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it down because she wants to do small, quality British films. I thought she sounded quite interesting.'
It was evident from the silence around her that nobody else did. Victoria looked as if she hadn't heard.
'Ugh, not her,' said Oonagh at length from the back of the room. 'Dreadful common ankles.'
Jane looked blank. What on earth was Oonagh talking about?
'Oh yes,' continued Oonagh. 'It's an absolute fact. Upper-class women have thin, elegant, bony ankles while lower-class women have big, thick, shapeless ones. You can always tell.'
'Any other ideas?' asked Victoria.
Lily Eyre, Jane realised, had been consigned to the dustbin. She felt uneasy, unable to understand why there wasn't a chorus of approval. Josh had been after Lily Eyre for months. She was not only an interview-shy rising star, in itself enough to make her intensely sought-after, but one with that delicate English pink-and-blonde prettiness beloved of upmarket glossy magazine editors. She was, in short, textbook-perfect cover material.
Charles Hawtrey suddenly roused himself. 'Well, what I'd certainly like to know,' he piped up in a high-pitched, reedy voice, his fists clenched in his lap, 'is where one can get a jolly good spanking these days.' A sudden, violent convulsion shook his weedy frame. He had, Jane realised, quite a bad twitch.
Victoria raised her eyebrows. Jane stifled a giggle.
'Apparently,' Hawtrey squeaked, by now purple-faced with exertion and indignation, 'there's hardly a single school in the country where they still have cold baths and corporal punishment. Now it's all warm beds and TLC. I've been to several dinner parties recently where people
205
have been complaining about it. The fathers, in particular, are all furious. They don't see why their sons should have an easier time at school than they did. And speaking personally,' Hawtrey stammered, as ^ series of twitches threatened practically to throw him off his seat, 'it didn't do me any harm.'
'Well, there
has
been a certain amount of anti-bullying legislation passed,' ventured Jane.
Hawtrey shot her a withering look. 'I'm aware of that,' he spluttered, as another twitch convulsed him. 'What I'm saying is that it takes a magazine like ours to stand up and say that there shouldn't have been. We built an Empire on being flogged senseless by the Upper Sixth. We must campaign,' he said, now jerking up and down like a bucking Bronco, 'to bring back Matrons with warts and being chased around the quad by the randy Latin master.'
'No, surely not,' said Victoria, much to Jane's relief. 'Latin's a dead language. Being chased by the randy French master, perhaps. That's much better. It's a seriously brilliant idea, Tarquin. Make a great think piece. Look into it, will you?' She gazed sternly round the room again. 'Well, that sorts out our
Fabulous
Dinner Party Debate for this month. But we still need our
Fabulous
Lifestyle. Someone very rich and glamorous, preferably.'
'But weren't we doing that piece about that very beautiful actress, Sonia Svank, going back and discovering her family casde in Lithuania?' asked Larry. 'I thought that sounded marvellous.'
'It would have been, had the castle not subsequently been turned into a rustic hospital,' retorted Victoria. 'When the photographer turned up, there was a Lithuanian farmer having boils removed from his willy.
And
it was tiny.'
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'Well, size isn't everything, you know,' smirked Larry.
'I'm talking about Sonia's
castle,'
snapped Victoria. 'In other words, I don't think she had one.'
'But that's impossible,' said Tash wonderingly.
'Everyone
has a castle somewhere.'
'Look,' said Victoria, looking determinedly at her watch, 'I was due at the Caprice ten minutes ago. Everyone keep thinking about the cover interview. And keep an eye out for possibles at the Movers and Shakers party on Friday.'
Friday was four days away. 'Movers and Shakers party?' Jane asked Tish after Victoria had flounced out of the office.
'Mmm.
Fabulous
does it every year,' said Tish nonchalantly. 'It's a publicity thing really. We invite all the most happening people in London to a party and drown them in poo.'
'Poo?' stammered Jane, wondering why she had never heard of this extraordinary event before.
'Shampoo,' said Tish, looking at her in astonishment.
'Champagne,
in other words.'
Jane blushed deeply. She clearly needed a crash course in upmarket rhyming slang. Despite her embarrassment, a spasm of excitement gripped her intestines. A party full of happening people, some of whom had to be single and some of whom might even be men. So there was at least one advantage to this new job. 'It sounds wonderful,' Jane breathed, thinking excitedly that she could smuggle Tally in too. Then she remembered Saul Dewsbury and scowled.
'Yah, last year Bonkers Brixham was snogging Bruiser Baddeley-Byng for hours,' supplied Tash, overhearing their conversation. This intelligence left Jane none the wiser as to who was the female half. If either.
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'Darling, must you wear that skirt
again?
Tally, buttoning her faithful old Black Watch tartan over two pairs of long Johns and her grandfathers First World War army fatigues, turned in surprise to see Saul watching her from the bed.
'You have superb legs,' he said. 'Such a shame to keep your tights under a bushel.' It was true, he thought. Tally did have nice legs. But that was about the size of it. After the Himalayas of Champagne s exuberant physique, the foothills of Tally had been a comedown in every sense of the word. But there were compensations. Saul was not a religious man, but he still sent out a prayer of thanks for his deliverance every morning he woke gibbering to find his recurring nightmare was just a nightmare. He was not, after all, trapped with Champagne and a stream of deafening anecdotes in a taxi from London to Paris where she leapt out and left him with the fare. After Champagne's extravagance, it was refreshing to find that Tally's idea of luxury was a new bar of soap, a fire that managed a flicker and lights that did not fuse once all evening.
Saul, however, found it rather more convenient if they did. Under cover of darkness, he could turn on all sorts of useful little taps to do some nifty bits of damaging flooding here and there to speed up the decaying process, although rather irritatingly someone — he suspected Mrs Ormondroyd - usually managed to turn them off before too much damage was done. He was sure she was spying on him. He had come across her unexpectedly twice yesterday, once when he was gazing with admiration on the work of a particularly vicious and destructive colony of deathwatch beetles and again when he was staring speculatively at a fine Tudor fireplace in one of the upstairs
208
bedrooms. She had looked at him long and suspiciously.
She had had good reason. Saul had recently bought a share in an architectural salvage company and Mrs Ormondroyd caught him in the act of calculating how much his target customer, an Islington film producer, would pay to install the Red Bedroom fireplace in his weekend home near Southwold. The less worm-eaten sections of the panelling in the Long Gallery would certainly be received gladly into one of Fulham's larger bathrooms and Saul had instantly earmarked the Jacobean staircase as a centrepiece for a second gym he was planning to open. Mullions' huge cast-iron baths, meanwhile, which probably hadn't been full or hot during the reign of the present Queen, were sought after for Georgian townhouses from Hackney to Harlesden. As for the pestles, mortars, toffee hammers, bone-handled knives and chopping boards scattered about the kitchen, there wasn't a theme pub in the country that wouldn't rush to stick them up on its wall for period atmosphere. The house's eponymous mullioned window frames, equally, would fit seamlessly and extremely profitably into the footballers' mansions currently being flung up the length and breadth of Cheshire.
Tally's breath, Saul noticed now, was clearly visible in the freezing air. It was little wonder they spent so much time in bed. Buried several feet beneath blankets and sheets was the only warm place in the house, and even then Saul half expected to wake up and find some of his frostbitten toes lying on the floor. It was like
Dr Zhivago,
he decided. Only Tally looked slightly less like Julie Christie than he himself looked like Omar Sharif.
Much as he dreaded flinging back the sheets and exposing his warm flesh to the cold, Saul knew he had to
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scowl and bare it. He had things to do, after all. Today he planned to walk the estate and make a rough calculation of the maximum number of houses that could be crammed on the site. And there were other decisions to make too. Herringbone or straight brickwork driveways? Cul de sacs or ovals? Video entryphones or traditional enamel bells? Fitted kitchens or freestanding units? The penthouses, he had already decided, would have their own private roof terraces, but there was still the parking to think about. Would he really be able to drain the oxbow lake and build an underground multi-storey as he planned? There were a few more calls to make about the financial backing as well. And, of course, he still had work to do on Tally. He was within an ace of getting her up the aisle, he knew. But victory was not yet his. Tally hadn't quite given in.
He leapt off the bed and felt the usual twinge in his spinal column as he went striding, naked, over the splinter-ridden floorboards to kiss Tally. As the morning sun, struggling through the dusty diamond-paned windows, gilded his tautly-muscled body and haloed his tousled black hair, her heart did a forward roll.
'Don't you think it's too cold in the house to wear short skirts?' she asked.
'Well, that's one very good reason why we have to start thinking about ways to get the place warm again,' said Saul briskly, pulling his damp and chilly shirt over his head and belting his trousers round his trim waist.
He was aware that the log supply was running low, but he was damned if he was going to chop any himself. He'd sooner put the furniture on the fire; in fact he would, without a second thought, had not the oak refectory table had Hampstead basement kitchen written all over it. He'd get a fortune for that. Saul was confident a similar dazzling
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future awaited the pair of fine Jacobean chairs that had somehow escaped the attentions of the woodworm. Perhaps they were saving them for dessert.
Mrs Ormondroyd could get the logs, he decided. She looked as if she could fell entire forests before breakfast. Oh, for a few creature comforts, he thought, bracing himself for a Mrs Ormondroyd breakfast, normally prunes and burnt toast. Prunes were hardly the thing to get one firing on all cylinders. On the other hand, perhaps they were.
'Tally, I've been thinking,' said Saul, now glued to the looking glass where he was, ostensibly at least, tweezering out an ingrowing hair. 'I know exactly how you can get this place back on its feet. Imagine it. New roof, new wiring, new window frames and a brand spanking new heating system.' Tally gazed at him raptly. 'New paintwork,' continued Saul. 'Repointing the brickwork. New grass on the lawn.'
'Oh,' sighed Tally ecstatically, an orgasmic light in her eyes. He was reminded of when Champagne demanded he talk dirty.
'Meet me in the Blue Drawing Room after breakfast,' said Saul. 'Tell Mrs O I'm giving it a miss today. I have more important things to do.'
Mrs Ormondroyd's broad back radiated disapproval as Tally entered the kitchen. She crashed the kettle on to the Aga, banged a few pots about and in case Tally still hadn't got the message, the scraped, blackened and torn toast she was finally presented with spelt it out in Hovis of fire.
'What's the matter, Mrs Ormondroyd?' Tally asked innocently.
'Back's playing up,' muttered the housekeeper. She clamped a large, sausagey hand to the bottom of her spine.
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To the small of her back, if her vast back could be said to have a small.
Tally sighed. 'Mrs Ormondroyd, I think we both know what's really the matter,' she said. 'I just don't understand why you hate Saul so much. He truly loves Mullions and really wants to find a way to get the place going again. He has tons of ideas,' she ad-libbed in anticipation of the revelations awaiting her in the Blue Drawing Room, 'and we may as well see if any of them work. After all, the alternative is to sell the place to the type of ghastly person we've had looking round recently, and while Mummy's away we should explore every option before she comes back and turfs us all out.' She bit into her toast and grimaced. It was like buttered coal from the grate. She wondered vaguely whether a loaf of carbonised bread would burn in the Blue Drawing Room fireplace. 'Give him a chance, at least.'
Mrs Ormondroyd's back remained silent and impassive.
Outside in the hall, the telephone bell shrilled. Almost immediately, it was picked up. The low voice of Saul floated into the kitchen, although his words were impossible to make out. There was a ting as he replaced the receiver. Half-turning so Tally could see her massive profile, Mrs Ormondroyd heaved her Brezhnevian eyebrows upwards. Tally finished her toast in as much silence as was possible given the crashing of her jaws against the carbon. Then she left the kitchen.
Billows of smoke greeted Tally on her entrance into the Blue Drawing Room. Saul was crouched in the vast hearth, eyes streaming, trying in vain to persuade a smouldering, resentful pile of still-damp wood into warm, blazing life. 'Whoever said there was no smoke without fire was talking utter shit,' he snapped as Tally came up behind him. 'No