The summer wedding, p.57
The Summer Wedding, page 57
Wincing with mortification, she cautiously picked up the handset and held it to her cheek. ‘Er… hello, Mr Masters?’
‘Hello.’ The voice was magical, as deep and dusty as a gold mine. ‘It’s Dominic.’
‘I take it you heard that?’
‘Have we’ – he broke off as a Tannoy loudly announced a final call to board a flight – ‘met?’
‘Briefly. Are you about to fly somewhere?’
His laugh was even more amazing than his voice, a deep rumble of disarming openness. ‘From what I just heard, it sounds as though I might be…’
Earlier that morning, Spanish air-traffic controllers had gone back to work, so Iris and Griff were now driving from Stansted to Wootton in a hire car. Feeling increasingly apprehensive at the prospect of taking Griff home, Iris fell silent. Her recent memories of Wootton were still of Dougie and rushing headlong up the aisle. They had been planning to come back from honeymoon so that he could take part in a ridden stunt display at tomorrow’s gala. He’d started sending texts again, clearly thinking he was still in with a chance. She wished she could have stayed in Spain. Having Griff beside her was like a protective force-field, its span so wide that an army of Dougies couldn’t ride through it, but what they had was still so new and magical that she was reluctant to expose it to the full battering of life in the Devonshire spotlight or introduce him to her family so soon after her broken engagement.
She looked at him now, so compassionate, clever and honest, and she knew that she had never felt anything of this intensity in her life. During her mother’s many tearful tirades and lectures in the build-up to the disastrous wedding, Mia had insisted that when Iris found a lifetime’s love she would feel completely different. Now that she had and did, she was frightened of losing it. She wanted to wrap what they had in tissue paper and lock it in a jewelled box. The butterflies went on a rampage at the thought of having Griff alone in the dark, but that led her to another dilemma: where they were going to sleep. She knew of old that the house would be at capacity during gala week. Unwashed and weary, the first thing they’d both want to do was shower away the travelling grime and scrape off its stubble, but the intimacy of sharing her little bathroom seemed too much.
She stole another glance at him. He had the most perfect profile of any man she knew, his brow straight and noble, jaw angular, eyes so dark and focused. How could I ever have thought it a frightening face? she wondered dreamily, and decided that perhaps she could share her loofah straight away after all.
He was looking back at her now, smiling with amusement. ‘OK?’
She blushed, not wanting to admit to thinking about the sleeping arrangements. ‘This gala tomorrow, it’s a very big thing for Mum,’ she warned him. ‘She’s always horribly uptight. And it’s her birthday. Maybe we should wait, and talk to her afterwards.’ She yawned pointedly, snuggling back in her seat. ‘And sleep together.’
‘I think we should definitely sleep together.’ He smiled widely.
Iris realised she might have made a mistake. ‘I said “sleep on it”, didn’t I?’
‘You said “sleep together”.’
‘Well, I meant sleep on it.’ She turned her flaming face to the window. Then, fireworks exploding and butterflies dancing, she added, ‘Together.’
When they arrived at Wootton, the front gates were wide open and two tradesmen were peering at the circuit board of the electric mechanism. Griff braked hard as a woman on a bicycle skidded through ahead of them.
‘It’s Godless,’ Iris groaned, watching Laney pedal up to the house with Hope strapped into a rear-mounted seat, holding air reins and pretending her mother was a pony. ‘No doubt called to open her arms and provide soggy shoulders for my mother.’
Mia was out of the door like a shot. ‘Laney! Thank God!’ She fell on her friend and sobbed while Laney struggled to hold the bike upright with Hope still strapped on to it. ‘It’s all such a mess!’
Griff had parked the car beneath a topiary cockerel and was walking around to open the passenger door for Iris when he saw the bicycle, with its child seat, pitching towards the gravel. With split-second reflexes, he dived across the drive to catch it with his good arm while Laney soothed her sobbing friend.
When Iris finally struggled out of the car and on to her crutches, she was besieged by ecstatic dogs. At the front of the pack, the two Maltese scrabbled up her legs, dark eyes huge, pressing their chins to her shins and yelping joyfully.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she said, trying to shuffle through them all to the bicycle love-in.
Blind with tears, Mia stumbled forwards, treading on both Maltese as she flung her arms around her. ‘My little girl is home!’
Iris pulled away awkwardly. ‘This is Griff Donne.’
It was not quite the dream scenario she’d envisaged for the introduction.
Mustering a gracious smile, Mia turned to him, confusion crossing her face. ‘Have we met?’
‘Very briefly.’ He was trapped on the wrong side of the bicycle that he was still holding, his other arm in a sling, and could neither shake the hand being offered nor kiss the wet cheek.
A dental-drill whine from the top of the steps made them all look up as a throaty voice called, ‘Iris! ¡Bonita!’
Jacinta had accelerated out of the front doors at such high velocity that her chair almost whizzed straight over the top step. Braking in the nick of time, she teetered on the edge, gazing down at her granddaughter with huge, limpid eyes. ‘The Lightning Man has cured me, Iris. I am cured!’
‘Oh, Lito!’ Iris hobbled across the gravel then threw down her crutches so she could hurry up the steps to embrace her grandmother and push her chair back from the brink.
‘It’s getting very biblical round here,’ muttered Laney, as Mia collapsed tearfully into her arms again, babbling incoherently about her life not existing without Dom.
Meanwhile Jacinta told her granddaughter, ‘Your father, he is so happy!’
‘He’s here?’ Iris gasped.
‘Yes! At long last your papá is here!’
‘I want to see him.’
‘He’s taking a nap for his jet lag.’ She patted her granddaughter’s arm. ‘His assistant person is still awake. He is a very strange fellow. When I ask if he is married, he tell me he is married to his work, then he look very sad. Maybe we will find him a nice English girl while he is here, eh? Have a toffee.’ She offered a bag of her favourite tooth-pullers.
On the gravel, Laney was trying to get close enough to Hope to unbuckle her from the bicycle seat, but Mia was still clinging to her. ‘I have to talk to you!’ she pleaded.
Griff was keen to relinquish his role as animated bicycle stand and join Iris on the porch as she listened to Jacinta, who was demonstrating her miracle cure, arms outstretched. ‘The Lightning Man, he lie both his hands on me like this.’ She placed her hands on her grey head as though she were dancing to ‘Agadoo’. ‘And I feel like new. When Cloud Man do it, I feel nothing at all, but of course he only have one hand.’
‘Did you say “Cloud Man”?’ gasped Iris.
‘Arch-rival of the Lightning Man, they say. Such a terrifying face, like the devil burned from sulphur. Young Chloe Benson helped chase him away. She was muy valiente. I tell Haff he must ask her out to dinner. Such a shame she is so plain.’
Griff almost dropped the bicycle as he caught Iris’s eye.
‘When was this, Lito?’ she demanded.
‘Three, four days ago.’
‘So Dominic was here,’ Griff breathed without thinking.
Mia let out a strangled sob, clutching Laney closer. ‘He’s been here too! God forgive me, I missed him here and in LA.’
‘I hope he’s collecting air miles,’ Laney muttered distractedly, trying to get to Hope.
‘When was he in LA?’ Griff demanded.
But Mia was crying too much to answer. A small blue hatchback drove in through the open gates with a cheery toot of the horn, and she buried her face in her friend’s shoulder. ‘Oh, G-God, all these g-gala people. I simply can’t cope with anybody else right now. P-please let’s go somewhere quiet. I have to talk to you.’
Laney swayed, the bicycle leaning over dramatically. ‘I have Hope with me,’ she looked horribly torn, ‘and I have to go to London later.’
Iris rushed down the steps. ‘We’ll look after Hope,’ she reassured her, starting to unbuckle the seat straps, to Hope’s obvious relief. The little girl was looking distinctly green; motion sickness had eclipsed pony fantasies. ‘Griff’s fabulous with kids, aren’t you?’
‘Absolutely.’ Griff beamed at Laney, clutching the bike to his side as its small, rein-clutching rider was liberated. ‘Iris promised to introduce me to all the horses here, Hope. What do you think? Would you like to come too?’
While Hope whooped with delight, eager to embrace all things equine, Laney looked edgy and protective. ‘She can be funny with strangers.’
‘Griff isn’t a stranger, Godless,’ Iris insisted, watching her own mother’s face for reaction. ‘He’s family now.’
But Mia’s eyes remained hollow with misery. She was too caught up in her own drama to take in what Iris had said. With a bolt of recognition, Iris understood how much her mother had suffered in losing Dominic.
From the porch above, Jacinta hailed the small, stocky man who was stepping from the little hatchback. ‘Here is the genio who will enable me to show an elegant turn of foot at the gala!’
Pulling herself together, Iris looked from the man to her grandmother. ‘That isn’t the Lightning Man!’
‘No, bonita. This is my chiropodist, Mr Singh.’
Apart from poor Lorca, who kicked at his box door furiously, all the Wootton stallions were out on the upper lawns, where Haff was putting his WAGs through their paces, music blaring from the temporary speakers. He was riding the now-sound Scully in place of Mia, who was too upset to rehearse.
Back on her crutches, Iris clanked into the stallion barn and introduced Hope to her irascible horse, showing her how to feed him a mint from a flat, outstretched palm, which made the little girl shriek with giggles.
Fed up with being neglected, Lorca pulled faces and attention-sought shamelessly, nipping, eye-rolling and pawing with his front hoofs.
‘I’ll ride you all the time now, my darling, I promise,’ Iris told him, and Lorca eyed Griff triumphantly, making the Welshman smile as he acknowledged that his biggest rival had four legs and a brain smaller than a matchbox.
Emerging from the tack room, Vicente greeted them with a shy smile, and suggested Hope might like to meet the new foals in the nursery barn.
‘We have to find Chloe,’ Griff murmured quietly to Iris, as they headed across the courtyard and along a covered walkway to an open-sided barn. ‘She obviously saw Cloud Man when he was here.’
While Hope watched, entranced, as the foals came up to her on spindly, big-kneed legs, their fluffy baby coats like half-blown dandelion clocks, Iris tried her friend’s number again, but it went straight to voicemail as usual. ‘Chlo, I really need to talk to you. I’m at Wootton with Griff. We’re – er – looking after Hope for a bit. Can you call when you get this?’
Leaving the foals to enjoy their lunch, they went along to watch the quadrille rehearsals, Hope cantering ahead, bucking skittishly and occasionally shying at clumps of daisies.
‘The gala committee has been busy.’ Iris whistled.
The two interlinked marquees were at least three times the size that the modest wedding one had been, with even more terraces, stages, fountains and foliage, like a small-scale Alhambra. The main stage in front of the water cascades was tented to match its grand neighbours, with a full-scale lighting rig and sound system, with which the engineers were still fiddling.
‘Amazing fountain.’ Griff gazed at the steps of water that dropped away from view as far as the eye could see.
‘Dad had it modelled on one at Chatsworth House that he and Kate Winslet shared a clinch in for a costume drama – I forget which, although I remember he said she was a seriously good kisser.’ Iris was admiring the horses practising on the uniformly striped lawn beyond the marquee: a white-boarded dressage arena had been laid out, stretching as far as the tall yew hedge, ivy frothing from Greek urns balanced on top of the letter marker cones. A steep row of seating rostra was still being erected along its far side.
The three new stallions were spectacular, dappled grey, black and bay, along with Scully, pure white and a class apart. His rider was also a class apart from the others, barely moving in the saddle as he encouraged the horse to dance for fun.
Bright red in the face from their efforts, huge chests bouncing, the WAG riders were battling to keep time and control. Great swathes of stripy blond hair extensions scraped back into pony tails, dark sweat rings on their pastel T-shirts, make-up sliding off, they were a far cry from the cucumber-cool, pouting clothes-horses the public usually saw. But they were making an incredibly good job of it, Iris saw, their horses dancing in time to the grinding, pulsing beat from the speakers.
Thundering across one diagonal, Sylva Rafferty was only just in time to cross in front of the diminutive Kerri Hughes, who was riding across the opposing one while texting on her jewelled iPhone.
‘How many times, Kerri? Halt at text!’ Haff bellowed as he flew in their wake in an extended trot so smooth he might have been on rails. Spotting his favourite client’s daughter, he told his riders to stretch their horses and take five before riding over to the boards, dark eyes glowing. ‘They look good, huh? You like the music?’
Throbbing through the speakers, a familiar rock riff had been cut through with Spanish guitar music to create an amazingly sensual, rhythmic soundtrack. It was only marred by the roaring water cascade and shrieking feedback from the main stage as the engineers tested radio mikes.
‘Pete Rafferty mixed it especially in his studio,’ Haff went on, dropping the reins and patting Scully’s baroque arched neck, now granite grey with sweat. ‘Is amazing, no? The man is a legend. He come here tomorrow and I shake his hand.’ He looked positively skittish. Then his face hardened: the rock legend’s comely wife was sneakily practising piaffe in the far corner, spurs jabbing into little Quito’s sides. ‘Let him rest! He needs a break! ¡Ave María purísima!’ Scrunching up his weather-creased face against the sunlight, he spotted Kerri making a call while her stallion stuffed his face with one of the potted urn arrangements. He tutted despairingly. ‘Tomorrow they wear the frilly flamenco dresses with no pockets so they cannot carry their phones – it will be fine.’ He sighed, turning Scully into the arena to confiscate Kerri’s iPhone before they tried the canter pirouettes.
While Haff was bawling out Kerri, Gabby Santos da Costa thundered up on Balthasor, who had spotted a potential source of Polos. ‘Iris!’ She hauled on the curb rein, only just stopping him in time to avoid jumping the white boards. ‘Great to meet you at last. I loved you as Purple! I just know we’re going to be best mates.’
Iris smiled awkwardly, feeding the stallion a mint and loosening his curb chain. She had no idea who Gabby was and had no desire to appear rude, but she liked her current best mate, even though she wasn’t answering her calls. She quickly checked her phone: still nothing from Chloe.
Gabby was beaming at Griff, who had now hoisted Hope to his hip, where she was pretending to ride, using a lot more leg than Haff’s quadrille ladies. ‘It’s Dougie, isn’t it?’
‘This is Griff Donne,’ Iris said tetchily.
‘Who?’ She tilted her head to admire Hope, who was feeding Balthasor a mint under Iris’s guidance. ‘Is this your little girl?’
Iris didn’t hear Griff’s answer because her phone sprang into life with Chloe’s photograph beaming from the front.
‘At last! You OK, Chlo? I’ve been worried sick.’
