‘No … Yes … Oh yes, I suppose so,’ Mitzi nodded. What did it matter? She could always make some more Dreams and Gowns for Doll, couldn’t she? And fifty pounds was an awful lot of money for the village hall.
Tarnia stretched her mouth into a smile. ‘I knew you’d see sense. Good girl. Now, let me go and find the others. And remember what I said about taking yourself in hand. Although forget about Atkins. It’s so yesterday. I’ll send you a copy of the South Beach Diet. It might help you lose your middle-aged spread.’
‘Oh, sod off,’ Mitzi muttered as Tarnia undulated away to be group-hugged by her cronies. ‘Oh, God!’
The village hall doors had been opened and with a roar of giddy gusto Hazy Hassocks in buying mode flooded in.
‘Wait! Wait! Wait!’ Trilby Man, who had turned into Mr Ubiquitous, screamed into his microphone from the stage. ‘You might be in, but you can’t start spending yet! Put that down!!!! Down! Now! Right – I’d like to welcome our kind benefactor, Mrs Tarnia Snepps, to make the official opening.’
‘Huh,’ Mitzi muttered again, fighting a losing battle with a battered box of Tweed. ‘It’ll be Lady Snepps this time next year if she gets her way. Still, if it means the village retains the use of the hall I suppose I can live with that. But I’d still like to think my Powers of Persuasion Puddings played a small part in bringing about the change of heart.’
Tarnia, beaming beatifically at her cronies, teetered across the stage and wrestled the microphone away from Trilby Man. A few people cheered in a desultory manner. The whole of the tombola stall slow handclapped. Tarnia ignored them.
‘I’d just like to say how lovely it is to see you all here today,’ she cooed. ‘And how pleased my husband and I are to be able to allow you to hold all these cosy village functions in our hall. We are, as you know, very aware of the importance of rural communities and will continue to do everything in our power to encourage this. Our home is
your home – well, no … what I mean is, the village hall is on our land, but we magnanimously agree that you should share in it and—’
‘That’ll do, duck,’ Trilby Man snorted as the tombola stall threatened to drown her out. ‘T’aint the bleeding Gettysburg address. They just wants to get their hands on the crap. Wind it up, duck, there’s a good girl.’
Thunder faced but still clinging to the mike, Tarnia nodded. ‘So, all it remains for me to do is to assure you that these functions in the village hall will continue, and I hope you spend lots today which will swell the community coffers, and it’s my great pleasure to declare the Christmas Fayre open.’
‘Thank the flying figgit for that,’ Flo Spraggs muttered as everyone ignored Tarnia and the village hall suddenly filled with the anticipatory roar of Hazy Hassocks in search of a bargain.
Never ceasing to be amazed at what rubbish people would buy, Mitzi was hectically busy for the next twenty minutes and the cash in her basin grew rapidly.
‘Need a hand?’
Mitzi, pausing in selling an out-of-date foot balm grinned at Joel. She always grinned at Joel. She couldn’t help it. Despite Trilby Man and Tarnia voicing her own dark doubts, she had no control at all over her mouth – or the rest of her body – when he was near.
‘Are you sure? I mean – is this really your sort of thing?’
‘Christ, no,’ he squeezed in behind the table beside her. ‘I’ve never been to a jumble sale in my life. Saturday afternoons in Manchester were spent at football or in the pub. This is something else. Yes, madam,’ he smiled at an elderly woman wearing two coats. ‘Bubble bath? The nice orange one? There we go – fifty pence please.’
‘Very impressive,’ Mitzi said. ‘We’ll make a stallholder of you yet.’
‘Better than trying to remove a very reluctant wisdom tooth,’ Joel said. ‘Which is what me and Doll have spent
most of our morning doing. Don’t know which one of us was sweating most at the end.’
Mitzi winced at the mental image. ‘Ouch. And what about the patient?’
‘Oh, the patient was fine. Stretched out, warm, comfy, filled with local anaesthetic, in blissful ignorance. It was the staff who were going through the mill. Oh, by the way, Doll said to tell you she’s going straight home to put her feet up. She doesn’t think she can cope with this.’
‘Wimps, my daughters,’ Mitzi smiled. ‘Lu has cried off too. She and Shay have gone to the RSPCA kennels to see those puppies again.’
‘And are they still all loved up? Shay and Lu, I mean, not the puppies.’
‘To the hilt,’ Mitzi nodded. ‘I’m pleased for them, of course, but it can get a bit much over the toast and marmalade.’
‘Not to mention sticky,’ Joel chuckled.
‘Hello, young Mitzi,’ Gwyneth Wilkins, wearing a massive, ground-dragging, herringbone overcoat and a woollen headscarf, trundled through the throng, with Big Ida Tomms in a trenchcoat and eyebrow-touching cloche towering behind her, and a snake of equally elderly ladies bringing up the rear. ‘Good bit of work your young Lu did the other night with them pups. You should be right proud of her.’
‘I am,’ Mitzi nodded. ‘And it was all thanks to your tip-off apparently.’
Gwyneth tried to look modest and failed. ‘Makes a change for us to get it right, you mean? Maybe … but nice to know the dear little souls all survived and the buggers at the back of it have been nicked.’
As Gwyneth started raking through a basket of bath bombs with mittened fingers, Big Ida reached over her shoulder and scooped up a clutch of face masks. ‘I’ll ’ave these, love,’ she beamed toothlessly at Joel. ‘They’ll do lovely for my godsons’ stockings.’
Joel, to give him his due, made no comment, but bagged up the face masks and took Big Ida’s money.‘Ida’s godsons are both a bit Graham Norton,’ Gwyneth whispered to Mitzi. ‘Nice boys. Oh, and I must say it was well worth coming along just to see Lady Tarnia Muck doing the opening here. She’s changed ’er tune since she and ’er Marquis decided to go for that there titular thing. I’m run ragged doing security for all the charity shindigs she puts on these days. We’ve been doing self-defence classes, me and Ida, so’s we can cope if things turn nasty. Tai Kwon Do and a bit of kick-boxing. We’ve not quite got to grips with that, though. I’m thinking of taking on a posse to spread the load. Now – what else have you got here?’
‘Lots of things,’ Mitzi said, firmly pushing the picture of a whole horde of Fiddlesticks pensioners organising themselves into a sort of Charlie’s Angels on Sanatogen to the back of her mind. ‘And it’s nice to see so many people from the other villages here for our Fayre.’
Gwyneth, whose chin only just reached the top of the trestle table, pulled a face. ‘Oh, me and Ida always likes to come up to town to do our Christmas shopping. See, when you lives in Fiddlesticks, with its ’andful of ’ouses, if you buys at the local bazaars everyone knows who’s given what. There ain’t no element of surprise. We came over in the minibus with a party from The Bagley-cum-Russett Ladies League of Light.’
Joel snorted. Mitzi bit her lip.
‘What about this for your Elsie?’ Big Ida had reached across again and picked up the purple bottle of Primitive Passion, managing to jab one of the Ladies League of Light in the eye with her elbow at the same time. ‘Oops, sorry Mrs Webb. Were you after this too? Have to be a bit quicker’n that, duck. What do you reckon, Gwyneth? Would Elsie like it?’
Gwyneth, her head on one side like a chunky sparrow, gave it some consideration. ‘Hmmm, maybe. But our Elsie doesn’t drink much now, does she? Not after that to-do
with Clyde Spraggs’s rhubarb and cowslip.’
‘It ain’t for drinking, Gwyneth,’ Big Ida said scornfully, brandishing the purple bottle tantalisingly in front of Mrs Webb’s watering eyes. ‘It’s for washing in.’
‘It’s not for washing in as such,’ Mitzi intervened, valiantly trying to ignore Joel’s hardly suppressed laughter. ‘More for bathing.’
‘Dat rules out your Eldie, den,’ Mrs Webb snuffled, still dabbing at her eyes. ‘She don’t neber take all her clodes off at one go. Undlike some I could mention.’
Like a massive whirling dervish, Big Ida executed a neat groin thrust. Despite Gwyneth’s doubts, the kick-boxing classes seemed to be paying off. Mrs Webb collapsed with a gentle sigh. Another member of the Ladies League of Light started going through her handbag.
‘There,’ Big Ida rubbed her hands together, paying for the Primitive Passion with a flourish, and powering her way towards White Elephant. ‘That’ll teach ’er not to cast aspirations.’
‘Jesus,’ Joel choked. ‘Who writes their scripts? This is brilliant, Mitzi. Just brilliant.’
‘We aim to please.’ Mitzi wiped tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes. ‘Oh, dear, poor Miss Higham’s got them now.’
Miss Higham, next door to Mitzi on White Elephant, shot her a desperate glance across the trestles as Gwyneth and Big Ida started rummaging through her wares.
‘You still walking out with that Aubrey, young Joyce?’ Gwyneth asked chattily.
Miss Higham, all of sixty and blushing scarlet, nodded.
‘Thought so. Her Aubrey,’ Gwyneth loudly informed Big Ida, ‘is in retail in Winterbrook.’
‘Ah, it shows.’ Big Ida studied Miss Higham’s handwritten White Elephant banner which announced GIFTS FOR ALL THE FAMILY: PRETTY SAUCERS. SEASONAL FLOWER POTS. FESTIVE ROBINS GOING CHEAP. ‘What’s a festive robin?’
Miss Higham pointed to a heap of rotund brown things in a shoe box.
‘I think you’ll find they’re just socks, Joyce,’ Gywneth began kindly. ‘Brown socks rolled into balls. Not robins. Can’t see what’s festive about old pairs of socks with – well – stuff stuck on ’em.’
‘They’re Christmas robins,’ Miss Higham said archly, lifting one carefully from its confines. ‘Handmade. I sewed all the little breasts on myself.’
Big Ida trumpeted with laughter and Mitzi knew she had to intervene before it ended in bloodshed. Not daring to meet Joel’s eyes in case she disgraced herself, she pushed her way across to White Elephant.
‘Look,’ she said in what she hoped was a conciliatory tone, ‘they may have started out as socks, but Joyce has worked really hard crafting them into robins. Look at the little lint breasts in – um – lipstick. And the beaks in – er – plastic, and their dear little pipe-cleaner legs.’
‘Oh, give us half a dozen then,’ Big Ida shrugged. ‘They’ll do for the neighbours’ kiddies. Not that I’m convinced, mind. They still looks like socks to me.’
‘But not to a child’s imagination,’ Mitzi said firmly. ‘I might even buy some myself.’
Robins and cash rapidly changed hands and Mitzi scuttled back to Bath and Beauty.
‘Oh, nice,’ Joel said. ‘Socks. Are they for me? A boy can never have too many socks – especially for Christmas.’
Mitzi punched him happily, pushed the festive robins into her pocket, and heaved a sigh of relief as Gwyneth, Big Ida and The Ladies League of Light trundled off in the direction of Nearly New.
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ Joel asked in a brief lull. ‘Or something stronger?’
‘Oh, yes – thank you. A litre of Merlot would go down a treat,’ Mitzi sighed, ‘but as the village hall doesn’t have a liquor licence – yet – tea will have to do. Two sugars please. And we could have had the Green Gowns with them
but Tarnia’s fed them to her cronies.’
‘Shame,’ Joel said cheerfully. ‘You’ll have to make some more just for me. I’ll see if they’ve got some biscuits for dunking as a poor substitute, shall I?’
She watched him push his way through the crowd, luxuriating in the tingle. She loved him. It was foolish but irrevocable. And maybe, after Tarnia’s warnings, she should have done without the sugars and definitely the biscuits, but what the heck.
A sudden rush of Bath and Beauty customers meant she had no time to ponder on it. She’d have to save it for later. Maybe the South Beach Diet, whatever it entailed, might be a good idea after all.
‘Mitzi!’ Tarnia thrust her way through the throng and screeched to a halt in front of the stall. Her face, if it hadn’t been set in stone, would have been contorted. As it was, her eyebrows had disappeared into her spiky fringe and her mouth was slashed into a rigid rectangle like a post box.
‘My people,’ she waved an agitated hand towards the huddle in front of the stage, ‘have just been abused by some of your – your riff-raff!’
Mitzi groaned. Lav and Lob? Clyde pressing his home brew? Trilby Man Telling It Like It Is? Tarnia’s entire family giving away the dreadful secrets of her origins? There were so many options.
‘I was giving them a swiftie tour of the hall,’ Tarnia continued, ‘as you do. And they were very, very impressed – so we went backstage to see what improvements had been made in the audio-visuals, and we were just having a cup of coffee and some of your nibbly cakes – those little green ones were so delicious they ate all of them and were asking for the recipe – and then … and then …’
Dear oh dear, Mitzi thought. ‘And then what, Tarnia? Don’t tell me old Baden Wiggins flashed his long johns at them? You know what he’s like. He’s been doing it all his life. Everyone just laughs – although I suppose it could be a bit unnerving for newcomers—’
‘It was far, far worse than Baden Wiggins!’ Tarnia spat. ‘It was people … people we went to school with – June and Sally and that funny Ronald who did embroidery a lot – with no clothes on! Not a stitch! And they were singing! Loudly! Some of the most disgusting lyrics I’ve ever heard in my life! My people were horrified. Horrified! I’m afraid I can’t allow you to use the hall any more! This is too much!’
Mitzi closed her eyes. Bugger and sod. Why on earth couldn’t Trilby Man have held off on the
Hair
rehearsals until after the Fayre? If Tarnia’s High and Mighties were mortally offended it would certainly sound the death knell for The Gong and the village hall.
With no warning, Mitzi suddenly felt herself lifted from her feet. A pair of strong hands clasped her waist, a waft of clean skin and lemon shampoo and warm maleness enveloped her, and a pair of firm lips were kissing her very thoroughly indeed.
Out of practice and completely bowled over, Mitzi only hesitated for a split second, then she kissed him back. It was absolutely blissful. The tingle travelled from her toes to her head in a star-spangled fizz. On and on and on it went. The village hall and Tarnia and the roar of the crowd simply melted away.