Top Hard Page 5

  Like all the big historic gaffs in this part of the world, Hardwick Hall is well within a miner's spitting distance of slag heaps - in this case, the remains of Teversal Colliery. Of course, this didn't bother Bess of Hardwick when she built the place (the hall I mean, not the pit). She'd lived in the Old Hall until her husband died. This particular husband - number three - was the Earl of Shrewsbury, and of course he was loaded with dosh. So Bess used his money to build a bigger, grander hall. She was already seventy at the time, and it took seven years to finish the place. But what else would you do with so much money at her age?

  It's been written that Hardwick is 'a milestone in the history of civilised taste'. Some folk would think it's more of a millstone. Think of all that money, they say, poured into a bloody enormous house for one batty old woman to live in. Paintings and tapestries and carpets and staircases and wood-panelled corridors. Who needs it?

  But not me. I think about the blokes who worked on it. It took them seven years - so they weren't your average cowboy builders, were they? We're not talking the old 'sling up a bit of breeze block and slap some paint on it before the plaster's dry' techniques of the late twentieth century. They were craftsmen, these blokes, who put their whole lives into producing places like Hardwick. The Great High Chamber has a coloured plaster frieze a hundred and sixty-six feet long that will knock your eyes out. The Gallery has three bay windows - each of them about the size of a modern council house.

  Then you should go and look at the Great Kitchen downstairs. Who do you think slaved away at those sinks and chopping boards? Who lugged crates of wine up from the cellars, and who broke their backs to produce vegetables all the year round from the garden? Not Bess of chuffin' Hardwick anyway. It may have been her money, or her dead hubby's. But it was ordinary folk's sweat that built the hall and kept it running.

  * * * *

  While I waited in the car park, I eyed up some of the tourist types drifting in and out of the hall and wandering about the grounds. Most of them looked as though they might just as well have been at Alton Towers or Disney World. Today they'd been for a whiteknuckle culture ride. Really scary stuff. There was a carved ceiling in there that could make you forget which way up you are. And then, of course, there's the usual souvenir shop, where they turn you upside down until the coins fall out of your pockets. Who needs the Corkscrew Rollercoaster?

  I felt sorry for some of the kids being dragged about. It's supposed to be part of their education. But they just get the impression that in the old days everybody lived in massive houses and had servants. It makes them wonder why their own family lives in a shoebox-sized semi made out of cardboard and have to move their own wheelie bins to keep the binmen happy. Nobody bothers to explain to the poor little sods that if they had lived in Bess's time, they would have been the servants. No Nintendos or telly, no designer jeans or Big Macs. Not even any school. Or wages. Or shoes. And no Sunday afternoon outings to places like Hardwick either. Yes, you can make them learn from history if you take the trouble. But if you don't do it properly they grow up feeling all deprived because they haven't got three maids and a footman.

  I was loitering near one of the side entrances, where a sign at the gate says 'Residents only'. But we're not talking Bess herself here, or even her impoverished descendants. The residents now are caretakers, National Trust staff - there to see that the hoi polloi don't get in at night and nick the tapestries. As if we would.

  When Lisa came out, she wasn't alone. From a distance, she always looks small and fragile. She's fair, and I suppose a bit plain really, if you forced me to it. But her smile and that style she has make up for it. She'd got this way of holding herself as she talks to you that makes you feel you're the most important person in the world. It's a kind of a tilt of the head, a look in the eyes, an angling of the shoulders. And then when she smiles at you, you feel as though you're already in bed together. What a trick. But just at the moment that smile was turned on someone other than me. I'm not a jealous bloke - emotions like that are dangerous in my business - but I like to know who my bird's being chatted up by, just in case I have to feed him a knuckle sandwich.

  This bloke was one I didn't recognise. He looked like a tourist, but not the ordinary sort. For a start, he was wearing a suit instead of M & S casuals and he wasn't carrying a Canon autofocus camera. He was much too smart. In fact, he stood out like a working man in a workingmen's club.

  I expected him to go in a moment or two. Probably he was just asking the way to the nearest craft shop. But he kept Lisa talking on the doorstep. She was nodding and chatting back, and she hadn't even noticed I was there. This wasn't on. It looked as though I'd have to take action.

  I slipped out of the car and checked my jeans were suitably grubby. Levis never look right unless they're a bit grubby, do they? One of the back pockets was hanging off, and there was a curious stain near my crotch which I couldn't properly explain. I'd left my leather jacket off, because the weather was quite warm, and my check shirt was rolled up to the elbows and just about clinging together, held at the front by a couple of buttons. I had on my favourite belt with the big brass VW buckle ('Very Wicked' - get it?), and my boots were still streaked with mud. Somehow my hands had got covered in black oil at Metal Jacket's workshop. My hair had been cropped to a number two on top only a couple of days before, but I'd left it long at the back, where it was starting to get in need of a wash. I reckoned I looked about right.

  My boots crunched satisfyingly on the gravel as I marched across the car park towards the elegant doorway. At times like this I feel as though I ought to be going round to the servants' entrance, but what the hell. The rich gits are long gone from this particular pile. It belongs to us now, via the National Trust.

  Lisa clocked me first, and I gave her my best grin. I watched her eyes, and several expressions seemed to pass across her face. This is normal. Well, you know what women are like - they can feel eight things at once and communicate six entirely different ones at the same time. And God help you if you choose the wrong one, mate. I thought I detected pleasure in there, along with wariness, apprehension, and a touch of amusement. But did this mean she wanted to be rescued, or not? It was no use waiting to find out. It isn't the way I operate anyway. And I must say the closer I got to the bloke in the suit, the less I liked the look of him. My antennae were picking up the sort of aura about him that told me I would either have to touch my forelock or drop him with a Mansfield kiss, depending on whether I needed his money. By the time I arrived on the steps, I'd decided to dispense with subtlety entirely.

  "Fuck me, I'm sweating like a pig in a sauna. Me kecks are stuck so far up me arse it feels like I'm being buggered by a randy stair carpet. Talk about shagpile, eh, mate?"

  I saw the suit stiffen like a sudden case of rigor mortis. And that was even before I nudged him amiably in the ribs. Lisa covered her face with a hand. Whether she was laughing or about to be sick I couldn't tell, but it was too late now, whatever.

  "I've got to have a slash soon an' all, or I'll be filling me pants legs. I've had ten pints of bleedin' Mansfield Bitter and I'm not even near pissed. I don't know how the bastards get away with it."

  I managed a nice loud, unrestrained belch just as the suit turned reluctantly to face me. His long nose wrinkled and his lip curled. His hands began to move nervously about the pockets of his jacket as if he was searching for a scented handkerchief to hold to his nostrils. I laid a hand on his sleeve, like a bloke who just couldn't help being friendly.

  "You met my kid sister then? Bit of all right, in't she? What about them knockers, eh? Bloody hell, talk about selling 'em by the pound. You've got enough there to start a European tit mountain."

  The bloke seemed as though he'd been about to say something suitably condescending. Now he stopped and his face coloured. Obviously the tits had been exactly what he'd been thinking about.

  His feet were moving on the gravel, and he might have backed away if I hadn't got hold of his sleeve. All right,
I'd wanted to get rid of him, but I was enjoying myself now. It's a funny reaction. I suppose it's a bit like a fox who wishes like hell that the idiots in the red coats would go away and take their horses and dogs with them, then when he gets round the next corner he finds a huntsman off his horse and having a slash against a tree. He wouldn't be able to resist the sight of that solitary fat backside, right? The bloke saw this too. Contempt had been replaced by anxiety on his face. He wasn't sure what I was going to do next, and this is the way I like it. Would I to try to borrow money off him, or might I vomit on his polished brogues? Or worse, was I intending to be his friend for life?

  Lisa recovered first. Very cool, that one.

  "This is Mr Michael Cavendish," she told me. "He's a regular visitor to Hardwick. In fact, he's a descendant of the original family. About the ninth generation from the Countess, would it be, Mr Cavendish?"

  "What? Oh yes."

  Cavendish sounded a bit croaky. Either he had a touch of laryngitis or he was scared shitless that I'd pollute his Hugo Boss suit with a steaming beer and carrot stew. But his colour was getting back to its normal aristocratic puce, and any minute now he might even think of something to say.

  "I must be going," he said. Brilliant. He'd got his line word perfect at the first attempt.

  He had another go at tugging his sleeve out of my grasp. I hiccupped and gave him my best lopsided grin.

  "Oh, but we were just discussing the fourth Earl, weren't we?" said Lisa.

  "No matter, no matter. Another time."

  While he was looking at Lisa, I took the opportunity to brush up close to the bloke and feel for his side pocket with my free hand. He looked as though he might have a useful cheque book or two about his person.

  Cavendish lost patience then. He took hold of my fingers with his right hand and prised them from his sleeve. I was taken by surprise at the strength of his grip. My fingers felt bruised where he'd held them, as if I'd accidentally trapped them in a door.

  "Goodbye then, Miss Prior," he said.

  We stared into each other's eyes for one more moment. Then he turned on his heel and marched away towards a gold Range Rover without looking back.

  "Stones," said Lisa. I still couldn't tell what she was thinking. Was I in deep shit for upsetting an important visitor? Had I just put the total kibosh on a really crappy day?

  "Yes, love?"

  "You're such a pillock. Just get in the car."

  5

  After we'd been in the house for an hour or two, Lisa had pretty much forgiven me for the incident at Hardwick Hall. At least, she'd quietened down a lot. In spite of the fact that I'd washed my hands, I could see there were slightly oily handprints on her bare back when she turned over onto her side. Also, I had to find a clean shirt, because the buttons had gone completely on the old one.

  "Why were you so foul to Michael Cavendish?" she'd asked me at one stage, just before we came unglued.

  "He asked for it," I said.

  "How do you mean?"

  "He was a stuck-up rich git."

  "But you'd never met him. You'd hardly set eyes on him."

  "So? I'm very perceptive like that. I can sense it. Rich gits make my ulcer hurt."

  "You haven't got an ulcer."

  "I will have, if I meet that Cavendish bloke again."

  She seemed to think about it for a bit, clinging on to my arm when I tried to ease myself away.

  "It wasn't because you were jealous then, Stones?"

  "Jealous? Give over. I could get a suit like that, if I really wanted to."

  "Mmm."

  I left Lisa dozing in the bedroom and went back downstairs. Despite the onion bhajis and other stuff from the deli earlier, I was feeling a bit peckish after my efforts. I felt my performance had been pretty good, but giving your all to your art fairly takes it out of you. I'm talking about my bit of acting at Hardwick, of course.

  When the phone rang, I automatically picked it up. I could have let the answerphone deal with it, but you never know when it might be urgent business.

  "Stones? It's Nuala."

  "Oh, hi," I said, cautious.

  Nuala's the new bird. She's at that stage where she actually thinks I'm a non-stop sex machine, a hilarious stand-up comedian, and some soppy romantic Mills and Boon hero all rolled into one. Women like their delusions, don't they?

  "How are you, love?" she said. "I've been missing you something terrible."

  "Oh yeah? Right."

  Then she started to make conversation. It was the kind of stuff that women expect you to put up with when you've recently started having sex with them. I'm not very good at tolerating this at the best of times, but just now I really had to cut her off. Lisa was upstairs, and I thought I could hear her putting her knickers on. You know that sort of slither and snap that you're usually only half aware of while you're still sleeping it off? That's what I could hear, and it sounded like approaching trouble.

  "Yeah, yeah, Nuala. Right. I might be able to see you tomorrow afternoon. Yeah, well, I'm really busy, love. You know what it's like." Well, she soon would if she was around me for any length of time. Nuala is a bit of all right, but my God can she talk. When she opens her mouth, it's like a slagheap shifting - it just never stops coming at you.

  Nuala is an Irish name, and it's pronounced Noo-lah. She tells me her long-disappeared dad was from County Wicklow. I don't mind this, because I'm part Celt myself. My old granddad was one of a band of Lowland Scots who trekked down to find jobs in the pits back in the 1930s. We're a Nottinghamshire family now all right, though. My dad never went to Scotland in his life. And me? I wouldn't know a haggis from a sheep's intestines.

  I met Nuala when I called in the travel agent's one day. No, I wasn't going on holiday. All those foreign countries leave me cold. Or too hot. You can keep your villas and bistros and your Hotel Paso Doble. It seems to me that most folk travel out there and straightaway run into some family called Cunliffe who live in the next street back home. Am I right? And then they spend a whole fortnight talking about people they know and getting pissed together watching Blind Date on the telly with Spanish sub-titles. Bloody marvellous. Why couldn't they just have nipped round the corner to the Cunliffes' house and saved the money? You can get sloshed on cheap Spanish wine just as easily if you buy it from Tesco's as you can if it came over-priced from Manuel's Los Bravos Bar. Why bother with a seafood paella on the harbourside at Tossa de Mar when you can give yourselves the thundering squitters just as quickly with a few out of date haddock fillets from the fish stall at Medensworth market? The blokes could even shag each others' wives without having to go through all that business of swapping hotel bedrooms and getting lost in the corridors. And they wouldn't have to risk getting skin cancer from falling asleep on the beach on the first day; and they wouldn't have to wear those bloody stupid straw hats for the rest of the fortnight to stop their noses falling off. So why do they bother? Well, at least the Cunliffes save them from having to come into contact with the natives, I suppose. Y viva bloody Espana.

  Anyway. I was in this travel agent's. I wanted some travellers' cheques, you see. Yes, there are reasons for wanting travellers' cheques other than going abroad, but now isn't the time to explain it. All I'll say is that it's a neat trick, but you can't do it too often.

  Nuala wasn't actually serving me. That job had fallen to some other bird that I hardly noticed. This was because I was distracted by an Irish voice that was going on and on about some tour company rep she'd got off with in a hotel room during some steamy weekend freebie in Rotterdam. Apparently he'd seemed very promising when he was handling her bookings, but he'd failed to check the entire party in at reception, if you know what I mean. Nuala didn't quite put it like that. But the way she did put it, you couldn't quite ignore what she was saying.

  It was when she noticed me that the situation changed. She peered over the other bird's shoulder to see what she was doing, and then became an instant expert on Brazil. Yes, Brazil - but don't ask.


  "The basic unit of currency is the real," she said helpfully. "Portuguese is the official language, but German and Italian are spoken by many Brazilians, especially in the southern cities."

  "Thank you very much," I said. "Now about these travellers' cheques - "

  "The climate ranges from tropical to subtemperate. The average temperature in the capital, Brasília, is a comfortable seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and rainfall is about sixty-three inches a year. Hundreds of species of beautiful exotic plants abound, including begonias, laurels, myrtles, and mimosas, as well as palms and mangroves."

  "I'm not actually going - "

  "And did you know that Brazil is the home of the puma, jaguar, ocelot, and the rare bush dog? Anteaters, sloths and armadillos are also common."

  There was a lot more of this stuff. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, and the Amazon basin occupies one third of its surface. You can vote there at sixteen, and the capital, Brasilia, was only built in the 1960s.

  These and other fascinating facts were force-fed to me while I looked at Nuala. Looked, I said, not listened. She's worth looking at far more than she's worth listening to. The trouble is, that was how I ended up taking her for a drink, then later on going back to her flat. By not listening to her, I mean. She tells me she did discuss it with me in great depth at some stage. It must have been somewhere between the population of Sao Paulo and the length of the River Amazon. But, like the Amazon itself, I just seem to have gone with the flow.

  "Haven't you ever thought of getting some nice curtains for this room, Stones?"

  Lisa had come down the stairs behind me. Thank God I'd already cut off the call. But she was well used to me being on the mobile, setting up meetings, that sort of thing. Poor tart, she thought I was a scrap metal dealer or something.

  "I don't need them. I don't have the lights on much."