Wild Weekend Read online

  After a considerable while, a long, wet, cold, wind-blown while, Clare spoke again from her permafrost and said, ‘This can’t be right.’

  ‘It must be right,’ Miranda tried not to plead. ‘We took the turnings, we did what he said.’

  ‘But we’re in the middle of nowhere. Surely we should have passed the pub by now …’

  As she spoke, some garish lights blurred past the window.

  ‘There it is,’ cried Miranda, with relief. ‘There’s the pub! Left past the pub, that was it.’

  They drove on. No left turning appeared. No right turning appeared. They were in a long tunnel-like twisting lane overhung with thrashing trees, with no exits. After ten more minutes, Clare said, ‘Let’s go back to the pub and ask directions.’

  She slowed, stopped, and tried to turn the car around in what seemed to be a woodland picnic area. Being strictly an urban motorist, Clare did not appreciate the essential idiocy of leaving the safety of the Tarmac for a patch of muddy ground well covered with wet leaves. When the front wheels were six inches from regaining the road, the back wheels started to spin.

  ‘What on earth …?’ Clare demanded.

  ‘Sorry, sorry. I’ll get out and push,’ said Miranda, flinging her door open into the downpour.

  ‘Wass happerhapperhappernin’?’ asked Dido, slurred and dissonant because she still had her headphones on.

  ‘Don’t get out …’ Clare began. It was not part of the plan for Miranda to get wet and cold and even more tired than she was already. But the door slammed and she saw her daughter’s black form floundering to the rear of the car. Then she felt a flurry of clothes behind her, and a blast of cold wind on the back of her neck as Dido scrambled out to join her friend.

  It took time, and a hard struggle, and much swearing, and a bit of luck, and some fallen branches pushed under the back wheels plus a twisted ankle, three broken nails, a definitively ruined pair of Manolo Blahnik boots, a rip around the shoulder seam of Miranda’s coat and the complete destruction of both their hairstyles, but in a quarter of an hour or so Miranda and Dido made it possible for Clare to drive their car back to the roadway. The rain, of course, did not let up in the least during this difficult operation. And when they got back into the car, wet, muddy and gasping, Miranda’s mother instinctively flinched away from them.

  When they reached the cheerful glare of the pub car park, Miranda flung herself out into the rain again without saying a word, followed in a few minutes by Dido, struggling with her bag.

  Miranda dragged open the pub door and advanced purposefully towards the bar, vaguely aware, in the smoky depths of the room, of a few rural types raising their noses from their glasses.

  ‘We’re looking for the Saxwold Manor Hotel,’ she began, registering the landlord’s unpromisingly blank face as she spoke.

  ‘Round here, is it?’ he answered, even less promisingly.

  ‘I think so,’ Miranda said, scanning the blackboard on which the wines of the month were offered and beginning to think that a nice glass of something red and velvety would do wonders for her karma.

  Dido floundered to her side and dropped her bag, from which several wayward items immediately escaped. ‘Do they know it?’ she asked, as if the indigenous people did not speak English.

  ‘The Saxwold Manor Hotel. It’s in Suffolk. Somewhere called Lower Saxwold,’ Miranda said.

  The landlord sucked his teeth. ‘I dunno … I can ask,’ he offered.

  ‘Maybe a quick glass of Rioja,’ Dido suggested. ‘If we’ve got to wait a bit.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Miranda conceded at once.

  The landlord, hearing ‘rio-ha’instead of the accustomed ‘rio-jar,’ decided that perhaps these two rather scruffy young women might in fact be the messengers of destiny finally bringing to his door the sophisticated clientele of which he had almost despaired. He poured the glasses with a will.

  ‘Saxwold Manor Hotel, anybody?’ he demanded of the room at large.

  ‘Round here, is it?’ asked Colin Burton, wondering if one of these bedraggled women might in fact be destined to become Mrs Burton Number 4. The one with the long hair, perhaps. She might clean up rather well.

  ‘It must be round here,’ said Lucy Vinny, ‘if it’s got Saxwold in the name. Unless you mean Saxwold St Swithin, that’s in north Norfolk.’

  ‘This is Suffolk, isn’t it?’ Dido asked, experiencing a wrench of panic.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Colin reassured her. ‘This is Suffolk, all right. No worries there. And you are in Great Saxwold. Lower Saxwold’s a couple of miles down the road. Can’t be far away.’

  ‘And these are the only Saxwold places in Suffolk?’ Miranda pressed on, determined to force these yokels to get their brains in gear.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said a voice behind her. Shades of irony, undertones of humour. A London voice, for heaven’s sake. Miranda turned around with an encouraging smile.

  Before her stood a blessedly urban sight, a painfully thin, pitifully white-skinned, reassuringly spike-haired figure dressed in black and clanking with crucifixes, its fingers webbed in black lace and its feet squeezed into shiny black boots. It was clutching an empty glass, which seemed a reasonable basis for negotiation. Fellow metropolitan, thought Miranda, fellow traveller in this strange land, I salute you. Actually, I trust you.

  ‘So if this is the only Saxwold in Suffolk,’ she pressed on with hope in her heart, ‘and we’re looking for the Saxwold Manor Hotel …’

  ‘No point asking her,’ Colin insisted. ‘She’s not local, she won’t know. And the rest of them Gothicks or whatever, they’ll be three sheets in the wind by know, hardly know their own way home.’

  ‘Oh, I won’t know, won’t I?’ Toni replied, giving Colin a near subliminal wink just before Miranda turned back to her. ‘Don’t take any notice of him, he’s bin rat-arsed himself all evening. ’ Scuse my French. What was it, Saxwold Manor Hotel?’

  ‘Yes,’ Miranda confirmed. ‘Could I, er …’ She indicated the glass.

  ‘Cheers, large vodka,’ Toni replied smartly, failing to stop an ungothly smile from warming her lips. If she could get this yuppie tart to buy her a drink, surely she could also figure out a way to piss off her stepmother. An idea was taking shape. Maybe she could actually have a bit of fun, if such a thing was actually possible in Saxwold when it was raining. Which Toni doubted severely.

  ‘Saxwold Manor Hotel,’ she said again. ‘It’s dead simple. You just go on through the village, take the first left, go on down that road about ten minutes and where the road forks, take the left, and it’ll be straight ahead of you. Big white house with a couple of them stupid-looking stone dogs outside.’

  ‘Left, left, big white house with stone dogs outside,’ Miranda repeated. Yes! They were nearly there.

  ‘No sign,’ Toni warned her, in an earnest voice which, had Miranda not been wet, cold, exhausted and deeply interested in the second half of her Rioja, would have immediately signalled a porky pie of ample proportions. ‘Very discreet sort of a place, no publicity or anything.’

  Miranda and Dido missed the suppressed chuckle raised among Colin, the landlord and Lucy Vinny. All they retained was the impression that this was a nice pub, a jolly pub, a bit naff, maybe, but still a pub which even Clare might enjoy visiting for a drink or two before dinner. As for discreet – why, wasn’t the whole weekend supposed to be discreet, from the new Minister’s point of view?

  ‘Got you,’ Miranda assured her. Discreet, eh? Her mother was going to love that. And chill, and smile, and stop criticising her. Everything was going to be OK. She could hardly wait.

  ‘So – I’m not staying with them, you see,’ Dido explained to the landlord, her wet hair like straps of seaweed as she pulled it aside from her face. ‘So I’ve got to find somewhere else to stay tonight. I don’t suppose you’ve got any rooms here, have you?’

  The unpromising look returned. Please God, Miranda prayed, let him have a room for Dido. My mother will just kill me if …r />
  ‘Funny enough, we did have some bookings this weekend,’ he was saying, searching behind the bar for something. When he found it, it was a large desk diary, already dogeared, containing a shopping list, a flyer from the Anti Apian Slavery Society, and the room booking details. ‘But I do have one left. There’s no en-suite, that’s the thing …’

  ‘No problem,’ Dido told him with relief. ‘It’ll be fine. So that’s me sorted, angel. Don’t worry about anything. You’ve got my number, haven’t you? We can talk tomorrow.’

  They kissed, Miranda paid, and parted. Back on the road, now full of hope for the weekend, Miranda directed Clare down the first left, then down the left fork, and then to a halt on the gravel drive of The Manor House in front of the stupid-looking stone dogs.

  Clare turned off the engine and flopped back in the seat, saying, ‘I hope to God this is it.’

  ‘Of course this is it,’ Miranda assured her. ‘I’ll go in and get someone to get the bags.’

  Dido, with the eyes of all the bar upon her, flicked back her hair decisively and wavered in the general direction of her luggage.

  ‘Let me help you,’ said the landlord.

  ‘You’re so-o-o-o-o kind but I can manage,’ said Dido gallantly.

  ‘Let me help you,’ said Colin Burton, striding forward from his corner.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ said the landlord, nipping around the corner of the bar with previously unseen speed.

  The two collided in front of Dido, whose hands flew to her lips to hide a smile.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Lucy Vinny.

  Jimmy sat on his usual stool and smiled. The landlord, who got to the handles first, tried to pick up Dido’s bag, misjudged its weight, and staggered. In the end, she and he took a handle each and they struggled out of the room towards the back of the building.

  ‘Toni,’ said Colin Burton, turning to her as soon as the coast was clear in the bar of The Pigeon & Pipkin, ‘what have you done? If I’m not mistaken you just sent that woman off to your mother’s house and told her it were a hotel. You naughty, naughty girl.’

  ‘Yeah, well don’t sweat it, Colin,’ Toni replied, returning to the pool room to tell the story.

  7. Checking In and Checking Out

  Outside The Manor House Miranda slicked back her wet hair out of her eyes, dabbed on some lip gloss and got out of the car. Large white house, stone dogs, no sign. Yes, yes, yes. This was it. At last.

  Through the teeming rain and biting cold, her traumatised boots found their way up the exquisitely lichenous stone steps. With the one finger whose nail was still intact she pressed the brass doorbell.

  No reply. She pressed again, hearing the bell peal somewhere in the guts of the building. For a while that was all she heard. Then a dog somewhere cranked out a bark. Just as she was about to ring again, heavy steps sounded from behind the door, accompanied by heavy paws. A light came on, a beautiful, welcoming golden light. There came the sounds of fumbling, unlocking, dechaining.

  The door swung open, and the golden light flooded out into the night, followed by some large brainless dog thing that pushed past her legs and disappeared into the darkness, barking madly. Miranda staggered forward through the heavy door, out of the cold and wet and into the gold and warmth. It felt like passing through a time warp into a parallel universe.

  And there, holding open the door, was the man. The man who, in the obscure lower depths of her subconsciousness, she already believed would take care of her whatever she did. The heavenly man. Well, he was just as she would have imagined, if she had allowed herself to imagine him. Big, solid, calm, with an adorable, slightly fuzzy look of bewilderment on his face. His fine face. In fact, he was very fine, fine all over. Class-A, from his gorgeous messy hair to his gorgeous feet. Feet which were in socks only. But who cared? Suddenly, this weekend was looking up.

  ‘Hi,’ she fluttered happily. ‘I’m so sorry we’re late. But we did phone.’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Oliver, holding the door a good bit wider. A large WOW had filled his head. A very large WOW. Who was this appealing creature and why had nobody warned him about her?

  ‘The bags are in the car,’ she said.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But do come in. It’s a filthy night, you must have had a terrible time getting here. Come in and sit down and let me pour you something.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘My mother’s just coming.’

  Mother? Ah! Obviously this mother was some friend of his mother, and this appealing creature was her daughter. Obviously, faced with the sudden likelihood of being made bankrupt, his mother had forgotten to tell him that she had invited these people for the weekend. So far, so excellent. Oliver could do a damn fine job of impressing a mother, when he had to. Impressing the prospect before him, however, was the overriding imperative.

  ‘Come through into the drawing room. I’ve got a fire going,’ he urged her.

  ‘Lovely,’ she replied. Drawing room! Such a sweet, old-fashioned expression.

  And it was lovely. Annabel had done the drawing room in cream, her favourite, most luscious shade of cream, with quite a lot of raspberry reds and old-rose pinks. It was warm, and calm, and pretty. There were pictures of contented cows in sunny meadows in gold frames. Oliver’s fire was blazing enthusiastically and the reflections glimmered from the polished sides of some big chest thing with drawers. The scent of a huge bowl of hyacinths mingled with the tang of wood smoke. It was exactly as Miranda had pictured the lounge of the Saxwold Manor Hotel.

  She flung herself, with just a touch of provocation, on a handy chintz sofa. ‘A glass of red wine would hit the spot,’ she told him. ‘Or just send the waiter. Better get the bags before my mother gets irritated. Maybe I should order something for her. Make that two red wines. I’m sure your house red will be fine.’

  ‘Right,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll just let my mother know you’re here.’

  A family business, thought Miranda. How quaint. I suppose people still have family businesses in the country.

  He left her patting the cushions and blinking at the fire, and went to the kitchen for his boots and a word with Bel, whom he discovered chopping onions disconsolately.

  ‘Well, they’re here,’ he said, looking hurriedly around for his boots. One was clearly visible under the kitchen table.

  ‘Who’s here?’ she asked.

  ‘The people who’ve come for the weekend,’ he answered, dragging out the first boot and thrusting a leg into it.

  Boys! Bel Hardcastle exclaimed to herself for the thousandth time since she had brought a son into the world. They just rush in where angels fear to tread and assume everything’s going to be OK. ‘Oliver! You might have told me.’

  ‘I’m telling you now,’ he said, bending to search all levels for the second boot. There it was, in Garrick’s basket. With the top chewed off. But the foot still OK. Well, maybe a couple of holes. What the fuck.

  Why is my son looking so insanely cheerful? Bel asked herself, noticing a bounce in Oliver’s deportment that had been lacking for some time. In fact, he hadn’t looked so happy since the day he bought the farm. It was on the tip of her tongue to say something pained about being taken for granted, but it seemed a shame to spoil his new mood.

  ‘So, these people,’ Bel said carefully.

  ‘This girl and her mother,’ Oliver was fighting his way into his second boot and trying to open the back door at the same time.

  This girl and her mother! Girl! And her mother! At last! At last! Wedding bells! Grandchildren! Yes! Yes!

  ‘I’ve got to get their bags from the car,’ he told her, stamping his heel down the last reluctant inch. ‘They must have had one hell of a journey, all the way from London on a night like this. I promised them a couple of glasses of red. The bottle’s open already.’

  And he dived out of the door into the cold black night, eyes bright and a smile on his lips. One of those boy-meets-girl smiles! At last!

  Bel dropped her knife, wash
ed her hands, took off her apron, fluffed up her hair, rooted out a lipstick, took the shine off her nose, smoothed her skirt, changed her shoes and set off for the sitting room. Yes! There was a girl on the sofa. About the right age. Maybe a little old but maybe she was still tired from the journey. Old could be good. Keen to get on with the children.

  Not too clean. Actually, she had mud on her shoes and it was getting on that eyewateringly expensive tapestry rug. But she didn’t mind. She. Did. Not. Mind. The shoes were good. You could always tell a person by their shoes. Good shoes, nice clothes generally. Probably she had a job, a good job even. Maybe quite tall. Quite pretty, except for the nose. Oliver had a very nice nose. Could be blonde but the poor thing was so wet from the rain it was hard to tell.

  ‘Hello?’ Miranda heard a presence near the door.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ Bel advanced into the room, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Oliver’s mother. Bel. Do call me Bel.’

  The poor thing was shy. She was looking at the hand with a little worried frown as if she didn’t know what was expected of her.

  That’s a bit quaint, Miranda decided. Introducing herself like that. Maybe they’re going for a family atmosphere or something. Quite sweet really. Making people feel at home. ‘I’m – ah – Miranda,’ she said, realising that she still didn’t know what name had been used to make their booking.

  They shook hands. Firm, thought Bel. She knows her own mind, this one. Soft, thought Miranda. A bit ingratiating, but then that’s her business, I suppose.

  ‘Did you have a ghastly drive from London?’ Bel asked.

  ‘Complete nightmare,’ said Miranda. ‘Is it always like this on holiday weekends?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is. But you’re here now, that’s the important thing. Oliver’s getting your bags, isn’t he?’ Helpful, that’s my son. And strong. And reliable. Any girl would be lucky …’

  ‘I’d love a glass of wine,’ said Miranda. ‘And I’m sure my mother will too. She’s probably just locking the car.’