Just a Family Affair (11 page)

She parked on the road outside and walked up the path, noticing with pleasure the joyous ranks of daffodils. She’d have to see about a gardener soon. Elsie had kept on Bill’s legacy as best she could, but there was no way she would be able to maintain a full-to-bursting cottage garden in her condition. Mayday was sure there would be someone at the brewery who would be glad of some extra cash, either one of the young lads or one of the old codgers who’d been at Honeycote Ales since the dawn of time. She’d get Patrick to ask around, maybe stick a notice up in the staff room.

In the kitchen, her grandmother was sitting at the table, looking rather dazed, and there was a strong smell of burning. Mayday rushed over to the Aga, where the kettle had boiled itself dry. She stuck her hand in an oven glove and pulled it off.

‘Gran! What happened?’

‘I must have fallen asleep.’ Elsie blinked. Her eyes were unnaturally pink. Mayday peered at her.

‘Have you been crying?’

‘No, no. It’s . . .’ Elsie cast round for an excuse, but was still too groggy to think of one. Mayday pressed her lips together.

‘Mum’s been here, hasn’t she?’ Her mother was the only person on the planet who could upset Elsie. And who chose to upset her. ‘What did she say?’

For a moment, Elsie considered saying nothing. She didn’t like stirring up trouble between her daughter and granddaughter. But she wanted reassurance that Angela’s suggestion was outrageous, because the more she thought about it the more sense it seemed to make. After all, how could she carry on the way she was? At Coppice House, she would be fed and waited on, there would be somebody on hand to help if she couldn’t reach something, or open something. Even now, she had to resort to shapeless tops and elasticated skirts to avoid fiddly zips and buttons. Elsie was no fashion plate, but she liked a nice crisp cotton blouse. And shoelaces - who would have thought that shoe laces would become a luxury? She suddenly loathed the cushioned slip-on shoes she’d bought from Marks and Spencer.

She decided she would retain as neutral a tone as possible when mooting Angela’s idea to Mayday.

‘Your mother thinks I should move into Coppice House.’

Mayday’s response was immediate, as she dumped the cool box on the table and put her hands on her hips, tossing back her black hair in a gesture of indignation.

‘What? Is she mad?’

Elsie immediately felt mollified. The idea was preposterous.

‘That dump?’ Mayday went on. ‘You’d be better off in one of Mum’s dog kennels, which is really saying something. Joyce Hardiment is only interested in one thing and that’s profit. Not the welfare of her patients. If it was up to her they would lie on a plastic mattress wallowing in their own wee all day, being fed on a drip so she didn’t have to pay any staff. They’ve had E-coli there three times, it’s so filthy.’ Mayday pulled off the lid of the cool box and took out a plate of chicken casserole, going over to the range and sliding it into the top oven to reheat. ‘No, Gran. If you want to go into a home, we’ll find you somewhere nice. Not somewhere run by a money-grabbing old cow.’

Elsie looked down at her hands folded in her lap. So it was Coppice House that Mayday objected to, not the idea of a home. She blinked hard to stop the tears of self-pity betraying her. For the first time since he died she thought perhaps Bill had had a lucky, if premature, escape. At least he hadn’t undergone the indignity of being a crippled nuisance, packed off to an institution for the elderly and infirm. That’s what she was: elderly and infirm.

‘I expect Joyce is short of takers or something.’ Mayday was busying herself round the kitchen, refilling the kettle. ‘I hope you told Mum where to shove it.’

She picked up the teabag box, and Elsie watched in envy as she peeled away the cellophane in one easy movement, then lifted down the brown teapot from its place on the shelf.

‘Tell you what.’ Mayday lifted the kettle, which had by now reboiled, and poured the hot water in a steady stream. ‘Why don’t I do your hair? You deserve a bit of pampering. Have your tea, then we’ll give you a shampoo and set. You won’t know yourself.’

‘Lovely,’ said Elsie, and obediently ate her chicken.

She couldn’t quite pluck up the courage to ask Mayday to help her with her bed. Mayday had only changed the sheets on Friday. But last night Elsie had woken in the early hours desperate for a wee. The pain in her knees had been so excruciating, she couldn’t face getting up. She’d tried to ignore the persistence in her bladder, and had eventually succeeded, falling back to sleep. But when she woke that morning she realized that she hadn’t conquered her need at all. She’d wet the bed. If she admitted that, even to Mayday, then the search for a home would definitely be on. She’d have a go at changing the bed herself, she decided, later on tonight. Even if she just got the bottom sheet off, and slept on the bare mattress . . . she’d just have to pray there wasn’t a repeat performance. Or perhaps she should try not drinking so much during the day.

So when Mayday passed her a cup of tea, Elsie waited until her back was turned and poured it quietly down the sink.

T
hat afternoon’s meeting at Honeycote Ales wasn’t exactly official. But all the board members were going, and Elspeth, the brewery receptionist, had laid out proper cups and saucers for tea and a plate of shortbread, which lent an air of formality to the proceedings.

Patrick arrived first. The afternoon sun was slanting in through the windows, making the wood of the mahogany table gleam. The whiteboard had been wiped clean from the last sales meeting. Patrick put his notes down on the table in front of the space he had chosen for himself, and wondered whether to write his bullet points up on the board. No, he decided. He’d wait and see where everyone else lay before he showed his cards.

He looked through the typewritten notes Elspeth had printed out for each board member: the balance sheets, the quotes and the projected sales figures, a gloomy collation of pie charts and graphs that showed their profits were plummeting. His stomach churned slightly. The writing might not actually be on the wall yet, but they weren’t far off it. It seemed as if they continually took one step forward and three back. No sooner had the Honeycote Arms won Gastropub of the Year in one of the Sunday papers, than they were hit with an industrial tribunal from one of their staff for unfair dismissal. The case had clearly been a set-up, but times being what they were, and employers evidently being evil and exploitational, they lost the case and had to pay a hideous amount of compensation to the silly cow.

Then they had won a contract with a new chain of pizzerias to supply their bottled beer, only to discover that the Peacock Inn was subsiding and threatening to slide down its own beer garden and into the river - they’d had to close it immediately, and lost its comparatively substantial income. Added to that, there was absolutely no doubt that a lot of the machinery in the brewery was tired and worn; they had reached the point where it was counterproductive to keep repairing it. They needed a complete refit, and goodness knows what would be uncovered in the process - the brewery was held together by years of dust and cobwebs, and to disturb it was asking for trouble. And, of course, they were still trying to recover from the ghastly incident with Roger Sandbach, landlord at the Horse and Groom.

He should have listened to Mayday, thought Patrick. She had phoned him any number of times with dark warnings about Roger’s drinking and gambling habits. But every time Patrick had called in to see him, Roger had been perfectly steady on his pins, and the books had been in order.

‘You think I’m crying wolf.’ Mayday’s dark eyes had been accusing. ‘But why would I? People talk, Patrick, and you’d do well to listen. He cashes up, takes the money down to the bookies on the way to the bank, sticks a load of bets on, collects his winnings, puts back what he borrowed, takes our money to the bank and keeps the rest. OK, so he’s got some great tips, and nine times out of ten he cleans up. But it’s going to go wrong, Patrick. There’s no way he can keep it up. And you know gamblers. They get greedy. One day he’s going to make a bet he can’t afford to lose.’

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Mayday, who he knew had her ear to the ground and was privy to the secrets of most of the great and the good of Eldenbury, as well as the not so great and the downright bad. It was just that he didn’t want the landlord of his biggest establishment to be putting the hotel takings on the three-thirty at Cheltenham. So he had ignored her warnings, until the day Roger had received a tip for a dead cert and put two weeks’ takings on a horse that fell at the first fence. Roger promptly blew his brains out in the back office, not simply because he’d lost the money, but because everyone would know that he’d been on the fiddle as he hadn’t kept back enough to cover his losses.

Mayday was astonishing. She’d found the body, poor girl, but hadn’t batted an eyelid. As she said afterwards, she’d been waiting for disaster to strike for so long, it was almost a relief when it happened. She’d dealt with the situation with incredible calm. She had contacts with the local police, who arrived as discreetly as they could so that the hotel guests were oblivious to the tragedy. The ambulance had slipped quietly around the back without all sirens blazing and removed the body. Then she’d called the staff into the dining room and quietly informed them that Roger had shot himself. By the time Mickey and Patrick arrived, it was as if nothing had happened. The hotel was preparing for evening service with an air of serenity that was almost unnatural. Mayday, it seemed, had put it to them straight, pointing out that everyone’s livelihoods would be in jeopardy unless as little fuss as possible was made.

It was Patrick who suggested that Mayday take Roger’s place. The staff clearly respected her, and if anyone knew how the hotel worked it was Mayday who, it emerged, had been troubleshooting for Roger almost since the day he arrived. Keith and Mickey had both been wary and unsure. The Horse and Groom was one of their biggest earners - when its staff weren’t gambling with the profits, at any rate - and they were reluctant to put it into the hands of a young girl with a less than conventional sense of dress. But, as Patrick pointed out, most of the customers came in to see what Mayday was - or sometimes wasn’t - wearing, and she was pretty astute. He finally persuaded them to appoint an assistant manager who had qualifications and a quiet taste in clothing, and hand over the reins to Mayday. They’d given her a three-month trial period.

That had been eighteen months ago, and the takings had nearly doubled since Roger’s demise, which went some way towards recouping the substantial loss he’d made on their behalf. Ironically, the Horse and Groom became the place to stay for Cheltenham racegoers - Mayday had organized a courtesy bus to and from the racecourse for the key meetings. The amount her guests drank in the hotel before and after more than covered the cost. At other times the hotel was packed with city dwellers arriving for her Cotswold Experience weekends, which included a hot air balloon ride over the breath-taking countryside. And she didn’t forget the locals: she had devised a special loyalty card for commuters who got off the Paddington train. Between six and seven the lounge bar was stuffed to the gills with suited executives enjoying a glass of her ‘Wine of the Week’ together with a selection of nibbles, before going home to their lovingly prepared suppers. Lunch on market days was booked for weeks ahead, and she’d introduced a special high tea for children at five o’clock, as she had noticed many harassed mothers en route from Brownies or ballet or swimming who were only too glad not to have to cook for their overtired offspring and brought them in for organic sesame-coated chicken goujons, sweet potato wedges and stir-fried broccoli spears.

Patrick was relieved that his gamble had paid off. He would have been more concerned about his loyalty to Mayday than his loyalty to the brewery if things had gone awry. For she was his rock, his sounding board. It was Mayday Patrick turned to if he had a dilemma, or a brainwave, or if he needed a second opinion, for she gave him a totally objective point of view, and she had a great gut for what was right and wrong. Sometimes he felt guilty, and thought it should be Mandy he turned to for advice, but he rather thought Mandy told him what she thought he wanted to hear when it came to business. Besides, with Keith being her father he sometimes had to be careful what he said. He didn’t have to pull his punches with Mayday. They were always honest and upfront with each other. They always had been, since the day they’d first met.

He’d been fifteen, home from boarding school one hot June weekend. The fair was in town, sprawling all over the market place in Eldenbury, which usually harboured nothing more exotic than Volvos and pick-ups. The air was hot and heavy, filled with promise and the smell of frying onions. Patrick was bored. He’d come here with his best mate Ned, who’d promptly run off with some rabbity-faced girl he’d met at a Pony Club Disco.

He was idly taking pot shots at the rifle range when he felt sure someone was staring at him: the hairs on the back of his neck rippled. He turned, and saw an extraordinary creature with a mane of teased black hair, eyes ringed with kohl, and the fullest, plumpest lips he had ever seen, painted deep purple. She wore a black velvet bodice, ripped jeans and staggeringly high stiletto boots.

‘I’ve always wanted a giant giraffe.’ The voice trickled from between her lips like honey falling from a spoon. Patrick swallowed hard, and attempted a laconic smile.

‘Whatever the lady wants . . .’

He turned to take aim. The star prize, the giraffe in question, stood lopsidedly against the stand, mocking him. His hand shook. He could feel her beside him, imagined he felt the warmth of her breath on his neck. Her perfume was as sweet and alluring as the candy floss from the next stall. It made Patrick feel quite giddy as he squeezed the trigger. The pellet whistled past the tin and missed.