Jane was consumed with curiosity about what Tally had been up to. Guiltily, she realised it had been weeks since she had spoken to her. And what tumultuous weeks they had been. She had started a new job and she had found and lost once more both Tom and Mark Stackable, with varying degrees of regret. She had thought she had finally rid herself of the dead weight of Champagne, only to be proved hideously wrong. Tally, meanwhile, had hardly been idle. She had apparently converted Mullions into Baling Studios.
Jane had thought at first that Jade was mistaken, but the directions she was given confirmed that Mullions was indeed where
Three Christenings and a Hen Party
was being immortalised on celluloid. It must be part of Tally's push to generate new business. An admirable and uncharacteristically enterprising effort, thought Jane, but it was a shame, nonetheless, that the production had Champagne in it. After her previous experience showing Champagne round Mullions, Tally had sworn on the heads of all the Venerys never to have her within a million miles of the place again. It was odd that she had changed her mind.
262
As the weather was so crisp and fine, Jane decided to leave the 2CV by the gatehouse and walk through the parkland to Mullions. She would be late for the arranged on-set meeting with Champagne, but not significantly. And certainly not later than Champagne herself. Champagne could be late for Britain.
After a pleasant ten minutes wandering along the estate road with the afternoon sun on her face and the sleepy church bells of Lower Bulge floating drowsily across the fields, Jane rounded a corner and stopped dead in her tracks. A scene seemed to be in full swing. Not wishing to disturb the filming, Jane slipped behind one of the bushes bordering the path, blessing Mr Peters and his slatternly pruning for such a convenient and copious screen. She peered out and watched.
'
The actors looked a decidedly scruffy bunch, all with straggling beards, metal-framed glasses and cagoules in every hideous fluorescent shade from violent pink to acid yellow. All wore hiking boots, were hung around with rucksacks and compasses like Christmas trees and were looking angrily in the direction of someone Jane could not quite see. She wondered where this scene fitted into the plot.
'What do you mean we can't walk across this land?' one of the cagoule-wearers was shouting, shaking his skinny fist. 'This is a right of way, this is. Marked on all the Ordnance Survey maps. Just look.' He waved a handful of much-creased cartography in the invisible someone's direction. 'You've no right to stop us, you haven't.'
'I have every right,' shouted a threatening, familiar voice.
Saul Dewsbury,
thought Jane in horror, shrinking further back into the bush.
Still around.
She imagined he had got bored of Tally and gone back to Chelsea ages ago. But no, he was here, larger and louder than life. This was
263
obviously nothing to do with the film. This was another plot altogether.
'Don't want my land messed up by a load of wandering outward-bloody-bounders like you lot,' Saul was yelling, still out of sight.
His
land? thought Jane in panic. Surely to God Tally hadn't
married
him. That would be a disaster. Not to mention insulting. They had always sworn to be each others bridesmaids.
'Stomping around with bloody knapsacks,' continued Saul's echoing, contemptuous tones. 'Just piss off, will you? If you don't make yourselves scarce this minute, I'll horsewhip you off. I'll give you blisters where your boots have never been.' There was a cracking sound. Jane knew without having to see that Saul was slapping a riding crop over his thigh.
The ramblers' glasses flashed with impotent fury, but they decided not to call his bluff. Instead, they walked as slowly and defiantly as they could back along the path to the gate, muttering into their beards as they went. 'Won't get away with this,' the leader vowed as they passed Jane hidden behind the bushes. 'Breaking the law. We'll get him for this. Arrogant tosser.'
'Yeah. Who the hell does he think he is?' demanded another plaintively. 'Ruined our walk, he has. I'd just got into my stride and all. And what about all these egg sandwiches? I spent all last night making 'em.'
'Never mind the sandwiches,' said the leader, looking resolute. 'They'll come in useful, don't you worry. An army marches on its stomach. An' this is war. There've been some odd rumours about what that bloke's up to 'ere as it is. Time to get in touch with a few of our mates, I reckon.'
264
The little group stomped out of the gateway and disappeared behind the hedge along the road. Jane wondered who their mates were. And even more about the rumours.
She waited a few minutes until she was sure Saul had gone, then stepped out on to the path, almost colliding with Saul as she did so. He was passing the bush, presumably en route to the gate to make sure the ramblers had disappeared.
'Ow,' he shouted, as Jane's knee collided with that part of his thigh which still smarted from overzealous application of the riding crop. 'You!' he exclaimed, glaring at Jane. 'What the hell are you doing here? You're trespassing. I've a good mind to call the police.'
'I'm here for the filming, actually,' Jane said, trying to disguise how rattled she felt by his assumption of control.
Surely
Tally couldn't have .. . 'I'm here,' she continued lightly, 'to bring the sights, the sounds and if I'm very lucky the scenes of Champagne D'Vyne s cinematic debut to the printed page for the benefit of the glossy magazine-reading public.'
Saul stared at her, the colour draining out of his face. 'Champagne?' he gasped, his lordly tones dropping several decibels. 'Is
Champagne
in this bloody film?' He gasped at Jane in horror before recovering himself rapidly. 'I haven't seen the final cast list yet,' he muttered.
'She's got a starring role,' said Jane, amused at his consternation. 'I'm surprised you haven't popped down to say hi. Although,' she added slyly, 'I don't suppose Tally would particularly appreciate that. Is Tally around, by the way? I was rather hoping to be able to stay at the house.'
'Tally's not here at the moment,' said Saul firmly. 'I'm looking after the place for her. She's gone to London.'
265
'London?' exclaimed Jane, not believing him for a minute. Tally's loathing of London was legendary. Had he, she suddenly thought wildly, got
rid
of Tally? Hidden her under the floorboards and taken control of the estate? Saul, Jane was quite sure, was capable of anything to get his own ends. And there was no one around to stop him.
'Yes,' said Saul, smoothly. 'She's gone shopping. Buying a wedding dress, as it happens. We're getting married next weekend.'
Jane gasped. Next weekend. Relief that it had not yet happened mixed with horror that it was going to. 'Where's Mrs Ormondroyd?' she demanded. If she could get any sense out of anyone about what had been going on she'd get it out of the housekeeper.
'Mrs Ormondroyd, alas,' said Saul, admiring the signet ring on his little finger and playing with one of his elegant cuff-links, 'is sadly no longer with us. We had to let her
go.'
Jane stared. The ring on his finger bore the Venery
crest. Tally's ring. 'What, you mean you've sacked her?' she gasped. 'But Mrs Ormondroyd's been here for years. Centuries.'
'Exactly,' said Saul, lighting a leisurely cigarette. 'Mrs Ormondroyd didn't fit in with the, well,
enterprising
spirit that Tally and I are trying to introduce at Mullions. Nor, for that matter, did Mr Peters, who has also sadly left us. And now,' he said smoothly, 'I'll have to leave myself. Regrettably I won't be able to put you up at Mullions tonight. None of the bedrooms is fit to receive guests, unfortunately.'
When, thought Jane, watching Saul's dapper form retreating, had they ever been?
Jane walked rapidly down the slope into the park. There
266
was little more she could find out until Tally returned from London. If she had ever gone there, that was. Jane glanced up at the rambling old house and calculated that her chances of finding Tally inside that maze of rotting rooms if Saul wished to keep her hidden were nil. Mullions was the kind of place where people got up in the night to find the nearest lavatory, lost their way and were discovered forty years later as a skeleton in the Clock Tower broom cupboard.
Jane headed towards the film set. Even to her jaded and preoccupied eye it had something of the excitement and romance of a fairground. Caravans and lorries were parked haphazardly on the grassland, and ponytailed, T-shirted people bustled importantly about clutching clapperboards. On the grass immediately below the house, a gaggle of people with clipboards, cameras and loudhailers were concentrating on the scene about to be filmed.
As she approached, Jane saw that it was a scene between Lily Eyre and her co-star, a gangly young man with a tousled fringe and a disorganised air who was evidently meant to provide the Hugh Grant factor.
Lily was even more beautiful in the flesh than in her pictures. She had a vivid heart-shaped face in which two huge blue eyes shone like naughty sapphires, and a large, infectious grin. Her long, gold hair was as yellow and crinkly as spiral pasta and, as far as Jane could make out under the jeans, her ankles were slender and irreproachably upper class. As she waited for her cue, giggling with her co-star, she seemed to radiate charm and good humour.
'Take twenty-four,' shouted a red-haired girl with a clapperboard as Jane sidled in next to her at the edge of the set.
A-aaa-aand ACTION!' shouted a shambolic-looking
267
man in a baggy sweater and geeky glasses, evidently the director, Brad Postlethwaite. He looked too cerebral to be tempted by Champagne, Jane thought. Whatever state he had been in when he offered her whatever part he had offered, he was clearly regretting it now.
'CHRIST!' he yelled as a figure suddenly appeared and ran across the back of the scene being filmed. 'Champagne, you've arsed up the eyelines again. For FUCK'S SAKE!' He spoke, Jane thought, amused, with the acid vehemence of the truly bitter.
'What do you mean?' bawled back Champagne indignantly. 'There's nothing wrong with my eyeliner. I know a damn sight more about make-up than you do.'
'Not eyeliner,' yelled the director furiously.
'Eyelines!
His voice dropped, suddenly weary. 'You're distracting the actors on set so they keep looking at you and not at each other.'
You could hardly blame them, Jane thought. Champagne was wearing a fluorescent pink minidress so tiny one wondered why she had bothered putting it on at all. Her tanned thighs were exposed in their entirety while her breasts soared outwards and upwards like a couple of moon-bound Apollos.
'That dress should win an Oscar,' whispered the redhead with the clapperboard. 'Best supporting role.'
'A couple of Golden Globes at least,' giggled her blonde companion, whose bag, bulging with brushes, pots and tubes, proclaimed her to be a make-up girl. 'Unbelievable, isn't she? Talk about star attitude. Have you heard, she's even been demanding her own trailer?'
'Yes. And Brad told her she could have the honey-wagon if she wanted,' grinned the redhead. 'She was thrilled until she found out it was the toilets.'
268
'She's not very good at the jargon, is she?' smiled the blonde. 'When she first came to have her make-up done she had a very odd idea of what touching up was.'
'She thought a dolly grip was some sort of sex position, apparently,' snorted the redhead. 'Ooh, I'm on,' she added, suddenly realising the filming had ground to a halt and the director was staring at her furiously. 'Take twenty-five,' she called, slamming down her clapperboard so hard it made Jane wince.
'Get out of shot, for God's sake,' bawled the furious director at Champagne. 'For the millionth time, and almost the millionth take, THIS ISN'T YOUR SCENE!' Brad pushed his glasses on top of his unkempt hair and rubbed his eyes. He looked utterly defeated. 'OK, OK,' he said. 'Let's do your bit, Champagne. Your big scene. You walk across the set, grin at the camera and walk off again. That's all there is to it.'
'That's all there is to it
now,'
grinned the clapperboard girl. 'She had a line to say at the beginning but Brad got so fed up with her fluffing it he made it a non-speaking part. Lily's been very good about all this, I must say,' she added. 'Most stars would have a major fit if they had Champagne to put up with.'
Indeed, far from being annoyed, Lily, now smoking a cigarette beside the cameraman, actually seemed to be enjoying it. Her eyebrow was raised and her face shone with suppressed laughter. It was, Jane realised with a pang, the most perfect, provocative expression for the cover of
Fabulous.
Really, she was beginning to be obsessed with the magazine.
'AACTION!' shouted Brad.
Champagne stood up, took a deep breath and tottered across the set on her high heels. 'Break a leg,' murmured
269
the redhead as Champagne closed her eyes and started to flex her tyre-like lips in what was evidently some sort of pre-performance ritual.
'Well, she'd certainly rather break a leg than a nail,' observed the make-up girl. 'I should know, I spent about three hours painting them this morning in exactly the right shade of nude she wanted. If nothing else, there's no end to her talons.'