Embedded Files
16
It is a couple of nights before I manage to sleep properly again.
Then, one morning, I sleep quite late – late, that is, for a naturally early riser - and it is as if I am making up for lost time. I should have got going by now but it is comforting, especially with Charlotte's funeral so recent, to be in the four-poster and looking at the mediaeval castle fireplace. This room feels as much home as my flat does now, if not more so.
I never thought I would see the sun creep across the archers, the knights and the pagodas again.
And I didn't this morning as I have woken up so late that the narrow, vertical slab of light has already edged its way to the woollen tapestry bell-pull with a tassel on the end, an elaborately- wrought exclamation mark that is now practically redundant as servants are not called often in this house - no, they have time-tables, schedules.
Contrary to what the languid, monocled woman with the Twenties bob might convey as she stretches out on a chaise in her study and absently drops correspondence on the floor, Sarah herself has timetables and schedules. She does, after all, have several irons she waggles about in several fires, some of them businesses originally set up by her parents but others the result of her own enterprise. As the only child, it is now all down to her but she picked up a fair amount from just being around while her mother and father worked through their daily tasks. Being the sole survivor means she has to do a lot of waggling but, there again, a reasonable number of Dollars, Pounds and Euros make their way dutifully home to mummy, so she doesn't mind too much. And Borrington her accountant is, of course, "an absolute gem, the dear boy".
A full schedule does not mean that she is too busy to see people though, and, when I do go over to the window to see what has scrunched up the drive, it is Sarah herself who walks out and greets the large man in the track suit who seems to almost expand as he plops out of the little pink mini like a large balloon that has been forced through a letterbox. His fiancé Magenta is with him and she has a much easier manoeuvre, wriggling and giggling out of the driver's seat as she practically falls onto the gravel.
I throw on some clothes and go down to see them.
I know what they are here about and I also know what they risk by doing this. As I walk down the stairs, Sarah shuts the door to her office before I reach the bottom. Although I have been very careful not to assume too much about our friendship, I am surprised - and a little hurt - at my exclusion, especially as I have some information about yesterday. But then, of course, she doesn't know about Hettie and the Mayor in the woods. I could – should, perhaps - have told her last night, but it just didn't seem appropriate for the occasion.
I guess Nicky will be going into the meeting any time now with a tray of coffees, so I scribble a farewell note to Sarah and leave it at reception. Nicky is at her desk, though, so I tell her myself. She looks sad to see me go and, reaching into the stuffed menagerie on her desk, she picks up a random purple teddy bear, holds it next to her and pulls a sad face as she waves its little paw at me. Throwing it back to the mercy of other assorted cuddly mutants, she changes to a cross face… But it is a pretend one (I think).
" ‘Ere, you can't bugger off.... You only just got back again!"
"It's best... I only stayed because nobody was sober enough to drive me home." She gets up from her desk, moves into the kitchenette next door and calls out to me as she pours water into a cafetiere. She is shouting now as the office kettle is boiling again: being past its first flush of youth, it’s rather noisy.
"And anyway, everyone knows Her Ladyship has the hots for you!" It is at this point I hear footsteps pass hurriedly by in the corridor behind me. I go out to see who it was and catch a fresh trace of the same perfume that had nestled up against me in the taxi.
Oh shit.
It is at least a minute later that Sarah enters the office, coughing loudly on her arrival and knocking, something she never, ever does. Another shout from the kitchenette.
"Yeah, it' pretty bloody obvious, really! I reckon you -" Nicky recovers fairly well, considering. "Oh, hello, your ladyship. Just coming with the, er...."
"Um, good. We're in my office." I can that tell Sarah isn't quite sure why she said that. It's pretty obvious she is in her office because that's where Nicky went to ask if there was anything she could do. The monocle leaves, closely followed by the perfume and Nicky is crouched, her head in her hands.
"Oh, fuck fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK!" She looks up, her own mangled mane now doing a fair impression of the fluffy orange lion balanced on top of her computer screen. "Do you think she heard?"
"No, of course not. Couldn't have done... Positive".
17
I really intend to get cracking now. I'm back at my flat, I'm at my drawing table, I have just burnt my memoirs in the kitchen sink and it feels good. What right have I to write an autobiography, anyway?
I look at the lame 'Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life' card sent me by my ex (Annabel) from some rehab clinic in the sticks. It is the kind of thing said in desperation by someone who doesn't believe it for a second, and who has probably been chanting it every day for the last decade as he/she fills out a gym membership form. Said form is then unearthed a couple of days later from a pile of paper next to the wholesome, unopened muesli on the breakfast table near the bin containing this week's screwed-up half empty cigarette packet and disposable lighter, both to be retrieved in a suicide-happy, hey-what-the-heck moment the same evening when the overdraft reminder has been opened and shoved in the growing mound on the kitchen table.
But I'm different because I really mean it.
This time.
I think.
There… I've got my drawing pens laid out in front of me and a NEW pad of graph paper. I have made a cup of tea and I'm going to start the new batch of patterns for the manufacturers. Christmas is only a few months away and they want a limited edition of tights with seasonal stuff on. I'll make a list.
Holly
Turkey
Baby Jesus
The Three Kings
No, better steer clear of Religious if I'm designing gift wrap for legs to be opened in the stationery cupboard at the office party.
So, here I am, trudging up and down the muddy field of My Life in a temporal harness and wondering how to deck women's nether regions with Yuletide nylon while one of God's most beautiful angels who produced work of such sublime beauty is immortal, gone. While on Earth she finally tamed light and space and now she has, in her little spot in Eternity, conquered time as well... I meanwhile colour in little squares with a felt tip and yet am the one still here. It's not so much feeling guilty as the one left behind, it’s admitting that the world lost more by getting rid of her and not me. Just to make myself feel really good, I read the gas bill.
Thieving bastards.
In short, this is probably the moment I should be knuckling down and earning a bit of overtime, but I just don’t seem to be able to settle, so… Instead of lunch in the flat, I prepare a couple of sandwiches as I have decided a walk to the old factory chimneys will work its customary magic and, perhaps, inspire me. I will sit down next to them and I will go up to them and put my nose against the bricks to enable me to breathe in their sooty pungency…
… Even through the pong of cheese and chutney…
…And, treat of all treats, I will go and look into the stream.
I am not party to the full horror when I first get there because there is a tall wall, a long line of thick plywood panels. I notice that I cannot see the chimneys, the chimneys I can almost make out from the front door of my flat, the chimneys that have dominated the town's skyline for over a hundred years. It is more a desperate hope rather than rational expectation that makes me think that they are there still... Surely, they are just hidden from view? On reaching the hallowed place, there is a man there in front of an orange gate that is part of the high barrier round the whole perimeter of what is – was - the factory site. The man is busy with his phone, his iPad and his voice, all three being mobilised in various combinations and, by the expression on his face, to varying effect.
The man must be important as he has a thin, neat moustache on his top lip and 'Project Manager' on his helmet.
I’d love to be a ‘Project Manager’. It would fit the new, purposeful me, the fact that I had a Project… and, what’s more, that I was actually Managing it. It is, of course, someone else’s project but that makes it even more impressive. This man isn’t merely some whimsical, dictatorial Napoleon deciding on the spur of the moment he wants the Arc de Triomphe just… There. No, he has been entrusted with a complicated, multi-million pound/multi-million piece puzzle.
But, at the end of the day, the bastard has still pulled down my chimneys.
The Bastard walks in my general direction. The subtle tones of the his tweed jacket have lost the fight with the bully-boy yellow of his safety waistcoat and he also has a tie, totally useless apart from signifying that he has the authority to boss others - without ties – around. This one has acorns and oak leaves on which means he's a member of the National Trust and that is probably a good topic as an opener if I am to find out what is going on. I wait until he has completed the deployment of his troops over the muddy field of campaign and I point at the tie as I smile and walk towards him.
"I see you're a member."
“Pardon?”
“The National Trust.”
He eyes me suspiciously but his look conveys, after a moment or two, that if I know about such an august institution then I can't be quite the yob I look. He draws himself up stiffly and, tapping the iPad in his hand absently against a beautifully pressed trouser leg, he takes off his glasses, puts one of the arms of his spectacles between his lips the way intellectuals are supposed to when they are thinking about something clever and drawls a cautious "Yairse.” Pause. “Why?" But he still isn't looking at me, he is following the gigantic arm of a crane as it swings an arc through the blue, cloudless sky. I look at him, puzzled. This must be some kind of trick question.
“Why what?” I queried. “Why are you a member? How should I know?”
“No, I meant – oh, never mind.” Then I get what he meant and continue, skirting the question altogether and I start explaining that my parents were members and used to drag me round various old places. Mind, I can’t say I objected and it paid off too as it was invaluable training for my role as recent houseguest of the local whacko aristocrat.
There, Mister Nice Tie Man with your fancy, hoity-toity ways – I’m not the ignoramus you thought I was and I bet the nearest you’ve ever got to the landed gentry is a fleeting, distant view of Harris Tweed on some poker-straight aristocratic back as you stand the pleb side of a rope separating you from the nice Sévres on some Robert Adam mantlepiece. Me? I’ve eaten off the damn stuff in a dining room the size of a small concert hall - the Sévres, that is, not the tweed.
I scrabble round in my mind for the name of somewhere National Trust-ish as I'm desperate to see what's going on behind that barrier and for that I need to get on the right side of he who is, I suspect, the gatekeeper. I manage to remember a place in Gloucestershire that made quite an impression on me.
"I quite like Snowshill, myself. It's how I would be if I had the money. All those mad, random collections of things. The room full of instruments, the one with Samurai armour in, all the nautical stuff." A slow grin visits the project manager's face.
"Yes, it certainly has something. An interesting place" A man in more orthodox work wear for a building site passes by with a walkie-talkie and stops near us. He looks up as a large bucket of concrete on the end of the crane tips its contents through the air and into some mysterious hole beyond the makeshift wooden force-field in front of us. The man and My New Best Friend make a cursory nod of satisfaction to each other and it is only after that that the project manager turns to look at me properly.
"Anyway, how may I help you?" He scans me briefly, knowing in a glance that I haven't come to work there. "Are you another environmentalist desperate for a whinge?" I think about that one. In a word, no but, in another a word, hmm....
I still can't see beyond the orange wall but I am fearing the worst. The man in the tie is, surprisingly, warming to me (a little) and I think he recognises me but he is not sure. This makes him loosen up (a little) and he is going on about how the National Trust does a good job because of the way special places must be preserved because they mean so much to so many people. Meanwhile, here I am, looking through an observation hole I have found in the curtain of plywood and watching the wholesale desecration of my spot, the spot that meant so much to me but which is not, unlike other far grander places, deemed worth saving.
But it isn't really my spot; I have never owned it… Except, of course, I did in a way. All the same, I know deep down that I have no right to plead its cause, let alone expect someone to heed me. The man has, it seems, picked up on my sadness and even I can tell he is softening. Despite first appearances he is, it seems, a kind man and offers to take me inside to have a look. He points to a huge metal container with windows where, through the glass, I can see a row of spare hard hats lined up and someone in a uniform at a computer. It’s actually very nice of him to offer, but I'm not actually sure I want to go in now.
This boss of all he surveys is also, it turns out, a sensitive man. He guesses why I came here today with my camera and my carrier bag of food but if he thinks I have been foolish, naive, he certainly doesn't betray it. As I look at this official man with the clipboard, the tie, the reflective waistcoat and the hard hat displaying his badge of rank, I am certainly not expecting what he is about to say next.
"I used to come here as a boy. None of my friends would have understood. It was the chimneys I liked. That and the stream." It's then I interrupt, not caring if I'm about to sound a bit loony.
"That stream, it was a whole little world."
"Yes," he nods slowly, "that stream, it was a whole little world." We look at each other, both a bit gob-smacked. His phone clicks its fingers and wakes him from his momentary trance. He looks apologetic and fumbles in a pocket.
"Sorry, must go. This'll be another fiasco requiring diplomacy to the many, stern words to the few and a kick up someone's stupid behind. Look, here's my card. Just before we moved all this crap in I came and took loads of photos. Email me, give me a bell or something - I can let you have some pictures. Keep in touch!"
That's the kind of thing you say when you don't expect to see someone again - this is different though and I'm sure he means it. Getting a leaflet from the office, he presses it into my hand and gives a cheery wave as he passes through the gate into the squelching, churning stomach that is the muddy site.
I should be feeling really pissed off as I eat my sandwiches on the bus into the centre of town. Wedging a yogurt between my knees, I open up the leaflet yet again. It is a shopping centre, huge and silver and, actually, sort of exciting. It is the kind of place that, in a hundred years time, somebody is going to sit down next to and get all poetical about, perhaps even to the point of, yes, putting their hand in a stream like I did and pulling out not a Victorian soldier's pipe but, say, a plastic disposable lighter and then bestowing on it the same reverence I did on that small crook of fired white clay.
I try to convince myself that, if this chap is in charge, then there is a sensitive hand at the tiller, that it doesn't really matter the factory is gone, that it doesn't even matter that the shrine to Charlotte, her shed, has been flattened and that if anyone was going to do it then I am glad it was him. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I am almost upbeat as I enter Maisie's and order a cappuccino.
Such thoughts are, of course, totally illogical but this glimpse of something new and exciting has triggered a long-missed optimism in me, a change of mood. I find a couple of pages of memoirs in my bag, ones that escaped. I put the tatty pieces of graph paper on the plastic red and white gingham tablecloth.
I stare at the random musings on it.
It was in that year that I…
In my opinion, I…
Of course, I knew that I had to…
It was then I decided to…
Just what the fuck is this self-indulgent crap? I was right to burn it. I stir in my one sugar (clockwise) and imagine my debilitating introspection swirling round the cup and dissolving in the depths under the foam. It is time to move on, time to stop dwelling on the past, time to stop dreaming of the unreal.
I take out the neat, clean card of the project manager and lay it on top of the discoloured graph paper with the dog-eared edges, wild handwriting and scratchings out. It sits there, new and fresh, its minute fragment of whiteness dominating even the broad expanse of the ancient manuscript beneath it. That's the future, that is. Taking the phone from my army bag, I dial the number.
Later, that evening it's the project manager who greets me at the door of Twenty-Six, The Mulberries. The front of the house is neat and ordered, no doubt like all the other countless houses that bend round this estate in their Lego-brick perfection. They are little emoticons of houses, avatars of a home, a symbol for when you want to put 'number of dwellings' on a graph. As I stand looking at the UPVC front door, it opens to a pale, dusty-pink wallpaper with glossy stripes and the clean, wholesome smell of proper, by-the-book cooking and new carpet. He is not in his jacket and tie anymore but open-neck shirt, v-neck pullover and slippers. If he has misgivings about my tatty Converses on the expensive-smelling, freshly-laid woollen pile it doesn't show as he smiles kindly and reaches out his hand.
"John Flanders".
I enter the front door. The house is not scruffy like my flat and it isn't decadent like Burnleigh Hall. No - it is, just like the outside, neat and ordered. There are not many possessions on show and, if he had to draw a picture of each room, John Flanders would be able to plot accurately each precisely-placed china ornament, each photograph of their grown-up children in their degree robes, each cut-crystal wineglass in the illuminated wall cabinet.
It would be easy to look at the unassuming man with the grey hair and the moustache and put him down as a bit part in a pension plan. This is what I fall prey to and it is with a slightly superior swagger that I walk into the oh-so-cosy domesticity. Mr. Flanders offers to take my coat.
"Do excuse Valerie; she's in the kitchen doing the honours. Won't be long." He looks at my attire, suddenly alarmed as he scans my second-hand army overcoat, the jeans and the 'Meat Is Murder' tee shirt. "Goodness, you're not vegetarian, are you? I forgot to ask."
"No, I just like the design." Actually I don't like it (or even know the album): I just wanted to wear something provocative. John then confesses that, while The Smiths weren't bad he was more of a 'Cure' fan in the 'Eighties, something that only partly prepares me for the shock of entering his 'den' and seeing a photo taken thirty years before, a creased image of him hanging round Camden Market with then-girlfriend Valerie and an explosion of black hair on his head.
Even more of a shock is the eyeliner, the guitar around his neck and she who is presumably bustling about in the kitchen, just as busy here in the picture of yesteryear where she is sporting a sexy Satanic Barbie look as she moves through the crowd with an upturned hat, her man knocking out some song or other with evident gusto.
"I only knew about three numbers, but if you're busking that's all you really need. Do you play?" he queries, pointing to the guitar now displayed on the pristine white wall but with the same decoration of 'Johnny B. Damned' still hanging on by the skin of its teeth. The permanent marker, while fresh and black in the photo, is now rubbed and faded as it works out its last gasps on the surface of the bashed-up guitar.
The only development since the photo is even more duct tape holding it together and a Glastonbury sticker, itself a coy fig leaf over the "Fuck Thatcher" slogan next to the skull with a Mohican, the sticker no doubt added when the first little Flanders was getting perilously old enough to read. John Flanders doesn't wait for an answer but moves over to the computer.
"This is what you came for." My host is not the sort to boast, but he’s a little more relaxed now he's brandished a history that beats mine. If I came round to shock, then I have been trounced at a game I consider my speciality.
While the computer is organising its enormous screen, I look at the photo again. Valerie has a tattoo round her wrist. At this very second, that tattoo is probably putting a casserole on the G Plan teak table in the midst of serviettes in rings, silver plate cutlery and crystal glasses about to be graced with Wine Magazine's recommended Red Of The Month.
Valerie Flanders, Miss S and M transformed by the years into Mrs. M and S. There is a knock on the study door and the erstwhile owner of the black lace basque enters in her tan skirt and cream top to tell us that the meal is ready. Smiling, she raises her left hand in a wave to me, the wide diamante watchband pretty well hiding the erstwhile tribal markings but with vestiges of 'Val-Hallah' still just visible. Of course, the black lace basque may still have the occasional outing, but probably not for activities you discuss with your guest.
Taking another delicious mouthful of main course, I tell them about my sculpture.
Correction: they tell me about my sculpture.
"It was amazing! We went along a few times to have a look at it. What made you do it?" So I tell them about my father. They in turn tell me about Glastonbury and then she is hilarious as she talks about being penniless in Las Vegas and what they saw when they worked in hotel kitchens. He tells me about his job and is very amusing, one story being about a rock star client who, not having really thought it through, still insisted on a nuclear bunker beneath his swimming pool. I almost talk about Lady Pinke-Burnleigh but bottle out at the last minute.
At the end of the meal, I offer to help but Valerie nods to the den door.
"That's very sweet, thank you, but you guys clear off to John's little pit of iniquity. The machine will do the dishes. Coffee?" Back in the room, and with me sat at the screen, John tells me to scroll down the photos, pick out the ones I like and dump them in a new folder. There are arty close-ups of brick texture, chimneys in the mist and even one of me going into my shed the time I was making my sculpture.
"John, You knew?"
"Yep".
"And you didn't squeal?"
"Why should I? The whole thing was fascinating. Here, have a look, I was shooting these at the time". He scrolls down and I see the black mass of the chimneys against the orange glow of the city street lights. "I even turned your lights off once when you forgot. Didn't stop them knocking your shed down in the morning, though." He scrolls down again. It is Charlotte getting the key out of the hole in the wall of the chimney.
"You even knew about her? About that? You know about the two of us being there when even we didn't?"
"Sorry, a bit sneaky. Honest - I'm not a stalker!"
"No... No, it’s just amazing to think... But these pictures... They're beautiful." John drags my choice onto a CD Rom and asks, almost casually, "Shall I put in a word for you? A sculpture in the new complex?"
"Sorry, this sounds really ungrateful - and thanks and all - but can I think about it?"
"I understand. We've just come in and trampled all over so why would you want to have any part of it? That's how I felt as well". He looks at me. "No, really."
“I believe you. It does sound sort of exciting, though."
"Don't count your chickens, etcetera, etcetera."
"I know."
By the time I leave I love these people. The biggest surprise is that they don't give a toss what anyone thinks, even if it's that they're boringly conventional.
And that's how cool they are.
18
Maisie's has always been a place I find I can work. I am one of the regulars that Maisie turns a blind eye to, one of the die-hard crew who only buy one coffee every two hours. We are tolerated because, in slack times, we help give the illusion that it’s a popular haunt.
And times are usually slack at Maisie's.
The cafe is a bit of a niche slot. It attracts the local 'arty' people in the main, those with a taste for the wild and exotic in life but with only a taste for the cheap and mundane if it means finding the money to pay for it. The proprietress could have made a lot more had she got a franchise with a 'MegaCoffeeCorps' (as she never tires of telling us) but that, apparently, is not her 'bag'.
Maisie is now around sixty-five and sees her eponymous establishment as a pension scheme she can handle, a place she is comfortably familiar with, having been here in the square since a local teenager called John Flanders used to come in with his new squeeze Valerie and play in the corner for free cappuccinos.
And everybody loves Maisie. Even the local environmental health inspector has a soft spot for her and turns a blind eye to the shop dummies hung on the walls, septic dust-gatherers dressed in a random selection of Hippy, Arthurian Legend, Alien and Transvestite Bondage, the whole lot donated (in exchange for free teas in perpetua) by the former owner of a local fancy dress shop when it went under.
I was never considered that arty because I produce designs that end up as a fifteen denier weave, but my presence used to be tolerated by the local cognoscenti. My reputation in here has, however, gone stratospheric since my sculpture in the square and my name appearing in The Realm Of Destiny (a wall in the corridor on the way to the bog) is a reality at last.
A woman is sitting in a smart car outside and pointing through the window. The driver opens the door for her and she steps out, flicking imaginary dust from her immaculately tailored suit and passing a diamond-mounted finger through her coiffure.
It's Sarah and she's come to take me back to Burnleigh Hall. I have, since being absent from it, come to love that place so much that my returning there is a recurring dream at the moment, so it's with disappointment that I realise the woman is actually not Lady Pinke-Burnleigh but Hettie.
Jimmy Choo stilettos, a Cartier watch. Expensive, but far too high street and obvious for Sarah. Lots of money and lots of looking through Vogue to find out what she is allowed to wear this season but, despite it all, no real style... That's the new-look Hettie. The brown bob is elegant enough, but it still sits a little uneasily on a head more used to a home-made haircut and experimental food colouring applied after a couple of spliffs and a few cans of supermarket lager.
I am guessing that the long sleeves are forever, an arm full of needle punctures never looking good at the official functions that surely come with the territory. Mind, sitting through a Civic Dinner with the Mayor must be a small price to pay for the money that Hettie can now spend on herself. Putting her black patent Hermes bag on the homely red and white(ish) gingham tablecloth in front of me, she grimaces and shakes her head as she speaks.
"You were such a disappointment. I could have done so much more with your art."
"But you did, didn't you? You 'sold' it to Lady Pinke-Burnleigh."
"Ooh, that's fighting talk, that is." Hettie looks round at the punters in the cafe with the air of someone who has just been put in a garbage bin. "And, as we are in public, that's slander too." I shove my saucer at her.
"Perhaps you could take my cup to the counter on your way out?" I watch as this woman who once hardly saw a bath - let alone a makeup counter - pointedly ignores me and checks her mascara in a dainty compact. I continue: "Get some good pictures of Burnleigh Hall, did you?" She wants to ignore that as well, but one eye stares at me, the other still obscured behind the ornate gold disk of the lid. I notice a diamond has fallen out of the compact and is now in the sugar bowl. Picking it out, I give it back to her. She is not grateful. Just irritated.
"Why didn't you keep it?" She snaps. "That's more than you earn in a month!"
"What, and live off the earnings of a tart? Even I have standards." The slap she gives me... Well, I suppose I deserve it, really. The comment was below the belt (in a manner of speaking). Hettie is quivering now.
"And what about you sponging off Her Ladyship - that's different, I suppose?"
"Yes it is - I get to keep my trousers on." Administering a second slap smacks of repetition and a lack of imagination, not that I tell her so in quite so many words, as I'm not sure how long I can keep up an air of nonchalance. "You need to widen your vocabulary a bit; relying on physical violence can make your hands sting."
"Oh yes, Mr. Smart-Arse... Perhaps your wise and witty words will stop the bulldozers when they turn up on Her Ladyship's doorstep." And now it's plain that Hettie realises she has divulged too much. Flinging her chair from behind her, she addresses the little cafe in general. "And the rest of you losers can fuck off too!" As the door slams, Merlin quivers in the aftershock, perilously close to falling off the wall; as it is, his cotton wool beard takes its leave and reveals the nineteen-sixties make-up of a Twiggy look-alike in advanced state of rigor mortis.
Digging round for my mobile, I phone Sarah.
"Hello. How are you?" A lame opener, but it's all I can think of. I can tell that Sarah is pleased to hear me. She doesn't sound that confident though, almost shy as she asks me if I would like to come over for a meal.
For once, I can read the signs and tell she isn’t right.
"Adlington could come over for you. And stay the night as well, if you like. Some of the staff are out - the fair is in town - but even I can get a duvet cover on."
"I'm sure it will look very elegant. You may need a belt round your middle to give it some shape, though."
"Ha ha, funny boy. See you in a bit. The way I'm feeling, you might get here and find me wearing it as a shroud." There is an awkward silence as we both remember Charlotte. "Sorry, too soon for that kind of joke. See you."
I throw my mobile in a Tesco bag along with a clean shirt, underwear and a toothbrush. I contemplate taking a bottle, but as Sarah has acres of premium wine cellar I leave my solitary bottle of budget white in the fridge where it has taken up near-permanent residence between the margarine and a can of diet cola. What I do grab though is a drawing I have done of a flower I found in the road when the market was on… I remembered at the time that irises are her favourite. I shut up the flat and wait on the pavement for Adlington.
Adlington has no spirit for giving me the cold shoulder. This is so unusual as to make me feel uneasy. There is no subtle (yet unavoidable) arching of the eyebrow as he sees my carrier bag; in fact he is almost wearing an expression that says he is glad to see me. There is even a joke.
"Would sir like a hand with his trunk?" This attempt at a quip should sound like a snide comment, but it doesn't. No, it is him saying 'Look, sorry I've been a bit off but it's just the way I am and I'm sort of getting used to the idea of you now. I just take a little while to cope with something new, that's all'.
"Apologies for being late, sir, but the annual fair appears to be under a process of construction."
As we go around the town square there is another limousine coming the opposite way, this one with the Mayoral coat of arms on. The scene through the window is a study in isolation, the Mayor and Hettie turned away from each other with neither showing any urge to communicate.
A fairground lorry has managed to wedge itself between the half-assembled Dodgems and a candy floss stall and the traffic has ground to a halt, the two limousines stuck in a jam merely yards from each other. Hettie's eyes meet mine and it is not triumph in the woman's eyes but a desperate stare, her body hunched, and she leaning her elbow on the walnut sill as if in a desperate attempt to get someone's – anyone’s - attention. Her partner is sitting in his Mayoral chain, bolt upright, impassive as if she doesn't exist. Despite it all, I feel for her. Hettie hides behind her hand so the Mayor can't see her make contact with me, so he doesn't discover her mouthing something to me.
Or is it at me?
Whichever it is, I just tell myself she's got out of her depth, that's all, that she is probably really quite nice. She needs to disguise her red eyes now and I see her take out the compact she flashed around in the cafe. The Mayor starts shouting and Hettie flinches, the Mayor snatching the compact from her hand and prodding the place where the diamond is missing..
All is clear now as The Obvious has had its surface wiped free of mystery. Hettie doesn't own any of her bright new things. No, they are hers to carry and care for the way a pageboy bears a crown, the monarch's power made visible. A King can be only be arrayed with so much, but to have a shop window dummy who shows it off for you and then opens her legs when bidden?
Well, it's a win-win.
Adlington slides the communicating window back and asks if I know the Mayor. The question is couched so perfectly; it appears the man can sit perfectly expressionless and yet make diplomacy point its finger in a direction that is obvious to all. I hope my tone of voice will convey, in a more direct fashion, my own feelings on the matter.
"Yes. Yes, I know the mayor. Does that answer your question?" Adlington allows himself the smallest of grins.
"Admirably, sir."
‘Sir’ without sarcasm? This is indeed a novelty I could get used to very quickly, but it doesn't prepare me for the "Please pardon me saying, sir, but I suspect her Ladyship will be only too pleased to see you, if I may be so bold."
We stop in a lay-by and Adlington opens the glass partition between the driver and the passenger seats. Is he going to ask me to get out so he can wait for a lull in the traffic and heave my freshly-skewered corpse into a ditch? Maybe not, now I have seen this new softer version. Perhaps he has needs that go beyond a clean white shirt every day and he reckons that I am the one to service them? If it is either of those, he is taking an inordinate amount of time to gather himself. Adlington is pausing and, sat here in the dark, the more he pauses the more I am wondering if I ought to make a run for it... Waiting, of course, for my door to be opened for me - to do it myself would, after all, be a severe breach of protocol.
"I think, sir, you ought to know - “Adlington pauses. ”Sorry sir, I am speaking out of turn." The grey, concrete man is in a situation which, rarely for his life, there is no text book for. Driving the hearse with Charlotte in was easy for him - there are things you carry out at Pinke-Burnleigh occasions and he has done them before. Servicing the cars is easy, because he's familiar with their peculiarities and their quirks - he knows, for example, that he has to check the dipstick more often in the Daimler because the oil warning light hasn't worked for thirty-five years: Adlington also knows that the pewter-grey Rolls steers a little to the left and that the gearshift in the nineteen thirty-eight Bugatti rattles when the car hits forty-seven miles an hour. They are all his children... It is his job to know.
But this is difficult.
For both of us.
It is not distance in his eyes when he turns to me, it is devotion to his employer that inspires a willingness to travel far from his comfort zone to a place where even the trusty sat nav is useless. He looks embarrassed.
"No, Adlington, please continue. Whatever it is, please go on."
"I think she, er, needs your presence there, sir. Things are afoot." There, he has said it and in doing so he has broken the seal on a long-closed box of taboos. He opens his eyes again and realises that, by committing the cardinal sin of Speaking Out Of Turn, the Earth has not opened and sent him plummeting to the doomed eternity of a Hell liberally furnished no doubt with small Japanese hatch-backs and middle-class eco-warriors on bicycles. Adlington is, in fact, emboldened now.
"Quite a lot. I think she, um, needs your presence there quite a lot, sir." It is only because of a lull in the traffic that I hear a faint, whispered "oh, Hell." The chauffeur shifts uneasily in his seat. "I think we should go now, sir?"
"Yes please, I think we should go now. And thank you." As I pat his shoulder, Adlington makes eye contact, possibly for the first time ever.
But that is not all and he suddenly turns even more solemn, as if to impart some extremely grave announcement.
"And I think you should know, sir, that she has taken up residence in the flat." I am somewhat mystified at the sombre tone. The idea of a flat sounds rather homely.
"Is that bad?"
"Oh, yes, sir. Very bad." Adlington sighs, shakes his head and turns the wheel. The limousine launches out into the road and then turns left down the familiar, dark avenue of trees.
19
Once I have slung my plastic bag into the comforting mustiness of the room with the pagoda wallpaper and the castle fireplace, I follow Adlington's directions to the flat and I find Sarah behind an unassuming door of normal size, something unusual in itself. The little apartment is tucked away from the splendour of the house and is very modest with a sitting room, a small kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom, while its sole inhabitant (Sarah) is in jeans, a sweater and slippers with no makeup and her hair held in place by a pink and orange plastic Alice band.
This is, despite Her Ladyship’s quiet, pensive mood, still a day for dressing up; it's just that today she is attired in a manner suitable for a pokey little lounge with late fifties wallpaper, nineteen-sixties sideboard, Formica-topped dining table, plastic-seated chairs and kitsch reproductions on the walls of a Spanish senorita and Parisian street scenes. A small portable record player has a rack next to it containing a neat little row of vinyl LPs, but the music is coming from a tinny transistor radio in the kitchen.
This approximation of the mundane finishes at the window and, if the pink and orange Flower Power roller blind in the bathroom were to be raised, there would be the reality of opulence, a view out over the parkland and the familiar terrace below with the fountains and the Burnleigh Hall take on ‘normality’, namely mad topiary hedges cut into the shapes of teapots, elephants and bowler hats. Sarah smiles and bids me sit.
"This is where my parents lived when they first got married. They found it intimate, cosy, a great way to get away from the prying of the staff - it was their honeymoon suite, in a way. Everybody wants unreality in their honeymoon suite, and everyone wants make-believe; this was theirs, a fantasy of what generally passed as normal in the outside world." She leafs through the vinyl LPs of Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. "Then, one day in the Sixties, they simply turned the key and left it all up here to gather dust as they moved into the main part of the house. I found that key when I was about ten and this became my playhouse, my den."
"Do you find it comforting?" Sarah nods and places the needle of the record player on Elvis Presley's 'Love Me Tender'. Is that just an accident, perhaps some random last-second decision made by the muscles in her hand? It may be a distraction to stop me probing, but it won't stop me finding out what's wrong. "And why do you need this comfort right now?" Sarah sighs, looks down at the Pop Art tufted rug in the shape of a target, gets up and goes to the kitchen to turn the radio off and the kettle on.
"Tea of coffee?" I look at my watch as it feels a bit late in the evening for coffee and then I watch as she puts two teabags in a couple of mugs; it looks odd when Sarah does it, because it is such an ordinary thing to do. It is like watching a film idol put a hand on a wall, the viewer amazed that the fingers should touch a surface where countless hands of mere mortals have touched it before and defiled it.
Marie Antoinette would occasionally have a day off from being Queen of France and go and be a milkmaid for a while, play at being a peasant. It would be porcelain pails she used (and it was still within the palace grounds) but it was precious and, to her, real. Did she think of the delicate blue and white porcelain filled with the sweetest, palest milk as she looked down at her last ever vision on this Earth, a rank-smelling basket filled with heads? Did she think of the gentle lowing of her cows as she heard her last ever sounds, the jeering of the mob and the iron blade of the guillotine slipping down its slimy groove towards her neck?
And now this woman, who today is but a small child playing 'House'... Is this one of the things she will remember during her last moments, the memory she will find comfort in?
Playing House? Maybe, but instead of a little plastic tea service to play with, Sarah has a real kitchen, a kettle and a fridge. When she comes back into the sitting room she waits for me to drink from the mug and she wonders if she has done it right, as if she is trying to do something new. When I was little, I would wait for my mother to start drinking the pretend cup of tea I had 'made' and it is almost as if Sarah is waiting for me to smack my lips in a theatrical manner and go "Ooh, that's lovely! Thank you!"
Sarah suddenly looks away, blushing; it is obvious – even to me – that she feels vulnerable, silly. She is deciding, too late, that she shouldn't have invited me into this her most private of private places. She isn't wearing makeup and her hair is dragged back by the Alice band after perhaps just a couple of pulls through with a brush but it is as if she has to perform the rite of being seen here, even though she is more exposed, more naked than merely naked could ever be.
Then I notice the wallpaper is scuffed and a little grubby around the light switch, the paint on the door still has scratches from a dog and the pattern on the Formica top of the table is worn at the edges. No, this isn't a mini theme park, it is a small haven of normality that was decorated sixty years ago and happens to have not been touched since, this making it, after all, the strangest place in the whole eccentric realm of this house.
Next morning, I am up early and I rootle round the carrier bag (which doesn't take long) for my clean socks and pants. I find the shower a tolerant audience for my imaginary conversation with Sarah and I am now clear-headed and invigorated, still singing in a random, shouty sort of way even though I am now dry and out of the steamy bathroom.
Walking past Sarah's room, I hear noises but it's the efficient bustling of the maid. So, does Sarah comes down from her live-in dolls' house to choose her clothes in the morning, or are they left at her door for her to find as if some magic process in a fairy tale? There is no trace of either Sarah or the flat, each totally invisible as if neither had ever existed. On the way to breakfast, I wonder what other little quirks snooze within the random sepulchre that is Burnleigh Hall.
I have only been in the dining room for ten minutes when a tempest that is Sarah storms in brandishing a small piece of plywood on a stick. On this placard, according to the screaming woman, is a notice indicating someone's wish to build an industrial complex on the woodland.
Sarah is not pale-cheeked and wan anymore, she is rosy-cheeked and smells vaguely of the stables but that is not surprising as she has her jodhpurs and riding boots on… She is in fact wafting both Countryside and Warm Tweed, surely two of the most evocative fragrances known to humanity. Here she is, having a stress… And this is the moment that she is no longer frail and weedy but, suddenly, the most astounding person in the whole world. I sit at the table, open-mouthed at this whirlwind of tousled anger and indignation.
"WELL? HAVE YOU LISTENED TO A DAMN FUCKING WORD I'VE SAID?" I want to say 'no, I've been watching you, I think it's fantastic you aren't sad anymore and I've watched your mouth move but, no, I haven't heard a word you have said because I'm so totally gobsmacked!'
I don't, however. It's probably not wise at the moment.
Or any moment.
Sarah bangs the placard down on the table and pours a torrent of milk on a waiting bowl of muesli, most of it sweeping round the curved ski jump of the bowl and exiting the other side, a muddy, woollen sleeve then smearing it onto the floor. Failing in her quest for calories, she stabs a poor, defenceless pile of bacon and shakes it off the end of her fork and into a roll.
"WE ARE GOING TO FIGHT THIS!" The loudness of her voice is losing its heroic status and just plain making me nervous, but not as much as the word 'we'.
"We?"
Sarah stops dead in her tracks and stares at me, incredulous at the one syllable I have dared utter. Her face says that I owe it, that I am now part of Burnleigh Hall. Pausing to sit down slowly, she looks at me again. Aren't I part of it? I don't know, I shrug. Am I? Sarah stares down at her teacup and pushes the handle back and forth.
"Sorry, I forget how to speak to people. Bloody hell, I'm so damn fucking lonely here I get out of practice. No excuse, I know." Am I to answer that? What am I supposed to do at this point - go on my bended knees and beg Sarah to let me stay here? She stares out of the window. "Yes, there is Nicky and Colin, and Borrington and Adlington - not to mention Mrs. Henderson - but who do I have to talk to over dinner? I mean, they are lovely and all that, but... Well... You know."
Her mood has executed a deft handbrake turn and it is now a placid Sarah who smiles to herself and pushes the handle round again. "Do you remember your first dinner here? I thought you were going to brain Charlotte! And then you moped off in a strop with your, er, 'headache'." She laughs and then goes silent. Head bowed, she raises her eyes to me as I speak.
"And I was put out because I thought Charlotte was your Golden Girl. I nearly asked for chips with my meal that evening just to piss you off." Sarah laughs, sits erect again and bangs the table with her fist.
"Ha! It takes more than that, `Sunny Jim!" I point at the placard, no longer a lethal weapon but dormant in the spot where it has been banged down on the table.
"The Mayor seems to have found out how to do it, though."
"Yes, he does." Now she is quiet again. Sarah moves over to the fireplace, looks in the huge gilded mirror and starts to sing softly. It is a song by Pulp about wanting to live like common people and do whatever common people do. From the Lady Pinke-Burnleigh I hardly knew that would have sounded crass, insensitive, even. From the Sarah I now know it sounds desperate, insecure. She undoes her cravat and tries to tame her unruly, wind-swept hair but her fingers don't seem to have any authority over the disobedient head of chestnut. Abandoning that quest, she examines her reflection and mentally itemises her apparel - the riding breeches, the waistcoat and the tweed hacking jacket.
"Look at me, a genetic throw-back to forelock tugging and horse-whipping the peasants. I make that about two stages up the evolutionary scale from organisms crawling out of the Primeval Soup... And that's on a good day." Sarah turns to face me with a look of helplessness. "Please tell me I'm not like that, that I'm not some Victorian tyrant." I walk backwards from her, bowing as I go.
"Please, no, your ladyship, definitely not, your ladyship!" If Sarah is annoyed at her badly-aimed bacon roll making a grease mark on the wallpaper beside me, she doesn't show it. Drawing a finger across her throat, she laughs.
"Off with his head, the impudent young pup! Begad, by the time this day is out I will have his gizzard fed to the hounds and his head boiled up for soup!" Sarah sits down, stirs her tea and gazes at me, her head tilted in the cup of her hand. "Do you know what?"
"I'm sure you're about to tell me."
"Damn right I am. Do you know what, this is the first time I have laughed in ages." Sarah pauses, pushing her finger round a puddle of milk still on the surface of the table. "Look, why not stick around for a few days?"
"Yes... Why not? Thank you."
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