Bad Heir Day Page 2

  “Do they?” Anna said, not at all sure what he meant. She reeled slightly. Orlando’s breath was pure alcohol. One flick of a lighter and…

  “Yah. Put it this way—Lavenham always says she screws like an animal.”

  “But that’s rather flattering, isn’t it?”

  “Not really.” Gossett paused, then nudged her. “Like a dead dog, he says. Haw haw haw.”

  Anna did not smile. “Have you met her?” she asked coldly.

  “Not exactly, not in the flesh, no.”

  “You have, actually.”

  “Sorry?” Orlando looked blank.

  “Met her. You’re meeting her, in fact. Sebastian Lavenham is my boyfriend.”

  There was an exploding sound as Orlando Gossett choked on what Anna calculated to be his seventh glass of champagne. “Christ. Oh my goodness. Oh fuck. I really didn’t mean…I’m sure he was joking…”

  “Yes.” Part of her refused to believe Seb could ever be so cruel. Part of her, however, feared the worst. “Excuse me, I really must go and powder my nose.” At least she had an excuse to get away from him now.

  “Well, you won’t be alone,” Gossett remarked cheerily. “Half of Kensington’s chatting to Charlie in there. They say there’s more snow in Strawberry St. Felix’s bag than in the whole of St. Moritz.”

  Seb having completely disappeared, Anna decided to pass some of what promised to be a very long evening exploring the castle.

  As she wandered from the thronging hall, ringing with the depressing sound of everyone but her having a good time, Anna wondered where she and Seb would be sleeping that night. And whether it would be the same place. The traumas of the journey were beginning to catch up with her. She longed for a lie-down.

  The passage she was walking down was very dark, of a blackness so intense it almost felt solid. Anna inhaled the deep, cool, mildewed smell of centuries and wondered what it would be like to live somewhere so ancient. To have a past of burnished oak refectory tables, tapestries and mullions; Anna, whose own past was rather more semi-detached, G-plan, and Trimphones, was fascinated by the air of age and decay.

  The darkness was now absolute. Anna, proceeding steadily onwards, stuck her hands out in front of her, terrified of being impaled on something sharp—perhaps another of the intimidating halberds she had noticed festooning the hall. The silence was ringing in its intensity—the noise from the hall having long receded. Yet, straining her ears, Anna thought she heard the faint sound of a door closing. A bolt of fear shot through her as she realised the castle might be haunted. That, of course, was the downside of old places. Say what you like about semis, Anna thought, you rarely saw headless green ladies in them. Unless you’d knocked over one of Mum’s china shepherdesses. On seeing a dim light in the distance, Anna felt weak with relief. Approaching, she saw that the faint glimmer was a large, diamond-paned oriel window, the deep recesses of which held two cushioned seats facing each other. She collapsed on one of them gratefully. A sense of calm ebbed slowly through her as she gazed out into the night.

  Directly in front of her, picturesquely distorted through the ancient and tiny panes of glass, a full moon with a searchlight beam silvered the vast expanse of the loch. The water shimmered and wrinkled like liquid satin, edged with the thinnest of watery lace as it rippled peacefully up the pebbly shore. All was silence.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said a voice beside her.

  Anna leapt out of the seat and tried to scream, but found she could only manage a petrified croak. Yet even in her terror she couldn’t help noticing that the voice was less marrow-chilling and deathly than low and well-spoken and shot through with a warm thread of Scots. Anna opened her eyes. The moonlight shone on tumbling dark locks. A shock of hair, in every sense of the word.

  “Terribly sorry,” gasped the diffident waiter. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Well, I dread to think what happens when you do,” Anna snapped, immediately regretting it. For some reason she didn’t want him to think she was a harridan. As he put a nervous hand over his mouth to stifle a rather forced-sounding cough, she noticed the signet ring that glinted on his finger. Anna stared at it, surprised. But then why shouldn’t a waiter wear a signet ring if he wanted? It was disturbing to realise that Seb’s values—that only the wealthy and well-born were allowed rings with coats of arms—were seeping through.

  “My name’s Jamie Angus,” he told her, proffering his hand. It felt cool and reassuring over hers.

  “Anna. Anna Farrier,” she mumbled, embarrassed both at how prosaic it sounded beside his own splendidly Caledonian affair and also at the waves of attraction thudding up her arm, down through her stomach, and straight into her gusset. I must be drunk, she thought wildly. Guiltily, even, until, suddenly, the memory of Seb’s hand on Strawberry’s naked back flashed into her mind. Slowly, reluctantly, she withdrew her hand from Jamie’s and, looking at him, smiled.

  His wide, dark eyes, Anna noticed, were as far removed from Seb’s spiteful blue ones as soft malt was from a vodka martini.

  “Did you come on your own?”

  “I came with my boyfriend, actually.” Damn. Why the hell had she said that?

  The warm light in Jamie’s eyes died away.

  “Although,” Anna gabbled, desperate to limit the damage, “he seems slightly more interested in one of the other women guests.”

  “Well, he must be mad,” Jamie said, with what could have been no more than usual politeness. Silence descended. In an abrupt change of tack, Jamie asked her if she’d ever visited Scotland at the exact same time she asked him if he’d worked here for long. “No,” was the mutual and simultaneous answer.

  “Not exactly,” Jamie elaborated. “I’m just helping out.”

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Anna said.

  Another pause followed. Unwilling to risk banalities, Anna stared silently out of the window at the moonlit loch. The waves flexed tiny, tight muscles beneath the surface of the water, while the path of light lay sparkling above, leading to the distant horizon and the dawn. She stared hard at the stars glowing like Las Vegas in the blackness of the sky and tried to work out which of the constellations she could see.

  “Is that a planet over there?” she ventured, pointing at a very bright star to the west. “It looks very bright. Is it Venus?”

  “No. That’s the planet easyjet.” Jamie said it gently but sounded amused.

  Anna reddened in the darkness as the star moved steadily through the sky, accompanied by a bright flashing light. Astronomy had never been her strength. Orion’s belt was about her level, and she wasn’t altogether certain of that. The one she was staring at seemed to have fewer notches than last time. Perhaps he’d been losing weight. Lucky old him.

  “I’d better get back,” Jamie said. “The cake needs cutting. And I think the disco has started in the Great Hall.”

  He led her back down the passage and gave her a swift, sweet, farewell peck on the cheek before propelling her through a door which, unexpectedly, opened directly into the cavernous, vaulted room, amidst whose friezes and flagstones the disco was indeed in full swing. Or swinger—a superannuated Ted with a thinning, greying quiff proudly presided over a console emblazoned with the words “Stornaway Wheels of Steel Mobile Disco.” As the cacophonous blare of “The Locomotion” filled the air, Anna’s heart sank in depressed recognition of the nuptial-attender’s ritual nightmare, The Wedding Disco From Hell.

  She glanced around the scattered strobe-lit crowd for any sign of Seb. Or Strawberry. Neither was in evidence. Taking care to position herself as far as possible from Orlando Gossett, currently investigating the buffet at one end of the room, Anna headed for the bar and drowned her sorrows in getting to know a group of delicious White Russians. After a while, emboldened by their company, she tottered unsteadily towards the dance floor and sank gratefully into a chair at the edge. The
flashing lights made her head spin, as did the jerking forms of about thirty men in morning suits leaping around as the dying strains of “Love Shack” were replaced by “Come on Eileen.” Roaring and foot-stomping floated through the speakers. When “Fever” succeeded “Mustang Sally,” Anna felt the first urge to laugh she had experienced all day. The sight of Orlando Gossett writhing around and assuring some blonde, horsy woman in an Alice band that she gave him Fever All Through The Night made Anna snort with suppressed mirth.

  It was odd, Anna mused with the intensity of the inebriated, how people seemed happy to sacrifice all dignity in the face of really terrible music. Just what was it about “Hi Ho Silver Lining” that got couples leaping up from their tables? Why did “I Will Survive” prompt mass histrionic role-playing, or “YMCA” and “D.I.S.C.O.” have everyone waving their arms about like the compulsory morning workout at a Chinese ball-bearing factory? Most of all, why did the merest riff of Rolling Stones suddenly turn every man on the floor into Mick Jagger (in their dreams)? Even now, Orlando Gossett was prowling plumply around with one arm stuck straight out in front of him, rotating his wrist and imploring the horse-faced blonde to give him, give him, give him the honky tonk blues.

  The music changed, as it was inevitable it would do, to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and, as the heaving crowd on the dance floor shifted, Anna suddenly spotted her long-absent consort Doing the Time Warp Again. She watched, unsure whether the nauseous feeling in her stomach was because he was doing it a) at all, b) with a willowy, writhing someone bearing a striking resemblance to Brie de Benham, or c) because the effects of the White Russians were by now wearing off. Or possibly wearing on. Unable to reach a conclusion, or indeed anything else apart from the arm of the chair on which she kept a tight, stabilising grip, Anna watched their gyrating figures, oddly comforted by the fact that even the beautiful people looked ridiculous in the context of a really dreadful disco. It was a great leveller. Quite literally, she thought, as Orlando Gossett flicked to the right just a little bit too enthusiastically and went crashing heavily down on his well-upholstered bottom.

  “Desperate, isn’t it?” Anna had been too absorbed in watching the floorshow to notice that someone had sat down next to her. “Still, it beats L.A., I suppose,” added the voice. It belonged, Anna saw, to an extremely pretty girl.

  “It does?” Anna stared at her neighbour’s glossy tan and radiant teeth. “But I thought L.A. was full of beautiful people.”

  “It is. All the men are gay and all the women are gorgeous. The competition’s too stiff.”

  “But you look great,” Anna said. Certainly, her new friend hardly looked the shrinking violet type when it came to men. The only thing shrunken and violet about her, in fact, was the tiny lilac cashmere cardigan out of whose casually unbuttoned front a pair of tanned and generous breasts rose like the morning sun. Even in the dim light her smile was electric, emphasised by plum-coloured lipstick applied with architectural precision.

  “Thanks. As the lady said, it takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” The girl grinned, smoothing a black satin skirt slit the entire length of her thigh over her slender hips. She flicked a heavily mascara’d glance around the room. “It’s nice someone appreciates it. No one else seems to.” A precision-plucked eyebrow shot peevishly upwards. “Can’t say I’m too thrilled about having schlepped all the way up here,” she added. “I only came because I was told this wedding would be thick with millionaires. But I suppose”—she lit up a cigarette—“they were right about the thick bit.”

  The girl blew smoke out in two streams from her nose. “And the women…” She stabbed her cigarette in the direction of Strawberry, who had suddenly reappeared and was glaring at Brie and Seb smooching to “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You.” “Look at that. Hair like a badger’s arse.”

  Anna looked determinedly away from the dance floor and bulldozed a grin across her face. “Quite. I’m Anna, by the way.”

  “Geri. Lead me to the drinks. If I can’t bag an heir, hair of the dog will have to do.”

  Chapter Three

  “Then there was Hugh.” Geri struck the manicured pinnacle of her middle finger. “Gynaecologist. Met him at a BUPA checkup—it always pays to go private. Said I had the prettiest cervix he’d ever seen. Saved me a fortune on smear tests and breast examinations.”

  “Oh?” said Anna unsteadily. Geri had located the source of the champagne bottles behind a curtain beside the blazing hearth in the hall, grabbed three, and withdrawn with them and Anna to an alcove. Endless warmish fizz plus endless highlights of Geri’s romantic history were proving a potent and anaesthetic brew. Even the sight of Seb grinding his pelvis into that of Brie de Benham was by now painless. More painless than for Seb probably, as the de Benham pelvis resembled two Cadillac fins and it could hardly have been comfortable up close. Seb, however, seemed to be rising to the occasion.

  “Commitment problem,” said Geri.

  “Absolutely,” said Anna, looking resignedly at Seb.

  “Yes, except Hugh’s was that I wouldn’t commit,” said Geri, oblivious to the connection between Anna and the couple on the dance floor currently in the throes of “2-4-6-8 Motorway.”

  “Wish I had now, really. But at the time, I wanted to play the field. Trouble is”—she rolled her long-lashed eyes—“if you play in the field, you come across a lot of shit. Like Guy, for example.”

  “Guy?” With difficulty, Anna shifted her bovine stare from the disco.

  “A very rich banker. Or was. Complete ruthless shark. He was on the financial fast track until he got sacked.”

  “Insider dealing?” Anna hoped she sounded worldly wise.

  “Nothing quite so glamorous as that, I’m afraid. Someone in the office—everyone there hated him—changed his computer screensaver to say Fuck Off Cant. Unfortunately, Cant was the name of his immediate boss.” Geri paused and grinned. “But we did have other problems, particularly in bed. He could barely raise his eyebrows, let alone anything else.” She paused and sighed.

  The disco, it suddenly dawned on Anna, had stopped. Everyone was milling about, many of them making a beeline for the cut-up wedding cake. This had suddenly arrived in their midst on plates borne by Jamie who looked on with contempt as two WAGs grabbed handfuls of icing and began to throw it at each other. Anna tried to catch his eye to throw him a sympathetic glance and perhaps experience that delicious frisson again, but, deliberately or otherwise, he failed to notice her. Wresting his wares from the WAGs, he disappeared into the crowd and was soon lost to sight. Resignedly, Anna tuned back into Geri.

  “Then,” Geri was saying, “there was James. Wanted sex three times a night at first. Exhausting. Nightmare, in fact. Then, after we’d been together a few months it went down to twice a night. I couldn’t decide whether I was insulted or relieved. So I left him for Ivo. An academic. Hopeless.”

  “Oh?” said Anna, interested. She’d once entertained academic ambitions herself. “Why was he hopeless?”

  “Oh, not academically. He was one of the best in the world at ancient languages. He spoke fluent Aramaic which, apparently, is only of any use if you happen to meet Jesus.”

  “So what happened?” asked Anna, grinning.

  Geri sighed, “He was broke. And as far as I’m concerned, if there’s no dough, it’s no go. He could be awkward as well, which is no good either—you do it my way or hit the highway. But in the end, it was me who went. Took myself off to L.A. But now I’ve come back to London. Got offered this fantastic new job and there seemed no reason to turn it down.”

  A ripple of misgiving slid coldly through Anna’s stomach. Her nose twitched suspiciously at the sweet smell of success. A fantastic new job. Just as she had started to regard Geri as a soul mate, as someone doing just as badly as she was.

  Further questioning was rendered impossible by a sudden commotion in the hall. As everyone began to arrange themselv
es into pairs, Anna realised that Scottish dancing was about to begin. She shrank back against the hard wooden settle on which they sat. She hated country dancing. There were few people she loathed more than the Dashing White Sergeant, and could imagine nothing less gay than the Gordons.

  “A new job as what?” Anna had to shout to make herself heard as the fiddling struck up.

  “Executive development,” Geri yelled back cheerfully, lighting up another cigarette. “Lots of travel, lots of responsibility. Lots of man management. A real challenge. I’m looking forward to it, although I must admit I was hoping to meet someone here who would save me the bother of working altogether. Anyway, enough about me. What do you do?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” Anna bawled. “I’m trying to write a book, actually.” Hesitantly, then so fast that her words began to tumble over each other, she swiftly outlined her ambitions.

  “That’s brilliant,” screeched Geri. “Can I be in it? I’ve always wanted to be in a novel.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got very far with it,” Anna shouted, feeling her voice beginning to break with the strain. “The trouble is, I’m not sure whether I’m any good or not. I think I need a bit of professional advice about the nuts and bolts of things.” It was as near as she planned to come to admitting that she had neither agent, publisher, nor reason to believe she could write anything more than a postcard.

  On the dance floor, the stomping, clapping, and shrieking had intensified. “Ow,” yelled Geri as hairpins, shaken from their rightful positions by the frantic activity, began to fly in the direction of the oak settle. Brows streamed with perspiration, women’s breasts sprang free from their moorings. An excited-looking Seb shot by with a fetchingly rumpled Brie de Benham, their pupils the size of pinpoints.