Chapter Fourteen
On Sunday morning at the Eastingdean Teapot, Honor found Sophie sulking in the kitchen and sporting shocking pink hair. It looked like hell with her ever-pink face. Honor felt laughter ballooning.
‘Robina was going to do hers, too!’ Sophie wailed. ‘She chickened out.’
Robina tossed back her dark curls, then winced. Sullen grey shadows lurked beneath her eyes in an otherwise stark white face. ‘There wasn’t much dye left. I was worried it wouldn’t take properly.’
Sophie pouted. ‘You chickened out.’
‘You certainly were brave, Sophie,’ Honor consoled. ‘And how is your friend, Kirsty?’
Sophie’s gaze accused Robina once more. ‘Exhausted. She could have done with a good night’s sleep. But Robina wasn’t very well during the night. Were you, Robbie? And every time she thundered to the bathroom she banged the door. Poor Kirsty.’
‘Poor me.’ Robina swelled with outrage. ‘I was the one who spent half the night on the bathroom floor.’
Honor washed her hands and tied on her apron. ‘Was it something you ate?’
Sophie slammed the oven door shut and set the timer. ‘No — something she drank. Because she was greedy, as usual, and drank more than her share — also as usual!’ Her pink face quivered as she slammed utensils on the steel surfaces.
Robina screwed up her face in pain and reached for the ties of her apron. ‘I’m too ill to work. I’m taking a sickie.’
Instantly, Sophie’s anger flipped to dismay. ‘Robbie! That’s not fair. OK, I won’t bang—’
Calmly, Honor cut across her panicked apologies, reaching around Robina and retying the apron strings. ‘No, you’re not taking a sickie because if you do, me and Sophie are downing tools so the Teapot will have to be shut and Sunday must be a lucrative day. You’re not too sick to work. You and Sophie are going to stop taking swipes at each other and we’re all going to be friends and just get the work done, OK?’
Robina and Sophie gaped.
Honor held their gazes. She’d spent too long dealing with Stef’s stunts to be intimidated by people throwing tantrums. ‘Jeez, what is it with you guys? Grow up. Does Kirsty usually get between you when you fight?’
Robina’s glare dissolved. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, with a grin. ‘Kirst is the sensible one, Sophie’s the emotional one and I’m the diva. Right, Sophie?’
Sophie giggled. ‘Right, Robbie.’ But then a stick of a woman shuffled through the door, clutching the doorframe as if her knees might buckle. The laughter died.
‘Hiya, Kirsty!’ Robina’s jollity was horribly forced after the instant of silence.
Sophie shot around the counter and helped Kirsty pull out a chair. ‘Kirstee! Are you sure you ought to be up?’
Kirsty propped herself in the chair, looking like an old waxwork, yellowed and shrunken. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘How about peppermint tea?’
‘I’ll do it. You guys sit down together.’ Honor made peppermint tea for all three of the women after shaking hands with Kirsty, ‘Hi, how are you?’, pretending not to notice that Kirsty’s hand had a permanent tremor.
Kirsty looked so drawn that Honor had to thrust away the words sick unto death that rushed into her mind. Customers began to cast Kirsty furtive glances, making Robina joke, loudly, ‘I hope nobody thinks she got like this from eating here!’ But no amount of wisecracking disguised the shock in Robina’s eyes or the anxiety in Sophie’s round pink face.
When Kirsty had staggered back up to her room, Robina snapped at everyone for the rest of the morning. Sophie whispered that it was because Robina could see there was no way Kirsty would be well enough to look after the Teapot while Robina and Sophie went to the Global Gathering, but Honor thought Kirsty was so damned sick that even Robina couldn’t be quite that self-centred.
She hoped not, anyway.
* * *
Thursday and Friday were Honor’s free days this week and, by the time they came around, she was glad to have a couple of days off from refereeing spats between Robina and Sophie, facilitating ecstatic encounters between hungry customers and Robina’s cakes and breathing in so much sugar that her own sweet tooth took a hike and she began to fantasise about salted nuts or crispy bacon.
She hadn’t intended working half the hours Robina rostered her on for but the Teapot was frantic with the tourist season in flood, as most English kids finished school during the third week of July for the long summer break, and the sun shining as consistently as the English sun seemed able to manage. She had to harden her heart about Ru standing in for her because Robina said that the last couple of days at school were a waste of time.
Honor said, ‘No, they’re not! They’re fun!’ and felt double bad because his supposed holiday job at the funfair had fallen through and he’d probably end up covering at the Teapot all summer. But a girl had to have the odd free day in which to run by the ocean with the wind flying her ponytail like a kite, mooch contentedly around Pretty Old and haggle a 1960s’ Wedgewood cruet from Peggy the hobbit, then hang out over lunch at the Fig Leaf pub before heading home for a hot shower and to fire up her laptop.
Her email inbox had another message from Stef waiting for her, making use of Billie’s internet connection again. OK. You’re making me think long and hard about what I’ve done and I apologise (again) for how it turned out for you. I don’t accept that it’s all over between us, though.
She sighed. There didn’t seem much point in repeating how over it all was. Stef probably thought he could talk her round now that she’d had time to calm down.
To cheer herself, she caught up with the family news — her dad and Karen, along with Stef’s dad, Will, had joined a club, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a gym ; Jess had new shoes, it was the turquoise heels that did it ; and Zach was finding his internship in Texas hotter than hell .
Facebook caught her up on what was going on with her friends and the former students of Hamilton High, bringing vividly to her mind the sunny streets of Hamilton Drives and the places they’d hung out: the lake; the shopping mall. The picture-book white wooden church; the steeple so white against the blue of the sky and the green of the willows.
Then, on impulse, she searched Facebook for Martyn Mayfair and, as well as his own understated one, found a fan page with a very proprietary tone. As well as listing a ton of ads that Martyn had been in, complete with images, it led to a slideshow on YouTube. Was this what Robina had done, without even asking Martyn if that’s what he’d like? Wow.
A little Googling around and she discovered that Martyn’s own web presence was minimal and sophisticated in purple and black and linked directly to a similarly understated page at Ace Smith Model Management, giving few details other than height, weight, colour of eyes and successful campaigns, headed by le Dur. A selection of moody and sizzling images pretty much did the talking. Backtracking to the Google search page she found a whole host of other model agencies to click through. The most successful agencies adopted the same ‘less is more’ approach as Ace Smith. Not for them tempting bios vaunting positive approach and unique look or lists of work that would be considered.
Shutting down her machine and wriggling into her combat pants, which felt appropriate for a self-defence class, she felt downright weird that Martyn Mayfair was to be her driver for the evening.
* * *
Once the damned class was upon her, she found herself no more enthusiastic about it than Ru. But if she didn’t go, Ru wouldn’t have anyone to encourage him — or pay for him, in all probability. They found their way into the hall over a pub where Personal Safety Training was printed on the sheet of white paper stuck to the door. A dusty stage at one end rose above floorboards and a spongy blue floor mat. The smell of beer tainted the air.
Including Honor and Ru, the class numbered twelve. Seven of the others were women of all ages up to mid-sixties, and each paused to look at Martyn when he walked in. Lifting a lazy hand to Hughie, he hopped up to sit on the edge of the stage and watch.
Honor hadn’t bargained on his presence but she could scarcely object, as he’d given them a ride. She and Ru joined the half-circle around Hughie, a tattooed hulk with a buzz-cut who, despite the grey in his hair, balanced on the balls of his feet and looked ready for anything. He had an oddly sweet smile and liked making his class laugh with jokes about his middle-age, ‘Blimey, this lad was no more than a twinkle in his father’s eye when I left the army and began these classes!’ Which put at ease the ladies who had a decade or so on him but made Ru flush. Ru looked how Honor felt — alien and apprehensive. If it hadn’t been for half of the class looking even less at ease in elastic-waist trousers and cardigans, Honor might have hissed, ‘Let’s go!’ to Ru and made a break for it.
Instead, she focused on Hughie’s growly voice as he bounded into his course introduction. ‘I’m not going to ask you all individually why you’re here,’ he began. ‘Because I know.
‘Something, at some time, has made you feel in need of a swift and effective answer to violence. You, or someone close to you, has been mugged, beaten up, picked on or sexually assaulted. You’re here to learn to defend yourself — not so that you can pick up tips on how to be an aggressor.’
He paused and scanned his class sternly, keen blue eyes daring anyone to admit aggressive tendencies. ‘I’m going to show you that even the smallest person can be effective in self-defence by mixing up the pairings.’ Rapidly, he divided the class up: young with middle-aged, woman with man, large with small. Ru looked terrified to be partnered by a plump woman with tight grey curls in rows, as if the perming rods were still in there.
‘And you — Honor, isn’t it? — you’re the lightest of us, so you partner me and we’ll show these guys how a little woman can overcome a big bloke.’
Honor grew hot with alarm. ‘Wow. I’m a complete beginner. Maybe someone else—’
‘—would be a complete beginner, too.’ Hughie twinkled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, this class is all about empowerment, about vanquishing that feeling of being out of your depth. That’s not a nice feeling and we’re going to show it the door. Right? We’re going to begin with vital point striking, because the brilliant thing about vital points—’ he began to tick points off on his fingers, projecting his voice to the class at large, — ‘is that we’ve all got them. Vital points cannot be conditioned. Vital points are as vulnerable on a fifteen-stone hoodlum as they are on a seven-stone weakling. OK?’
Along with the class, Honor nodded. ‘Stones’ were a bit of a mystery to her, but the principle was easy to comprehend, fifteen being more than twice as many as seven.
‘Now make me a fist.’ Hughie turned back to Honor and watched as she curled in her fingers and thumb on her right hand. ‘Good!’ He beckoned the class closer. ‘See, the thumb is on the outside of the fingers, parallel to the knuckles and across the front. You don’t curl your fingers over your thumb. Or stick it out at the side.’ He demonstrated each no-no. ‘Because you might break your thumb the first time you use a fist like that. Right? Honor, clench it harder. Great. The harder you can make it, the more effective it will be and the less chance there is of you getting hurt.’
He pulled up a banner from a sort of tube on feet that stood on the floor, to show a black silhouette with pink dots. ‘Here are the vital points,’ he pointed to each dot. ‘Eyes. Nose. Ears. Throat. Groin — especially if your attacker’s a man. Knees. Instep.
‘This isn’t a martial arts class and I’m not going to show you classic technique — I’m going to show you how to control a violent situation and get away, right? So you’ll use your hand in the easy ways.’ He stuck out his own hairy fist to demonstrate each option. ‘The back of your fist, the side of your fist, the flat of your palm and the points of your fingers. And you’ll put all the weight of your body behind each blow, right? Right?’
‘Right,’ the class responded, shyly.
‘OK, find you and your partner a bit of space and we’ll begin with the eyes.’
Honor glanced across at Ru, saw his face finally igniting with something that might be enthusiasm, and felt her heart lift. This was going to work. This had been a great idea. She turned to throw Martyn a grateful look. But then Hughie said, ‘Right, Honor. Now I’m going to choke you.’