So, as it turned out, I would be going to the Willow Barn apple harvest picnic and barn dance that year, after all – in fact, I volunteered to organize it. I’d already swept out the old hay barn where the dancing took place, so I thought I might as well just do the whole thing.
Chloe normally did it all, but with only two months or so until the baby was due, it was a lot for her to take on, and as I was pretty much living down at Willow Barn full-time, working on the book, it seemed natural for me to take over.
I was quite excited about it. I’d spent the last five years going to lavish parties arranged by other people, as part of my job, so it was rather a lark to be organizing one myself.
I’d even had a look at some of Chloe’s back issues of Martha Stewart Living to get some entertaining tips and I’d spent an evening discovering the joy of cookbooks for the first time, boning up on interesting ideas for barbecues. It was a whole new world for me, playing happy homemaker, and it was rather fun.
I’d just come off the phone from Chloe one evening, getting the low-down on the preferred butcher, the quantities of sausages to order, the numbers of glasses to hire, the phone number to book the ceilidh band and the rest of it, and was settling down for an orgy of list making, when the phone rang again. It was Ham.
‘Darling,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been talking to Chloe and I know you’re being an angel helping her organize the apple harvest fest, but actually I’m going to make it rather different this year and I’m going to get caterers in.’
I felt so deflated, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Don’t be disappointed, Stella,’ Ham said, reading my silence correctly. ‘Because the thing is, we’ve got rather a lot of interest in our book. The American publisher wants to bring a major photographer he intends to use for the book over to see it, and there’s a rather interesting film-maker who is talking about doing a feature-length documentary based on it, and he wants to visit too. So I thought they could all come to the apple harvest and experience a real Willow Barn family event. See the house as it’s meant to be used.’
It was encouraging that there was a buzz starting up about the book, but I still wasn’t very thrilled. I loved the hokey family and friends event the way it had always been and I’d been really rather stoked up about organizing it. I didn’t want a load of Ham’s architecture groupies there as well.
But he was clearly off on one, so I just let him drone on. When he was excited about something, he was an unstoppable force. My sausages on witty hazel-switch sticks would have to wait until next year.
‘I’ve got a lot of people from the universities I teach at, who I need to entertain as well,’ he was saying. ‘And then there are all my students who are agitating to visit the house, so I thought we might as well have one big black-tie bash in a marquee and have them all at once.
‘We’ll have friends and family too, of course – the more of those, the better, for context – and we’ll do the apple picking as normal and the lunchtime picnic and the barn-dance part. I just want the dinner to be more formal, but with an apple theme to the food. It will be a living example of my beliefs about the importance of formalized rituals in family life and creating fluid spaces for them to take place in…’
The marquee for this particular fluid yet formalized ritual was enormous, I soon discovered. It started going up several days before the event, while I was still the only one down there, and it wasn’t just your bog-standard party marquee, it was a huge, circular, red and white stripy thing, like a circus tent.
‘Ham,’ I said, calling him on his mobile. ‘Did you mean to order a big top for this dinner? It looks like Billy Smart’s setting up on the lawn.’
He chuckled down the phone at me.
‘Oh, excellent,’ he said. ‘That’s just what I wanted. Has it got a large pennant flying from the central pole?’
I looked out of the window.
‘Yes, with a picture of two apples on it…’
Ham chuckled some more and hung up on me.
Things got even weirder on the day of the big event. Chloe and the kids were all in residence and the VIPs who were staying in the Willow Barn guest wing were starting to arrive, but Ham hadn’t even got down there yet.
I could hear some banging outside and when I went out to see what was going on, there were two men with lavish beards erecting a tall thin object in front of the big top.
‘What on earth is that?’ I asked the one with the longer beard.
He looked at me as though I were simple.
‘It’s a maypole,’ he said.
‘Did my father order that?’ I asked him.
‘If your father’s called Henry Montecourt – yes,’ said the beardy weirdy, and he went back to weaving long green, red and yellow ribbons around the pole.
‘Funny time of year for one of those, isn’t it?’ I persisted, but he wasn’t interested.
‘Ask your father…’ was all he said, and I didn’t give it much more thought after that, because when Ham got going with one of his special events, anything was possible.
So, I just put it out of my mind – along with the large quantity of empty barrels which were just being delivered, out of which, I gathered, we were going to bob for apples; and the Druid priest and his attendants, who, Chloe had told me over breakfast, were coming to bless the trees and the harvest.
He loved a theme, did Ham.
Once it all kicked off and we actually got going with the apple harvest, I pretty much forgot about his more over-the-top details, it was so much fun.
The whole family was there, plus the much-loved addons. Archie was a permanent fixture with us now, and Alex came too, bringing Rose – and Monkey, of course.
I didn’t know whether it was the looming presence of Ham’s ridiculous stripy tent, the prospect of a proper black-tie rave-up, or just general high spirits, but they did all seem particularly excited.
We all loved a party down there, but Archie and Tabitha, in particular, seemed to be in a permanent state of near hysteria and Venezia kept changing her outfit into briefer and briefer ensembles, until so much of her midriff was on show, Ham sent her inside to put a shirt on.
At one point Daisy appeared in the orchard wearing a pair of terrible sparkly white shoes, like the ones little Mexican girls wear to get confirmed in, until Chloe quickly ushered her back to the house to change out of them.
I’d been spending so much time down there on my own, I decided I’d just forgotten what a bunch of nuts my collective family were.
As well as the academics and earnest-looking young people I assumed were Ham’s students, who were taking photographs of us like we were some kind of anthropological display, friends arrived all through the afternoon and pitched in with the apple picking.
Ham had encouraged me to invite as many of my ‘pals’, as he called them, as possible, ranting on about it being an essential part of the mix to make the event work. I thought it was probably about time for me to entertain them, for once, so I’d invited Becca, Tim, Tara and Amy and they’d all come. Even Peter and his wife Renee showed up.
He’d finally rung me a few weeks before and I’d been delighted to find that he was back to his old self – and with good reason. He had a new job as a media commentator on Radio 4’s Today programme, and from that position of strength, he had decided to take the Journal on over his pension entitlement – and the NUJ was going to pay his legal fees. They were making it a test case and it looked like the Journal were going to settle out of court, generously, in Peter’s favour.
I’d already heard him on air with James Naughtie making much of the fact that he couldn’t report on this particular item himself, because it concerned him, which only helped to hype it up into a much bigger story, written up in depth in all the newspapers, apart from the Journal.
To my particular delight, Martin and Jeanette had both come out of it all looking as scummy as they were. It had been a real ‘trial by media’ for both of them, which gave me intense satisfaction after what she’d done to me via the press.
To celebrate their humiliation I’d had a very funny dinner at The Groucho with Peter and Ned. And when I told them the full story about Jeanette and my father, they had laughed so much, I thought we might be asked to leave. Ned had been literally rolling around under the table spluttering.
I’d invited him to the harvest too, of course, and he was a great addition to the party, with his sense of fun – and his long swimmer’s arms, which were excellent for reaching high branches.
Over time our friendship had settled back down into its old easy bantering companionship, although I was still conscious of not letting myself get too close to him physically. The spark was still there at a hormonal level, there was no denying it, whatever my brain and sense of propriety thought about it, but I knew it was just an animal reaction.
I watched him, sitting in a tree, fast-bowling cooking apples to Alex and Archie, who were fielding at far-flung points of the orchard, and I had to smile. The female architecture students seemed to find that scenario particularly photogenic, and so did a man with a camcorder, who I assumed was the documentary film-maker.
Alex was on fine form too. I’d hardly seen him for months, so it was great to catch up with him. He was always at his best down at Willow Barn, I thought, out in the open air, where he loved to be, fooling around, pink with exertion, and having a laugh. And I couldn’t help noticing that he and Tara seemed to be getting on rather well too.
Ham just walked about the place beaming until I thought his face might split open. It was his idea of heaven: a classic Willow Barn family and friends event, with perfect Indian summer weather – and with lots of suitably informed people to watch us all being fabulously Willow Barn-y.
The only thing that seemed to be causing him any stress was his table plan. He’d mull for ages over how to seat 10 of us at a family dinner, so 240 people at 24 round tables was a huge deal for him; especially as he gave whole lectures on the topic, relating it back to ‘further considerations of proximity and fluidity in the family home’, as he put it.
This one was a major challenge, not only because of the sheer numbers – and the high proportion of guests who thought they were terribly important – but also because he was shamelessly showing off to his peers, fans and sycophants.
As a ‘senior family member’ and his co-author, I was hosting one of the key tables, he told me, and when I nipped into the big top for a quick snoop before dinner, after he’d put the place cards round, I was surprised to see that I had Alex sitting next to me.
I’d expected to have someone a little more germane to the success of the book project to look after and my heart sank as I realized Ham must be back to matchmaking between us again.
Despite those misgivings, I took special care with my appearance as I got ready for the dinner. I was excited about the book, after all, and wanted to do everything I could to help it along.
It felt really weird putting make-up on, though. I spent my time now pretty much permanently in my scruffiest clothes and I had to yank my mascara wand to get it out of the tube, it was so long since I had used it.
Mostly, I was quite happy to have left that pressured world of image behind, but for one night, I reckoned, I could turn it on again. Ham had given me a pair of beautiful Myla knickers for the occasion – chosen by Chloe – to get me in the mood, he’d said.
I couldn’t imagine many women received that kind of underwear from their fathers, I thought, but from him, it just seemed normal.
As I slipped into them and then buckled on my gold Prada wedges, it was like stepping back into my former self, and when I looked in the mirror at the woman in the blue silk Lanvin dress, it was a little like looking at an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while. I blew her a kiss.
As the dinner hour approached, I made sure I was at my table early to greet my guests. The film-maker was one of them, and he arrived with his camera rolling. He’d had the bloody thing going all day.
By ten minutes after the appointed time, everyone on my table had sat down apart from Alex.
I was just starting to wonder where the hell he was when he rushed over, looking gorgeous in his black tie, but even pinker in the cheeks than normal, and changed the name card on the place next to me.
‘Last-minute change, Stella,’ he said. ‘Ham wants to put one of his students next to you, instead of me.’
I turned to speak to him, but he’d gone, so I glanced at the place card he’d put down to see who I was getting. I looked and blinked, wondering if I was seeing right. In immaculate black calligraphy, it said ‘Jay Fisher’.
I was squinting at it, thinking that my eyes must be playing tricks on me, when Ham got up, clinking his glass with a spoon, to call everyone to attention so he could introduce the dinner.
As every head in the room turned to look at him, someone came and slid into the seat next to me.
It was Jay.
Jay, looking like a celestial being in black tie. Jay grinning at me, like it was the biggest lark in the world. Jay putting his arms round me and pulling me to him and kissing me, regardless of anyone else nearby. I noticed the film-maker had his camera pointed right at us, but I didn’t care.
‘So, are you pleased to see me?’ he said.
I just nodded, like a moron.
‘Well, are you going to say hello?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling with mischievous delight.
‘But Alex said it was going to be one of Dad’s students…’ I said, when I finally regained my powers of speech. I was still in shock.
‘I am one of his students,’ said Jay. ‘I’m going back to college, Stella, in London – and your father has taken me on as an intern. I’ve done three years of architecture school already, remember.’
I closed my eyes and opened them again, just to make sure he was still there. He was.
After that we had to stop talking, because Ham was making his speech, although I noticed his eyes kept flicking over to me and Jay and he looked ready to burst with excitement.
‘And so,’ he was saying, ‘I’m delighted to welcome you all to Willow Barn. Some of you are old friends, some are visiting for the first time – some for the second time…’
He looked over at us again, this time very deliberately. I leaned my head against Jay’s shoulder and grinned back at him. Jay waved.
‘And I hope you will all feel welcome in what is, above all other considerations, my family’s home. All my family are here tonight to share it with you – every last one of them, which is saying something–and if anyone has any questions, there will be a short interactive session after the pudding, when you can ask me, or any of the family, anything you would like to know about the house and our lives here.’
The dinner was a complete blur for me. There may have been other people at the table, but I’m afraid I didn’t speak to any of them. Jay and I might as well have been alone in that marquee.
‘I tried to find you, Jay,’ I told him. ‘Not long after I left Sveti Stefan, I tried to find you, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake, and I felt so bad about what I said about your foundation. I really didn’t understand how serious it was, and it was terrible what I said. I’m so sorry.’
My eyes filled up with tears and I thought I was going to lose it, but Jay just shook his head and kissed me tenderly on the lips.
‘I couldn’t get hold of you anywhere,’ I continued. ‘You’d changed all your numbers and then you sent my letter back. That’s when I knew it was hopeless.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘That was brutal, but I was so hurt when you chose your job over me, and yes, the “toy charity” thing did get to me, but it’s OK, we all say dumb stuff in the heat of the moment and I hadn’t told you about it properly anyway, so how were you supposed to know?’
We sat there for a moment, just looking at each other and breathing. It seemed such a miracle to be doing that in the same space again.
‘And anyway, Stella,’ he said eventually, entwining his fingers with mine, ‘it wasn’t just you that made me freak out that day. I was so confused about my dad and all that back then, I wasn’t thinking straight at all. I so wanted to get back in touch with you, but I was just too ashamed of the way I’d behaved. And too stupidly stubborn…’
I bit him tenderly on the tip of his nose. Because I could.
‘So where have you been all this time?’ I asked him.
‘I went back to New York first up, but I just couldn’t hack being in the apartment without you…’ He frowned a little. ‘Did you see that paparazzi picture of me coming out of it with Patrizia, incidentally?’
I nodded, feeling a bit sick.
‘I thought you would. She’s just a friend, I’ve known her forever, and she’s subletting the place from me, because I couldn’t stand to be there without you. I’d been showing her round when they got that picture, the bastards. Anyway, I’ve been at my mom’s ever since. I’ve been helping her with the grape harvest, and just hanging out, cooking, weeding the vegetable patch, swimming, sleeping, wasting my life, being a dumb “money bunny”, as you call it, and thinking about you.’
Just what I’d been doing at Willow Barn, I thought. I shook my head, it was so nuts, I still couldn’t take it in. All those days of longing and loneliness and now he was really there. I kept touching him to make sure. Then I realized I hadn’t asked him the obvious question.
‘But how did you come to be here?’
Jay’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
‘Like I said, I’m your dad’s student…’
‘So how did you come to be his student, smartypants?’ I said, poking him gently in his stomach, so he wriggled. I’d forgotten quite how nice that stomach was.
‘Well, first he found me and invited me to this party…’
‘OΚ, Jay Fisher,’ I said. ‘Enough of the mystery-man business, I’ve waited too long to see you – tell me exactly how you came to be here tonight. From the beginning.’
‘Well, like I say, it was your dad. He’s quite an operator. He called up Edward – you know, my heinous uncle, the one he did the museum with? – and got my mom’s number on some pretext, and she took the call, because they knew each other back in the day, and she handed the phone to me. It was as simple as that.’
I just shook my head in amazement. Why didn’t I think of that connection?
‘But what did he say to you?’
‘He said his most beloved firstborn daughter had a broken heart and that he felt responsible and that he was really sorry for intervening in our relationship and asked me if I would like to come to the Willow Barn apple harvest.’
‘What did you say?’ I asked.
‘I said I would walk there from Santa Fe, barefoot, across broken glass, if I thought you would see me again. And then I asked him if he would consider taking me on as a student.’
Jay laughed.
‘No. He said that was an entirely different conversation and that I needed to send a formal application with my CV and all my college reports to his office. So I did – and he took me on, but I only found that bit out today.’
Then he kissed me a lot.
There was a bit of a break between the main course and the pudding, with people going to the loo and outside for ciggies, and I told Jay I was going over to thank Ham. He came with me. So did the film-maker, but I was getting used to him.
‘Actually, Stella,’ said Jay, as we walked across the marquee. ‘There’s someone on your father’s table I really want you to meet.’
She’d been sitting with her back to me during the dinner, but as soon as she heard Jay’s voice and turned round I knew straight away who it was – Celia, Jay’s mother. She stood up and beamed at me, and then embraced me, like a long-lost friend.
‘I know exactly who you are, honey,’ she said to me. ‘I am so happy to meet you, Stella. Jay has been wasting away on me, pining for you. I don’t want you two to split up ever again. OK?’
‘Neither do I,’ I said, grinning back at her.
Ham came round to join us, beaming like a bright planet of delight. I hugged him with every ounce of hug I had in my body.
‘Thank you, Ham,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
There was nothing else to say.
Jay and I joined his table for the rest of the dinner and it was the best fun. Every member of my mad mixed-up jigsaw of a family came over to kiss me and tease me and to tell me how they had known for ages that Jay was coming and how hard it had been not to let on. Especially when he had arrived a bit early and they’d had to hide him from me in the pool house.
Archie was hyper about the whole thing.
‘I put him in the tree house first,’ he said, between Butt-head sniggers. ‘Then I thought – bad move – too obvious, Stella loves the tree house. So then I thought: pool house, yeah.’ He clicked his fingers, like a jazz singer.
‘Go on, Archie,’ I said. ‘Tell me the route.’
He beamed.
‘Well, it was a hard call, because I had to avoid the barn and the house, so I went, tree house, paddock, drive, behind copse, lower garden, behind summer house, east side of lawn – we had to run that bit – guest-wing French windows, kitchen courtyard, kitchen garden, pool house. It was pretty risky – particularly the kitchen courtyard section – but I couldn’t see any other way.’
I kissed his pimply cheek and, for once, he didn’t flinch away.
‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘I did have a sheet over his head as well.’
The question-and-answer session after the pudding was a little dull for those of us already well versed in Ham’s theories, with the academics and students asking questions designed primarily to show how clever they were. I really just wanted to escape to be alone with Jay, but I knew I couldn’t.
There was one moment of levity when Tabitha, clearly goaded on by Rose and Alex, stood up and said she had a question for Ham.
She stood on her chair and said clearly to the whole room: ‘Please can Daisy have a pug puppy for Christmas?’
He had to agree and everyone cheered.
After that the questioners returned to more earnest enquiries about the long-term emotional implications of the parental turret and the metaphorical meaning of the bamboo walk.
Then Jay stood up to ask a question. I thought he was being a bit keen as Ham’s newest student, but at least it showed willing.
‘I have a question for you, Henry,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘Please can I have your permission to marry your eldest daughter?’
The room was silent for a moment, then everyone yelled and clapped and whistled their approval.
‘I would be delighted, Jay,’ Ham said. ‘But you’ll have to ask her – she’s a very independent girl, as you know.’
Jay turned to me. I was dizzy from shock – first him turning up and now this.
‘Will you marry me, Stella, baby?’ he said.
A million thoughts raced across my brain in a nanosecond as I stood there, everyone in the tent staring at me, my most intimate personal life on display as entertainment for the guests at Ham’s party. A cute little footnote for future studies of the work of Lord Montecourt, I thought bitterly.
My first instinct was to flee from that marquee, pausing only to throw something heavy at my father’s head. I felt a flash of pure white rage at him for orchestrating this outrageous situation and my head snapped round to give him a death-ray stare, but then I looked back at Jay’s face and my anger immediately disappeared.
His expression was so loving and gentle, with a distinct hint of nerves in the eyes. And he had reason to be nervous – I’d never wanted to get married, he knew that. I stood there, silent, for another hearbeat, seriously considering my answer. But suddenly it was out of my mouth before I really knew it was happening. I loved this man. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. That was all that mattered.
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
‘Louder!’ shouted some wag from the back, who I had a strong feeling was Peter Wallington, so I said it again in my most ringing tones.
‘Yes!’
There was a great roar of cheering and when it had all calmed down, Jay spoke again.
‘Tonight?’ he said.
I looked at him – then back at Ham, and suddenly it all made sense. The huge marquee. The filming. Daisy’s sparkly shoes. The bloody maypole.
Ham threw back his head and roared with laughter. It was a total set-up. But this time I couldn’t even be cross with him.
‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘Yes, I will.’
I wasn’t going to let Jay Fisher slip through my fingers again.
Of course, we couldn’t actually get married there and then – there are forms to fill in, identities to prove, bans to be read and all that, before you can get legally hitched – but we had a symbolic wedding, conducted by the Druid priest, under a bower of fruit-laden apple branches in the centre of Ham’s big top, with all my family and dearest friends there to share it with us.
I had to hand it to my father, I thought, as he walked me up what I could now see was the aisle – a straight gap from the top table to the bower – he might have been a shocking old control freak, but as Jay said, he was a hell of an operator. He’d got his big wedding without me having to get legally married. It was very clever and now I was stuck with it, I had to admit, all the details were perfect.
Darling Daisy was my bridesmaid, in her terrible sparkly shoes, Jay was resplendent in black tie, and I carried the floral centrepiece from Ham’s table as my bouquet. Alex was Jay’s best man and my ring was a free gift from one of Daisy’s princess comics. Suited me.
I was even, I realized, wearing something old and blue – my dress, the one I’d had on the night I met Jay. Suddenly the new knickers made sense too, and Chloe insisting I borrowed her beautiful pearl drop earrings, to look my best ‘To impress the film-maker’, she’d said – and there he was again, I realized, happily filming as we made our vows. Nothing had been left to chance.
And that wasn’t the end of it. When we left the big top to go over to the hay barn for the dancing, the two bearded men and several more of their ilk were skipping merrily around the maypole. I laughed so much I couldn’t walk, so Jay picked me up and carried me.
The only aspect of the big fat bogus wedding Ham had thrust upon me that I refused to go along with was a bridal waltz – carried away as I was with the lark of it all, I still had my limits.
Instead, I introduced Jay to the hectic delights of Strip the Willow and other exhausting reels and country dances – during which I was happy to notice that Alex and Tara seemed to be glued together, totally ignoring all the bits where you were supposed to change partners, and just dancing with each other.
Then, while everyone was caught up in the frenzy of the ceilidh, Jay and I quietly made our exit, and walked through the moonlit garden together, just savouring the moment.
I said nothing as he led me down across the orchard, round the pool, through the walled kitchen garden, into the house by the back door and out again through the glass doors at the front – clearly, he knew the plan of the place as well as I did – then past the marquee and down to the summer house at the end of the lawn.
I lay on the slatted wooden seat with my head in his lap, looking up at him and still marvelling that he was even there – let alone pretend-married to me.
‘Hello, Mrs Non-Fisher,’ he said, stroking my hair. Then he got a more serious look on his face.
‘Er,’ he continued, with unusual hesitance, ‘you see, the thing is, Mrs Non-F – I’ve got one little thing I have to tell you. I hope you’re not going to be mad I didn’t do it before I got that plastic ring on your finger.’
I just smiled up at him and kissed the ring. What else could they possibly spring on me? I wondered, glancing around to see if there was a camera rolling.
‘Will you mind being married to an impoverished architecture student?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.
‘I quit,’ he said. ‘I’m not the heir any more. I had plenty of time to think about it while I was hiding out at my mom’s place and she totally supports my decision. She encouraged me. I told my dad just before I came over here. The Hippo can have the lot, all the money and all the hassle. I mean, I should get to keep my trusts, although he could fight me for all of it, if he felt like it, and darling Jaclyn will certainly want him to, but I don’t care. He can have it. I just want my own life – and you.’
I sat up and wrapped my arms around him. As un-wedding presents go, it wasn’t exactly conventional – but from Jay, it was the best I could have asked for.
‘You’re not disappointed, are you?’ he asked me, sounding sincerely concerned.
I shook my head and smiled at him.
‘Just as long as you understand that I’ll have to get a job to support us…’ I said.