Lots of Love (66 page)

‘The “girl” won’t agree to that,’ Ellen gasped. ‘The “girl” can’t stand back and watch this crazy, loveless marriage take place.’

‘Oh, do dry up! Love has nothing to do with this union. I’ve never loved Spurs’ father, and we have a very good marriage.’

‘I don’t want a good marriage,’ Spurs snapped, taking Ellen’s hand. ‘I want Ellen.’

The court heels clicked away, and Hell’s Bells’ broad shoulders were pinned to her ears with tension as she gathered her fiercest force. ‘This marriage
must
and
will
go ahead, Jasper. If it doesn’t, I’ll die with my spirit and heart broken along with the family sword.’ Hell’s Bells crashed a firm hand on the table. ‘By God, I’ve forgiven you a great many things, but this would haunt us all beyond the grave. You cannot throw this away for a rebellious crush, boy! If you love her more than me, then go – go now and never come back. I hope you both die happy, because I certainly shan’t.’ Her eyes lit up as a thought struck her. ‘And I won’t be the first to depart this life cursing you, will I, Jasper? We both know that.’

Ellen waited for Spurs to retaliate, but it was as though he had been shot with a tranquilliser pellet – the sometimes fierce, sometimes playful, always dangerous big cat reduced to a subjugated, trapped victim with no fight left in him.

Sensing victory, Hell’s Bells rubbed her fingers together and drew several restorative breaths. ‘I want you to leave.’ She glowered triumphantly at Ellen. ‘Leave this house, leave my son and leave this village.’

Ellen looked at Spurs in a blind panic. His eyes were tortured, caged, and no longer told her his secrets. He had, she saw in horror, conceded defeat.

‘I think you know why I am not being as civil as protocol might dictate,’ Hell’s Bells was saying, as she indicated the door. ‘Alas, I have no time left for civility, pride or convention. My son is a wilful idiot, but I do love him and I have loved him a great deal longer than you have. You will cry for a short while, no doubt, but young hearts mend easily – especially those that are rather . . .
easily
won. But I’m afraid that your brief acquaintance with my son is at an end. Come along, now – I’ll see you out.’

One by one, Ellen released Spurs’ fingers. It was like pulling harpoons from her side. Each one ruptured another artery, dragging nerves and blood and fibre through her skin as she let him go.

‘I
forbid
you two to meet again,’ Hell’s Bells was saying, quite cheerfully, ‘I absolutely forbid it.’

‘Go to hell,’ Spurs muttered. ‘She leaves Oddlode in a fortnight.’ But his voice carried an echo of farewell.

‘She leaves your life this very minute, Jasper. You will not see one another again before she leaves.’

Again, Ellen waited for Spurs to protest, but he nodded curtly. Without warning, her welling anger and resentment burst through in a great geyser of spit and passion.

‘I hope you realise that by making your son marry for Mummy and money you are wrecking his life!’ she screamed at Hell’s Bells. ‘You’ll be taking his soul to the grave with you. That will be your legacy – not this bloody house, which Ely will grab for himself the moment you’re dead and turn into a hotel or a convention centre.’

Having said nothing at the thought of her son’s life being wrecked, Hell’s Bells wailed at the prospect of her beloved manor suffering a similar fate, incensing Ellen more.

‘No wonder you’re called Hell’s Bells! I bet they’re ringing out a welcome for you down there already. And you,’ she turned to Spurs, ‘you’re a—’ She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t call him a coward. One look at his face told her that he was the opposite. He was the bravest man she had ever met.

‘Stay, Ellen,’ he entreated, his eyes alight. ‘Stay with me. We’ll find a way.’

But she was already backing away, knowing she would never be as brave as he was. ‘I’ll leave you to your duty. You leave me to my duty-free.’ She turned and ran.

‘Wait!’ Spurs came in pursuit, but Ellen was too fast for him. Sprinting out of the house, she was through the yard and over the old footpath gate before he’d jumped from the terrace.

With the devil at her heels, Ellen ran straight past Goose Cottage and on to Goose End, crossing the bridge and heading up into the hills.

It was only when she reached Broken Back Wood that she could cry, but by then she was too breathless to sob: she simply drew in great dry gulps of hot air and looked back across the valley, a simmering, corn-ripening crucible in which she had burnt her fingers and broken her heart.

Isabel Belling rang through to Ely Gates without delay. ‘Lunch is orf, I’m afraid, Elijah. We have a situation. I need your help.’

‘A situation?’

‘It’s the
girl.
Such an inconvenience. I shall be ordering Spurs to help his feckless cousin at the Springlode yard to keep him out of harm’s way. I have alerted my network and trust you will do the same, but I must warn you that this may require us to move on to Plan B.’

‘Good God, is it that serious?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it in m’ life.’ She shook her head. ‘They call it love, but I rather think it smacks more of mutual lunacy.’

Ely drew a sharp breath. ‘In that case, we must alert the registrar and consider taking other measures.’

Hell’s Bells gasped. ‘You don’t mean—’

‘No, Isabel, I was thinking of something a little less bloodthirsty than breaking the sixth commandment. Leave it to me.’

Poppy was breathless with excitement as she made an early-morning call to Ellen: ‘. . . a quite
exceptional
offer. Of course, the Brakespears are terribly disappointed, but I can quite understand why your parents had no choice but to accept. Gazumping is a very broad term, these days, and this hardly even slips under the wire. Market forces dictate new rules all the time and . . .’

God, that woman loves her job, Ellen thought irritably, as she crammed the receiver under her ear and filled the kettle from the kitchen sink, watching Hunter Gardner feed his chickens.

Two sleepless nights were blurring her brain and she rubbed her temples and fought to keep pace, dragging her mind from the why-why-why to the here and now.

Her mother had already pre-empted Poppy’s call with the news that a last-minute – and simply irresistible – offer had been made on Goose Cottage, blasting the Brakespears out of the water. After such months of static, it seemed everyone wanted Oddlode’s prettiest cottage. Ellen’s parents attributed this turnaround to their clever daughter, and claimed that she had always been ‘very lucky’. And despite Ellen’s protestations that it was unethical, Jennifer refused to feel guilty about the Brakespears. She and Theo had already eagerly accepted the new offer.

‘. . . I am only sorry that it involves you vacating the property even earlier than anticipated,’ Poppy went on. ‘That is the only requirement we really must adhere to.’

‘I’m flying a week on Saturday,’ Ellen pointed out. ‘That’s not a problem.’

‘Oh, joy!’ Poppy piped.

Ellen was glad that Poppy found it such a cause for celebration. She would probably be the only person willing to wave her off, although the rest of the village would be there in spirit.

‘Mr Gates will be thrilled,’ Poppy announced cheerily.

Ellen felt like a sword-swallower with hiccups as she fought to talk round the steely lump in her throat. ‘Mr Gates?’

‘You must remember him – the man who made the silly offer early on?’ Poppy confided chummily. ‘Well, be prepared to fall off your seat. He’s the purchaser! He
has
changed his tune, literally tripled his offer to secure the property at this late stage. He
really
wants it.’

And wants me gone, Ellen thought wretchedly, propping the phone beneath her chin and wrapping her arms around her shoulders as she slumped her head to her knees and fought a wave of nausea. Ely was even willing to pay a ridiculous trumped-up price for Goose Cottage to ensure that a greater des. res. was within his grasp – the manor house. He was ruthlessly determined that nothing would stand between him and his dream – not his daughter’s happiness, not Spurs, and certainly not Ellen.

‘His one stipulation,’ Poppy went on, ‘is the hasty completion date. His solicitor, Mr Hornton, has even been instructed not to bother with searches. The draft contract is already being biked to your parents’ solicitors.’

Ellen rang off and went to fetch the horseshoe from the mantelpiece, looking at the single nail still lodged in a hole.

So Spurs and Godspell would have their wedding gift of a gingerbread cottage, after all, she realised.

She sank forlornly on to the window-seat in the dining room and pressed her cheek to the deep sill, looking across at the polished table and trying to visualise Godspell, resplendent in gingham oven gloves, settling a steaming hot-pot on a trivet while Spurs waited, knife and fork poised.

She laughed tearfully. It was ludicrous. The whole marriage was ludicrous, concocted by an ambitious social-climber and an impoverished landowner. That their children had agreed, in this day and age, was astonishing.

She had no idea what drove the strange, withdrawn Godspell, and why she would co-operate with her father’s plans. But Spurs, whom she understood only too well, had an overwhelming debt of guilt and duty to fulfil. She knew that he loved her as recklessly and ill-advisedly as she loved him – something undeniable that had caught them unawares, hitting them at such velocity that they had crashed together in a tangle of heartstrings and volatile chemicals, too shocked to realise what was happening.

Ellen sobbed as she laughed. ‘You bloody idiot. You complete, bloody idiot.’ She was speaking for both of them.

She picked at the nail in the horse shoe, remembering Hell’s Bells incanting the Constantine family motto.
To break one’s promise is to break one’s sword.

Right now, she longed to pull the sword from her throat and run it through the entire population of Oddlode, with their kowtowing hierarchical hypocrisy and their total deference to a family that no longer existed. Most of all she wanted to run around the manor, cutting down the tapestries and the velvet curtains, slashing the macabre hunting oils, carving graffiti into the oak panelling and sending up sparks from the flagstones. She wanted to leap upon the dining-table, twirling her longsword and screaming, ‘Monkey!’, a small, incandescently angry Samurai warrior, declaring war on Hell and all her Bells.

Spurs had tried to warn her, despite his infatuation. He’d invited her to love him, but never to honour or obey because that, after all, was his job. He had told her from the start not to get involved with him. And she had returned fire by believing that it was far too soon after Richard, by claiming that her heart was frozen along with her desire.

And, as the ultimate irony, he had only agreed to marry Godspell because she had been on her disastrous date with Lloyd the estate agent in the same restaurant.

Ellen threw the horseshoe across the room and howled in fury.

‘You’re the one who believes in fairy tales.’ She watched the shoe spinning on the flagstones. ‘You make the wish.’

‘He’s helping Rory at the kiddies’ riding school until you go,’ Gladys told Ellen breathlessly in the post-office stores, feverish with the secrecy of it all. ‘Fred the kennelman gives him a lift at dawn, and he’s there all day until Stan Baker drives him back to Oddlode again. After that, they watch him like hawks in the big house. He’s been told that if he’s so much as seen walking past your cottage, he’ll lose a finger for each step he takes closer.’

Ellen, who had sloped guiltily into the shop for her first packet of cigarettes in weeks, took a few bewildered moments to take in what was being said. She looked from Gladys to smiling Joel, who gave her a big wink. ‘Spurs is working at the riding school?’ She caught up dimly.

Gladys nodded. ‘But I wouldn’t try to get there if I was you – more chance of getting to the moon. I think it’s ever so mean keeping you two apart like this. That’s what I was just telling Mr Lubowski. I mean, you’re both adults, aren’t you?’

Ellen nodded, remembering Hell’s Bells’ insistence that her housekeeper had no idea Spurs was the one Godspell was to marry. ‘We are.’

‘Unfair to keep you apart, then.’ Gladys tucked in her chin. ‘I mean, telling the poor man he’d lose a finger coming near you. This ain’t the Lebanon. You might be a bit tarty, but I think we should all be a bit more tolerant in this day and age. I’ve told Lady B that if she don’t buck up her ideas, I’ll be applying for a job at the Waitrose in Minster Bourton.’

‘Thanks.’ Ellen was touched by her support, if appalled that everybody seemed to know her business.

Sitting on Bevis’s bench afterwards, she tipped her face to the tiny pinpricks of sun penetrating the horse-chestnut and wondered how many fingers she could live without if she were in Spurs’ place. She stretched up her hand and looked at it, shocked to find it shaking.