Lots of Love Read online

  ‘Don’t move a muscle until she looks away,’ Pheely breathed, like a safari ranger issuing instructions to a tourist who’d come face to face with a lion.

  Ellen chewed her lips and felt the repressed laughter bubbling in her mouth and throat, like a can of Coke knocked back in a hurry, until at last the silver gaze moved on to a fresh target and she could swallow the froth and fizz. She caught Pheely’s eye in relief, and a merry green wink greeted her. They had to look hurriedly at different parts of the ceiling’s ornate, crumbling cornicing to stop themselves hitting the laughter meltdown button once more.

  Still watching them, Glad Tidings made a couple of amendments to her notes.

  The auction had already been well under way when Pheely and Ellen had arrived, and the disapproving look they had received from Gladys then was getting sterner by the minute as they whispered like new schoolfriends during the first assembly.

  They had settled in the back row of the unusual assortment of seating that Hell’s Bells and Gladys had collected together to create an ad hoc auction room in the little-used Blue Drawing Room, the more formal of the manor’s reception rooms. While Pheely was perched high on a woodwormed Windsor chair, Ellen was just a few knock-kneed inches above the ground on a lumpy chaise-longue with books propping it up in place of its missing leg. In front of her, well-dressed locals were lined up on old chintz or leather button-back armchairs, footstools, chesterfields, refectory benches and garden furniture.

  ‘Look at the Surgeon.’ Pheely pointed out Hell’s Bells’ tall husband, balancing uncomfortably on a child’s nursery chair. ‘I bet the old bat made him sit there to stop him falling asleep. He snores like a trumpet – you should hear him in church.’

  Sir St John Belling was no longer the dashing, blond conqueror who had wowed the dog-eat-dog political world with his mix of leggy, Andrex-puppy charm and lean Doberman aggression. He was now an ageing bloodhound, jowly and grizzled, the blue eyes heavily lidded and downturned, the famous mane so thin on top that he looked as if he had two floppy blond ears. Yet he still had enough of the Belling magnetism to send the wives of Oddlode into a powdering, perfuming frenzy before tonight’s gathering. The best summer dresses were out in force, hair had been set in his honour, and tens of pairs of eyes secretly studied him as pearls overheated at blushing throats.

  To Ellen’s alarm, she was attracting a similar reaction from several ageing gents who craned to look at her over the shoulders of blazers and sports jackets, rheumy eyes taking in the bronzed skin, blonde hair and bare midriff.

  The great and the good of the village were, on the whole, considerably older than Pheely and Ellen. And because their hostess had maintained such a strict invitation-only policy, there were far fewer bidders than promises. On totting up the numbers, Ellen calculated that even if every single person in the room bought two lots, there would still be half a page of the catalogue to get through before her massage came up. She hoped that by then her several admirers would be feeling too poor to fork out or would have been marched home by their wives at the promised drinks interval after lot thirty (probably the most eagerly anticipated, being ‘A day in the Members’ Enclosure at Royal Ascot as a guest of Sir St John Belling’). Then she remembered that there was another reason for the curious, hushed atmosphere of statically charged anticipation: ‘Which one’s Jasper?’ she whispered, as she looked around the room.

  ‘Spurs?’ Pheely’s eyes searched the backs of thirty or so heads in front of her. ‘Not here, unless he’s lost all his hair or had a sex change in the past eleven years. All these bidders are boffers or biddies.’ She let out a low, throaty giggle, but her eyes still scoured the room for the missing prodigal son.

  Ellen thought this was a bit of an anticlimax. After Pheely’s build-up, she’d hoped at least to catch a glimpse of the village’s worst-ever tearaway. ‘Maybe he’ll pop by later to see his lot come up.’

  ‘What lot?’ Pheely consulted her going-for-a-song sheet. Half-way down the last page, Ellen pointed out the short, cryptic lot fifty-four: ‘Three wishes to be granted to the winning bidder, kindly donated by Jasper Belling’.

  Pheely let out a great snort.

  ‘One hundred! Thankyou, Ophelia!’ Hell’s Bells pointed her gavel triumphantly.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ Pheely looked up with a nervous smile, through which she muttered ventriloquist-style, ‘Don’t tell me I just bid for a meal in the Fuck Upstream?’

  ‘Are we all done at a hundred?’ Hell’s Bells boomed.

  ‘Please bid, somebody,’ Pheely implored, through her fixed smile. ‘C’mon, Giles, help me out here.’ She stared helplessly at a suave-looking man in a crumpled linen suit who was lounging against a far wall, and who had been bidding on the lot earlier. He smiled back at her with a roguish wink.

  ‘Bastard.’ Pheely clasped her hands.

  Ellen, who had terrible munchies now that the dope high was starting to pass, was almost tempted to bid herself if she could claim her meal straight away.

  ‘At one hundred pounds, with Ms Gently.’ Hell’s Bells raised her gavel like a motorist preparing to take out an injured animal with a shovel. ‘Going once . . . going twice . . .’

  ‘No, no, please no.’ Pheely closed her eyes in horror.

  ‘One hundred and ten,’ came a lazy drawl, and the man in the crumpled suit lifted a finger.

  ‘Yes!’ Pheely sighed, her eyes springing open.

  ‘Thank you, Giles!’ Hell’s Bells was jubilant. ‘Ophelia?’

  ‘No!’ Pheely shook her head hastily then held her breath until the gavel smashed down on a tall mahogany plant stand that had been placed beside the library steps.

  While Gladys busily made a note of the lucky recipient of a meal at the village’s gourmet pub, Pheely blew Giles a kiss. He smouldered back at her.

  ‘Giles Hornton,’ she told Ellen, in an undertone, ‘lives in River Cottage. Dilly keeps her horse in his paddock. Giles is our biggest local solicitor in more than one sense of the word. Watch out – that meal has no doubt been bought with the express intention of cross-examining somebody’s bikini briefs, and he just loves new girls.’ Eyes darting around, she stretched up to whisper in Ellen’s ear. ‘You’re probably the only woman in this room he hasn’t slept with. He’s quite irresistible, my darling.’

  Giles, who was the wrong side of forty with a peppery Tom Selleck moustache, Bahamas tan, dissipated blue eyes and very Miami Vice taste in tailoring, hardly struck Ellen as irresistible. He gave her a seedy wink, and she lowered her eyes hurriedly to her catalogue.

  ‘Lot sixteen,’ boomed Hell’s Bells, ‘has been kindly donated by Prudence Hornton, and is half a dozen water-colour lessons, paints and paper included.’ She gestured towards a slim, scruffy redhead, who was scowling behind dark glasses in a window-seat.

  ‘Is she Giles’s wife?’ Ellen asked in alarm, not surprised that the poor woman was looking so glum given that she was sitting in a room of her husband’s conquests.

  ‘Ex,’ Pheely pulled a face, ‘and a very silly cow. She runs the gallery in Cider Lane. Only opens the place up when the moon’s in the ascendant, and even then she won’t let Capricorns in. She hasn’t sold one of my sculptures in months.’

  This left Ellen wondering whether Pheely’s sculptures were only bought by Capricorns, but she didn’t get the opportunity to ask because Hell’s Bells was already scouring the room for prey.

  ‘Who’ll start me at fifty?’ she suggested eagerly.

  Pru’s watercolour lessons were peddled for just forty pounds in the end, which Ellen guessed hardly covered the materials. She was, according to Pheely’s sotto voce asides, run ragged by three of Giles’s many children, knocked back Valium like Smarties and was known as something of an ancient mariner when it came to her problems. ‘Whoever’s bought that will find themselves trapped on a hill slapping yellow ochre on to rag paper and listening to Pru’s tales of woe. Talk about Watercolour Challenged.’

  As the lots came up in turn, she cheerfu
lly gave Ellen the low-down on donors and recipients, whispering through her ventriloquist’s smile to avoid being mistaken for bidding again.

  ‘That’s Lily Lubowski – from the shop,’ she hissed excitedly, as the bidding hotted up for a week in a villager’s second home in France. ‘Married Joel when he was based at Upper Heyford with the US Airforce, then found herself stuck in Little Rock, Arkansas, for twenty years. When he retired, she dragged him back here. She’d always dreamed of running a tea room in Lower Oddford, but for some reason they ended up with a failing post office in Oddlode, hence the vast array of cakes on sale and the baseball bat hidden behind the counter.’

  Lily looked innocuous enough, despite the rather startling peroxide blonde hair and obvious face-lift. Ellen wondered why Pheely called her a complete weirdo. ‘Does she sell Little Rock cakes?’ she asked.

  ‘Lily’s convinced that every customer is going to stage a hold-up,’ Pheely whispered. ‘She once even accused poor Dilly of shoplifting. I’d just sent her in there to fetch my paper, which yet again hadn’t been delivered that morning, and the next thing you know Lily has the police crawling all over Oddlode. When the constable asked darling Dilly whether a parent or guardian could be contacted, she tried explaining that her parent was lying in bed at home waiting for her Guardian, and mad Lily got the wrong end of the stick and contacted social services. Having lived on a diet of US reality TV for two decades, she thinks we’re all candidates for Jerry Springer or America’s Most Wanted. She won’t let her paper-round kids near me now. I read Pixie’s Telegraph after she’s finished with it.’

  It seemed that there were few people in the village Touchy Pheely trusted, or with whom she hadn’t fallen out at some point, although Ellen sensed that affection lay behind the mischievous nicknames and heated feuds.

  ‘Your neighbour, Hunter Gardner.’ Pheely pointed out a familiar bullish figure, who was bidding for a day’s shooting at the Lower Springlode artificial grouse moor. ‘Great chums with your mother.’

  Ellen recognised the stiff-backed, ex-military man and village complainer, tonight kitted out immaculately in a tweed suit and golf-club tie. His Field Farm land divided the Goose Cottage paddock from the manor’s fields and consisted of neatly clipped enclosures housing rare poultry and miserable-looking snowy-white show sheep. He and Jennifer had happily conspired in many a campaign, including the one that had closed the footpath across their combined land. Hunter, as her mother was proud of pointing out, had a torch-bearing soft spot for Jennifer Jamieson. Theo loathed him.

  ‘I might bid on his lot.’ Ellen looked at the description, which offered a month’s lawn-mowing courtesy of Hunter Gardner’s gardener, Gary. She badly needed some help with sorting out the Goose Cottage meadow.

  ‘Don’t!’ Pheely hissed. ‘Gary is the Oddlode poisoner. He’ll napalm everything he can’t hack to within an inch of ground level.’

  Pheely had reasons why Ellen shouldn’t bid on any of the lots, which was perhaps not such a bad thing because Ellen hardly had the money to match some of the ludicrous sums being offered. It seemed that there was an unofficial competition going on as to who was the most wealthy and generous villager. The lawn-mowing was snapped up for over two hundred pounds by one of the residents of Coppice Court, the new executive development beside Manor Farm, known to Pheely as ‘Gin Palace Heights’.

  ‘They live in Tanqueray,’ she whispered, as the winning bidder gave his details to Gladys. ‘I think he’s an accountant in London. The Gordons and Beefeater families are here, too, but I can’t see Bombay Sapphire and I know the Corks are on holiday in Tuscany this week.’

  ‘Lot twenty.’ Hell’s Bells consulted her notes with the help of the half-moon spectacles that dangled from a gold chain around her broad neck. ‘Ah! Rather special, this one. For those of you with over-productive Bramley apple trees like me, Ely has offered to have the fruit harvested and make it into cider for you, which he will have bottled and labelled in time for drinking next year. Who’ll start me at one hundred?’

  A furious contest ensued between Joel Lubowski and the Beefeaters, with lots of vocal badinage and laughter thrown in.

  Lots twenty-one through twenty-seven were all donated by Ely Gates and were, Ellen thought, by far the most interesting of the evening. Among them was a guided balloon ride over the valley, during which Ely would explain the way that history had changed the landscape over the years; a wine-tasting tour of Lower Oddford vineyard, with a crate of the best vintage thrown in; a month’s unrestricted fishing on the Manor Farm river frontage; and a fresh flower delivery, ready-arranged, every week for a year.

  The tall, thin, bearded entrepreneur and church stalwart occupied a front-row position, sharing a dog-eared chintz sofa with his small, puddingy wife Felicity, whose very snub nose lent her the unfortunate expression of somebody with their face permanently pressed against a window.

  ‘I had no idea Ely Gates was so profligate.’ Ellen whistled softly remembering her mother calling Oddlode’s self-styled tycoon a tight-fisted, puritanical tyrant.

  ‘Hell’s Bells might think she runs Oddlode, but Ely is the real power,’ Pheely told her darkly. ‘Ever since his father took advantage of the change in tenancy law to buy Manor Farm from the Constantines, that side of the Gates family has been changing the shape of the village by selling off farmland for profit. They’re worth a fortune now. And doesn’t he like to show it!’

  It was true that, as well as donating so much, Ely had bought over half the lots so far: his hand was raised so often to bid that, from where Ellen sat, he almost appeared to be jiving in his seat. The residents of Gin Palace Heights might be flashing their fortunes as they outbid each other for babysitting, taxi and gardening services, but by far the most generous benefactor was their near-neighbour. Ely must have parted with thousands of pounds already, but Ellen disagreed with Pheely that he was being conspicuous. Compared to the overexcited, vocal bidding of the village ‘macho men’, he was understated and softly spoken. And this sombre self-effacement clearly wound up some of the other men far more than their own in-joke goading. They were out for his blood.

  Lot twenty-eight, donated by Giles Hornton, was listed in the catalogue as ‘Ten hours’ legal advice from the senior partner of Market Addington’s leading solicitors’. But suave Giles interrupted Hell’s Bells before she could announce it.

  ‘Change of plan, your ladyship,’ he drawled, glancing at Pheely. ‘I’ve been told my lot is rather dull . . .’

  ‘Too right,’ Pheely whispered to Ellen, making her wonder whether it was Pheely who had told him this. ‘He should have offered a freebie divorce. That would get everybody going.’

  ‘. . . so I am going to change it, if that’s agreeable,’ Giles was saying – and now looking at Ellen, his blue eyes apparently willing a couple of her shirt buttons to come open. ‘I propose to offer use of my Aston for a day, with or without me as chauffeur. I might even be able to arrange an unrestricted road test around Springlode airfield.’ He threw his arms wide and smiled at the room.

  From the shocked expressions and several whoops that greeted the gesture, Ellen saw that this was quite a coup.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Pheely’s eyes were almost popping out. ‘Now he really is being a naughty boy.’

  Giles Hornton’s Aston Martin, it seemed, was the one thing in his life to which he had stayed faithful. A rare vintage DB4, which he had had lovingly restored in silver birch Italian Job livery, it was the envy of the village. And nobody coveted it more than Ely Gates.

  When the bidding started at a thousand pounds, Ellen wrinkled her brow in disbelief. You could hire a fleet of cars for that. She had never understood men’s obsession with motors.

  At first, Ely was bidding against Hunter Gardner and one of the Gin Palace husbands. But at fifteen hundred pounds, Hunter was forced to drop out and satisfy himself with the fact that he could always drive around ahead of the winning DB4 joy-rider in his Bentley, rigidly maintaining the speed limit and thw
arting all attempts to pass him.

  The Gin Palace husband, himself the owner of a Range Rover and a Porsche, had a point to prove against the man on whose old milking yard his mock-Tudor five-bedroom house was built. But Ely would not drop out. The bidding reached two thousand, then three without break. Hell’s Bells was in ecstasy.

  ‘Three thousand two hundred – and three. With you, Ely. And four!’ The gavel spun like a cheerleader’s baton.

  Lounging against the wall, Giles winked at Pheely and Ellen.

  ‘Crafty bugger,’ Pheely murmured. ‘He knew this would get Ely going.’

  ‘Ely tried to buy that car from Giles a few years ago – offered him enough to buy a top-of-the-range new one,’ she told Ellen, through her fixed smile. ‘And Giles was pretty tempted – that car had got him into a lot of trouble when it was spotted parked outside the homes of lonely Lodes Valley wives whose husbands were in London. It’s too distinctive for an adulterer. But Giles loves it, so he turned Ely down and bought himself an Audi estate to make his house-calls in. Ely was livid.’

  ‘Why does he want Giles’s car so badly?’ asked Ellen, watching the Manor Farm tycoon jiving discreetly on the chintz sofa, determined to have his DB4 day.

  ‘Sentimental, darling. It belonged to his father – a status symbol the old man bought when he struck it rich, then never really used. He sold it to Giles in the eighties and bought most of Wyck Farm’s land with the proceeds. Ely likes to keep things in the family – that’s why he wants it back. He loved that car as a boy. My father said that, as a teenager, Ely used to drive it around the old orchard, slaloming in and out of the apple trees. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Three thousand eight hundred – against you, Mr Hornton . . .’

  There was something curiously intimate about the way Ely indicated his bids to Hell’s Bells, as though they were conducting their own private conversation.

  Apart from their hostess, Ely was the person in the room who fascinated Ellen most. In profile, his face was noble, the pewter hair contrasting absurdly well with the dark golden brows and neatly trimmed beard. She could imagine him as a young man with film-star good looks – the Peter O’Toole of the village, with intense, troubled eyes that had yet to be calmed by an unstinting devotion to capitalism and Christianity.