'Natalia Venery, meet Mark Stackable,' she said with a flourish. 'He's come to look at Mullions. You must be expecting him.'
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Tally frowned. Unreliable though her memory was, apart from when recalling the more recondite episodes of family history, she was sure the estate agents had stopped sending people to look round the house at least two weeks ago. After Saul had been to see them, in fact.
'They say the place is just too near to collapse to sell,' Saul had reported, the picture of regret. Tally had dolefully agreed, unaware that Saul's purpose in going to the estate agents was to take the place off the market himself. 'Don't worry, I'll think of something,' he had told her. She had given him a watery grin, unaware that he already had.
'Oh,' Tally now said to Mark, who was staring at her in the astonished way everyone who came to Mullions seemed to. 'I'm not sure I was expecting anyone actually. But you're very welcome. Would you like a cup of tea?' She prayed not. The Aga had been playing up so much lately it was quicker to go on foot to the cafe at Lower Bulge than wait for a kettle to boil.
'I had an arrangement to see your husband?' Mark said crisply. He felt impatient with this obviously batty woman. He'd wasted enough time already. 'Mr Dewsbury? He and I have been discussing the estate quite a lot recently?'
Jane stared at Mark, puzzled. He'd come to see Dewsbury?
It made slightly more sense to Tally. 'Oh, I
see,'
she said slowly. So Saul had decided to take the matter of finding a buyer into his
own
hands, had he? There was, Tally supposed, no reason why not, although he
might
have discussed it with her first. 'Well,' she said to Mark, 'I'm afraid my, er, Mr Dewsbury's not here, but I'm sure I can tell you anything you might want to know.'
'Good,' said Mark. 'I just wanted to check that the bulldozers are still on schedule?'
292
Tally gasped and took a step back. 'B-b-bulldozers?' Jane shot to her side.
'What do you mean, bulldozers?' she demanded. This sounded serious.
'Well, Dewsbury should have arranged it all?' said Mark. Never had his ludicrously interrogative tones irritated Jane so much. 'They're coming in a fortnight to flatten the place?'
'What?
said Jane, taking over the role of official spokesperson. Tally looked too shocked to speak. One hand was clapped to a face more drained and grey than the Mullions gutters. She looked as if she was about to be sick.
'Yeah, though Dewsbury says if we wait three weeks the house will probably fall down on its own. Sooner if somebody sneezes?' Mark grinned.
Tally removed her hand. Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.
•
'Then,' said Mark, snapping opening his folder and riffling through its pristine white pages, 'we slap up the houses.'
Tally's face had now changed from grey to ripe tomato. She started to sputter something. Jane put a quieting hand on her arm. Here, at last, was the evidence she had been waiting for. She had
known
there was something fishy about Saul from the start.
'Houses?' she asked, trying to sound as calm and matter-of-fact as possible.
'Yeah,' said Mark, flashing his tombstone teeth. 'Hundreds of them. Making astronomical profits for everyone involved?' He looked at Tally. 'I bet you're thrilled, aren'tcha?' He licked his lips.
Tally made a choking sound.
'Astronomical? Really?' croaked Jane, squeezing Tally's
293
arm warningly. Her head echoed to the thunderous sound of everything crashing into place. So
this
was what the marriage was all about. Saul had seen millions in Mullions the minute he clapped eyes on it, and seducing poor, batty, scatty Tally was the way to get his hands on it. He must have cooked up his plan almost immediately after Amanda's dinner party and had roped in Stackable to finance it.
Astronomical,' Mark almost sang. 'So you haven't been filled in on the details, huh? Best left to the men, huh?' He paused and grinned at them.
Jane was by now almost breaking Tally's wrist, so desperate was she to keep her friend quiet. They needed Mark to tell them as much as possible.
'Well,' Mark drawled, gazing at his documents with love in his eyes, we thought three hundred and fifty K a time for the smallest two-bedroomed rabbit hutch? And, as you know, we're building four hundred of them? Only the best breeze block, and each house comes ready-equipped with satellite dish, herringbone brick drive, carriage lamps and automatic garage door?' He stopped and looked at Tally's and Jane's astonished faces. 'Dewsbury doesn't seem to have briefed you very well, I must say?'
'No need, now you've done such a great sales pitch,' said a smooth voice behind Tally. 'Couldn't have put it better myself.' Saul sauntered into view, his eyes glittering boldly. 'Sorry I wasn't here when you came,' he added easily to Mark, 'but I was in the loo and the door fell in on me. Took rather a while to lever it off He grinned widely all round.
Tally and Jane's mouths stayed as straight and flat as spirit levels.
'I think you owe me an explanation, Saul,' said Tally, in
294
low, fierce tones Jane had never heard her use before.
The law of the Dewsburys was if in doubt, brazen it out. Saul now proceeded to apply that law to its last letter. 'But my darling,' he said, smoothly, 'just think of the advantages. The astonishing profits. With the sort of money we're talking about we can dismantle Mullions brick by brick and re-erect it in Arizona. On the moon, if you like. Just think of the . . .' His pleading voice died away. His expression widened and deepened into abject terror. It seemed to be reacting to something behind Tally. 'Oh God, no,' he gasped, as if the Grim Reaper himself was coming across the park behind them. 'Please. Anything but that.' Saul took a few steps backwards, then suddenly spun on his hand-tooled leather heel and shot off round the back of the house.
'Hey, hey, not so fast,' bellowed Mark, seeing millions, if not Mullions, disappearing before his eyes. He skidded after Saul across the gravel, the papers flying out of his folder as he went.
Both woman craned round to stare at whatever had so terrified Saul. Picking her wobbling, skyscraper-heeled way determinedly over the muddy grass in a pair of unfeasibly tight leather trousers and shades so profoundly black they looked opaque came Champagne D'Vyne.
'Where the bloody hell have
you
been?' Champagne brayed, looking straight at Tally as her metal Gucci heels dragged excruciatingly over the soft old stone of the steps. 'I've been all over this dump looking for you.'
Tally drew in her breath in a short, indignant gasp.
'Don't worry,' whispered Jane. 'I don't think she can see a thing in those glasses. She thinks she's talking to me.'
'I gathered that,' hissed Tally. 'I just object to my home being described in that way. Although I suppose,' she
295
added ruefully, 'judging from what I've just heard, I'm lucky to have a dump left. I just can't believe—'
'What's the matter?' Jane asked Champagne hurriedly. Now was not the time for Tally to embark on an orgy of agonised heart-searching. That could come later.
'That bastard Brad has only
sacked
me from the
film,
that's all,' honked Champagne.
'Outrageous.
How
dan
he? Who the
bloody hell
does he think he is?'
'What happened?' asked Jane. 'Artistic differences?'
'Well, for some reason,' Champagne boomed, still addressing Tally, 'he seemed to think I was being unreasonable, asking for a double to film some of the party scenes.'
'Body double? I thought they were only used for stunts,' said Jane.
'Yah, but in these party scenes, we're supposed to be drinking champagne, and of course I never drink anything less than Krug,' Champagne spluttered indignantly. 'And Brad was actually expecting me —
me —
to drink filthy
supermarket stuff.
So I
insisted
on a body double because otherwise I'd probably be throwing up all night. But he refused and threw me off the set.' Champagne fumbled furiously for a cigarette. Her efforts to light it were so severely hampered by the restrictions the sunglasses placed on her vision that Jane took pity on her and stepped forward to help. Without muttering a word of thanks, Champagne stuck the cigarette between her blood-red lips and took a deep, rasping draw.
'Well, anyway,' she demanded, staring at Tally again, you've got to get down there
now
and tell that bastard Brad he's got to put me back in that film
this minute'
She stabbed a red-taloned finger in Tally's direction. 'Tell him,' she declared grandly, 'that if he comes on his bended knees and gives me Lily Eyre's part, I'll reconsider.'
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'Look, I'm sorry to interrupt,' said Jane suddenly, 'but something slightly odd seems to be going on over there.'
Tally and Champagne followed the direction of her gaze to the park entrance. Wending its way over the rise behind the lake was a strange little procession of about thirty people. Capering figures in flowing clothes and brightly coloured pointed hats led others brandishing flags and playing bongos and flutes. People we.re clapping, waving their arms and letting out little cries.
Tally peered in their direction. She hadn't thought the day could possibly get more surreal. She had thought wrong. 'It's like the Pied Piper of Hamelin,' she breathed wonderingly. 'There's even someone on stilts.'
How could she see that far? wondered Jane in awe. To her, the approaching figures were just a blurred and slow-moving block. But then, Tally always had had superior eyesight. This honing of the optics came, Jane imagined, courtesy of the genetic inheritance of generations of Venerys scanning the horizons of their vast acreage. Being grand, however, had its downsides too. Like the girls at
Fabulous,
Tally had always suffered the most agonising of periods. Blue blood was evidently more painful.
'They look positively
medieval,'
Tally breathed, gazing at the approaching ragged band and thinking that it looked like a scene out of Brueghel. 'Apart from those people in ghastly fluorescent cagoules at the back, of course.'
This rang a Saul-shaped bell with Jane. Sure enough, bringing up the rear of the procession, were the grim-faced hikers she had encountered yesterday morning. So this was who their mates were. But what were they here for?
A sudden shriek from Tally made her jump.
'Piers!' Tally screamed, dashing helter-skelter down the
297
slope of the ha-ha. 'It's Piers! It's my brother! Piers!' she shrieked, rushing to the figure at the front of the crowd and launching herself upon him. 'Where on
earth
have you been?' She buried herself in his neck which, even from the distance of the terrace wall, Jane could see was far from clean. Blood, it seemed, was thicker than shower gel. She walked swiftly up to join them.
'Well,' a hundred feet under it, actually,' Piers said good-humouredly to Tally. 'We've been living in a hole under the new runway site at Gatwick for the last two months.'
As she approached, Jane stared at Piers in astonishment. How on earth had Tally recognised him? His fair hair, once as smooth and shining as a gold ingot, hung in matted ropes about his shoulders. Gone was the pink and white schoolboy face Jane remembered, and gone, too, were the Eton coat tails, brushed to within an inch of their lives by Mrs Ormondroyd. Instead, Piers wore layer upon layer of mud-caked sacking that made him look like an Arthurian hermit. With studs through his eyebrow, nose and upper lip as well as through his earlobes, he was not so much Piers as Pierced.
'Oh Piers, how could you?' cried Tally. 'Why didn't you get in touch?' she wailed, half furious, half ecstatic. 'I've been
desperate
to see you. So much has happened. M-m-mummy's disappeared and M-m-m-mullions was nearly bulldozed, and it was all because of
m-m-m-me.
How could I have been so
m-m-m-madl
Oh,
Piers?
She buried her face in his neck again and shook with sobs.
'Shush,' said Piers, his braceleted wrist rattling as he patted her on the back. He grinned at Jane. His smile, she noticed, was as brilliantly white as ever, but then it probably took more than two months down a mudhole to undo a lifetime of expensive orthodontics. And by the
298
way,' he added to Tally, 'I'm not called Piers any more. I'm Muddy Fox now. Muddy, for short.'
'Oh
Piers,'
gasped Tally, completely ignoring this and emerging from his dirt-crusted shoulder, her face swollen and red with tears, 'I nearly lost
everything.
Oh,
Piersl'
As Tally flung herself on her brother once more, Jane looked nervously around at his companions. Next to Piers stood a tall, solidly-built figure with a long grey matted beard, a rough-woven cloak of mud brown fixed with a Celtic clasp, and greasy grey locks hanging almost to his elbow. He looked like something straight out of Malory, thought Jane, blanching as she noticed the long, dull-grey metal object in his hand. It looked terrifyingly like a weapon of war. Is that a broadsword in your hand or are you just pleased to see me? she thought nervously.