by Daisy Waugh
‘Goodness,’ said Morrison, ‘you’re working late.’
‘I tend to,’ she agreed, scribbling away. ‘Sometimes it’s a job to keep up. Especially now. Every failed farmer in the country seems to think he can open up a bed and breakfast. Hotel. Thingummy-whatsit. You know, tourist facility.’ She looked up suddenly and glared at Morrison. ‘But they can’t. It’s that simple.’
‘Oh, I’m sure,’ said Morrison soothingly.
‘These characters wake up one morning. They say to themselves, ‘Hello, hello, the farm’s gone belly up! Not to worry – let’s pop in a couple of beds, serve up a bit of toast and marmalade for breakfast, bingo! Bankruptcy: bye-bye. But they have no idea! Not a clue! I shouldn’t say this, but it’s this sort of any-which-way, give-it-a-try attitude which really annoys me.’
‘Is that right?’ said Grey. ‘Why’s that then?’
‘Why?’ Sue-Marie looked at Grey as if he was stupid, and then back at Morrison, and then at Messy, and then back at Grey. She frowned. ‘You all look very familiar…Have we met before?’
‘It’s coz they’re all ever so famous,’ said Colin. ‘In different ways. An’ we got another one turning up in a minute an’ another one tomorrow called Nigel who’s gonna show me tennis! An’ they’re all famous!’ He pointed at Morrison. ‘That one’s—’
‘Colin,’ said Jo. ‘Time for bed.’
‘But I haven’t—’
‘Now,’ Jo said.
‘Go on.’ Grey gave him a friendly wink. ‘Fuck off, will you?’
‘And you too, Chloe, darling. Time for bed. And please. Don’t listen to Grey’s silly swearing. It isn’t funny.’
‘So,’ said Sue-Marie playfully, as soon as they’d gone. ‘Are you going to tell me what you’re all famous for? Or are you going to make me guess?’
The question sent a frisson of panic through Morrison which slowed down his naturally charming responses. So unfortunately it was Grey who broke the silence first.
‘If you don’t mind my sayin’, it’s none o’ your fuckin’ business,’ he said.
‘Oh!’
‘Grey!’ said Jo.
He ignored her. ‘Now you’ve marched in here interruptin’ our dinner and threatenin’ to close our place down. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you do whatever it is you feel you need to do and then leave us to enjoy our anonymity and what’s left of our evenin’ in peace.’
‘Dearie me,’ Sue-Marie said with valiant facetiousness, the playful grin apparently cemented to her face. And, without another word, returned to her paperwork. Silence fell over the table. She scribbled hard, unaware of the frantic scowling and grimacing taking place all around her. She didn’t notice Messy signalling emphatically to Jo, and then both of them tiptoeing out of the room towards the kitchen. She didn’t look up until Charlie came in with the coffee tray.
‘Super,’ she said to him. ‘Are you Food-and-Beverages?’
‘No, this is coffee,’ said Charlie and then, realising that wasn’t what she was asking, added, only a little more helpfully, ‘I mean I’m Charlie Maxwell McDonald. I’m the owner, if that’s what you were asking. Sorry. What did you say?’
‘That’s super,’ she said patiently. ‘I take it you’re Food-and-Beverages as well?’
Charlie looked no less confussed. ‘As part of your job description?’ she added, more patiently still. Sue-Marie was very patient.
‘My what?’
‘Your—’
‘I do the cookin’,’ interrupted Grey. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Excellent.’ She offered him one of her gruesome, heartless smiles. The flaps of soft white skin which closed over her eyes prevented her from registering his horrified response. He shuddered, like he’d eaten a lemon. ‘And are there other food handlers,’ she continued, ‘within the organisation? Or do you take sole responsibility?’
‘Aye.’
‘Aye – what?’
‘Aye. It’s just me.’
‘Except I can see Mr—McDonald here, conveying coffee,’ she said, sharp as a hawk. ‘Is that usual practice?’
‘Aye, sometimes. We all do the coffee from time to time.’
‘Tripping hazards,’ she muttered softly to herself, turning the page of her yellow form and jotting something down. ‘And I’m sorry. Whether you like it or not I am going to need a name.’
‘Aye, I know.’ He paused. ‘It’s McShane. M-c-S-H-A-N-E. Grey McShane.’
She wrote it down. She looked at it. ‘…McShane?’ Her mouth fell open. ‘Grey McShane?…I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!’ She stared at him for several moments in blatant, self-righteous disapproval and then, suddenly remembering something, broke off from what she was about to say and pointed at the space where Colin had been sitting. ‘You winked at him!’
‘So I did. Aye,’ drawled Grey, his mouth already curling at the humour of what he planned to say next. ‘Later on I usually pop upstairs for a wee bi’ o’ what I like to call toast-an’-marmalade, darlin’. An’ we bugger each other senseless until mornin’.’
‘McShane!’ thundered the General. ‘Don’t be so bloody disgusting!’
‘For Christ’s sake, Grey! That wasn’t funny!’
‘That really was loathsome.’
Everyone yelled at him. Everyone except Sue-Marie. Grey McShane took a gulp of his wine and waited for the storm to pass. Sue-Marie watched him. She made another quick note on her yellow paper and then, with an even gaze, continued with the usual line of questioning. ‘Before I take a look around the kitchen,’ she began, ‘I assume you’ve attained your Basic Hygiene?’
‘My what, darlin’?’
‘It is a prerequisite for all food handlers, as I’m sure you’re aware,’ she said. ‘I’ll need to take a look at your certificate. If you could provide that for me.’ But Grey didn’t move. ‘…As soon as that is convenient. Please.’
He laughed. ‘I don’t know what certificate you’re talking about,’ he said, draining his glass and slowly pushing back his chair. ‘But I certainly haven’t got it. Come on, I’ll show you the kitchen.’ He laughed again. ‘I don’t know what you’re hoping to find there, mind. It’s just a bloody kitchen.’
Grey didn’t really notice untidiness, or understand why people minded about it so much. Charlie, on the other hand, though he’d never before encountered a professional such as Miss Gunston, and had no idea what, exactly, she would be hoping to find, strongly suspected she would take offence to whatever she found in Grey’s kitchen. ‘Actually, Sue-Marie,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Miss Gunston – Sue-Marie. Can I call you Sue-Marie? This really isn’t a very convenient time. We’re expecting another guest at any moment. As you can see we’re in the middle of dinner. Would it be very inconvenient for you to come back later?’ But she was shaking her head before he’d even finished.
‘…Or perhaps,’ he added hopefully, ‘you could come back in the morning? For example. Everything’ll be tidy by then.’ Charlie was already sidling towards the door. As he drew closer to it he could hear the clattering of plates. Messy and Jo were on the case. But it had been chaos in there only a moment ago. They needed more time. ‘Or why don’t you just sit down for a bit? Relax! Finish your coffee!’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, offering another of her blinding smiles. ‘I wish I could oblige. Truly. However, it is a legal requirement that you submit to an EHO inspection, when and if an inspector calls. Where is the kitchen? If you just pointed me in the direction I could probably let you all get on.’ By the time her smiling folds were lifted Charlie had already slipped out of the room. She frowned. ‘Where’s he gone?’
‘To the kitchen to fetch some sugar, I sincerely hope! I simply can’t drink coffee without sugar. Can you?’ Maurice Morrison had been paying rapt attention to the toings and froings of the last few minutes, hence the uncharacteristically low profile. Since when several important jigsaw pieces had fallen into place, and he now, very reluctantly but nonetheless clearly, understood:
; A) that he was spending his purdah not in dignified rural isolation, but in the company of a stripping princess and nationally reviled pervert.
B) that this was something which the British Public (& Mr TB) should never be allowed to find out.
Which meant
C) that the repulsive Sue-Marie Gunston should under no circumstances discover his identity, lest she mention it to someone who might mention it to the press.
And therefore
D) that although per se he admired the stalwart work of all EHOs he would be feeling a lot more comfortable if this one could be persuaded to get the fuck out of the house.
So it was time to act. ‘Miss – Gunston,’ he said charmingly. ‘You seem like a sensible woman.’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘Would you perhaps allow me to make a small suggestion?’
‘Certainly.’ Sue-Marie blushed. You’re gorgeous, she thought. She was finding it difficult, in fact impossible, not to focus her eyes on the V of sun-kissed chest which glowed between the top two buttons of his shirt.
‘Because of course you’re quite right,’ said Morrison. ‘It is a legal requirement, and a very sensible one, that our friends here agree to giving you a tour of their delightful – food preparation area. But I think you’ll find – if you refer to your notes – a proprietor/proprietress is entitled to ask you to come back at a more convenient time. And as you can see, we are all in the middle of dinner. I would have thought…’ He smiled at her. ‘Of course I realise that you must be dreadfully busy, and it is entirely at your discretion, but if you could find it in your heart…’
‘We-ell,’ she said conquettishly, ‘I’m not saying I can’t, but you have to understand it puts me in a difficult position. As soon as I set a flexible precedent at a given location, so to speak, I find people tend to start walking all over me.’
‘Oh, I do assure you, we have no intention—’ but he noticed she had raised her eyes from his golden chest and was suddenly staring at his face. All his senses warned him that full recognition was now only seconds away. He broke off abruptly and stood up.
‘I must say,’ she said, squinting at him more than ever, ‘you look super familiar.’
‘And so do you, Miss Gunston. So do you…Perhaps we both simply have one of those faces.’ He gave her one last smile, one of his very best. ‘Or perhaps we had the good fortune to have met up in a former life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must…’ He left the room without even bothering to finish his sentence.
The General stood up next. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘on this confusing but happy note, I might take myself off to Bedfordshire. And I shall look forward to meeting the young stripper in the morning. So good evening, Miss – Ahh. Miss…Yes. And no doubt I shall see you tomorrow, McShane.’
‘Aye.’
The General winked at him as he walked by.
‘Well,’ said Grey, once the General had left them. ‘For a woman who really hates interruptin’ things this must all be pretty devastating. There was eight of us in here half a minute ago. What do you suppose went wrong?’
‘I don’t know, Mr McShane,’ she said pertly. ‘You tell me.’
They were born enemies. It had nothing to do with her job or his name. Grey and Sue-Marie glared at each other, silently acknowledging their mutual revulsion, until slowly he drained his glass once again, refilled it, stood up. ‘’Scuse me,’ he said simply, and left the room.
In the kitchen, the emergency clear-up had ground to a dramatic halt. Crowded together and all yelling in front of the open fridge, Grey discovered Charlie, Jo and Messy fighting over a packet of uncooked chicken breasts.
‘You’ve got to put the raw meat,’ Messy was shouting, snatching for the packet (which Jo was holding), and missing, and trying again, ‘you’ve got to put the raw – put the bloody raw meat on the bottom shelf! I did it in GCSE.’
Grey burst out laughing and the three of them turned on him, each one in such a high state of panic they were delighted to find someone new to vent it on.
‘Fuck off!’ they all yelled at once.
And then suddenly Jo, sounding unusually hopeless, let out a peculiar whimpering sound. Her head lolled, her knees buckled and the packet of chicken fell to the floor. Messy, Charlie and Grey leapt forward and caught her, just as the refined accents of Miss Gunston pierced through the adjoining dining-room door—
‘Hello? Hello?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ cried Charlie. ‘Jo? Jo, are you all right?’
‘Hell-oh-ho! Is anyone there?’
‘Someone. Please,’ he snapped, ‘get rid of that ghastly woman.’
Jo gave a wan smile. ‘My darling,’ she said, as the three of them slowly lowered her onto a kitchen chair. ‘You’re beginning to sound like your father.’
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ he said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie. I’m fine. I’m fine.’ She stood up, sooner than she ought to have done, no doubt, but Jo hated being an invalid. She wobbled slightly. ‘I just need some air…’ She would have liked to stay around to deal with Miss Gunston first, but Charlie didn’t provide her the opportunity. With his arm wrapped tightly around her, he more or less forced her out of one door just as Sue-Marie, who in the meantime, and for reasons best known to herself, had changed into a doctor’s coat and bath cap, burst triumphantly through the other.
‘Ah,’ she said with beady satisfaction. ‘Here we are!’ Slowly, unselfconsciously, she stood at the door and scanned the room. Her eyes flitted over the old stone floors (still covered in vegetable peel), the Aga (still covered in dirty saucepans), the General’s leather armchair (still floating on its sea of newspaper), the large Victorian pine kitchen table in the middle of the room, and the vast eighteenth-century pine dresser, which had been leaning against the same wall, beneath piles of changing clutter, for as long as anyone called Maxwell McDonald had owned the house.
The kitchen was a large scruffy room, pretty in an old-fashioned way, worn and very homely. It had been scrubbed every weekday morning, probably since the day it was built, certainly since Mrs Webber had first come to live on the estate. But Sue-Marie Gunston looked around her and all she could see were old things, and all she could think of were dirt traps. She shivered in revulsion. ‘So this is the kitchen, is it?’
Jo and Charlie felt relief wash over them the moment they stepped out into the moonlight. They were both so busy now and there were always so many people in the house, it had been a long time since they’d last been outside together, alone. In the moonlight. Slowly, happily, arm in arm, they walked the hundred-odd yards to the cedar tree and then they sat down beneath it in the frozen grass, and looked at each other and kissed, just as they had in the olden days.
‘We should come out here more often,’ she said.
‘I know we should,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘What’s the point of living in a beautiful place like this if we never have time to—’ He glanced up at the house. ‘I mean, look…’
There was a layer of frost around the lake and on the sloping lawns which framed either side of the house. Rustling ivy glistened around the windows and the soft red stone seemed almost luminous in the moonlight. In the kitchen Miss Gunston, making notes about safety rails, disabled toilets, non-slip easi-clean surfaces and non-porous cooking utensils, could do her very worst. But outside Fiddleford was unbowed, after all these years: old and solid and dignified and utterly, magnificently peaceful.
‘I love it here,’ she said suddenly, as if only fully realising it for the first time.
‘Even with all the maniacs we have to share our lives with these days?…And Miss Gunston…And two more maniacs arriving…’
‘Especially,’ she said seriously. ‘I love the maniacs. Most of them. They give the whole place a point.’
He kissed her again. ‘Including Grey?’
‘Of course including Grey.’ She sounded slightly shocked.
‘It wouldn’t be Fiddleford without Grey. You kno
w that.’
‘And Colin Fairwell?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she laughed. ‘And Colin Fairwell.’
‘And the shrinking but otherwise physically repulsive Messy Monroe and her funny little daughter?’
‘That’s not funny,’ she said.
He kissed her. ‘I know it’s not. Sorry. Let’s forget about her. What about the psychopathic Government Minister, who I would guess you have rather a soft spot for…’ He kissed her again. ‘And of course my almost – completely – impossible father?’
‘I love them all,’ she said, laughing and pushing him away. ‘More or less. Especially the psychopathic Minister, who incidentally isn’t in the least psychopathic. He’s very interesting.’
‘And I love you,’ he said seriously.
‘And I love you, too. Even more than Maurice Morrison…’
‘Jo, that thing in the kitchen—’
‘It was nothing. I’m fine. I’m completely fine.’
‘Because if anything happened to you. Or the twins…Don’t you think you should spend a couple of days in bed?’
She laughed.
‘No, seriously.’
‘Honestly, Charlie. I’m fine…In fact I’ve never felt better in my life…’ She leant across and they kissed yet again, falling gradually as they did so back onto the frozen grass: Jo on her side, to accommodate the bump; Charlie stretching to put his arms around her shoulders. But it wasn’t comfortable.
A moment or two later, after a valiant effort by both of them to pretend that full-blown sex was a realistic and desired option, Charlie grinned at her and said, ‘It’s getting pretty cold out here, isn’t it?’
She laughed. ‘It’s bloody freezing. And I must admit I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve gone completely mad, leaving Grey alone with the woman from Health and Safety.’
Slowly Charlie pulled himself up onto his elbows. ‘You were going to faint,’ he said uneasily. In fact he’d been thinking just the same thing.
‘I think we should go in.’
‘I know,’ he said, springing nervously to his feet. ‘He’ll have the place closed down before we can fucking blink.’
