Honeycote (3 page)

While Robbie serenaded them, the two girls sat in companionable silence for a moment reflecting on their respective predicaments. Sophie let her mind wander ahead to the next Saturday night. Her brother Patrick was organizing a charity dance – he was on the committee for some reason. And so was Ned, so he was sure to be there. Sophie toyed with asking Mandy for some advice about Ned – she was bound to be an expert on blokes and how to handle them – but decided it would be selfish, so she offered her another Malteser instead. Chocolate, in her experience, was very comforting.

*

Kay Oakley slipped into the car and out of her black suede court shoes. Three-inch heels were no good for driving, but they’d been a necessity today. While it usually suited her to accentuate her diminutive frame, she liked to look people in the eye when she was doing a deal. That way they got the full benefit of her mesmerizing, some said almost alien, green eyes. Before she drove off she checked her hair in the vanity mirror – she’d only just had it done and she wasn’t sure how the new style would hold up to the rigours of theworking day. But her hairdresser was an artist – it was razored and sliced to perfection, and highlighted to suit, giving her an artfully tousled style that belied the amount of time it took to perfect each morning. She dusted herself with some bronzing powder to take away the pallor induced by a day under artificial lighting, slicked on some lipstick and spritzed a squirt of Allure on to each wrist and down her cleavage.

She pulled out of her parking space, then tutted with annoyance as she saw the long line of cars edging painfully slowly towards the exit. She should have left the Exhibition Centre earlier; but the best business was often done at the end of the day, when people were tired and capitulated more easily. She’d negotiated an excellent price on a range of rustic kitchenware: the garden centre had already opened an extensive delicatessen, so this seemed a logical diversification to Kay. Whether it would to her husband Lawrence was another matter; but at least he’d be mollified by the knock-down price she’d got.

The queue edged forward another three feet. Kay’s patience left her. She pulled sharply out of the line and accelerated to the front, where the next escapee was about to insert his ticket into the machine that activated the exit barrier. Kay could feel forty pairs of angry eyes boring into her back as she lowered the electric passenger window and adopted a suitably distressed expression. She indicated the mobile telephone on the seat next to her.

‘I’m awfully sorry. I’ve had a phone call… It’s an emergency. Would you mind?’

Kay never tempted fate by lying. She was merely economical with the truth. She
had
had a phone call earlier: from Lawrence, to find out what time she’d be back. (‘Not before midnight, darling. More like one. I’ve got to do dinner with some of the suppliers – keep them sweet.’) And it was an emergency: if she didn’t see Mickey tonight, she’d die. It had been almost four days and she needed her fix.

Of course the driver let her out, and she flashed him a smile of such triumphant brilliance that he instantly realized he’d been duped. But by then she’d reached the freedom of the open road, and put her foot down hard. As she gained the motorway, she glanced at the digital clock. Just over an hour, traffic willing. The thought sent a pulse racing between her legs, and she put an experimental hand down to feel it. God, it was as strong as a heartbeat. Anticipation made her push the speedo up past ninety. The little Boxster managed it effortlessly. It was her ally, and the result of one of the few battles she’d won with Lawrence; if he’d got his way she’d still be lumbering along the feeder road in a Range Rover. OK, so you couldn’t get much in it, but speed was more important to Kay than capacity. To her mind, its only slight drawback was lack of anonymity. A Range Rover went unremarked in most of the places she frequented; a high-powered electric-blue sports car did not, which was sometimes inconvenient. But Kay was expert at weighing up pros and cons, and right now her choice was saving her precious time.

Austin Healeys really weren’t meant for screwing. But Patrick Liddiard was damned if he was going to sacrifice his pride and joy for the luxury of getting his leg over in comfort. Besides, Kelly was obliging and supple and didn’t seem to mind having her head jammed up against the window, judging by the appreciative noises she was making. He knew her appreciation was genuine, for he’d long concluded that the only thing that wasn’t fake about Kelly were her orgasms. From the roots of her candyfloss hair to the tips of her false nails (he’d had a terrible shock once, when he’d found one of them in his Calvin Klein boxers), she was a walking temple of artifice. Patrick could only be sure that her heart-stopping breasts were her own because a publican’s daughter studying beauty therapy at the local tech couldn’t possibly afford silicone implants.

Ten minutes later, as Kelly retrieved her G-string from the glove compartment, Patrick lit a Marlboro Light and stared out of the window. He never watched her get dressed; it inevitably depressed him and made him wonder, as she struggled into her cheap, gaudy, too-tight clothes, what on earth he was doing with her.

He knew the answer, of course. Because even if Kelly’s conversation was limited to the regurgitated contents of
Hello!
magazine, at least she took his mind off things with her effervescent babble. She was uncomplicated and a great shag. What more could you ask for? The last thing Patrick needed at the moment was a bird in tow that made endless demands and played mind games. He’d gone down that road before – it was exhausting. And at the moment he needed all his mental energy.

As Kelly prinked in the vanity mirror, he pondered his predicament. He hadn’t really expected things to turn out like this. His father had always insisted, from a young age, that Patrick should feel no obligation to step into his shoes at the brewery. For Mickey himself had been groomed to take over from his father before him, and he felt strongly that his children should be given the chance to choose their own path in life without being unduly influenced by the spectre of Honeycote Ales.

But it hadn’t been that easy to escape the legacy. Patrick had never been a great academic, and had scraped through his GCSEs with just enough marks to get into the sixth form to do A levels. They, however, had proved a spectacular failure. Mickey had been furious, not with Patrick, but with the school for allowing him to suffer all those years of struggling before admitting academic defeat. He’d taken him off to a crammer in Oxford, where within half an hour they’d pronounced Patrick borderline dyslexic. Had it been diagnosed at an earlier age, they said, he would have been spared the humiliation of always coming bottom of the class, being branded a ‘thicko’. Patrick was somewhat relieved. In his head, he’d never felt intellectually below his peers. It was just that he hadn’t been able to express himself on paper, and now he felt vindicated.

Mickey had been beside himself with guilt, and had totally over-compensated for what had not been entirely his fault. But he blamed himself for choosing the wrong school for Patrick, for trusting them to take charge of his education when clearly they were incompetent. He knew Patrick’s confidence had taken a severe knocking over the past few years, and he wanted to atone for what must have been a total nightmare for the boy. As compensation he gave his son a salary from the brewery, without actually giving him any responsibility with which to earn it. So Patrick became what was really a glorified temp, standing in whenever anyone was ill, whether it was driving the delivery lorry, humping sacks of hops or supervising the stringent tests they had to undertake several times a day. Although as a result Patrick was more familiar than anyone with the workings of the brewery, albeit on a junior level, Mickey was insistent that he spend the rest of his time working out what he really wanted to do with his life.

And now, at just twenty-three, Patrick realized that he’d reached something of a dead end. He didn’t have good enough qualifications to get a job of the sort of calibre he felt he deserved – sending endless CVs to estate agents and wine merchants had proved that. He couldn’t face another envelope landing on the mat with a rejection letter politely refusing him so much as an interview. He’d toyed with the idea of art college – if he excelled at anything, it was drawing – but the establishments he’d visited had appalled rather than inspired him. The students seemed pretentious, intent on shocking rather than the pursuit of the aesthetic. So that idea had gone out of the window. Of course, what he’d really like to do would be to race his Healey, but as that involved spending money rather than earning it, it wasn’t really an option. He had to content himself with its restoration, a slow but rewarding process that helped him take his mind off things from time to time.

Meanwhile, being around the brewery had aroused his interests, despite Mickey’s constant reminders that he was a free agent, that he should become a hot air balloonist or a lion tamer before taking up an official position at Honeycote Ales. But Patrick was gradually coming to the conclusion that this was where his future lay. After all, he loved Honeycote – the house they lived in, the countryside, the people, the way of life. And he knew he was lucky. A lot of people spent their entire lives trying to get away from where they’d been born. So he’d come to a decision – he was going to ask his father for a proper managerial position. He was going to stop messing around and do some hard work, earn his salary. He knew he was going to meet considerable resistance from his father, who seemed to be under a lot of pressure at the moment. In fact, deep down Patrick suspected that Mickey was keeping him at arm’s length deliberately, and it irked him. He wanted to be able to help. But it was going to be a question of timing, finding the right moment to ask. He sighed a deep sigh.

Kelly, happy now with her handiwork, turned to him and cooed:

‘You’re ever so quiet, baby. What’s the matter?’

‘I was just asking myself if, really and truly, there was any point to all of this.’

Panic-stricken, Kelly clutched the arm of his jacket. ‘What – you mean you and me?’

Patrick felt his teeth go slightly on edge at her touch. Funny, when only a few moments ago he’d been all over her. He realized that he was going to have to let her go. Kelly’s parents, Ted and Eileen, ran the Honeycote Arms. And in this supposedly classless society, he knew that class had never mattered more. If he was going to be management, he couldn’t be seen screwing the hired help. He wondered whether this might be the opportune moment to give her the boot, but he was too tired for histrionics.

‘No, no – I mean life in general. What is there to look forward to, for Christ’s sake?’

Kelly’s lips, shimmering with Rimini Razzle, formed a perfect circle as she pouted and looked at Patrick reproachfully from under her fringe.

‘It’s my twenty-first in a couple of months.’

Oh God. How could he have forgotten? Cold vol-au-vents, the Birdie Song and a ghastly cake with a huge silver key. Patrick smiled, as if this reminder had lifted the weight of the world from his shoulders. ‘Oh yes.’ He switched on the ignition. ‘Shall I drop you home?’

‘You’d better. I’ve got to do a bikini wax tomorrow in front of the whole class. I’m really nervous.’

Patrick felt ill-equipped to offer reassurance, not knowing or wanting to know what a bikini wax was, so he simply reversed out of the gateway and headed along the road that would take him back into Honeycote. As the little car roared through the outskirts of the village, Patrick looked down the wooded slope into the deep bowl that housed the brewery. In the moonlight, he could just make out the ghostly shape of the old shire-horse who used to pull the dray. The dray was long out of commission, but they’d kept Toby out of sentimentality. He was over thirty; if they hadn’t he’d have gone for dog meat, so he lived happily in retirement in the small paddock behind the malthouse.

Something suddenly caught Patrick’s eye and he frowned, slammed on the brakes and peered down into the darkness. Damn! He’d thought so: there was a light on in the brewery office. He’d heard they’d appointed a new Excise chap at Gloucester – an eager beaver by all accounts, keen as mustard – but surely the days of midnight swoops on breweries were gone? You’d have to be crazy to attempt an illicit brew these days. Crazy or desperate: there was too much to lose, too little to gain.

Patrick sighed. He’d better go and introduce himself; make sure this new chap understood that Honeycote Ales didn’t appreciate people breathing down their necks. Cursing softly under his breath and ignoring Kelly’s squeaks of bewildered protest, he swung the car round and set off back down the hill.

The Fox and Goose, the Honeycote Arms or the Red Lion? Mickey had narrowed the field down to three, but couldn’t bring himself to pinpoint a final choice. One of them had to go, that was definite. And of the ten tied houses that made up Honeycote Ales, these were the ones making least money and needing most investment. Which meant they would fetch less, but at this stage of the game any amount would help. Mickey ran his hand through his thick dark brown hair and sighed. There was going to be uproar whichever he chose. How the hell was he going to explain to the world at large that after nearly a hundred and fifty years of paternalism, Honeycote Ales was going to sell a pub from under one of their loyal and faithful tenants?

Mickey knew he only had himself to blame for the situation. The sad fact was, he might have inherited a family business but he wasn’t a businessman, no matter which way you looked at it. It was a miracle they’d made it into the twenty-first century – it was certainly more by luck than good judgement. He just wasn’t ruthless enough. He couldn’t take the bull by the horns, basically because he was terrified of change. He found it so much easier to keep things as they were, than have to take the blame for implementing some radical change that hadn’t worked. But he knew he was reaching crisis point. All the pubs owned by the brewery needed massive refurbishments, just to bring them up to scratch and to keep the Health and Safety people placated. Not only that, but the machinery at the brewery was out of the ark: several key pieces of equipment needed repairing. It was only a matter of time before something integral to the whole shooting match gave up the ghost.