to be deep and luscious. To add to the dismay of the women present, her body was both lean and curvaceous and covered in a deep blue French designer dress that had exquisite small white shapeless blobs scattered over it. The goddess of beauty smiled, “Welcome to Minton Hall,” she said in a soft Dorset burr, “It’s time for your initial briefing and, as required by the local authority, to give you some health and safety information.”
Her eyes swept round the circle like a pair of searchlights seeking out prey. “We don’t wear badges here, there is no need. I’m Angela, daughter of Lady Minton and I run the Soulmate Agency. You will see various members of staff around, if you need anything ask anyone, our aim is to give you a luxury holiday while helping you to get to know one another. Lord and Lady Minton are currently away in the Algarve, so you needn’t worry about bumping into them.”
She paused and glanced around is if checking that nobody had fallen asleep. “For safety reasons – this is a two hundred year old building – there is no smoking in any room except for the small room off of the hall that is labelled ‘Pansy,’ and which has full air-treatment facilities. I’m afraid if you try and smoke elsewhere you will set off the smoke alarms and that applies to en-suite toilets as well as the bedrooms.”
She smiled again and warmed the hearts of all the men while simultaneously hardening the hearts of the women. “Please feel free to explore the ground and first floors of the hall, the second floor is where the offices and family rooms are, so I would be glad if you don’t go into those areas.”
She leant back in her chair as if about to give a history lesson. “The wife of the fourth Lord Minton, who was somewhat of a lateral thinker, had room names carved into the wooden lintels above the doors. Basically she used the names of flowers running from A to M on the first floor – that is North to South – and N to Z on the ground floor, again North to South. All toilets and bathrooms end in letters with straight edges, such as H, M, N and W. If you find the name of a tree, then you’re where you shouldn’t be, that is on the second floor.”
She gave a short laugh that was like the tinkling of a waterfall, “Please don’t think that the wife of the fourth Lord Minton was being kind; she found her husband in her sister’s bedroom two days after their wedding. He claimed poor eyesight and she ensured that such a mistake could never happen again.”
There was a round of polite laughter and the beauty continued. “You are all in suites on the first floor, with one exception, who is in the ground floor Tulip suite. Seeing as you are all adults, there are no house rules about who visits where and when. Finally, with regard to rooms, ‘Weigela’ is a ladies only room and ‘Wisteria’ is a male only room, they are both on the other side of the main entrance hall.”
She consulted her notes that were held on an elegantly embroidered clipboard. “Lunch is usually at one o’clock and will take the form of a buffet; please feel free to eat it anywhere you like, except the library. Dinner is at eight o’clock and there are no dress rules, after all this is a holiday not a regimental gathering.”
She gave a third smile, “All the rest of the information you require is in the leather folders in your bedrooms.”
She crossed her exquisite legs from left in front of right to right in front of left, “Now, shall we get down to business. The Soulmate Agency makes no promises, you may, or may not, meet a soulmate here. Even if you do there are no guarantees that anything will move beyond friendship, but if it does, being a stately home, we are registered for both Partnerships and Marriage.”
Her eyes swept round the room, “Any questions?”
One of the women, a tall one with an aristocratic nose, waved some leaflets, “Doesn’t say anything about it being a no smoking building in here.” Her tone was autarchic, sharp and condescending.
Angela raised an elegantly plucked eyebrow, “Page 3, paragraph 4, following on from our request that you disclose and serious medical conditions.”
Haughty nose snorted while a vivid red-head put her head on one side, “What’s the difference between Partnership and Marriage?”
“One is the public statement that you should be treated as a couple for tax and benefits, the other is a mut
ual desire to share everything without boundaries.”
There were no more questions and Angela laid her clipboard down beside her chair. “I guess you’re all wondering what happens now. Well, we have various activities planned for every day and you can opt in, or out, of most of them. However, we strongly recommend that you all take part in today’s activity, which is talking about ourselves. I’ll give you each up to fourteen minutes to tell us your potted life story. You should all be prepared for this as we do mention this part of our technique in the brochure. I only ask you to be honest about your life, not unnecessarily embellish your past, and finish by saying why you are here.”
She pulled out a little cloth bag. “To make it fair I have in this bag the names of the nine suites that you are all staying in and I’ll pull them out one at a time.”
She paused, “Any questions?”
She was greeted by silence. She put her hand her little bag and pulled out a ceramic disc. “Fresia,” she announced, causing the male occupant of the fourth chair to grunt and everyone else breathe a sigh of relief.
Chapter 3
Derek
As all the eyes swivelled upon the occupant of the fourth chair he sat upright and gave a wry smile. He cut an interesting figure, dressed in cricket whites and wearing a pair of soft white leather shoes, he could have stepped straight off of a cricket pitch and into the room. However, his build was more rugby player than batsman being wide at the shoulders and with an immensely thick neck that supported a totally bald head. The absence of hair made his ears stand out more prominently than they would have otherwise and they appeared to make his face wider than it actually was. The face looked both benevolent and friendly having smooth cheeks, a well shaped nose and a pair of deep dark brown eyes below a pair of finely populated black eyebrows. He coughed as if clearing his throat. “Well I suppose someone had to be first and if you don’t recognise my face you might recognise my voice as I read the BBC news on the radio virtually every day and currently do the voice-overs for most of their scientific documentaries.”
The voice had the deep and even timbre of BBC-Oxford English that at once made you feel both relaxed and assured. Its bass quality seemed to resonate with the walls of the room, while its tenor part made you listen intently. Judging by the smiles round the room it was clear that most people did indeed recognise the voice. “I’m Derek Stonne,” he continued, and I suppose I should really start at the beginning.”
He shifted slightly in the seat as if trying to straighten his spine and even out the weight across his buttocks. He smiled like a benevolent uncle before he continued. “I was born in Uganda, my mother was Swiss and my father English. I don’t remember much about Uganda as we moved over to Kenya when I was three due to the unstable political situation that was developing. We stayed in Kenya until I was eleven, by then you could have called me a village brat. I spoke the local dialect more than English, attended the local missionary school and ran barefoot across the bush. All that changed when my mother died in a car crash. She was the reason we lived in Kenya as she was the local vet. Soon after my mother died my father decided that he’d sell our ranch and move back to the UK.”
He gave a broad grin, “I’d heard about England of course, but reality and image were somewhat different, especially as we arrived in mid-January. I had to wear clothes I’d never worn and, nearly for the first time in my life, footwear. Dad soon realised that we had a problem; my English accent was so thick with Kenyan overtones that practically nobody could understand me. So, as I was due to go to high school in September, he decided to give me a couple of terms at a stage school where I could have lessons on English as she is writ and elocution lessons on how she is spoken. It was there I first came across written phonetic English and I took to it like a duck to water. To cut a long story short, from somewhere the head of the school found me a bursary and I stayed there instead of going to a normal high-school. There I could concentrate on spoken English, dramatic tones and phonetic pronunciation. In overall terms I was a mediocre student, but I did manage to appear in a number of radio plays and keep the school satisfied with my progress. However, it is to my eternal regret that in every one of them I played an African boy as there was a dearth of African boy actors at the time. Not once did I ever play an English boy.”
He sighed deeply and continued, “From the school I went to a College of Dramatic Art this was a big mistake as my heart wasn’t in acting. In fact I managed to get sent down in the third term, not a minor feat in such a school. Suffice to say there was an incident with a side of beef, a bunch of roses, a bathtub and the principal’s knickers.”
He chuckled at the memory and gave broad grin. “After that I wasn’t sure what to do, so I worked in a supermarket by day and wrote a book by night. Fortunately the book, A Kenyan community, was a great success and won a number of prizes, which was just as well as my second book, Life after Kenya, didn’t even get into print. It was at this point that my life that it took a sudden and unexpected turn. The BBC asked me to appear in some flea-bitten radio play and, being desperate for cash, I agreed. While we were working on the dreadful script regarding some sordid domestic memoirs of some unnamed Northern town it became known that the mid-afternoon news-reader had fallen ill and there was no stand-in. There was only one requirement, that of being able to sight read phonetic English. Needless to say I volunteered, or to be more accurate I was volunteered by the leading lady, and my news-reading career took off from there.”
He gave a sad smile, “I don’t act anymore, I just read the news and any script that is given to me for documentaries, most often as not I don’t even see the film, I just read the text.”
He shook his head slightly. “Trouble is it’s totally anti-social. I’m in the studio in time to record the 6am news for the World service fifteen minutes early and then read live the English 6am news. From then on I read news on the hour, or half-hour, for various radio stations and sometimes give in-between continuity announcements or record some pieces of documentary voice-over. It’s not quite as onerous as it seems as usually the same news-bulletin can be rebroadcast as least two or three times. In any case on a normal day I’m usually home by mid-afternoon, but I go to bed just after the six o’clock evening news. Sometimes I even read that as I have a tiny studio in my flat with a flat-screen monitor, a red light to tell me when I’m on-air and the largest microphone you have every seen.”
His eyes swept round the room, “Why am I here? Well I spent most of my life sitting in isolate rooms in front of some sort of screen reading phonetic English to an unseen audience. Meeting people is difficult, making friendships nearly impossible.”
He fell silent and Angela’s eyes swept round the room, “Any questions?”
A grey-haired rotund man with wire-framed spectacles leant forward, “Why haven’t you made the transition to TV?”
Derek gave a nod and a slow smile. “Great thing about radio is that you can’t be seen. Apart from always wearing a bow-tie when I read – it helps keep the neck straight – I can wear anything and look like death warmed up. When I had to make the flash announcement about the shooting of the Home Secretary I did it from home in the nude, you couldn’t do that n TV!”
There were giggles all round and Angela smiled, she’d thought long and hard about who should go first and Derek had proved to be a good choice, she only hoped that her second choice would go down as well.
Chapter 4
Riona
"Bluebell!" Announced Angela causing the woman in the chair next to her to thwack her wooden soled sandals together and all eyes to look towards her. Whoever she was it had been a cruel twist of fate to sit her next to the immaculately clad Angela as it was patently obvious that this woman did not fit in to the current fashion scene at all. The current vogue was slim, but this woman was well built, not fat, but definitely nowhere near slim. The colour of the year was blue, but she was wearing an ankle length brown hessian type skirt with a red long-sleeved tee-shirt complete
with a ‘Skegness is so bracing’ logo. Clothes designers were all plugging uplift bras, but her well apportioned breasts hung unsupported behind the little man extolling Skegness’ virtues. In contrast her dark hair was professionally cut to hang just off of her shoulders in what could be termed a 1930s upward curl film star cut, at least that matched the triple string of pearls round her neck and the pearl topped stud earrings stuck in each ear lobe. Her face was expertly made-up and unblemished, and her pert nose sat between a pair of well shaped, non-chubby, cheeks below large almond shaped deep blue eyes. She wriggled her toes, bright-red nail polish the same as her fingers, and clicked her sandals together with another mighty crack. That was obviously another one of this woman’s little foibles, high-heeled sandals that were open toed with a 2½" wooden Cuban heel connected to a rubber-clad wooden sole by a leather instep, obviously hand-made and obviously expensive whereas the clothes were patently not. “My name is Riona Hardcastle” she said and immediately gained another label. Her voice was perfect cut-glass aristocracy, unlike Derek’s voice, which soothed you to listen; this voice startled you into attention and grated between your ears. She licked her front teeth and almost everybody did a double take as her front pair of incisors were pure gold and looked totally out of place behind her pale red lips. She glanced at Angela and continued in a sort of abstract description of herself. “My father is Lord Hardcastle and I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for being a girl. He wanted a son and heir, but got a daughter instead. My mother, trying to produce the required son and heir, died when I was five. My father remarried when I was six and from then on I’ve been almost disowned. I was sent to boarding school when I as six and a half, after that I saw my parents for around four weeks a year. One week at Easter, usually in Cannes; one week at the end of the summer holidays; and two weeks at Christmas, usually at their house. It took me some time to realize it, but they didn’t want me around and manipulated my boarding school arrangements with summer schools and language schools to ensure that I didn’t get under their feet. If they couldn’t quite farm me off to some god-forsaken summer school anything other than the four weeks was spent alone at their house with just the servants for company. The effect of this was that I spent three years at a wearisome boarding school in Kent till I was nine. After that it a boarding school in Versailles, then two years at some place in Switzerland that I’d rather forget and finally a boarding school in Suffolk.”
