Kissing Toads (31 page)

‘What's clemmed?' Delphi hissed in my ear.

‘No idea,' I said.

‘Hungry,' Ash explained briefly. We'd all missed dinner.

‘Good point,' Harry said. ‘We won't go much further. It'll take a while to get back, anyway. We could try the other path higher up the slope.'

‘It's no safe the nicht,' Young Andrew demurred. The thought of food had evidently had an effect on him. ‘It's mortal steep, that way.'

‘All right then, we'll retrace our steps. But we should try calling again first.'

We called – ‘Hello? Hello? Anyone there? Can you hear us?' – feeling slightly stupid, the way you do when you're yelling for someone and you don't even know their name. Our shouts fell flat, absorbed and deadened by the mist-wall all around us. Fenny barked in support – he had a big bark for such a small dog – but it sounded little more than a yap in the vastness of the fogbound night. Then we stood silent, listening. Hearing nothing. Fenny barked again. Harry tried his mobile in vain.

‘We'd better go back,' he said.

‘Wait a minute,' Delphi said. Fenny was pulling on the leash, tugging her forward and barking madly. ‘I think he's on to something.'

‘Probably a dead rabbit,' Harry retorted.

Delphi let the dog drag her off the track, veering towards the lake, the torch wavering in her left hand. The four of us trooped after her.

‘Careful!' Harry admonished. ‘There's uneven ground here and it gets boggy. You might slip.' He took the torch from her, holding it steady and gripping her arm to support her.

‘Can you hear anything?' she demanded. ‘I thought I—'

‘Of course I can't hear anything with that bloody dog making such a racket!'

They were going too fast for the terrain and inevitably she skidded, or he skidded, and they both slithered several yards, winding up in a heap halfway to the loch while Fenny, released from bondage, shot off along the bank, trailing his lead.

‘Are you okay?' I called out as Ash, Young Andrew and I approached more slowly.

I couldn't see who was on top of whom, but I heard Delphi say, ‘
Do
you mind?' and ‘Keep your hands to yourself!' during the disentanglement process. Then she got up, protesting almost tearfully, ‘Of course I'm not okay! I'm
covered
in mud and this is a nine-hundred-pound jacket and it's utterly ruined—'

‘I told you not to wear it—'

‘Don't you
dare
say
I told you so
– and I've just been pawed by a sex-crazed fake butler and – where's Fenny?'

Fenny, some distance ahead, had evidently stopped and was barking more enthusiastically than ever. And beyond the bark, there were voices.

‘Shut up, you little bugger! – Watch out, it could be savage. – Perhaps it's with a search party. – It's a fucking lapdog, you moron! Search parties have Alsatians and bloodhounds.'

‘He's not a lapdog!' Delphi yelled indignantly. ‘He's a bichon frisee!'

‘He's a hero,' Harry said, smothering laughter.

We'd found the missing hacks after all.

It was the usual sort of story. Eager for a closer look at Dunblair, they had borrowed a ladder (from Dirk – very suspicious) and climbed over the wall that bordered HG's property. It was a long jump down and one of them had slightly twisted his ankle on landing. Then they'd tried to make their way round the loch towards the castle, falling into a bog in the process, stumbling over tree roots, and aggravating the twisted ankle until it became a sprain and its owner was virtually incapacitated. His associate tried to help him, supporting him as he hobbled, staying close to the lakeside for fear of getting lost in the fog. Inevitably they'd fallen again, the ankle was agony, the mist thickened, their mobiles wouldn't work and evening found them without a torch, left with no choice but to wait for rescue.

Neither of them, incidentally, had lost a shoe.

They hailed us with more indignation than relief, apparently feeling that their plight was all our fault anyway, since we'd made their job impossible by refusing to leak snippets of scandal, bitch up our colleagues on the record, or give interviews detailing ex-lovers' penis size (or lack of it) and sexual performance. Such uncooperative behaviour had driven them to today's exploit and their subsequent predicament.

‘You've got a story now,' Ash pointed out. ‘Your own.'

But the tabloid-reading public have only a limited interest in hacks with ankle sprains, though the two of them agreed rather disconsolately that something could be made of Delphi's participation. (Delphi, who was deeply annoyed by their reception of Fenny, looked partly mollified.) They were even more pissed off when Harry explained they would have to wait some time for a full rescue, since we would have to return to base and send a boat and stretcher crew for the injured man.

‘What about Hot God's helicopter?' he demanded between gulps from Harry's hip flask. ‘Can't he airlift me out of here?'

‘He hasn't got one,' Harry said brightly. ‘Sorry. He has a private plane but he keeps it at Inverness airport. It wouldn't be any use here.'

Then the other man decided he didn't want to wait with his chum, causing a further deterioration in the situation. Eventually he was persuaded to stay – Harry gave him the hip flask – with Young Andrew to keep them both company, while the rest of us headed back to the castle. Harry knew the way well enough for our return.

‘It should have been me who stayed,' he said, ‘but I'd probably have pushed either or both of them in the loch.'

‘It should have been me,' said Ash, ‘but I'm better with the dead.'

‘It should've been me,' I said. ‘This was my fault all along.'

‘It wasn't going to be me,' said Delphi. ‘I've been a heroine but I'm not going to be a martyr.'

So we left Young Andrew to his fate.

‘I wonder whose trainer it was?' I said.

‘We may never know,' said Harry.

(In fact, we discovered later it belonged to one of the village lads currently helping in the garden. He'd gone for a stroll in the woods above the Cauldron with a local girl, removed various items of clothing including his shoes – though not, of course, his socks: men never do – and a trainer had been kicked away in the excitement, falling over the edge. As it was far too early in the year for such outdoor activities by the time we located him he had a bad cold, a splinter in his foot, and – interestingly – a black eye. The identity of his partner was never established, but one of the maids had skinned knuckles and an air of quiet satisfaction for the next several days.)

By the time we got back to the castle we were all cold, famished and desperate for a drink.

‘I'd better go with the boat party,' Harry said with resignation. ‘Make sure Cedric keeps plenty of hot food ready for Young Andy and me when we get back. Remember, he's clemmed; he may just have eaten those journalists by the time we get there.'

‘I hope so,' I said.

‘Not
both
of them,' said Delphi. ‘I want a big picture of Fenny and me on the front page of the
Scoop
, saying what a great bloodhound he is. After all, he was the one who found them.'

We went into the entrance hall, pulled off boots and jackets – ‘I'll
never
get this clean!': Delphi on the Wookie – and were greeted by a welcoming party of Russell, Morag and Cedric, who appeared from the direction of the kitchen with a tray of hot toddies and assurances of dinner whenever we were ready.

‘You should have given me a shout,' Russell said. ‘I'd have come with you.'

‘You were in the bath,' I pointed out.

He went off with Harry to sort out the final stage of the rescue, and Delphi, Ash and I, flushed from the abrupt transition to central heating and hot whisky, went into the drawing room to find the others. Morag told us HG and Basilisa were away for the night; Dorian was in his lair; Brie, we learned later, had gone to bed early with a face pack. Morty and Nigel turned to us with mild interest – ‘Did you find them?' – and Alex was on the sofa talking to a man I'd never seen before. An elderly man with silver-streaked hair and a face in which the collapsed remnants of good looks still lingered, like leftover guests after an all-night party. At a second glance, something about him was faintly – very faintly – familiar. Alex looked up, saw Delphi, said automatically, ‘What
have
you been doing?' and didn't wait for the answer.

‘Look who's here!' he went on. ‘Why haven't I met him before? You never even talk about him and I think he's fabby. We're best friends already. He's going to come to our wedding and give you away. Isn't it fantastico?'

Delphi dropped her glass. The whisky-glow drained from her cheeks, leaving her so white I thought she would faint.

‘Hello,' she said in a voice that was almost unrecognisable.

Then I realised who it was.

Her father.

Chapter 8:

Petting Party

There he was, sitting on a sofa in the Relatively Normal Drawing Room, drinking HG's liquor, all nose-to-nosey with Alex. My father. Just for a minute, I got that awful draining sensation again, when everything seems to be oozing out of you and you have no strength, no power, no control. I told myself it was sheer surprise. I hadn't forgotten about the call from Pan, but I'd simply never expected him to head my way. He's running out of daughters, I thought. I'm the last resort. Scraping the barrel. The dregs in the wine glass. Natalie's gone, Pan's not interested, he's stuck with me. I'm too old and not pretty enough for his taste, but he can have fun giving me away.

He used to call me Princess, when I was four feet tall and had dark blonde curls to my waist. (Well, mouse blonde, and it wasn't far to my waist in those days.) He'd read me stories, or tell me stories – I'm sure he did, though I can't remember any of them – and play records for me, and teach me the words of old songs. He was the one who liked me to have pretty clothes, adult fashions in miniature, who encouraged my childish vanity and an inclination to dress up. He once gave me my grandmother's pearls to wear to a party – I can't have been more than eight – though Mummy was furious when she found out, saying I might have lost or damaged them. She was right, too, I thought with hindsight. He'd taught me from infancy how important it was to be pretty, because only the pretty are popular and loved; how I must have admirers and boyfriends when I grew up, and marry a prince like all true princesses. I called him Daddy then, and for years after he left I dreamed of my daddy, and cried and cried over the end of
The Railway Children
, when Jenny Agutter runs down the platform with the fumes from the steam train billowing around her, calling out, ‘Daddy! My Daddy!'

I couldn't call him Daddy now. I couldn't call him anything. I let him kiss my cheek and sat in an adjacent chair while he told me how much he approved of my chosen prince, and called Roo to mind with the mechanical charm he reserved for people who didn't interest him. He'd never thought her much of a friend for me, I realised: too quiet, too timid, a fraction too low down the social scale. It's strange, the things you pick up instinctively which don't make it to your conscious mind sometimes for decades. He said he was looking forward to meeting Brie – whose social origins clearly didn't matter since she was famous and sexy, and joined Alex in wedding talk. The assumption that he would give the bride away was made without my being consulted. I didn't contradict him. I wanted him to go – I certainly didn't want him at my wedding – but my brain was temporarily numb. I felt trapped by the ease with which he'd re-entered my life, by his expectations, his charm. Pan didn't seem to have made a dent in his assurance; he was confident of a welcome and Alex, at least, had provided one.

‘Roddy's staying in the village,' Alex said. That's my father's name: Rodney St John Dacres. Rodney ‘Call me Roddy' Dacres. The landlord of the Sportsman's Rest in Little Pygford still asks after him, if I'm unwise enough to go in there. ‘Seen Roddy lately? Good chap, Roddy. Bloody good golfer. What a one for the ladies!'

‘I told him he must come here,' Alex was saying. ‘I asked Morag to prepare a room for him, but she just went off muttering something religious. Sour-faced old cow.' And to Roo: ‘Can you sort it out with HG tomorrow?'

‘This isn't a hotel,' she said, plainly daunted. ‘Mr Dacres – Roddy – hasn't anything to do with the show. I don't think . . .'

Alex protested, but my father was too busy being charming to push. ‘I wouldn't dream of imposing,' he declared. ‘Of course I'd like to meet Hot God – what do you call him? HG? Yes, I'd like to meet him, whenever he's around. He used to have a place in Antibes, not far from me. Didn't spend much time there, though. Sold it to a retired dictator a few years back – lovely chap, three wives at least, gives wonderful parties. Only the best champagne. I went to a reception over here just last week, a cousin of the royals: the champers was very inferior stuff. These African rulers may be black, but they have a lot more style than our chaps, I'm afraid.'

‘That's because our chaps don't defraud and exploit their subjects to pay for it,' Roo said tartly.

‘Dear me. Quite a Commie, isn't she?' my father said with an air of good-humoured tolerance. ‘Glad it's still fashionable for young people to be idealistic. You'll grow out of it all too soon. I know women: when you get engaged, you won't want to check his principles, just the size of the diamond.'