Country Pleasures (2 page)

‘Still thinking of roasting me in the pot?' asked Janie.

‘Silly! And all the while you're squirming and wriggling away on the bearskin, struggling to keep your legs crossed to hide what little modesty you have left, yet at the same time you're straining to be free of the leather cords.'

‘Stop!' Janie threw a magazine at Sally. She was blushing at the vivid picture: the two boys and her, tangled up together inside the secret wigwam. ‘Nothing like that ever happened.'

‘Well, if you don't want the fantasy, I'll keep it for myself.' Sally sniffed.

‘It's just that we were scrawny kids. The boys were far more interested in drawing blood from each other than using me as some kind of sex toy. Thank God neither of them knew what a desperate crush I had on them both.'

Janie moved round to the fireplace and stared at her reflection, indistinct in the enormous tarnished mirror. She twisted long strands of hair into two plaits and stood up straight.

‘What good's a crush when nothing comes of it, Mini Ha-Ha?' remarked Sally. ‘You have to pounce on men you fancy; at least let them know you've got the hots for them. That's what I do. It's what comes of having no one to play with when you're little. But you've never been a brazen slut like me, have you? You look just the part now, all tall and solemn, with that dark-red hair, the way your eyes slant up at the corners. All we need is the feather headdress, the buffalo-skin tunic –'

‘You can laugh,' said Janie, trying to bring Sally back down to earth. ‘Dressing up may be our only entertainment until we can get the TV fixed. Now, get off your arse and help me look.'

Sally made a face and had an exaggerated fit of coughing. ‘Look for what?' she asked.

‘Logs, electric heaters, Monopoly, a pack of cards –'

‘Vibrators?'

‘Like an eligible single man would have vibrators in his weekend retreat!'

‘You're always very defensive about him, aren't you?' sniffed Sally, hobbling to her feet like an old lady. ‘Won't hear a word against him.'

‘I'm just saying, about the vibrators –'

‘Don't tell me, he's a walking, talking vibrator! So well hung his girlfriends would have no need of any …
aids
for their pleasure.'

‘I wouldn't know about his love life,' Janie said primly. ‘We used to see each other a lot, when all the rellies used to troop down here to visit his family in their holiday home, but now it's usually by phone or email. I haven't seen him for ages.'

Janie wandered out into the chilly hall and yanked open the cupboard under the stairs.

‘But he's happy to let you come here while he's away?' said Sally as she followed her friend and crouched next to her.

‘Yes, keeps it occupied, and anyway, look at the place: it needs more than just a lick of paint. He can't have touched it in ten years. I had a good snoop round before you got here. It needs complete redecoration.'

‘Not going to be much fun for me if you're slaving away over a hot paintbrush all holiday.'

‘I told you, you're to relax. In any case, I won't be able to do the whole thing. Not on my own, anyway. I'll have to talk to him about getting some builders in.'

Sally pushed Janie aside and burrowed into the cupboard.

‘Look at all this!' she exclaimed. ‘It's like something out of a Noel Coward play: tennis racquets, croquet hoops, parasols. What's this contraption?'

A pile of metal poles and rods clattered out of a bag.

‘I think it's a swing-seat for the garden,' Janie said, pushing it all back in the bag. ‘You'd think from this stuff that the sun always shines down here.'

Sally wandered down the hall and into another little room at the back of the house.

‘Not necessarily,' she called. ‘He's got a neat little office set-up here. You could spend all winter in this place, holed up with plenty of food and booze, working away on some big business deal or writing a book.'

‘Ben never sits still, though,' said Janie, joining her friend who was busy snooping round the office space. ‘I'm surprised to see all these computers and stuff. I don't think he's here more than two or three times a year.'

‘He might be your hero, Mini Ha-Ha, but there must be loads you don't know about him. Perhaps he runs some kind of racket from here, far away from the prying eyes of Interpol or the Inland Revenue.'

Janie shut the cupboard door and brushed cobwebs out of her hair. ‘You're right, there is loads I don't know. I don't even really know what he looks like these days.'

‘What happened to his ugly mate?' asked Sally, as she climbed the stairs with her bag.

‘Jack? Haven't a clue. I last saw him crouching halfway up the cliffs, shooting at seagulls and narrowly missing my head. We must have been about fifteen. Oi!'

Janie spotted Sally on the landing, and bounded up the stairs, two at a time, to catch her.

‘Bags I the master bedroom.' Sally giggled and pushed her shoulder against the first bedroom door.

‘Too late.' Janie barred the way into Ben's bedroom. ‘I'm in here. I'm likely to be here all summer if he wants me to blitz the house, so I get first choice.'

‘But I'm supposed to be your guest.'

‘Your room is very sweet. Look.'

They trooped into the smaller bedroom, which had a
bowed wooden floor and a vast Victorian brass bed covered in lace cushions.

‘It's cute: a real love nest. But who chose the décor, his mum?'

They both looked round. The muslin curtains wafted gently in the draught. Outside was a tiny balcony.

‘Very likely. Or his sister. I guess she still comes here sometimes. It's not very masculine in here, I admit.'

‘Perhaps he puts his girlfriends in here, and visits them for a shag late at night.'

‘Do you ever stop thinking about sex?' Janie asked.

‘Nope. It's twenty-four seven for me, girl. Are you sure you want to spend two whole weeks with me?'

‘Well, I'm beginning to wonder,' mocked Janie.

‘Because I'm not sure I'd want to spend two weeks with me in the horny frustrated state I'll be in by the end of it.'

‘That's not why you're here, and you know it. You're here to put the world to rights, and I'm here to help you.'

‘I'll try my best not to behave.' Sally lunged at Janie to get past her. ‘Now, let me see the master's chamber.'

‘Later. I haven't settled in yet. Now I'm the one who's freezing,' said Janie, turning to go back down the stairs. ‘We've got to get some heat going in this house.'

‘Ooh, look up here!
This
is going to be my room!'

Sally had vanished up a little spiral staircase in the corner of the landing. So Ben had been doing
some
work to the house. This was all new. Janie climbed up into what was once the attic, and found Sally clattering around under the eaves. The room had been transformed into a hideout. The walls were painted dark red, the timbers were all exposed, and an enormous dormer window had been set into the thatched roof to
look seawards. A telescope rested on a tripod, and was aimed at the sky.

‘This used to be just full of clutter. I wonder when he converted it,' said Janie.

‘Think what larks you could have had hiding up here. Especially with that telescope.' Sally peered through the lens, shook it a bit, then gave up. She threw her bag down on the patchwork quilt that covered the low bed, which looked like a raft made out of driftwood. ‘It's very homely, all these little signs of cousin Ben everywhere. But I can't get rid of the feeling that we're trespassing.'

‘He knows we're here, silly.'

‘Yes, but what does he do on his own here? Have orgies, do you think? Plenty of room, after all!'

Janie took Sally's arm and led her back down the spiral staircase. ‘He relaxes; chills out. Now stop asking questions.'

The wind gave an extra loud howl through the front door as they came down, as if to reiterate its unseasonal violence. With much grunting and heaving, the two girls dragged a couple of electric heaters and some picnic rugs out of the cupboard, along with a dusty box of Trivial Pursuit and a chessboard.

‘Phew, it's like the mummy's tomb in here now.' Sally screwed up her nose as the warming heaters gave off the smell of scorched dust. ‘I take it our Ben doesn't have a Mrs Mop, like my Mrs Mop in London. You can see your entire reflection in the shower door-handle when she's finished at my flat.'

‘Welcome to the good life,
mademoiselle
,' commented Janie, holding her hands over the heater for a moment and surveying the room, which at least looked cosy now that it was more cluttered. ‘No domestic help,
no cook, no bottle washer. Just
moi
. Now, does the ambience, if not the temperature, meet with your approval?'

Sally wrapped her arms around herself, her hands invisible beneath the long sweater-sleeves. She jogged up and down on the spot for a few seconds, then sat down on the sofa that she had now earmarked as her own. ‘Absolutely,' she said. ‘It's adorable once it's lived in, isn't it?'

‘So that means I don't have to go out into this infernal storm, hunting for logs?'

‘Maybe later. You're excused for the moment, but the fireplace does look kind of bleak without a fire going, doesn't it?'

Janie changed the CD and enjoyed the few moments' silence.

‘Trivial Pursuit?' she asked eventually.

They both shook their heads.

‘Draughts?'

‘Too many draughts in here already.'

The wind rattled the window in agreement.

‘I'll tell you what'll warm the cockles and cheer us up.' Janie leaned over the squashy sofa and rapped her knuckles on the top of her friend's head. Sally blew her nose into a bright-pink handkerchief and looked round eagerly.

‘You've dreamed up Big Chief Hard-on. You've planned the big surprise. Any minute now, Ben and some hunky mates are going to roll up in an enormous black four-by-four, loincloths akimbo, armed with tomahawks and baying for our bodies.'

‘Guess again. I told you, this is a man-free zone. Anyway, Ben's overseas, working in Amsterdam or somewhere. He'd go running straight back there if he
knew a harlot like you had designs on him. Ben needs protecting.'

‘You mean you want him for yourself,' said Sally.

‘Don't be silly. I'm going to put the kettle on.'

‘Kettle?'

‘OK, I'm going to open some of that Chardonnay you brought,' Janie corrected. ‘You must have spent your entire redundancy cheque on those cases of food and wine. And then, for this evening's entertainment, you're going to tell me what happened with that waiter.'

‘What waiter?' asked Sally, feigning innocence.

‘Come on, you haven't said a word about that particular close encounter since I left you creaming yourself at the café last Sunday.'

Sally laughed and wriggled herself back into the soft cushions.

‘Oh, right, him. I haven't had a chance to tell you, and anyway, I'm still recovering from the experience.'

‘I don't believe you,' said Janie. ‘You can take all comers.' She wandered into the kitchen to fetch the wine, and decided that the cupboards would look good painted a misty blue.

‘Too right I can, but I thought you had declared this a man-free zone,' called Sally.

‘That doesn't include telling stories about them,' Janie said returning to the room with the wine, two glasses and an assortment of savoury snacks. ‘At least, not for today. Come on, you can start with, “it was a dark, dark night …”'

‘Well, if you insist. And if you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin. Except that, as you know, it wasn't a dark, dark night. It was a boiling hot afternoon, not seven days ago, although the welts and bruises are still there
to remind me.' Sally's voice went husky with remembered lust. ‘Now then, what you're about to hear makes cowboys and Indians look like child's play.'

‘I'll be the judge of that,' said Janie, pulling out the cork with a pop just as a clap of thunder exploded over the cottage.

‘Well, for a start, it turned out that he wasn't a waiter at all. He owns the bloody joint! I recognised his name from the financials when he told me. Rod Mastov. He owns a whole chain of cafés and bars.'

‘Good name, Rod. Especially if he turned out to be the sex dog you thought he was. Or perhaps a sugar daddy?' said Janie, crossing her legs under her on the floor and scooping up a handful of peanuts.

‘Nothing daddy-ish about him. Admittedly he's older than he looked when he was strutting about in those tight black jeans taking orders, but he's still fit as a flea. We were jumping into a taxi before you could say Marco Pierre.'

‘Haven't lost your touch, then,' murmured Janie, easing a peanut from her tooth with her tongue.

‘I was on a roll. After this knock-back at work, I needed a good seeing to. It's what I always need when I'm stressed, and that's why I cast my beady eye over him.'

‘I didn't even notice him,' said Janie.

‘That's because you're never on the lookout. Wake up and smell the coffee, Janie. You never know what or who is out there. And it's usually where you least expect it.'

Janie laughed and pulled a couple of cushions off the sofa: one to sit on and one to hug. The wind rattled the latch on the door and she shivered.

‘I don't care if Antonio Banderas is out there today,
imploring me to come out and play,' she said. ‘I'm staying put!'

‘That's why you'll never have adventures like I do,' mocked Sally.

‘No, poor old me. I'll just have to get my kicks out of hearing about yours.'

‘We'll see about that. Now, where was I?'

‘Zooming through London in a cab with a shady tycoon.'