Georgina had no intention of telling Ed any such thing. Ed in ecstasy wasn’t a prospect she wished to experience. But Sally was stimulating company, outspoken and so disarming. You would never have known she was Lady Sally.
‘Believe me, Ed’s going to be impressed by you. He’s really turned on by powerful women. Be sure to keep out of the bedroom when he shows you round the house.’
Georgina nearly choked on a nut she was chewing.
‘Joke,’ Sally said. ‘He’s a pussycat really, whatever may be going on inside his head. Now that I’ve given him this build-up, I mustn’t keep you in suspense any longer. Shall we join him?’
Their steps echoed on white oak floorboards. They were in a large living room, larger than it appeared through the glass outside. The leather sofa looked so low that Georgina wondered if she’d ever be able to get up from it. Otherwise the room was sparsely furnished with matching armchairs, low tables and bowls of flowers that may have been silk but so well made you would scarcely have known.
‘Take a seat and I’ll see if the master of the house is respectable,’ Sally said. ‘He’s been having a nap.’
In as dignified a fashion as she could, Georgina lowered herself into the sofa and pulled the hem of her skirt over her knees. Left alone, she decided on a strategy for meeting Ed. Better not talk about architecture. She’d be at odds with him there. It would be hypocritical, not to say dangerous, to give the impression she liked the steel and glass. The Beau Nash Society ought to be a safer topic. She’d learned things about the real Beau Nash in recent days.
If she survived this test, her next meeting with Peter Diamond would be something to relish when she tossed in the titbit that she’d recently visited the current Beau. The look on that seen-it-all-and-bought-the-T-shirt face would be priceless.
The boards creaked again. More than one person for sure. Every move in this house was telegraphed.
‘Don’t get up, Georgie,’ Sally said. ‘No need to stand on ceremony. You two have met already.’
The barrel-shaped man with her was in a white bathrobe and leather flip-flops and festooned with gold jewellery. He grinned and raised a limp hand in the way Roman emperors do in films. At a guess he was fifteen to twenty years older than Sally, but the face, being pudgy, was well preserved — probably improved by Sally’s anti-wrinkle treatment. He was completely hairless except for a triangle of white fuzz on his chest showing above the bathrobe.
Without being asked, Sally helped lower her husband into one of the chairs. ‘So,’ he said to Georgina, ‘you’re a cop.’
‘A top cop,’ Sally said.
‘Funny we haven’t met before at some civic bunfight,’ Ed said. ‘Don’t you have to do the glad-handing like me?’
‘Not much,’ Georgina said. ‘I’m overseeing operations mostly.’ She shifted the interest away from herself in a way she thought rather neat. ‘But as president of the Beau Nash Society you must know just about everyone of importance in the county.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Little me.’ Sally had spoken from across the room where she was gazing out at the fringes of the city, ribbons of light linking building developments very likely put there by her husband’s company. ‘Someone needed to explain why you were wearing your Beau costume.’
‘When was this?’
‘In the car the night before last, when we gave Georgie a lift.’
Ed looked blank. ‘I can’t remember fuck about the night before last.’
‘Honey,’ Sally said with a click of her tongue.
‘It’s a fact.’
‘I wish I could say you were tired and emotional but it wouldn’t be true. You were paralytic.’
‘Take a word of advice from a man who knows,’ he said to Georgina. ‘Never drink anyone else’s homemade wine. Do you know anything about Beau Nash, Georgie?’
‘The basics,’ Georgina said. She was already resigned to being addressed as Georgie in this house, but she would make damn sure nobody at work ever took such a liberty. ‘I’ve lived here long enough to call myself a Bathonian and as he was our most famous son it’s splendid that you keep his name alive.’
‘Famous son, my arse.’
Sally shot him down. ‘Ed, that was uncalled for.’
‘But true. He was a Taffy, born in Swansea and raised on leeks and seaweed.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’
‘Laverbread is made from seaweed.’
Good thing he didn’t know Georgina’s idea of happiness was visiting Wales. She would keep that to herself.
‘There’s worse I could say about the Taffies.’
Sally said, ‘And we don’t wish to hear it.’
‘I’m not wearing the costume now. I can say what I like in my own gaff. I’ll tell you this for nothing, Georgie. After the best part of twenty years being the Beau, I’ve honoured the old poser long enough. I’ve learned the dances, worn the wig, played the card games, rolled the dice, eaten the food and listened to more bum-numbing lectures than Einstein ever did and now I deserve a break. I’m a builder ferchrisssake. What am I doing poncing about in a frock coat?’
‘It’s the honour,’ Sally said. ‘They respect you.’
‘They did at the beginning. The glamour fades.’
Georgina wasn’t sure how to proceed. She hadn’t expected this tirade.
‘How did you get involved?’ she asked.
‘When I was thinking about expanding into restoration work, doing up old buildings, I went to this slide lecture in the Guildhall. Got chatting to the geezer in the next seat and it turned out he was from the Beau Nash Society. He’s dead now. Anyway, he asked me to be his guest at the annual dinner and ball and I thought it would be a bit of a laugh so I agreed. Forgot about it until a card with a gold edge arrived and I found out what I’d let myself in for, like hiring a costume and learning to dance before I even got to the dinner. This was before I met Sally. Blow me if I didn’t enjoy myself. Took to the dancing lessons like a duck to water.’
Sally said, ‘The fact that several gorgeous young women were learning with him had nothing to do with it.’
‘Minuets, cotillions, you name it. Looking at me, Georgie, you may not think so, but I’m light on my feet. Twinkle-toes. I can chassée with the best.’
Certainly it took some believing.
‘To cut the story short, they took to me in a big way at the ball and persuaded me to join. Inside three months I got my own tailor-made coat and breeches. That’s another story, the fittings—’
‘Oh for God’s sake, get on with it,’ Sally said.
‘I’m getting there. Next thing was the Beau dropped dead. Professor from the university. He hadn’t been in the position long. Overwork, they said. A case of high Beau pressure, I say.’
‘Give us a break,’ Sally said.
‘Nobody wanted the job and for a while it looked like the society might fold. So they asked me. I wasn’t keen at the time. I’m not a Nash scholar. Then the bait was offered. Lunch with the lord lieutenant and stuff like that, useful contacts for my corporate empire, so I took it on. And if I say so myself, I’ve done them proud, unselfishly giving my time to the cause for no reward.’
‘Apart from all the extra contracts,’ Sally said.
‘Such as?’
‘Kelston, Norton St. Philip, Westbury.’
‘We put in our bids in the usual way.’
‘And always came out the winner. How strange.’
‘You extended well beyond Bath?’ Georgina said, to put a stop to the bickering. It was making her nervous.