Read an Excerpt
Vanity and Vexation
A Novel of Pride and Prejudice
By Kate Fenton St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1995 Kate Fenton
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-5311-9
CHAPTER 1
It is a truth universally acknowledged – at least according to certain shiny magazines – that a single actress in possession of fortune, fame and more work than she can handle, must be in want of something. Otherwise life wouldn't be fair, would it? And when that actress has reached the age of twenty-nine, it seems reasonable to assume she might be in want of a husband. Babies even. In fact, it would be nice to think she's secretly yearning for some plain, routine domesticity of the kind experienced by us ordinary mortals who read such magazines.
As it happens, this is pretty much what the celebrated and beautiful Ms Candia Bingham confessed. 'I long to be a mother,' she told Our Correspondent. While sitting on her elegant suede sofa in cashmere leggings and a luxury apartment overlooking the Thames. In London's fashionable Chelsea. 'I want to settle down and bake bread and make curtains and everything. I absolutely adore children. But, so far, I'm afraid Mr Right hasn't walked into my life.'
Mr Bernard Nuttall was studying this article during the quiet hour before noon in maroon polyester slacks and the saloon bar of his establishment, the Red Lion. Overlooking the green, in North Yorkshire's picturesque, but not noticeably fashionable, Maltstone. He was reflecting that he wouldn't mind assisting the nubile Ms Bingham along the road to motherhood. Were he twenty years younger. He blew the froth off his morning glass and drank deep before reapplying his finger to the print.
The magazine in which Candia Bingham was exclusively opening her heart and her wardrobe was not Bernard's regular journal. It had been shoved into his hands by Mavis from the post office. With a smug pursing of the lips, she had suggested Bernard study page seven, if he knew what was good for him. Interfering old know-all.
Bernard laboured down page seven – and eight and nine – even though he soon wearied of Ms Bingham's extensive career and couture. Finally, however, he hit gold.
'Sarah,' he roared, heaving his bulk up from the bar. 'Sarah, where are you? Shift your arse through here, you daft cow.'
It was some minutes before Mrs Nuttall consented to appear in the doorway from the kitchen. She was as thin as her husband was stout, with the wiry muscles and red hands of one who has laboured thirty years in the subterranean caverns of catering. Nevertheless, even in chef's trousers with her greying hair scraped up into a rubber band, she was a handsome woman with well-turned cheekbones and intelligent hazel eyes. She was wiping her hands on her apron as she glanced round the bar. Her brow wrinkled when she saw the stub-filled dish at Bernard's elbow.
'Finished your breakfast?' she enquired, plucking the ashtray away.
'Get a load of this.' Bernard was brandishing the magazine in front of her. 'It's here. Us.'
'I'd have a better chance of reading it if you put it down. Anyway, I've not got my specs.'
'I'm telling you. By, I nearly fell off my chair. This here Bingham bird – you remember her, pet, she were in that programme, hell, name's on the tip of my tongue, you were dead keen on it, all peacocks and nancy boys ...' Bernard tossed the magazine aside. 'Doesn't matter, any rate. She's doing a new telly series now. And guess where they're filming?'
'This the dramatization of Pride and Prejudice, is it?' said his wife.
Bernard's blue eyes bulged. 'You knew?'
'They were talking about it in the butcher's yesterday. Llew was saying he hopes they're doing a decent job, because it's not the BBC. Some independent company.'
'Well, bugger me. Thanks for letting us know.'
Sarah Nuttall patted her husband's plump shoulder. 'You'll be seeing them down Haygate any day, from what I've heard. All the aerials and wires and what have you are coming down tomorrow. They're out top end of the valley now, turning the Pilkingtons' garden upside down with their cameras. Mind, they're paying old Colonel Pilkington a packet. Supposedly. One thing I know for a fact is that they're staying up at the Hall. Booked every room and Dorothy's in seventh heaven. I should think so too, with trade the way it's been.' This was said with feeling.
'Why didn't you tell me?' demanded her husband.
'What's it to us?'
'What's it to us? We're talking mega-media invasion of the village; this is the only pub with grub worth mentioning and you're asking me –'
'I do not,' interrupted Sarah frostily, 'serve grub. I run a restaurant. You, however, run a pub and it's opening time in ten minutes.' She wiped out the ashtray and, after replacing it on the bar, gazed at it thoughtfully for a moment. 'Then again, I suppose it might be nice for Llew. Bit of interesting company could be just what he needs.' She sighed. 'Though you can never tell.'
'Llewellyn Bevan? What's he got to do with anything?'
'I like Llew,' said Sarah flatly. 'And not just because when I give him crêpes framboises he doesn't say he'd sooner have lemon on his pancakes. Unlike some I could name. Poor boy's been looking miserable as sin recently. I reckon he's lonely.'
'Comes from locking himself away with a typewriter,' said Bernard. 'Not natural, is it? Anyway, there's always company down here.'
'Llew's clever,' stated Sarah as if this explained everything, adding rather wistfully: 'and he makes me laugh.'
'Bloody awful batsman.' Bernard emptied his glass down his throat in one well-practised gulp and let out a fruity belch. 'By gum though, this'll put some heart into the rest of the lads. Stand by Maltstone Lions for a boarding party of actresses.' He gave a throaty chuckle. 'Yo ho ho and all hands on dicks.'
'Bernard!'
'Mind, we mustn't let this put us off our stroke for the Valleys Cup.'
'Come again?'
Bernard rinsed his glass and began polishing it vigorously. 'Well-known fact: women and cricket don't mix. Saps the vital energies.'
'Then presumably your team's been working their way through the Kama Sutra,' said Sarah tartly. 'If their performance on the field's anything to go by.'
'Leave the gags to me, sunshine,' retorted Bernard. 'I'll bet our Chris is champing at the bit already. Where is he?'
'School, where else? Half-term doesn't start till Friday.' Sarah gathered up the magazine. 'Thank the Lord.'
'Where're you going?'
'I've two dozen steak and kidneys waiting for pastry, and the dairy orders to phone through.'
'I want you to get on to this television company,' he protested. 'Drop them a few brochures.'
'We've run out of brochures,' said Sarah. 'I told you last week there was only a handful left, but you forgot to order any new ones, didn't you?'
And, with a sweet smile, she retired to her kitchen.
CHAPTER 2
The committee meeting of the Maltstone Lions Cricket Club was held, as always, on the last Thursday of the month in the pub from which the team took its name. Not surprisingly, given their recent playing record, the members soon abandoned cricketing business in the back room and adjourned to the Red Lion's public bar. Here, they fell to discussing the interesting new arrivals in the area.
There were hearsay reports of live thespians being sighted but no one present could offer eye-witness testimony. The wicket keeper, however, had personally spotted a convoy of vehicles lumbering along the top road at sparrow fart this morning – including a large grey lorry indisputably labelled British Broadcasting Corporation.
His scoop was spoiled by someone else pointing out that this bunch wasn't supposed to be the BBC.
'Independent company, co-production job, using BBC crews and facilities,' said Llew. 'I expect.'
Llewellyn Bevan – author, cricketer and regular – was hunched on a stool in the corner of the bar like a vulture on its favourite crag. A certain swarthiness in his colouring had, in his childhood, prompted mutterings from his Dad about Italian milkmen. Only for Mam to retort that her little prince with his sooty hair ('and eyes the colour of treacle, my lovely') was every inch a Valleys boy. And, to this day, his voice had not quite shed the accent of his coal-cutting forebears. Actually, strictly speaking, his father had worked in the Co-op, but Llew was not a man to let mere facts muddy a poetic tradition. Stood to reason that if you were born and bred in South Wales there must be a few miners burrowing round the roots of the family tree.
A rangy, beak-nosed man, he was looking this evening both disgruntled (which was unusual) and disreputable (which was not). After all, a guy didn't quit the rat-racing city for rural North Yorkshire in order to sport tie and pinstripes, did he? And never mind if the cricketing farmers grouped round the bar were clad, to a man, in nattily monogrammed sports shirts. Llew fancied his shapeless, straw-tattered sweater was the epitome of bucolic suitability.
Since his city job had been in newspapers and he was even now a writer of sorts (although of what precise sort no one in the bar was entirely clear), his team mates evidently expected him to be well informed about television companies and suchlike exotica. But after that brief burst of erudition he disappointed them. No, he knew no one involved in the production. No, sorry, but he hadn't a clue if there were any famous names taking part – well, apart from Candia Bingham if Bernie was to be believed. And no, of course he didn't know if she herself was actually up here yet. How should he?
'You're a fat lot of good, Llew,' said young Christopher Nuttall, pulling an expert pint and plonking it on the bar in front of him. 'Hey, I wonder if they're looking for extras?'
There was a chorus of whistling from the assembled cricketers.
'What's so funny?' protested Christopher, flushing.
'It's not children's television,' advised a voice from across the bar.
'I'm not a child,' he retorted. 'I'm seventeen and I can pass for twenty-one.'
This, thought Llew, was probably true. The boy, Bernard and Sarah's youngest son by many years, was already six feet tall and smoothly muscled as a panther. His fair hair flopped with fashionable decadence over one eye and his voice rumbled deep as a train in a tunnel. Only his face, which was almost girlishly pretty, showed his youth. He had inherited his mother's splendid cheekbones and (so she claimed) his father's stupendous bone-headedness. 'A guy at school got taken on in crowd scenes for an episode of Country Doctor. Sixty quid a day, can you believe it.'
Llew frowned. 'Correct me if my senile memory falters, lovely boy, but when you hogged my word-processor last holiday, wasn't this on the understanding that your towering talents were destined for the world of journalism?'
'So? This is television, isn't it? Contacts are everything in this business.'
'Thanks for the tip.'
'That's an idea, though,' continued Christopher, thrusting his hair out of his eye and leaning forward over the bar. 'Maybe I should try and line up an interview with Candia what's-her-name. What do you reckon, Llew?'
'What about?'
'Feature profile job. No, better, see if I can get her on tape. I mean, print media's dead, isn't it?'
'Along with grammar?' enquired Llew.
Christopher naturally disregarded this. 'You haven't got a decent tape- recorder I suppose? I'm meant to be starting my media project this half-term and I fancy the old steam wireless. Bit of a buzz getting a film star, eh?'
'Media project,' echoed Llew, wincing. 'Whatever happened to good old-fashioned A-levels?'
'They're not till next year,' said Christopher impatiently. 'Anyhow, where are they going to get me?'
'University?'
'What's the point?'
'The working world is a mean and crew-ell jungle,' Llew declared, rolling his words with a very Welsh relish. 'Qualifications are by way of being the mosquito net of the middle classes.' The sonority of this turn of phrase pleased him. He repeated it, smiling to himself.
'Huh,' said Christopher, unimpressed. He was prepared to argue the point, but Llew had turned towards the door.
'John! And about time too, you backslider. Well, don't hover on the doorstep, man. You're safe: all the trivial business is concluded and we're into the serious drinking. What're you having?'
The man who walked into the bar possessed what Llew had once defined, with barely a shimmer of malice, as knitting-pattern looks. John Hapgood was handsome in a broad-shouldered, square-jawed, fresh-complexioned, solidly English style which – unlike the haggard elegance of modern male models – might have been invented to display to advantage a cable-knit cardigan. What's more, his crinkled hair was the colour of hay and his eyes as blue as a postcard sea. That a certain elusive sadness shadowed his smile, and a few lines were chiselled in the noble brow and manly jaw, only added (in the view of most of the women of Maltstone) to his very considerable allure. He was also a useful spin-bowler and universally acknowledged Good Bloke. Such a Good Bloke was he that his cricketing colleagues were prepared to overlook his poncey public-school accent and his effect on their wives. He earned his living by restoring, designing and making furniture. His friend Llew spoke of him, with a respect bordering on reverence, as an artist in wood. He called himself a joiner.
'What've I missed?' he said, accepting a half-pint of cider and dragging up a stool besides Llew's.
'Sod all squared.' Llew lapsed back into ill humour. 'I've been mug enough to let them elect me secretary again, pro tem – which might not have happened if you'd turned up on time.'
'You're the writer,' said John tranquilly.
'Did the neighbours ask Picasso to touch up chips on their skirting boards?'
John grinned over the edge of his glass. 'And?'
'We've sorted the cock-up over the music for the hop, confirmed the friendly against Hopewell for Saturday, weather permitting – and that's about it. Far as I can see, our worthy captain's more interested in securing home fixtures in the pub with a visiting television company than cricket matches.'
'Aye, that's something to put the sparkle back in your eye, Johnny boy,' chipped in Bernard, non-playing Captain of the Lions, who was leaning on the bar beyond Llew. Bernard preferred, when possible, to run his establishment from the customer's side of the bar and regarded it as the prerogative (if not the bounden duty) of a genial host to intrude upon everyone else's conversations. He thrust himself between them, offering his cigarette packet to John, who waved it away, and then to Llew, who, with a guilty grimace, drew one out. 'By heck,' said Bernard, 'I'd give my right arm to be a young bachelor like you two now, with all these dolly-birds flocking in.'
Neither of the men was, in fact, a bachelor. Nor were they particularly young. John Hapgood, at thirty-five, was a widower of nearly three years' standing, and Llew Bevan a thirty-four-year-old divorcee. They exchanged glances, and Llew lit his cigarette from the stub of Bernard's before enquiring: 'Where are they then? All these gorgeous women?' He glanced round. 'Looks like the same old butch faces to me.'
Bernard's face fell. 'Where d'you think, Taff? Up Maltstone bloody Hall, paying through the nose for gold bath taps and raspberry vinegar on their lettuce. I tell you, if we could just get 'em down here for a few dinners on their fancy expense accounts ...' He sighed longingly, 'I reckon Her in the kitchen and yours truly'd be booking for Florida come July.'
'That'll be the day,' remarked his wife who, unobserved, had emerged from the dining room and was standing at her husband's elbow. 'Thirty-two years of marriage and the nearest we've got to America is a paddle off Penzance.'
'Fancy Florida, do you, Sarah?' enquired Llew.
She considered the question. 'Sooner have Florence. But I'd go anywhere someone else is cooking.'
Bernard squeezed her shoulders. 'Did you get on to them printers?'
Sarah shook her head.
'Blimey, woman. How'll they know where to come if we don't tell 'em?'
'They'll find their own way. The whole county knows about Sarah's cooking,' said Llew, smiling at her.
His slightly crooked smile always had just such a conspiratorial air, like an invitation to share a private joke, and Sarah returned it warmly. 'Are you coming in tomorrow night, love?' she enquired.
'Course not,' grunted Bernard. 'He's over the village hall. Can't have the cricket club disco without the secretary making sure everyone's present and incorrect.'
She frowned. 'Damn, I'd forgotten.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Vanity and Vexation by Kate Fenton. Copyright © 1995 Kate Fenton. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
