Page 61 of All Summer Long

And then he kissed her for a good, long time under the heat of the afternoon sun, a slow, lazy smooch, a holding card for later.

‘I’ll do it, you know,’ she said, looking towards the gypsy caravan as she laid her head down on his chest. ‘I’m going to make this glampsite happen, and it’s going to be brilliant.’

Robinson tightened his arm around her shoulders. ‘Darlin’, I don’t doubt you for one minute. If you told me that you were gonna fly to the moon and back I’d believe you. You’re just that kind of girl.’

Alice glowed with pleasure and pride under Robinson’s praise. They said that it took a village to raise a child. In Alice’s case, it took a village and a hot cowboy to turn that child into a woman to be reckoned with.

Every seat in The Siren was taken the following Friday night, and the fire doors thrown open to combat the ongoing summer airlessness and the heat of having pretty much the whole village in one confined space. Alice and Niamh had bagged an early table, and Hazel, Ewan and Stewie had straggled in and dragged chairs around it too.

‘Are you sure you can’t persuade Robinson to come?’ Niamh said, flaking cobalt blue oil paint off her thumbnail. ‘Imagine this lot if he just strolled in here and knocked a few tracks out.’

Alice glanced around the village collective; farmers, WI members, with a smattering of goth teenagers sprinkled through. ‘I’m not sure they’d even know who he was,’ she said.

‘I can think of one person who definitely would,’ Niamh said, glancing over towards Davina standing at the bar, her hair backcombed into a 1980s crow’s nest. ‘She’d eat him alive.’ Given the fact that the postmistress was also wearing a basque with white lace elbow-length gloves and had numerous strands of knotted pearls draped around her neck, it was a fair bet she was planning to perform a few Madonna classics.

On the small, makeshift stage Dessy tapped the mike experimentally, making everyone cringe and cover their ears. He waited until their shoulders moved back down from around their ears and then did it again just to wind them all up, earning himself dirty looks and a peanut in the eye from one especially irate member of the audience.

‘Welcome ladies, gentle-farmers, Death Eaters,’ he said, throwing a wink over at goth corner, whose inhabitants glared back at him impressively, ‘and a special welcome to Queen Madge. We’re honoured.’ He dipped a curtsey at Davina, who accepted his deference by raising her pina colada in his direction and wiggling her lace clad fingers in a dodgy royal wave.

‘I’ve got a book to pass round,’ Dessy said, holding up a red folder. ‘If your song isn’t in here you can’t sing it, simple as.’ He flicked through it, frowned, and then tossed it aside as he glanced up at Davina again. ‘There’s only “Like a Virgin”, sorry, Davs. Not really up your alley.’

Niamh rolled her eyes at Alice as Dessy ran through his pantomime introductions.

‘What will you sing?’ she said to Alice, reaching over for the red folder off the table where Dessy had flung it.

Alice laughed. ‘Err, nothing, of course,’ she said. She’d never sung a note in public and had no intention of changing that this evening.

‘You will,’ Niamh said, flicking through the pages, unruffled. ‘It’s addictive. You’ll have a couple of glasses of wine and suddenly realise that you’re Lady Gaga.’

‘I highly doubt that.’

She watched as Stewie patted himself down absently looking for his reading glasses before Hazel reached up and fished them out of his Mick Hucknell-esque curls. He’d teamed the wig with a Bob Marley t-shirt and flowing harem pants, quite out there even by Stewie’s standards.

‘I’m hoping to do “Wuthering Heights” if it’s in there,’ Hazel said, adjusting the velvet bodice of her strapless purple dress. The chiffon skirt fell in various layers around her knees, and she’d pinned her hair back with a large rose clip. The overall effect was somewhere between a country singer and a pagan witch, and it suited her well.

‘“Do You Think I’m Sexy”, Stewie?’ Hazel suggested, taking the file from Niamh and sliding her fingertip down the list.

‘Yes, Hazel. As a matter of fact, I do,’ he said. ‘Bewitching, actually.’ He picked up his whisky and knocked it back in one go, then pushed out his chair and headed off for a refill, leaving Hazel staring after his printed, multi-coloured backside in a daze.

Alice smiled into her wine glass as Hazel’s cheeks turned pink. She hadn’t seen that one coming, but then she’d been so preoccupied of late with everything going on at home that she’d barely had time to notice what was going on outside the walls of Borne Manor.

On the stage, Jase kicked off proceedings with a rousing twist on Beyonce’s ‘All the Single Ladies’, complete with a low-cut tight black sequin t-shirt and dance moves he’d clearly gone to some effort to perfect, watched and egged-on by a shiny-eyed, entranced Dessy.

‘Stewie, will you do “Islands in the Stream” with Hazel? It always reminds me of happy childhood memories,’ Niamh said mistily when he came back from the bar. She managed to say it without a flicker of acknowledgment that she’d heard the earlier exchange between Stewie and Hazel and decided to meddle shamelessly. She had no special memories of the song, but hoped to after tonight now. Scribbling their names against it before they had time to even consider her question, she got up and treated the pub to a flirty version of ‘At Last’ by Etta James.

Alice noticed a dour-faced Marsh sidle in and take a stool at the end of the bar, his feet not touching the floor from his perch. He caught her eye and looked away without greeting, which didn’t bother or surprise her in the slightest. He was a small man with an ego as big as his oversized hat, a fish out of water amongst the villagers that he made no attempt to talk to.

Dessy killed ‘Wake Me Up Before You GoGo’, thrusting his hips and swinging the mike in a way that had a couple of tweed-clad farmers in their sixties slacking off their ties as Alice drank the last of her glass of wine and wondered what Robinson was up to back at the manor. Niamh topped them both up as Dessy consulted his list and beckoned Stewie and Hazel up to the microphone, plugging a second one in for the duet. Across the pub, Ewan slid down almost under the table muttering that he wanted to die as his friends elbowed him in the ribs.

‘Put your hands together for Borne’s answer to Dolly and Kenny,’ Dessy said, presenting them with his jazz hands as Hazel looked down at her chest doubtfully. ‘This one’s for you, sir,’ Dessy added, and threw a theatrical wink across the room at Marsh, who looked over his own shoulder at the wall for someone behind him in sarcastic response.

Hazel cleared her throat as the music struck up, Stewie swaying beside her with his mike ready by his lips. He started to sing, not especially to the tune, merry eyes only for Hazel. She almost whispered her way through her first line, and then Stewie reached for her fingers and gave them a squeeze until she piped up louder. They sang to each other rather than the room, sweet, romantic words that neither of them would have otherwise dreamt of uttering to each other. When Stewie ensured her she could rely on him whatever, the whole room sang ah ah, and when Hazel agreed to sail away with him, they oo oo’d. And then came the line that mentioned riding away together to make love, and Stewie abandoned all attempts at singing and bent Hazel backwards over his arm for a massive snog.

‘Stewie, you old sea dog! Get a room!’ Jase called from behind the bar as Dessy heroically took up the lyrics and stood in front of Stewie and Hazel to preserve their modesty. They emerged when the track finished, Hazel holding Stewie’s red wig in one hand and Stewie wearing more of Hazel’s plum lipstick than she was.

‘Gin, dear,’ Hazel said, sliding unsteadily into the chair between Alice and Niamh.

Dessy reached down and half pulled Alice out of her seat. ‘Save me, Alice,’ he murmured, lining up the next track. ‘Sing. I’m desperate for a pee.’

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