Just a Family Affair (12 page)

‘I thought that’s all you posh boys were good for. Shooting things. And killing foxes.’

Oh God, thought Patrick. Not a bloody animal rights fanatic. She probably knew his dad was a stalwart member of the Eldenbury hunt. He really couldn’t be bothered to get into an argument about it.

‘Who says I’m posh?’ he asked, trying desperately not to sound it.

As an answer she smiled, reached out a finger, and brushed the tell-tale long fringe out of his eyes. He jerked his head away and brushed his hair back with an impatient gesture, not liking this invasion of his personal space, but suddenly wanting more.

‘And so what if I am?’ he demanded.

‘Quite,’ she answered, not taking her eyes off him. ‘So what if you are?’

He could feel himself going red under her scrutiny, until eventually she dragged her gaze from him and cast a longing glance at the giraffe.

‘Shame,’ she commented wistfully. ‘I could just do with him to cuddle up with at night.’

Before he knew it, she had gone, gliding like a ghost amongst the crowds. Vainly he tried to catch a glimpse of her as she moved through the fair, but she had vanished without a trace. He wondered for a mad moment if he had imagined her.

He turned back to the shooting range. He had one chance. If he could get the giraffe . . . But he was a lousy shot. He always had been. He beckoned the stallholder.

‘Listen, mate.’ The stallholder curled his lip at Patrick’s attempt to come down to his level. ‘How much for the giraffe?’

The bloke looked him up and down, chewing thoughtfully on his gum. ‘Cost me fifteen,’ he said finally. ‘So call it twenty.’

Twenty quid! Patrick knew it was bullshit, that he’d probably got his entire menagerie of acrylic stuffed animals for half that, but it was a small price to pay. He dug in his wallet. Thirteen. That was all he could manage. He thrust it at the man.

‘Take this as a deposit. I’m going to find my friend. Please - don’t let anyone win it.’

Patrick pushed his way through the crowds, desperately searching for Ned. He always had wads of cash, because his dad paid him to do the milking on their farm and Ned never parted with a penny for months, then blew it all in one night by getting totally bladdered. He had to get to him before he spent it.

He found him on the dodgems with his Pony Club partner, who was looking rather green.

‘Lend me seven quid,’ begged Patrick. ‘It’s a matter of life and death. Actually, no, make it a tenner.’ He’d need a bit over if he found her. Enough to buy her a drink.

Ned didn’t quibble. He knew his mate wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. He thrust a hand into his jeans and pulled out a wad of crumpled notes. Patrick extricated two fivers, then went for a third. He didn’t want to look a cheapskate.

‘Make it fifteen. I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’

Stuffing the money into his own pocket, he ran back to the rifle range.

The giraffe was gone. As was the stallholder. Bastard. Patrick steeled himself for a row. He bet he wouldn’t get his money back. Gypsies, tramps and bloody thieves, the lot of them.

Suddenly the stallholder popped up from behind the barrier, brandishing the giraffe. ‘Didn’t want anyone else taking a fancy and winning him.’ He grinned. ‘There’s some good shots round here.’

Patrick settled up as quickly as he could, then grabbed the giraffe. It was nearly as big as he was. He pushed through the throngs, looking right and left, every song that blasted out seeming to mock him: ‘She’s Gone’, ‘Who’s That Girl?’, ‘Beware the Devil Woman’ . . .

She was there, sitting on the bonnet of a truck, swigging scrumpy out of a bottle, surrounded by a crowd of youths Patrick suspected were dropouts from Eldenbury High, an unsavoury bunch who wouldn’t take kindly to a posh git stepping forward with a giant cuddly giraffe and stealing one of their own.

She saw him. He raised one corner of his mouth in a rueful grin and leaned his head against his newfound companion’s. She nodded her head in recognition, a slight smile playing on her lips, then jumped down off the bonnet. Patrick prayed he wouldn’t be spotted by the others, but she said something to them, some muttered excuse that they seemed to accept, then made her way over to him.

‘Is that for me?’ she asked.

‘Well,’ said Patrick, ‘to be absolutely honest with you, I’ve already got an elephant and a rhino. There just wouldn’t be room for us all in one bed.’

Her lips twitched, and he looked longingly at her mouth. He thought to kiss her would be like eating the first blackberries of autumn.

The evening passed in a blaze of colour and sound and incredible sensations. Whirling merry-go-rounds, pounding bass, the stench of diesel and the roar of the generators. The feeling of her fingers on his lips as she pulled off tufts of candy floss from a pink cloud and fed him, the sugar melting almost immediately on his tongue. Patrick felt elated as she pulled him from one experience to the next. They didn’t pay for a thing all night, as Mayday seemed to know all the swarthy, earringed youths that ran the rides. Patrick was soon to learn that Mayday rarely paid for anything, that she could get things done, that she had a network of contacts starting from the local chief of police downwards, who were willing to bend over backwards for her. And it wasn’t hard to see why. She had a natural but enigmatic charm, and she treated everybody the same. She was disarmingly honest and frank, but never unkind.

Patrick found himself utterly bewitched. He’d had dalliances before, girls with thick blond hair and names like Suzi, Tash and Harriet - usually daughters of friends of his parents. Next to Mayday, they seemed interchangeable and incredibly dull. Mayday promised danger, excitement - and the one thing Patrick hadn’t quite plucked up the courage to do before now.

As the fair came to a close, he found himself with her in the back of a pick-up being driven out of town, the ridiculous giraffe between them. A small part of him niggled that he should have told Ned where he was going, but then Ned hadn’t bothered worrying about him earlier. He didn’t know where the pick-up was going, but he didn’t care. He was with Mayday.

Eventually they pulled up at a tumbledown farm, where an impromptu party threatened to carry on well into the early hours. Mayday was obviously familiar with her surroundings. She took him by the hand and led him to a barn filled with sweet-scented bales of the summer’s first cut. Talk about a roll in the hay, thought Patrick, as she pulled him towards her.

When he finally kissed her, she tasted of apples and vanilla, as the cider she’d been drinking mingled with the perfume she wore. He wasn’t going to tell her he was a virgin, no way. Besides, he felt all-powerful, more sure of this shot than the one he had attempted earlier. Her clothes seemed to melt away as if by magic; she lay naked beneath him, her skin pale and glowing like opalescent moonlight, her black hair cascading over her shoulders. She pulled him out of his jeans and into her, locking her legs around him, pulling him deeper and deeper inside. And when, moments later, he found himself crying, she kissed away his tears and made him taste them on her blackberry lips.

‘I won’t have crying,’ she whispered to him. ‘Save your tears for when there’s something to cry about.’

 

Later, they lay entwined in each other’s arms. As Patrick drifted off, Mayday began to sing, in a soft husky croak that was only just in tune but all the sweeter for it:

The tune was haunting; the lyrics made him shiver. Patrick could see the stars through a hole in the roof. He’d only known her a few hours, but he felt as if he had found his soulmate. In just the short space of time they had spent together, he knew he wanted it to last for ever. He turned to her.

‘Shall we?’

‘What?’

‘Get married?’

She gave him a gentle shove.

‘Don’t be daft. We’d never work. You’re from the big house, and I’m a worthless bint born the wrong side of the blanket—’

‘So was I,’ said Patrick eagerly. ‘Born the wrong side of the blanket. Well, almost. My dad only married my mother because she threw up her pill after a dodgy curry and got pregnant.’

This confession caused him a moment of guilt. His father had warned him often enough about getting carried away. ‘Look where it got me,’ Mickey had said, then added hastily, ‘Not that I would be without you, of course.’ His marriage to Patrick’s mother hadn’t seen out a year.

Mayday was shaking her head. ‘We’re poles apart, you and me. Your family practically own the village I grew up in.’

Patrick frowned.

‘You grew up in Honeycote?’

‘My nan lives in the council houses. She brought me up. Or as good as.’

Patrick looked surprised. Mayday gave a twisted little smile.

‘You see? You never even noticed me. Why would the likes of you notice the riff-raff from the bottom of the village?’

‘You’re not riff-raff—’

‘I watched you drive past in your big car. Ride past on your horses. But you never saw me.’

‘So you knew who I was all along?’ Patrick suddenly felt set up. As if he’d fallen into some trap. Had she deliberately seduced him, just to prove she could? He felt sick. ‘You did this on purpose,’ he said angrily.

Mayday bit her lip. The dark purple had long been kissed away.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I admit it. I dared myself. I wanted you to want me, to get you back for all those times you drove past without noticing me.’

For the second time that evening Patrick wanted to cry. So his seduction had been a trick, a little diversion for Mayday’s amusement. He’d just been a pawn in her game, her pathetic attempt to redress the class barrier, because everyone was the same lying down. And to think he’d felt this was the most important thing that had ever happened to him. He clenched his jaw, not sure whether to walk off into the night. This was a first for Patrick, being made to feel awkward, foolish, unsure. He usually had the upper hand in his relationships, and he knew he could be thoughtless and possibly a little bit selfish. But not premeditatedly cruel.

‘Well, I hope it’s made you feel good,’ he said in a strangled voice.

She cupped his face in her hands, stroking his cheekbones with her thumbs.

‘I was wrong,’ she said softly. ‘You’re not what I thought you were going to be at all. And I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?’

She drew her face towards his and kissed him again. And how could he resist? He had tasted pleasure and he wanted more, even if it brought with it the pain of humiliation and rejection.

Some time later she looked up at him, eyes glazed with satisfaction.

‘I guess that means we’re friends again?’

Patrick propped himself up on one elbow, smiling.

‘More than friends, surely?’

Her face clouded. She shook her head.

‘No. That would spoil it.’

‘Spoil it?’ He sat up in alarm. ‘We can’t do what we’ve just done and walk away from each other. It was . . . amazing. How can you not want this to go on for ever?’

Mayday signed. ‘Sweetheart,’ she said. ‘That’s sex for you. It’s not me that’s made you feel like that, I promise you. You’ll feel like that with the next person. And the next.’

Patrick felt himself blush. She’d known it was his first time.

‘Trust me,’ she went on. ‘It would end in tears. And I don’t want to hate you, Patrick. I want you as my friend. For ever.’

Ten years on, and they were still firm friends. Patrick was no longer in awe of Mayday and her sultry allure. And he was no longer the embarrassed schoolboy she had seduced; far from it. He’d gone on to learn that she was right, that sex was pretty bloody amazing whoever it was with, unless you were very unlucky. And their relationship had endured the test of time; their loyalty to each other knew no bounds. They could trust each other with secrets, share their misgivings and give their honest opinions. And occasionally, very occasionally, if they found themselves alone together and the mood took them, then they went back to rediscover that magical night, because there had been a chemistry that was hard to forget . . .

Patrick snapped out of his reverie as the others filed in. First his uncle, James, in a beautifully cut tweed suit and a lilac shirt, his features so much more chiselled than his brother Mickey’s so he always looked rather arrogant and haughty. Which he was a lot of the time, though Patrick was very fond of James, who was his godfather. He’d given him sound advice on several occasions.

Then Mickey, in a Honeycote Ales polo shirt and a pair of jeans. His dark hair was dishevelled and he was badly in need of a shave. He always spent Mondays with the men, checking over the brewery and seeing what maintenance needed doing. Mickey loved being hands on, and as the master brewer, the keeper of the secret recipes which gave Honeycote Ale its reputation, he liked to keep things clockwork. For someone who couldn’t organize a piss-up in his own brewery, he was surprisingly meticulous about the machinery, and spent hours ensconced with Eric the handyman, who was familiar with its workings down to every last nut and bolt.

Then Keith, in the v-neck and cords that had become his uniform. His face was usually cheery and smiling, but Patrick noticed immediately that Keith didn’t look himself. There was a set to his jaw and a dullness in his eyes, and his face looked drawn. Was he unhappy about the engagement? His congratulations had seemed sincere the day before, but perhaps now he’d slept on it he didn’t think Patrick was good enough for his daughter? Keith doted on Mandy, after all. And Patrick was banking on his approval of the marriage to ensure his continued support of the brewery. If he was against the wedding . . .

The next moment, Patrick felt mollified. Keith patted him on the shoulder on his way past, in a gesture that was both fond and reassuring. If he looked tense, it was probably because he knew this meeting was going to be awkward; that they were all going to have to face facts.