Away From It All by Judy Astley

Author:Judy Astley [Judy Astley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2003-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

Ten

YOU’D THINK GOD had turned up for a visit, Harry thought, as Patrice and Jocelyn hugged theatrically on the Penmorrow verandah and the wind chimes jangled like mad wedding bells from each side of the porch. There wasn’t even a camera running yet, but Jocelyn was going full out for dramatic effect. She was wearing what she called her rainbow elf outfit: multicoloured hand-painted silk trousers beneath a matching long jagged-hemmed coat with dangling pointy sleeves like a medieval maiden. It had been made for her by Ossie Clark as a generous thank-you for hospitality many, many years ago, and was kept as a treasure in tissue paper and a dark wardrobe. Too surprised to refuse, Katie had been roped in after lunch, to interweave a matching rainbow of slender braids into Joss’s plait to perfect the co-ordinated look she wanted.

‘It’s really now!’ Katie had exclaimed, admiring the delicate swirls of colour on the fabric. ‘This old hippy gear’s sooo this summer.’ It was a comment that on any other occasion might have gone down less than well with Jocelyn (or indeed with anyone), but Jocelyn was too pleased with herself and too excited at the prospect of being centre stage to find fault or offence.

Harry met Mo’s eye across the pathway and they exchanged a mutual lip-curl at the mwah-mwah kissing. Patrice was impressively surrounded by silver flight cases full of equipment which Katie, along with Nick the cameraman, had unloaded from Patrice’s Discovery. Jocelyn was gazing at all this heaped-up kit, as enraptured as if they were lavish presents gift-wrapped especially for her. Harry, by contrast, distrusted all this flashy paraphernalia, associating it with the kind of show-off men who drove low-slung cars with personalized number plates.

Greetings and introductions over, Patrice took Joss’s hand and jumped back down the verandah steps, pulling her with him, keen to inspect the Big Shepherd statue and the pair of angrily snarling bronze sheep that made up his depleted flock on the front meadow. Harry feared for her balance, but the attention of Patrice seemed to inject new vitality into her.

‘Are these the only sheep left?’ he asked. ‘I heard there were at least six, including two of them,’ and he lowered his voice only slightly to stage-whisper, ‘in flagrante.’

‘Oh, given away, drifted away, wandered as sheep do,’ Jocelyn told him airily. ‘Larry Olivier had one, and poor Jimi had one in London to take back to the States with him. But then of course he died, poor love, as so many did . . .’

‘Jimi? Heavens! We must have all this in shot at some point!’ Excitedly, Patrice wheeled Jocelyn round and placed her beside Big Shepherd, alongside whose mottled greeny-brown bulk she looked extraordinarily delicate and slender in her floaty silks.

‘Isn’t this thrilling?’ Patrice asked the assembled company. Harry trusted that he didn’t expect an honest reply. It didn’t seem thrilling at all to him or to Mo; more disruptively unwelcome and likely to lead, when this motley entourage had left, to a long, tedious period of Joss being grumpily discontented.

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