Lots of Love (10 page)

It was true that, as well as donating so much, Ely had bought over half the lots so far: his hand was raised so often to bid that, from where Ellen sat, he almost appeared to be jiving in his seat. The residents of Gin Palace Heights might be flashing their fortunes as they outbid each other for babysitting, taxi and gardening services, but by far the most generous benefactor was their near-neighbour. Ely must have parted with thousands of pounds already, but Ellen disagreed with Pheely that he was being conspicuous. Compared to the overexcited, vocal bidding of the village ‘macho men’, he was understated and softly spoken. And this sombre self-effacement clearly wound up some of the other men far more than their own in-joke goading. They were out for his blood.

Lot twenty-eight, donated by Giles Hornton, was listed in the catalogue as ‘Ten hours’ legal advice from the senior partner of Market Addington’s leading solicitors’. But suave Giles interrupted Hell’s Bells before she could announce it.

‘Change of plan, your ladyship,’ he drawled, glancing at Pheely. ‘I’ve been told my lot is rather dull . . .’

‘Too right,’ Pheely whispered to Ellen, making her wonder whether it was Pheely who had told him this. ‘He should have offered a freebie divorce. That would get everybody going.’

‘. . . so I am going to change it, if that’s agreeable,’ Giles was saying – and now looking at Ellen, his blue eyes apparently willing a couple of her shirt buttons to come open. ‘I propose to offer use of my Aston for a day, with or without me as chauffeur. I might even be able to arrange an unrestricted road test around Springlode airfield.’ He threw his arms wide and smiled at the room.

From the shocked expressions and several whoops that greeted the gesture, Ellen saw that this was quite a coup.

‘Bloody hell!’ Pheely’s eyes were almost popping out. ‘Now he really
is
being a naughty boy.’

Giles Hornton’s Aston Martin, it seemed, was the one thing in his life to which he had stayed faithful. A rare vintage DB4, which he had had lovingly restored in silver birch
Italian Job
livery, it was the envy of the village. And nobody coveted it more than Ely Gates.

When the bidding started at a thousand pounds, Ellen wrinkled her brow in disbelief. You could hire a fleet of cars for that. She had never understood men’s obsession with motors.

At first, Ely was bidding against Hunter Gardner and one of the Gin Palace husbands. But at fifteen hundred pounds, Hunter was forced to drop out and satisfy himself with the fact that he could always drive around ahead of the winning DB4 joy-rider in his Bentley, rigidly maintaining the speed limit and thwarting all attempts to pass him.

The Gin Palace husband, himself the owner of a Range Rover and a Porsche, had a point to prove against the man on whose old milking yard his mock-Tudor five-bedroom house was built. But Ely would not drop out. The bidding reached two thousand, then three without break. Hell’s Bells was in ecstasy.

‘Three thousand
two
hundred – and
three.
With you, Ely. And
four
!’ The gavel spun like a cheerleader’s baton.

Lounging against the wall, Giles winked at Pheely and Ellen.

‘Crafty bugger,’ Pheely murmured. ‘He knew this would get Ely going.’

‘Ely tried to buy that car from Giles a few years ago – offered him enough to buy a top-of-the-range new one,’ she told Ellen, through her fixed smile. ‘And Giles was pretty tempted – that car had got him into a lot of trouble when it was spotted parked outside the homes of lonely Lodes Valley wives whose husbands were in London. It’s too distinctive for an adulterer. But Giles loves it, so he turned Ely down and bought himself an Audi estate to make his house-calls in. Ely was
livid.’

‘Why does he want Giles’s car so badly?’ asked Ellen, watching the Manor Farm tycoon jiving discreetly on the chintz sofa, determined to have his DB4 day.

‘Sentimental, darling. It belonged to his father – a status symbol the old man bought when he struck it rich, then never really used. He sold it to Giles in the eighties and bought most of Wyck Farm’s land with the proceeds. Ely likes to keep things in the family – that’s why he wants it back. He loved that car as a boy. My father said that, as a teenager, Ely used to drive it around the old orchard, slaloming in and out of the apple trees. Can you imagine?’

‘Three thousand
eight
hundred – against you, Mr Hornton . . .’

There was something curiously intimate about the way Ely indicated his bids to Hell’s Bells, as though they were conducting their own private conversation.

Apart from their hostess, Ely was the person in the room who fascinated Ellen most. In profile, his face was noble, the pewter hair contrasting absurdly well with the dark golden brows and neatly trimmed beard. She could imagine him as a young man with film-star good looks – the Peter O’Toole of the village, with intense, troubled eyes that had yet to be calmed by an unstinting devotion to capitalism and Christianity.

Ellen had long suspected her mother of having a secret crush on Ely Gates, although Jennifer had called him a ‘common oaf’, an ‘upstart industrialist’ and a ‘village wrecker’. The entrepreneur might stand on paper for everything she loathed, yet his name had cropped up in more conversations during Ellen’s short stays at Goose Cottage than any other. Until tonight, she’d never clapped eyes on him and, now that she had, she was certain she’d been right. Ely Gates was an ageing hunk. Jennifer Jamieson’s scorn concealed a fast-beating heart. She found herself grinning, chuffed as always to find her mother out.

‘Does he have any children?’ she asked Pheely idly, hoping to hear the magic words ‘unmarried thirty-year-old son’.

But Pheely didn’t answer as Hell’s Bells’ gavel hammered down on the plant stand. The Aston Martin treat had been bought by Ely for four thousand pounds, and Pheely’s own lot was next up. She clutched Ellen’s arm tightly. ‘Please don’t let this be another Pru moment.’

‘Lot twenty-nine,’ Hell’s Bells announced breathlessly, her cheeks now high with colour after such an exhilarating battle. ‘A portrait bust to be sculpted by local artist Ophelia Gently, daughter of the renowned sculptor Norman Gently OBE. Ophelia will capture the buyer – or a family member of their choice – in clay, requiring several sittings in her village studio. Who will start me at five hundred?’

The great and the good sat on their hands. Most were eager to get on to the Royal Ascot lot and the wine break. Gladys had already crept off to rev up her corkscrew, leaving her clipboard with Sir St John who was reading the notes jotted on it with an amazed expression.

‘Four hundred, then?’ Hell’s Bells didn’t want to hang around either. ‘Three hundred? Let’s see – two hundred and fifty as an opening bid?’

Pheely was turning paler by the second.

‘Twenty-five,’ offered Giles Hornton, in his come-to-bed drawl.

‘Thank you, Mr Hornton. Twenty-five. Do I see thirty?’

‘You’ll see fucking stars if you sell my promise to that bastard for a pony,’ Pheely breathed.

It was humiliation on a grand scale. Ellen hardly dared look at her. ‘One hundred!’ she bid, wondering what the hell she would do with a huge pottery depiction of herself when she went travelling.

‘One hundred from the back of the room, thank you,’ Hell’s Bells pointed her gavel at Ellen, then swung it towards Giles, who shook his head and smirked.

‘Bastard,’ Pheely muttered. ‘You don’t have to buy it, Ellen. Honestly. I don’t mind.’

‘I want to.’ She gulped, hoping Pheely wouldn’t make her look like a goblin.

Hell’s Bells was asking for more bids. Nobody caught her eye. There was a long pause.

‘Are we all finished at one hundred?’ she suggested hopefully, and glanced at the big wall clock, which already read a quarter to nine with less than half the lots sold.

‘One hundred and twenty-five,’ bid the head of the Beefeater household.

‘You’re off the hook,’ Pheely patted Ellen’s hand, still mortified that her work was meeting with such little enthusiasm.

‘One fifty!’ Ellen went straight back in.

‘One fif— Two hundred!’ Hell’s Bells announced a new bid before she’d finished declaring Ellen’s.

‘Two fifty!’

‘Ellen, stop it.’ Pheely giggled, but the colour was coming back into her cheeks as she looked around to see whom Ellen was bidding against. It wasn’t the Beefeaters or Giles, all of whom were watching silently. Whoever it was had a discreet way of attracting their auctioneer’s attention.

‘Three hundred!’ she announced, and Ellen wondered if the Lady of the Manor was bidding herself.

‘Three fifty.’

‘Four hundred.’

‘Five hundred!’ Ellen wasn’t sure how much longer her nerve would hold. She really couldn’t afford that much. It was a huge cut of her world-adventure savings.

‘Seven hundred and fifty!’

‘Don’t,’ Pheely warned her, but it was too late.

‘One thousand.’

‘At one thousand pounds!’ Hell’s Bells boomed. ‘Any advance on one thousand pounds?’ She tapped her gavel menacingly against the palm of her hand.

There was silence.

Shit, Ellen thought in a panic. What have I done?

‘Fifteen hundred pounds,’ came a deep, deep bass cry in a thick Oxfordshire accent from the front of the room.

Pheely’s pale face had flushed almost purple. ‘Raise your bid,’ she hissed at Ellen.

‘I can’t. I haven’t got the money.’

‘At fifteen hundred pounds . . .’ Hell’s Bells stared at her. ‘Young lady?’

‘Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase,’ Pheely whispered, in her little-girl voice.

But Ellen simply couldn’t chance it another time. She wasn’t sure what had possessed her to take it so far in the first place, but she certainly wasn’t going to spend all her travelling money on a clay effigy, however much she liked Pheely.

‘At fifteen hundred pounds then . . . going once . . . going twice . . .’ The gavel lifted. ‘Sold – to Mr Gates.’

‘Bum.’ Pheely sagged back in her chair. ‘I
hate
doing beards.’

Ellen gaped at her, hardly able to believe that Pheely had wanted her to gamble her entire savings just because she hated sculpting facial hair. ‘Maybe he wants you to do his wife?’ she suggested.

‘My platform would collapse under the weight of the clay,’ Pheely said uncharitably, now in what appeared to be a foul sulk.

Ellen sat silently through the next lot, torn between intense irritation and amusement, hardly noticing the battle that went on between henpecked husbands to buy their wives a Ladies’ Day at the races with Sir St John.

‘At five thousand three hundred pounds . . . going once, going twice . . . Sold to Mr Heaton-Jones! Congratulations. But whatever you do, don’t lend my husband any money to bet with.’ Hell’s Bells looked surprised when this was greeted with guffaws of laughter: she had been quite serious. She tapped the gavel against the plant stand for attention. ‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. We will now break for fifteen minutes’ refreshment in the orangery before reconvening here promptly at nine.’

‘Let’s go to the pub.’ Pheely grabbed her bag.

‘Don’t you want to stay?’

‘Not particularly.’ She was watching Ely leave the room with the others, all obediently filing out onto the terrace towards the orangery. ‘The wine will be ghastly and Jasper’s not here to have a squizz at.’

Ellen was finding Pheely’s bossiness grating, and dug in her heels. ‘I want to see my lot come up.’

‘We can come back in an hour.’ Pheely was already skipping away, beckoning Ellen towards another door that led to a back corridor. ‘You’ll only get mobbed here. Come on, Ellen, I haven’t been to the Lodes Inn for years. Oh, hurry up – Giles is coming over!’

‘I want to stay for a quick drink,’ Ellen insisted. Pheely was doing another of her butterfly dances, the fanciful flight of someone who wanted to keep her new friend all to herself.

Anyway, they were already under attack.

‘Ophelia! Radiant as always!’ The moustachioed Lothario swept in and took her hand to kiss it, naughty blue eyes looking up at Ellen as he did so, X-raying through to her bra, then crossing as they focused on her belly-piercing. ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure . . . ?’

‘Giles Hornton – Ellen Jamieson,’ Pheely muttered, scuffing her toe on the thinning Axminster, not looking at either of them.

‘Enchanté.’
He kissed Ellen’s hand too, proving that his moustache was as soft as a teddy bear’s head and not bristly at all. He smelt overpoweringly of expensive aftershave and Clorets. ‘Now, ladies, may I accompany you through for a drink?’ He put a practised arm around their waists.

Within five minutes of finding herself trapped in the stuffy orangery, Ellen was wishing that they had sloped off to the pub after all. The wine – warm sweet Liebfraumilch – was foul, and the company overbearing. As well as suave Giles, she was soon being courted by Hunter ‘How is your dear mother?’ Gardner, the ‘Do you hunt?’ joint MFH of the Lode and Foxrush Vale, a camp antiques dealer and even Sir St John himself: ‘Are you the young lady coming to Ascot with me?’

When Pheely – who was refusing to talk to any of them – headed out on to the terrace for a cigarette, Ellen excused herself and dashed after her.

‘Told you – mob tactics,’ Pheely muttered, lighting a Marlboro and offering Ellen the packet.

Ellen shook her head, trying to muster the will-power to keep resisting.

It was a beautiful evening, the last pink streaks of light being stolen from the sky by the ink-spill night. The manor’s gardens looked seductive and opulent in the half-light, the roses that crowded around the terrace wafting out their old-fashioned lady’s-chamber odour, the huge black yew hedge hiding a multitude of birds wishing one another good night. In the distance, they could just hear the thud, thud of Roadkill playing their second set in the village hall.