‘Rose!’ I hissed, ‘The bride is not supposed to discuss her least favourite male body parts!’
She giggled. ‘Still, Susie, we really should find you a decent man,’ she said, with all the generosity of the newly married. With rare tact she lowered her voice as she added, ‘But not one that comes with a mother-in-law like mine. I’m sure Jeremy’s got some friends who’d suit you perfectly.’
I doubted it somehow. Jeremy’s friends were much like him as far as I could see, hearty country types who were all nice enough in their way, but hardly likely to set the heart strings singing. Unlike the fallen angel, I thought wistfully. Even my great-aunt, who proudly proclaims that she’s never found a man she’s liked better than her King Charles spaniels, which is why she’s never married, would find him worth a second look.
‘Frankly, Rose, unless he’s a sugar daddy willing to pay my rent, you’d be doing me a far greater service by finding me a job,’ I said, in a weak effort to stop her loudly proclaiming to all three hundred and fifty guests that Susie Gardener needed a date.
Rose raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
There wasn’t anything she could do, unless it was to offer me the cleaning of the pile she was moving to, and I expected there was an army of women from the village already in place to do that. At least I had got her off the subject of my love life, which was not something I wanted aired in front of the two women who were approaching me with expectant smiles and ‘Susie, we would hardly have recognised you.’
Thanks, girls. I hadn’t seen either of them since my last day at school, so we spent the next twenty minutes engaged in one-upmanship, or catching up, as it’s known in popular parlance. We started off with a fairly even distribution of points. One better degree was equalled by a lesser plus travelling to India etc., then I fell sharply back into third place - Lucy was on the fast track in the Civil Service and one day would be a PPS, and Sophie already owned her own PR agency with a rising turnover, though she admitted she wasn’t making much money yet. I had to confess to being a Food and Drink Distribution Executive though I didn’t mention that my sort of food-and-drink distribution consisted of pushing packets of peanuts and crisps over a bar and pulling pints. However, I did regain a few pips when it came to the discreet nosing around about boyfriends (not that any of the three of us were prepared to openly admit that we were quite as interested in love lives as careers). A French boyfriend, even a part-time one, is one hell of a lot more prestigious than nothing at all or a tax inspector.
After we’d sized each other up to see who was ageing the best, who’d got slimmer/fatter and who was wearing the most glamorous outfit - I was definitely the one with ‘nuls points’ there - we made insincere noises about meeting for lunch soon and drifted our separate ways.
Rose came tearing down the tent, skirts hitched up in a most unladylike fashion, and displaying a natty design on her silk stockings. ‘Susie, I’ve had the most brilliant idea! It could solve all your problems,’ she exclaimed, grabbing my wrist and beginning to tow me back again. ‘Come on, hurry. We’re going to have to cut the cake soon so the oldies have a reasonable chance of getting home for the news and a cup of Ovaltine, and then there’s all the speeches. I might not have a chance to get his attention again.’
I obediently followed, wondering uneasily exactly what it was that Rose had a ‘brilliant idea’ about. I’ve been the recipient of them before, and though Rose always means well her judgment can be slewed at times. Especially after a lot of champagne. Had she taken me seriously about needing a sugar daddy? ‘Rose,’ I began as she slowed down a little, ‘I don’t think . . .’
‘Good,’ she said, looking towards two men making desultory conversation, both looking more than a little apprehensive. ‘He’s still there. I was afraid that he might have gone off to practise his speech.’
It seemed safe to assume that by ‘he’ she wasn’t referring to her new husband, so by brilliant deduction I worked out she meant the best man. ‘Rose, you aren’t trying to set me up with Hamish, are you?’ I asked with the deepest foreboding. It was what she’d call a nice tying up of the ends.
‘Wouldn’t be any use. You aren’t his type. Jeremy says his last three girlfriends were small and dark, so you, being tall and fair, wouldn’t stand a chance.’
I wasn’t keen on her assumption that the decision was entirely up to him. He wasn’t my type either. I’d known that before I even met him. Every Hamish I’d come across before, a grand total of three at university, had an unfortunate predilection for wearing a kilt at every possible opportunity - thus displaying unpleasantly hairy knees, had red hair - bad enough on me, worse on a man and a mystifying liking for Haggis and salt on porridge. Which they tried to make me eat as well. So I’d reckoned it was inevitable this Hamish would be a chip off the auld block too. Actually, when I met him for the first time yesterday, he was a pleasant surprise. His hair was sort of peaty-coloured, if a bit too short and disciplined for my tastes, his knees were decently covered by chinos, and he didn’t display any unusual culinary appetites. And even without the positive contrast to what I’d been expecting, I’d had to admit that, while not being tall, dark and handsome, he was certainly tall, quite dark and would definitely be attractive to some. Quite a few actually. But not to me. He still wasn’t my type.
He looked up with a faintly unwelcoming expression as we approached. I knew it was probably due to nerves about the speech rather than anything more personal. I wouldn’t be exactly acting normal either if I were about to stand up in front of over three hundred people and had to make a speech that didn’t offend the oldies, didn’t contain any information which might later be used in a divorce action, emphasised how all the single men present were broken-hearted but didn’t imply that the bride was the good time that had been had by all, didn’t have any smutty jokes and still managed to amuse everybody.
‘Hamish!’ Rose said brightly. ‘Susie needs a job.’
Not surprisingly, Hamish didn’t immediately leap in with, ‘Well, she shall have one. In fact, she shall have two.’ Instead, he stepped back, looking at me with the air of a man who can’t think why he is being informed of this. ‘I hope she finds one soon,’ he said politely after a pause.
Most people would regard this as a set-down, a stand-off, a bucket of cold water, etc. Not Rose. She smiled at him sunnily. ‘Weren’t you saying at lunch the other day that er ... er Stephen Bailey-Stewart was in desperate need of someone to help him? Susie’d be brilliant at that.’ Her ringing vote of confidence in my abilities was only slightly marred by her addition of, ‘Whatever it is he needs someone to do for him.’
Hamish’s eyes flickered over to rest on me thoughtfully. ‘I’d like to be able to help you out, Susie,’ he said at last. Did I detect a trace of insincerity there? ‘But Stephen needs someone to organise him, not pull him a pint every so often.’
‘Idiot!’ exclaimed Rose. ‘Susie isn’t really a barmaid, that’s just to pay the rent while she’s looking for a proper job. She used to work in the City, but you know what it’s like, it’s a man’s world and it’s so difficult for a woman to get anywhere. To be even considered women have to be twice as good as the male applicants . . .’
I was sure the last thing Hamish felt he needed just then was a feminist rant and that was why he cut in quickly with a promise to ring me the next day at my flat to discuss the job. Rose shut her mouth with a satisfied air. She’d just about reached the end of her list of feminist polemic anyway. Typically, she refused to see Hamish’s cool response as a face-saving standoff and insisted on him finding a discarded service sheet so he could write down my telephone number.
I grabbed her arm and towed her away out of earshot. ‘Rose, what is this? Who is this Stephen whatsit? What’s he do? Where’s the job?’ I wasn’t ungrateful for Rose’s efforts in setting herself up as a one-woman employment agency, but I had a horrid feeling this might end up with embarrassment all round if, when, I was deemed to be thorough
ly unsuitable for this job.
Rose shrugged blithely. ‘Dunno exactly. He’s a schoolfriend of Hamish’s elder brother, that I do know. I think it’s some kind of assistant’s job, PA maybe.’
‘Rose, I can’t be someone’s PA,’ I said, horrified. ‘That would be a career step backwards.’
Rose slowly and deliberately took out a cigarette, and lit it while staring at me down her nose. ‘A step backwards from being a barmaid?’ she enquired coldly, looking extremely offended that I was treating her sterling efforts in such a cavalier fashion.
‘I’ve only been a barmaid for a couple of months,’ I said reasonably. ‘I didn’t intend it as a genuine career move.’
She smiled at me and blew a smoke ring, one of her most admired tricks at school. ‘Point taken. But the job market’s so hard at the moment, and I think this is to cover some sort of maternity leave, so it’s not as if you’d be committing yourself. It’d give you a chance to do something a bit different, look around a bit, decide what you want to do.’
I didn’t want to do something different. I wanted to go back to being a money broker. But I knew better than to say so, Rose had never understood the fascination of working in the City, in fact, Rose didn’t understand the fascination of working, full stop, so she wasn’t the ideal person to dispense careers advice. Besides, her mother was upon us, instructing her to present herself at the cake for cutting duties and to look besottedly at Jeremy while he told all of us how lucky he was to catch a girl who looked just like her mother (or something along those lines if he wanted a harmonious relationship with the in-laws).
I was hovering near the edge of the crowd, keeping back in case I got collared by the maniacal photographer, who was taking pictures of Rose and Jeremy posing with the cake - pretending to cut it, smiling at each other over the top of it, standing with the bridesmaids while they gazed open-mouthed at it, not smiling at the youngest page as he broke off a piece of icing - enough, in fact, for them to completely paper their downstairs loo in cake pics if the fancy took them. ‘Your glass is empty,’ said a man beside me, handing me a full one. ‘You, of all people, must be able to drink the bride and groom’s health.’
I turned to thank him and almost spilt my drink down my detested skirts. It was him, Luke. He didn’t seem surprised at my reaction, but then someone who looks like that is probably used to women being reduced to open-mouthed imbecility in his presence. ‘Shall I take your empty glass for you?’ he asked with a charming smile, though I was so temporarily dazzled that just then I’d have found it charming if he’d sat down to file his fingernails.
I handed it over, almost expecting, as in the best romantic trash, a bolt of electricity to shoot up my arm at his touch. Disappointingly I didn’t get it; but more satisfying than any electrical discharge, he came back to talk to me once he’d dumped the glass on a table. Close-up he was just as good-looking as I’d thought, bright blond hair falling in an unruly fashion over his forehead, grey-green eyes heavily fringed with brown lashes, and a full mouth that would have been the envy of many a top model. His physique looked like it fully matched up to his face too, I thought, making a surreptitious survey. To my irritation, they started the speeches before we’d had time to do more than exchange a few pleasantries of the where-do-you-live kind, and the chief bridesmaid couldn’t be seen to be chatting all the way through, even if that was exactly what she wanted to do. Rose’s godfather droned on for ages and hadn’t even started winding up when Luke was tapped on the shoulder by Nigel Flaxman, who smiled apologetically at me and made urgent signalling gestures towards his watch. I watched them slip out quietly, my disappointment at seeing Luke leave only slightly mollified by the way he had kissed my cheek and murmured, ‘I hope we meet again, Susie.’ I wanted to believe he’d meant it.
An hour later, Rose was being shooed upstairs by her mother to go and get changed into her going-away outfit. ‘Yes, darling, I know you’re enjoying yourself,’ her mother said patiently, ‘but it doesn’t look good if the bride and groom don’t show any signs of being keen to be alone, it makes one wonder about what’s been going on before…’
Rose rolled her eyes up to heaven and with a ‘Really, Mum!’ obediently went upstairs, signalling to me to come and help her undo the ninety-four covered buttons down her back. She was far more interested in gossiping than getting dressed and was still parading about in her white basque and silk stockings like some Victorian pin-up when her mother knocked impatiently on the door. She rapidly began to wriggle into her suit, saying as she smoothed the asymmetric lines of the jacket over her hips, ‘And you, young Susie. Did you have any successes?’
I settled back comfortably on the bed, leaning against the pillows and flexing feet that were suffering from spending too long in the pink satin shoes that matched my outfit. I felt Rose wouldn’t be particularly interested in any successes of mine, it was her day after all, so I said vaguely, ‘Not really.’
She swivelled around, ‘I despair of you,’ she exclaimed in exasperation. ‘There were three hundred and fifty people here today, at least fifty of whom were male, single and eligible. Some of them were even passable. Are you really telling me you’re so hung up on Arnaud, who incidentally isn’t even as tall as you are-’
‘Yes, he is,’ I interrupted indignantly. ‘We’re exactly the same height.’
‘Only when you’re barefoot and he’s wearing lifts,’ she retorted and turned back to the mirror. I let this piece of blatant sizeism go. There was no stopping Rose when she got into her stride. ‘As I was saying,’ she went on, ‘you’re wasting all these lovely opportunities, Susie. You don’t appear to even find other men attractive, let alone do anything about it. Haven’t you ever heard of when the cat’s away...?’
‘Of course I have and I do find other men attractive,’ I said, a touch defensively.
‘Like who?’ she demanded derisively. Then, as I didn’t answer, ‘Someone today? I don’t believe it.’
‘Don’t believe it, then.’ I retorted childishly.
She swung around again with a grin. ‘You did! Come on. Tell. Who was it?’
I sighed, knowing that I wouldn’t be allowed a minute’s peace until I confessed all. ‘Your Nigel’s friend, Luke,’ I said quickly. ‘And you don’t have to tell me that I’m one of a long line either. I know that perfectly well.’
Her bouncy vivacity seemed to leak out of her like a punctured balloon. ‘What were you doing with Luke?’ Her elbow jerked, knocking her lipstick over. It rolled off the dressing table unheeded, making a thin red line down her cream skirt as it fell to the floor.
It took me a couple of seconds to register her sudden mood change. ‘He brought me a glass of champagne to drink your health with and we started chatting, that’s all.’
‘I hope it was all,’ she said. ‘Because let me assure you, Susie, Luke Dillon isn’t for you.’
I propped myself up on one elbow, staring at her, hardly able to believe what I had just heard coming from the mouth of someone who’d promised to ‘forsake all others’ only a few hours ago. That was our code for, ‘I saw him first, lay off.’
What the hell was this about?
CHAPTER 3
The signs of spring were everywhere; our street was bright with windowboxes carefully padlocked to security grilles, the parks were alight with yellow swathes of daffodils in the parks, and the streets were packed with people wearing the colourful light clothes that they’d optimistically changed into on the first sunny day because they’d forgotten how perishingly cold April usually is.
I was restless and edgy, filled with the same feeling which had afflicted me every spring when I was a teenager, that fizzy sense that everything is waking up around you and at last something is going to happen. Rose and I had spent many intense and moody hours discussing exactly what it might be when we would probably have been better occupied learning German verbs. I hadn’t felt like this for ages, and the rational part of me knew it had nothing to do with the season and a lo
t to do with the general feeling of dissatisfaction that had been afflicting me since Rose’s wedding, ten days ago.
Meeting my old classmates, and hearing the apparently exciting things that they were doing, had rammed home how I was stuck in a rut and not going anywhere. Knowing that was sure their jobs probably were nothing like as high powered or glamorous as they made out was no consolation. At least they had prospects, unlike me.
It didn’t help that, not unexpectedly, I had heard precisely zilch from Hamish’s friend about this supposedly wonderful job. Hamish had rung to take down the barest details of my CV, but hadn’t vouchsafed any information in return, saying that his friend would ring me if he was interested. The ‘don’t hold your breath’ was clearly implied. Even if Hamish hadn’t pigeonholed me as one of those girls who flit from job to job whilst waiting to get married and thankfully give up all paid work, my performance as chief whipper-in of ten children at the wedding couldn’t have given him a good impression of my organisational abilities. Especially after the incident with the penknives at the wedding rehearsal even though it hadn’t been me who’d been stupid enough to give penknives to the pages in the first place.
It would have been nice to have a sniff at a proper job again, I thought gloomily as I turned into the little road where the Bull and Bush hid itself from the more fashionable elements of Camden. I hadn’t been up for a place on a long list, let alone a short list, for three months; unemployed graduates are two a penny, and ones who have been asked to resign are about as welcome as a fox in a chicken coop at your average interview. The one temp agency prepared to give my dubious secretarial skills a try had now ceased to offer me even the real dregs, ever since I was returned for having the wrong attitude. My boss for the week had told me once too often not to worry about all the anomalies in the report I was compiling for him and to get on with the typing, leaving the brainwork to the expert. This had been accompanied by a lingering look down my front. I’d pointed out, in a very polite voice, that a woman’s IQ isn’t necessarily in exact inversion to her bust measurement.
Seven Week Itch Page 3
