Having savagely prayed for rain on the day, Georgie was ashamed to find her hopes fulfilled. But the rain only chucked down for a couple of hours, leaving puddles all over the rock-hard ground and the weather hotter and closer than ever.
Georgie found opening the fete even more frightening than her own launching party. Embarrassed to show the world such a diminished version of the abandoned beauty on the
Guy spent Saturday morning commuting between Angel’s Reach and the vicarage. Every vegetable had been dug up in the garden to find longer carrots and larger marrows than Rannaldini’s, Larry’s and Bob’s. He’d even tried his hand at some elderflower wine. But competition was at its fiercest in the class for the best chocolate cake made by a man. Guy had baked four cakes last night before he was satisfied. Larry was rumoured to have enlisted the help of Anton Mosimann and to be flying the cake down from London. Rannaldini had made his cake last weekend and Kitty, having removed it from the deep freeze, had just delivered it to the flower-tent wondering if she should leave Tabloid on guard.
She now despondently surveyed her bric-a-brac and was wondering how she was going to sell cracked 78s, single book-ends, cake knives, jigsaw puzzles of Norwegian fjords, purple plastic roses and a flowered vase she had given Hermione last Christmas, when Lysander came rushing up.
‘Kitty, Kitty, help, help. Ferdie’s going to murder me. He stayed up all night making me the perfect chocolate cake and I’ve just dropped it in a puddle.’
Kitty giggled. They decided against pinching a cake from Joy Hillary’s stall next door in case the cook responsible recognized it. But by the time Kitty had found a clean plate and a white lacy paper mat, squeezed out the cake, shoved it together, disguised the cracks with Cadbury’s flake sprinkled on top, and written a new card, Lysander’s offering looked quite presentable.
‘God, you’re a star,’ he hugged her. ‘I don’t know how you made all those cakes for that cricket tea. It took Ferdie and me till four in the morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Now, Georgie’s opening the fete at two-fifteen. That gives us ages to have a bet on the one-thirty and a quick one or three in The Pearly Gates. Come on.’
‘I can’t,’ said Kitty sadly. ‘I promised Marigold and Joy I’d watch their stalls.’
She refused all Lysander’s entreaties so he was reduced to boosting her turn-over by buying an old fox fur as a present for Jack and Maggie and insisting she kept the change from twenty pounds.
‘It’s for the spire. Oh Jesus, here comes Marigold. I don’t want to blow up any more balloons.’ And with that he shot into The Pearly Gates.
Back at Angel’s Reach, Georgie was livid with Guy for insisting she wear a dress. Her only presentable one had disappeared with Flora. Why the hell Flora needed a pistachio-green silk tunic to go backpacking, Georgie couldn’t imagine. And she’d have to shave her legs and put Clinique on her varicose veins.
‘I’ll just ring Marigold to check everything’s on target. We must leave by five to two,’ said Guy as Georgie switched on her hair dryer.
Switching it off a second later to spray on some mousse, she heard Guy say, ‘Hi, it’s me.’
‘Marigold OK?’ Georgie asked later, as she ringed her eyes with dark brown pencil.
‘Couldn’t be bothered to ring her.’
‘I heard you saying: “Hi, it’s me.” ’ Then, as Guy put on his mental-nurse face, ‘I
‘You must be going mad. I didn’t ring anyone. Promise to go and see Dr Benson on Monday.’
Unearthed from a black dustbin bag in the attic, Georgie’s grey denim midi was wrinkled like a rhino.
If I composed classical music it wouldn’t matter, she thought savagely, everyone would say I looked charmingly eccentric.
‘Why are you spraying scent on the back of your knees to open a village fete?’ asked Guy.
‘I might meet a ravishing dwarf,’ snarled Georgie.
‘You are not bringing Dinsdale.’
‘No Dinsdale, no me. You can open the fucking fete yourself.’
Yellow leaves dislodged by the rain tumbled out of the limes around the village green. The high street was hung with red-and-white bunting. Parked cars glittered like shingle in the newly cut barley field next to the vicarage. Sheltered by high walls, seldom exposed to the winds which swept up from the Bristol Channel, the Hillarys’ garden was a top-coat warmer than Valhalla or Paradise Grange. It boasted a yellow catalpa covered in big creamy white flowers and two massive horse chestnuts, whose leaves, touching the ground like cardinal’s robes, added a suitable ecclesiastical note. A rainbow of different coloured clematis rose out of a bed of lavender against the ancient lichened walls of the house.
The crowds already milling round the stalls agreed on Joy Hillary’s green fingers, but chuntered that the vicar must have been sprinkling illicitly to produce such a perfect lawn.
‘Turning all that wine he drinks back into water,’ suggested Bob Harefield, whose bald head had tanned as brown and freckled as a farm egg and who, in his quiet, steadily efficient way, had achieved far more than anyone else. Having set up most of the stalls, priced the goods and refereed squawking matches he was now taking money at the gate.
‘You two ought to get in free,’ he told Georgie and Guy, who insisted on paying.
‘How good of you to come,’ chorused the vicar’s wife, Marigold and Lady Chisleden. As they all surged forward to ‘receive the personality’, the recently drenched grass pegged their high-heeled advance.
‘We don’t really allow dogs,’ said Joy Hillary, remembering Dinsdale without enthusiasm.
‘Well, at least keep him on a lead,’ said Marigold.
‘A quick whisk round the stalls to thank our caring helpers,’ said Lady Chisleden, ‘and then we’d better proceed with the opening.’
Poor Kitty was running bric-a-brac single-handed because last year’s Miss Paradise, who was supposed to be helping her, hadn’t turned up.
‘What’s this?’ said Meredith, waving a cardboard disk.
‘You put it at the bottom of your pans to stop fings boiling over.’
‘Pity you can’t stand Rannaldini on it. I’ve just bought a first edition of a book called
‘Written by every husband in Paradise,’ said Georgie, pausing in front of them.
Joy Hillary shot her an alarmed look. Marigold had promised that Georgie could be relied on to behave, but she had a wild look about her and she must have slept in that dress.
‘I think you know Kitty Rannaldini,’ said Lady Chisleden, ‘a tower of strength.’
‘An absolute bric-a-brac,’ giggled Meredith. Grubbing around in a cardboard box he discovered the purple plastic tulips and handed them to Georgie. ‘Just in case Marigold forgets your bouquet, dear.’
‘Don’t be silly, Meredith,’ snapped Joy Hillary, bustling Georgie on to the plant stall where Marigold was urging people to buy plants to enhance their Best-Kept gardens.
‘We’ve got some lovely heartsease,’ she told Georgie.
‘Take more than a plant to ease mine.’
‘Come and guess the weight of the pig,’ interrupted Joy Hillary hastily, ‘and then I think we’ll have your opening.’
‘’Allo, Georgie,’ yelled Mother Courage.’
’Ot isn’t it? People are passing out like ’ot cakes.’
After the rain, the wasps were beginning to dive-bomb fruit and the jam tarts on the cake stall.
‘I had a coffee cake in here a minute ago,’ announced Lady Chisleden, gazing into a carrier bag in bewilderment.
On the way to the platform, Georgie caught sight of Ferdie who was having a ghastly afternoon giving pony rides on Tiny, who, maddened by flies and general ill-temper, had bitten him three times and lashed out at several small children.
‘Where’s your bloody little friend?’ hissed Georgie. ‘He promised never to leave my side.’
Ferdie was tempted to snap back that his bloody little friend had promised to be there to control Tiny, but, as there was so much money at stake, he murmured soothingly that Lysander would be here any second.
