The summer wedding, p.67
The Summer Wedding, page 67
‘Harv!’ She rushed over to hug him, pressing her lips to the soft muzzle and breathing in his kindness. Only Dougie ever rode Harvey.
How dare he come and hijack the gala? Heart hammering, blood boiling in her veins, she limped through the yard arch and around the back of the stallion barn to the huge HGV horsebox parked there. A knight in full armour was sitting on the ramp, visor tipped up as he smoked a cigarette.
‘Hi, Dougie.’
The visor snapped down.
‘I know it’s you in there.’
He said nothing. Smoke was pluming from the slits around the mouth and eyes in a very ghostly fashion.
‘You’d better take the cigarette out.’
Starting to cough, he snapped up the visor, Marlboro ejected at speed.
Watering like mad, the bluest eyes gazed at her, thick sooty lashes blinking furiously.
‘I knew it was you!’ she snarled.
He looked extremely fed up. ‘You’re not supposed to recognise me until I ride up and declare my honour. I’ve written a speech.’
‘Now I know why you called me last night.’
‘I meant every word.’
‘There’s no point. It’s over.’
‘Don’t say that! We’re so good together. I need you, Iris. You’re my rainbow without which there’s no sun. I’m so lonely without you. I love you.’
Iris looked at him, so handsome and chivalric, and her anger evaporated, heart filling with sadness as she remembered the fun they’d had undressing with a can of WD-40 and a pair of pliers. ‘I’ve met somebody else, Dougie.’
His blue eyes stared at her for a long time, then he turned away, pulling off his helmet, blond hair spilling out like a golden sea. It had grown since the wedding and fell over his collar now. Streaked by the sun and matched with a deep Californian tan, it made him unspeakably handsome. ‘Fast work,’ he said eventually.
‘Griff’s very special.’
‘I was very special last month.’
‘You can’t predict these things,’ she muttered, thinking about her conversation with Jacinta and knowing that falling out of love with one person and into love with another was not as simple as jumping from cloud to cloud. There was a transition period where the love for both tore one’s heart in two. She knew what she felt for Griff was far more intense and true than anything she’d shared with Dougie, but it didn’t stop part of her heart going out to him for what they had lost.
‘What sort of name is Griff anyway?’ Dougie sneered.
‘My name,’ came a deep Welsh voice. There was a step on the ramp beside Iris and she turned to find Griff standing behind her, stripped to the waist, six-pack shimmering. For a shocked moment, she thought he’d ripped off his shirt purely to flex his muscles in some pseudo-gorilla display – his tanned chest was oiled, she saw with alarm – but then she took in the bow-tie, wing collar and white cuffs, and remembered he’d agreed to be a porter for the charity auction. Her heart swelled with pride, yet thudded too as she prayed Dougie and Griff would be civil to each other.
But Griff seemed hardly to have noticed the knight in shining armour sitting on the ramp. ‘You should come and listen to what your mother’s saying, Iris.’ He put a protective arm around her. ‘It’s pretty momentous.’
‘Oh God.’ Iris turned and hurried back towards the house.
‘Wait! I don’t give up that easily, you know! I deserve an explanation!’ Dougie demanded, but by the time he’d struggled upright from the ramp in the cumbersome armour and clanged around the side of the box, they had both disappeared. Hugely bad-tempered, he clanked over to the stable yard to mount.
The committee stalwart had now tit-taped enough pashminas to her models to restock Tie Rack in every major London railway station. The hunting ladies were red-faced and far too hot. Rupe hastily led out Harvey, who picked his way eagerly across the cobbles, grey ears pricked together over his champron.
Dougie accepted a leg-up from his partner and turned Harvey towards the sumptuous Wootton gardens. ‘Wish me luck, Rupe. I’ve just found a dragon that needs slaying.’
‘After twenty incredibly happy years together, Leo and I are going to separate,’ Mia told the stunned crowd. ‘We are the very best of friends and will remain so. He is the very best of fathers, and will remain so. The Devonshire Foundation will continue to make money for good causes, and Leo and I will work closely together to ensure that that happens. We are a very good team.’ She looked across the room at him and saw those bush-baby eyes utterly transfixed by her, fear and relief ebbing and flowing across his handsome face.
‘This is my decision. As the old cliché goes, life is not a dress rehearsal.’ She held out her hand and beckoned him to join her. ‘I am for ever in his debt and I love him more than I can say. I know we could have hidden behind press statements and dark glasses to announce this, but we’ve lived our entire married life in the public eye and we will no doubt live unmarried life in it too.’
Joining her on stage, Leo put his arms around her, muttering, ‘You always were a bloody exhibitionist.’ Which broke the tension in the atmosphere: the crowd realised, to their amazement, that they were allowed to laugh.
The Devonshires were a magical double-act, even when improvising the end of their marriage. On stage now, they held hands and gave their audience the very best of Leomia, a private performance that nobody would ever forget, astonished to witness one of the most joyful, eccentric and civilised splits imaginable.
Watching, with Hope on her knee, Laney was trying not to snort as she cried into Simon’s comforting shoulder. Arm around his wife with the twins on his knees, he had tears running down his cheeks too. ‘He’s right. She always was a bloody exhibitionist. She’s waited in the wings twenty years to have the last line.’
‘She’s taking the baddie role for once – that’s what she meant by being a troll,’ she whispered, barely able to speak for the choking lump in her throat. ‘She’s letting him go. She’s coming out of the dark…’ She shut up: Gloria Estefan was singing in her head.
In the entrance to the marquee, Iris stood clutching a pillar for support as she watched her parents on stage, trying to take it all in and battling not to let them both down by bursting into tears. She knew it was the right thing: they lived almost totally separate lives now and it had been waiting to happen for many years, but that didn’t make it any less emotional. At her side, Griff’s dark eyes checked her reaction: he was aware that she was close to cracking. Others were watching her too, fascinated by the real-life soap opera going on all around them. Iris found illogical laughter bubbling up with the tears and battled to suppress it. She only wished Mia hadn’t chosen to do it in front of an audience, but that was typical of her mother. She was looking incredibly calm now, even joking with Leo as they introduced Haff again: ‘We both hope he’ll have no surprise announcements, apart from the wonderful news about a Javiero Dressage Coaching Centre coming to London soon…’
Then Iris saw Ivan standing alone in his garish sweater, undoubtedly knitted by Leo. Part shielded by an ivy-wrapped column, he was holding one of Mia’s terriers, his face buried in its neck. Iris felt overwhelmed with emotion for him too. Their relationship had always been spiky but, as Jacinta was fond of saying, the prickliest pears bear the sweetest fruit, and Ivan and Iris were a very prickly pair.
Gently detaching herself from Griff, she made her way over to Ivan and put her arms around him.
‘That was an amazing thing to do,’ he said in a choked squeak.
‘Mum’s always preferred giving to receiving.’
‘It’s the gift of a lifetime.’ With a sob, he hugged her back as a small, panic-stricken dog wriggled out from between them and trotted off to greet its mistress, who was coming off stage.
Standing in front of the microphone now, Haff – who had been dreading his speech like a multiple tooth extraction without anaesthetic – was tongue-tied. The audience bubbled and boiled in front of him, whispering, chuntering and exchanging glances, none of them quite certain how to take in what Mia had just said.
Haff cleared his throat loudly to get their attention. ‘Hello, I am Juan-Felipe Javiero. I teach dressage. I play video,’ he croaked faster than a Benidorm DJ introducing a techno beat, nodding at the technical team, who had a computer linked to the big screen and were running the slide show he had saved to the Pegasus flash drive.
A grainy piece of CCTV footage flickered into view, the over-bright wing of a Range-Rover just visible. Out of it spilled an undeniably handsome but extremely pained-looking figure clutching his crotch. As the car sped away, he turned to face the camera, eyes glowing unnaturally silver like those of a wolf.
‘That’s Dougie Everett!’ gasped a voice in the crowd.
Iris’s jaw dropped. Then her throat burned on Dougie’s behalf as tittering filled the tent. ‘Switch that off!’ She turned desperately for help, noticing that Griff was glaring through the open sides of the marquee at something glinting in the sunlight as it moved through the yew arch.
‘And here he comes in person, ladies and gentlemen,’ he muttered under his breath.
As the technical team quickly killed the video, music blared out of the loudspeakers, heralding the start of the fashion show, and the guests in the marquees emerged into the sunshine, grateful for distraction as a knight in shining armour trotted into the dressage arena, leading a troupe of near-naked girls wearing ridiculous hats.
Unaware that he had just featured on screen, Dougie rode tall and proud, a lance clutched to his side bearing a pennant adorned with Bibi Cavendish’s company logo.
Her throat now apparently filled with hot coals, Iris ran out too.
Griff bounded after her. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of him for you.’
‘I don’t need protecting,’ she insisted, stumbling and hopping to the white boards as the knight clanked up the centre line.
On the nearby stage, the technical team were trying to connect up the PowerPoint file to the big screen that showed close-ups of each hat on sale, along with adverts for the companies donating scarves, jewellery and watches, but the little Pegasus flash drive overrode the media player. As another grainy CCTV tape flickered into action, Leo looked up from a tearful hug with Mia and Ivan to see a tall figure moving into shot, his white-blond hair gleaming like a halo.
‘Get it off!’ he bellowed, as Mia let out a cry of anguish and ran towards the screen.
The picture disappeared, to be replaced moments later by a twirling image of a hat shaped like a duck. Mia fell to her knees. Like two dark wings folding around her, Leo and Ivan gathered her up and held her close.
‘I’ll never forgive myself for sending him away,’ Ivan told her, riddled with remorse. ‘You will see him again, I promise.’
In the arena, Rupe’s hunting ladies were gaining confidence as their immaculately trained horses marched sedately out in line, curving black ears pricked together to create Moorish arches over rivers of curling jet forelock, obediently following the glinting silver armour and glimmering white rump of their leading rider and horse, who were delighting the crowd now. Dougie lowered the tip of his lance to the ground and pirouetted around it in a courtly dance, then brought it back to his chest with a flourish and marched on, the models still following sedately.
Watching him, Iris felt compassion and anger staging a battle in her chest. ‘That’s how a Doma Vaquera caballero rides around his garrocha pole. I taught him that trick.’
Griff took her hand and squeezed it. ‘He’s an absolute shit pulling this stunt on you.’
‘He’s a stunt rider,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s what he does.’
‘Then he’s riding for a very big fall,’ he growled.
But Iris’s battle-torn heart was bursting at the seams with divided loyalty. She knew she cherished the man whose fingers were now threaded through hers like a dovetail joint, even if he was dressed like a male stripper on Ladies’ Night, but maybe her knight in shining armour deserved forgiveness.
As he rode past, clanking like pans in a dishwasher, the knight nodded at her and Iris felt the stitching on her heart give way further. A month ago, if she’d had a handkerchief handy, she’d have thrust it at him eagerly. She’d let him wear her colours too quickly.
‘Iris!’
She turned to see Chloe pushing her way through the spectators, puffed out from running. Dressed in old jeans with grass stains on the knees and a polo shirt covered with mud, she stood out from the dressy designer crowd, who parted in surprise as she charged up.
‘I said to keep the horses under cover!’
‘You have no idea what’s been going on here!’ Iris fell on her gratefully, whispering, ‘Mum and Dad have just split up in front of hundreds of guests and Cheers! magazine, and Dougie’s in that suit of armour, but you know about that. Why didn’t you warn me? It’s all such a mess, Chlo.’
‘Where’s your mother now?’ Chloe panted, studying the horizon anxiously over her friend’s shoulder.
‘Still in the marquee, I think. She’s with Leo and Ivan. I’m sure she’s fine. Laney’s there too.’
‘We have to get these horses put away,’ Chloe said urgently, stepping back as the knight trotted past again, riding so close to the boards that he could almost have reached down to pluck Iris into the saddle. ‘Hang on, did you just say that’s Dougie?’
‘One and the same,’ muttered Griff, watching the knight retreat with narrowed eyes and eyeing his armour for weak points.
‘We mustn’t reveal him to the crowd,’ Iris hissed. ‘The most awful thing happened a minute ago…’ Her voice trailed away as she realised Chloe was staring at the sky, not listening to a word.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ gasped Griff, eyes now glued to the horizon too.
Iris turned slowly, squinting into the sun.
Beyond the distant beech woods, a great yellow dome was rising up like a second dawn.
‘It’s a hot-air balloon,’ he breathed.
‘No fooling you,’ Chloe muttered nervously, trying to work out which direction the balloon was moving.
A teardrop of sunshine blown by the wind, it burst up over the black woods. Still too far away for its burner to be heard, the glowing envelope was definitely growing larger as it floated steadily towards them.
‘Tell me that’s just a random balloon passing by.’ Iris turned back to Chloe.
‘Nobody flies at this time of day unless they know exactly what they’re doing,’ Griff told them. ‘It’s far too hot. The thermals are deadly.’
Iris’s voice shook as she ventured, ‘A cloud man might…’
But Griff shook his head decisively. ‘He’d never fly this close to so many hazards. There’s the crowd, the cars and the tents, not to mention the horses.’
‘I didn’t tell him about the gala,’ Chloe admitted in a small voice.
Chapter 58
The balloon was now fully visible, floating steadily towards them from the woods and over Wootton land, flying very low, its shadow falling across the water meadows towards the river. The crowd pointed excitedly, thinking it part of the entertainment.
Chloe had run to the back of the arena, where the committee stalwart was waiting with emergency tit tape. ‘You must get them back to the stables!’ she begged, but the woman pointed to the big screen where hats were twirling. ‘There’s still three hats to go.’
