Page 23 of All Summer Long

‘Shall I be chair?’ Stewie said loudly, leaning towards Alice across the table in the back room of The Siren. It was just after three in the afternoon as Dessy made his way to the table with a tray of drinks, stopping halfway across the room to straighten his sparkly Stetson out of his eyes.

‘Crème de menthe,’ he said, curling his lip at the smell as he handed Hazel the sherry schooner of emerald green liquid. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like something in it? Domestos, maybe?’

‘You boys just don’t know what’s good for you,’ Hazel said, arching her eyebrows and sipping it with a little mewl of pleasure.

‘Whisky for you, Stewpot, no rocks.’ Dessy slid the neat scotch over to Stewie.

‘And a fruit-based drink for the ladies,’ Jase said, appearing behind Dessy waving a bottle of icy white wine and a clutch of glasses.

‘Sorry, kiddo,’ Dessy said to Ewan as he slid him a Coke, then leaned over and whispered ‘there’s a double rum in it,’ out of earshot of Hazel and shot the teenager a cheeky wink.

Alice looked around the collective, gathered there by Niamh for an ‘invitation only, highly confidential’ meeting, if the sign taped to the door of the snug was to be taken at face value.

Once they were all inside, Stewie had conducted a completely unnecessary headcount and then shoved a chair under the handle to ensure they wouldn’t be interrupted by afternoon drinkers from the bar.

Taking Alice’s lack of answer as a yes, Stewie shoved his chair back and stood up, clearing his throat to garner everyone’s attention, even Pluto’s, who looked up from his bowl of water by the table leg and regarded Stewie sombrely with his good eye.

‘Ladies … gentlemen … and pooches,’ he said, embroidering his words with as much drama as he could muster.

He attempted to throw in a bow too, but only tipped a fraction forward before his luxurious dark curls, brought in homage to Kevin Keegan in the early eighties, started to slide forwards so he shot back up hastily.

‘We seven gathered here today, henceforth to be known as the Borne Seven Society, or the BS Society, have been bestowed with a great responsibility. But as a great man once said, with great responsibility comes great power.’

Dessy frowned and took off his Stetson. ‘Shouldn’t that be the other way around?’

Stewie ignored him and carried on. ‘We,’ he gesticulated in a circle around the table, ‘have been appointed as the protectors and guardians of the greatest secret ever to be bestowed upon this village.’

A silence settled on the group and they all looked at Stewie, who looked around at them each in turn and nodded gravely, rubbing his silk-shirt-encased gut in circular motions like it was his food baby.

‘As we all know, Brad McBride departed Borne Manor in a cloud of flashy suits and light bulbs.’ He patted Alice’s shoulder. ‘Nasty business, my darling, nasty business.’

Alice could only agree.

‘And he left behind this poor, defenceless creature to fend for herself,’ Stewie said, and Alice looked up at him in alarm and went to stand up.

‘Err, I’m not exactly defenceless …’she started, then stopped speaking again when Stewie applied enough pressure to plop her back down into her seat and spoke over her.

‘And so it came to be that she has fallen on hard times, and has had to move out of the big house into the servants’ quarters, and the house has a new master to serve.’

Niamh started to laugh and muttered ‘Cinderella’, and Alice reached for her wine in resignation.

Everyone in the room knew the general truth of what had happened with Brad anyway, thanks to the press coverage at the time, and trying to stop Stewie in full flow was about as pointless as throwing yourself in front of a moving train and expecting to survive.

‘Stewie, are you sure this wasn’t the plot of one of your movies?’ Jase piped up.

Stewie narrowed his eyes as he thought about it for a second.

‘Now that you come to mention it, Jason, I did take the part of a rather dashing young lord of the manor in 1973. Similar building, actually. Lined all the servants up and rogered them senseless over the kitchen table,’ he said, nodding at the memory with a faraway smile.

Ewan batted his mother off when she tried to cover his ears and Dessy rocked back on the legs of his chair and grinned.

‘Hope you’re doing your maidly duties, Alice, my darling.

’ He raised his glass in her direction. Niamh stroked Pluto’s silky nose and caught Alice’s eye but said nothing.

For her part, Alice wondered why she’d ever thought this meeting would be a good idea.

‘Some hush so I can continue, if you please, children,’ Stewie said, brimming with bonhomie and whisky, flapping his hands until he had everyone’s attention again.

‘The fact is that we’ve got ourselves what you might call a delicate situation here, team BS.

Robby Duff has chosen Borne as his home for the next few months and he wants to live here in privacy and seclusion.

The moment it gets out that there’s a superstar in the manor, he’ll leave, and I for one want him to stay as long as possible. ’

‘Didn’t he used to be in Take That?’ Jase said, knowing full well that he didn’t and winking at Niamh, who had dug a pen from her bag and was doodling Alice a caricature of Stewie on a beermat.

‘Actually, I don’t think anyone calls him Robby,’ Alice said, to keep the facts straight. ‘Or Robster, or Robin, or Bob, either. It’s Robinson.’

Dessy raised his hand. ‘Can I say that I think it’s extremely unfair that Jase and I are the only members of the Bullshit Society that haven’t actually met him.’

‘Noted in the minutes,’ Niamh said, writing ‘never gonna happen’ on the edge of the beermat before showing Dessy with an impish grin.

‘The man is a bone-fide, walking talking rock star,’ Stewie said, full of self-importance.

‘If we can keep it under our hats that he’s here,’ he looked pointedly at Dessy and Jase’s matching glittery Stetsons, ‘who knows who else might come to visit him over the summer? Think of the private parties at the manor. I’m willing to bet he knows Hugh Hefner.

’ Stewie stroked his curls absently. ‘Had a wild night in the Playboy Mansion with Heff in 1978. Those bunny girls, I can see them now, all big bare bosoms and waggy little tails.’ He sighed, drawing a curvy female outline in the air with his hands and wiggling his backside.

‘In all seriousness, it’s really important that no one finds out that Robinson is here,’ Alice said, shooting Stewie a look that went completely over his curly head as he was still lost somewhere in a Hollywood Jacuzzi in the seventies.

‘He’s come here because he needs some peace, and I for one understand that.

And you know what else? He’s a pretty cool, normal sort of guy when you talk to him, just someone who’s had his problems and could use our help. ’

Alice wasn’t speaking out of turn; Robinson’s relationship issues had been splashed all over the internet even more than her own had.

‘I know you guys haven’t met him yet,’ she looked towards Jase and Dessy. ‘And you have no reason to keep his secrets, but will you do it anyway? Not for him, but for me. I honestly don’t think I can handle the press descending on the manor again.’

Everyone around the table nodded. They’d all taken Alice into their hearts as one of their own, and despite their eccentricities and foibles they knew how to close ranks.

‘I’d like the chance at least to spend some time turning the gardens of the manor into a glampsite, and I won’t be able to do that if all hell breaks loose,’ she went on.

‘Because if I can’t get this business off the ground it’s highly likely that the manor will have to be sold, or else Brad will buy me out and I’ll have to leave.

’ Alice found herself becoming emotional and Niamh squeezed her fingers.

‘I don’t want to leave Borne. I love it so much, and all of you crazy people with it.

’ She smiled, and a tear slid down her cheek.

If Brad had been there, he’d have been crazed with jealousy that he couldn’t summon tears with such perfect timing, except that Alice was one hundred per cent authentic and meant every word.

‘One for all and all for one,’ Jase said, holding his wine glass aloft like a sword. ‘Robinson who?’

‘Team BS all the way,’ Dessy added, taking the Stetson off regretfully and laying it on the table. ‘The Siren’s lips are officially sealed.’

Hazel drained her crème de menthe and placed the glass delicately back down. ‘Robinson can of course rely on our complete discretion,’ she said, rolling her ‘r’s like the queen and laying a hand on Ewan’s shoulder to indicate she spoke for them collectively.

Her son looked at her hand for a second, and then slowly around the table as if he’d just noticed they were all there. ‘BS stands for bullshit,’ he slurred, laughing into his neck and then sliding under the table in a rum stupour.

‘That was hilarious,’ Niamh said, as they stood by her front gate twenty minutes later.

Hazel had screamed in panic when Ewan had hit the deck, and a shamefaced Dessy had confessed that the tiniest splash of rum might have somehow fallen into Ewan’s Coke by mistake and then hauled him up and gave him a piggy back home.

Niamh and Alice had followed on behind, leaving Stewie in the bar of The Siren where he was retelling his Hugh Hefner story to a startled-looking farmer she half recognised from down the valley.

‘I just hope it works,’ Alice said, reaching down behind the garden wall into the box of dog treats Niamh stashed there and feeding one to Pluto who’d been leaning against her leg.

‘It will,’ Niamh said, unlatching the gate.

‘I was born in Borne.’ She started to laugh at her own joke because she’d drunk too much wine.

‘I know the people here. They’re bonkers but deep down they’re solid gold.

’ She looked up at her little cottage and sighed.

‘There’ve been a lot of secrets in this village over the years, Alice, we’re good at playing our cards close to our chest.’ And with that she tottered up the path and opened the front door, ushering Pluto in before blowing a kiss and disappearing inside.

Alice looked at the cottages thoughtfully.

Although she owned them, technically, they never particularly felt like hers, probably because everybody paid bugger all in rent.

She’d never even seen their rental contracts, let alone collected any monies from them.

Pausing outside number four, she looked for any signs of life and found nothing.

It was strange, really. Her half of the sale proceeds had landed in the bank a few weeks back, much needed funds both to live on and to use to get the glampsite up and running.

With the wind behind her and Robinson’s rent too, she should be able to hang on to the manor for the summer in time for her to, God willing, get a business mortgage on the manor.

The plan had holes in it big enough to keep her awake at night, but it was all she had and she was going to cling to it like a life raft until such a time came as she sank altogether.

But it wouldn’t. She wouldn’t sink. If there was one thing that Alice had learned about herself during the whole debacle with Brad it was that she might look fragile but she was actually a whole lot stronger than people gave her credit for.

The meeting in the pub might have seemed quite lighthearted at times, but her friends all knew her well enough to know that when it came down to it, the situation was just about as serious as it got for Alice.

When she opened the Airstream door, she found herself faced with a naked cowboy, aside from his boots, his modesty saved only by a suede tool belt. He threw his hands out to the sides and shot her a sexy grin.

‘I got you a gift,’ he said. Alice let her eyes slide down his eye-wateringly good chest and looked at his middle.

‘You got me a tool belt?’

‘I don’t want you keeping nails in your pockets any more, Goldilocks.’

She was beyond touched that he’d done something so simple and thoughtful, and then he turned around slowly and treated her to a cheeky view of his perfectly peachy backside before facing her again with a glint in his eye.

‘Like it?’ he asked, stepping closer.

‘A lot,’ she laughed, placing her hands on his chest and sighing with pleasure.

‘You better try it on then,’ he said, then dropped the kitchen blind with one hand and unclipped the belt with the other and let it fall to the floor.