Page 71 of The Cocktail Bar
“Hey, you’re not wrong there… and this is just the beginning,” said Terry, raising his glass to prompt another toast from everybody at the table. “The ‘ole globe sure is our oyster now.”
“Am I missing something? What is this significant other thing that’s happened today?” River said with an expectant smile. He could already tell what was coming.
Banjo Boy began to pat his instrument, sat as usual, protectively in his lap, to signal some kind of a build-up to a public announcement. The pat became the hard beat of a drum and soon he couldn’t resist leaving the table to try his luck with the Czech musicians at the restaurant’s entrance, who had little choice but to accept him – just for one song, which admittedly, he did a pretty decent job of providing a strangely haunting melody to.
“What a day it’s been, as I was saying,” cried Heather again as the musicians finally called it a day and began to pack up their instruments. “Terry’s only asked me to move in with him… permanently, on the Charles Bridge.”
“The… did you just say on the Charles Bridge?”
His question was met with a round of hearty giggles.
“She doesn’t mean I’m gonna knock up bricks and mortar on the bridge, River. No, course not. Plus the fact, I’m a man in demand these days, soon to brighten up all of your television sets… Nicholas Knowles eat your heart out.”
Terry’s index finger scanned the guests at the table then, as if it might find the traitor, the one who had always secretly had theDIY SOSfront man geek crush but was too embarrassed to admit it.
“She means when we get back to Glastonbury, we’re going to shack up together permanently, your mother and I. Well, I can hardly kick out Blake and George – mind you, I’d probably be doing them the biggest favour if I did, so we’re going to pool our resources together, love, aren’t we?”
He paused briefly to look lovingly into Heather’s eyes, and despite the genuine sentiment, River almost had to clutch at his stomach, as would have Georgina, had she not been serving up trays of heady mixers right now. “Because actually, there is a little bit more to tell you about this TV show I’m appearing in right now where we’re filming the stately home improvements at the Rigby-Chandlers—”
“Sounds fascinating,” said River, pulling up a spare seat for himself and Alice, figuring that any story emanating from Terry after wine, and now theslivovicwhich the waiter threatened to uncork, was going to be akin to a reading straight out of War and Peace – but also, that they couldn’t hover behind Heather for ever and a day, making her strain her neck this way and that.
“I’m only flippin’ well earning more than I’ve done,” Terry broke off momentarily to switch to a whisper now, suspicion washing over his face at the sight of the waiter and his huddle of shot glasses, “in a bloomin’ decade,” he added, eyebrows tall as skyscrapers, head nodding affirmatively.
“Well that’s brilliant, Terry,” said Alice encouragingly.
“And there’s more,” Terry rubbed his hands together. “Please don’t think me greedy… and only God above knows how this has come about, ‘cos stuff like this never happens to a run of the mill kind of Joe Bloggs like me… but they really are tipping me to be a bit of a future Somerset celeb, like.”
River couldn’t help but smirk inwardly at this little nugget. How Terry would scoff at his own hand in all of this; at his unknown link to Mexico, and the gratitude a little woman with wonky teeth living in a shack in an agave field so deserved for the way she had personally seen to it that lives would be changed.
“Gosh, never mind River and me giving people autographs.” Alice quite unnecessarily forced River to imagine Piet snooping around their room now, a vision he was keen to entrench in drink before he arrived at the sniffing at her underwear part. “It sounds like you’ll be doing that soon enough. But if I may say so myself, hasn’t your luck changed since you’ve started visiting the cocktail bar?”
“He’s worked hard all his life and when opportunity knocks at our age, you really do have to grab it,” said Heather.
“Here, here,” echoed Hayley.
“Our sentiments exactly.” Cassandra raised her slivovic in a toast to Terry, for the drink had now made its merry way around the table. “I must echo Alice’s words though, there’s something about the tall, handsome, bearded, pony-tailed hunk of a mixologist sat beside her… well surely you’ve all noticed it?”
River swallowed down his fear at having been sussed out as Cassandra got to her feet now, her little thimble of potency undulating left and right.
“Sorry we’re late!”
River had to do a double take, a double take of sheer relief but a double take nonetheless. Lady Rigby-Chandler was only rushing over to join them all in an outfit straight out ofDynasty; shoulders wide as plane wings, pearls layered heavily around her neck as if she’d been scooped off a seabed. She turned to click for her tortoise-like husband and as if by magic, Lord Rigby-Chandler began to scuttle a little faster in their direction too.
The group became silent.
“Now,” said Terry, “be friendly one and all… that was the part I was rather trying to get to… but as usual, my tangents stopped me in my tracks. Lord and Lady R-C,Rigby-Chandler, I mean, Rigby-Chandler…” He bowed down low to the aristocrats who stood wide-eyed and expectant at the head of the table, so low it was a wonder he didn’t set fire to his few remaining sprigs of hair on the Gothic candelabra. “M’lady and his lordship… well, they wanted to come over to Prague as well. They’ve sort of taken to the idea of the travel group in recent weeks, you see, as per my relaying of the trip’s details whilst they’ve been overseeing my plastering above their drawing room fire place.”
Lord Rigby-Chandler removed his bowler hat to signal his agreement.
“Um, well, let’s all make them feel welcome then.”
Alice jumped to her feet, helped herself to a couple of chairs from another table, prompting everybody to bunch up together to make room for their unexpected guests. Cassandra panned the restaurant for the dregs of her now forgotten conversation and resigned herself to her own chair.
***
“You’re off the hook, River, and I can only apologise, I’ve been a snob of the first order,” said Lady Rigby-Chandler halfway into her first glass of wine.
River pinched himself behind the screen of the lace tablecloth; sure he’d wake up from this kaleidoscopic dream any minute. Even Mercedes couldn’t have made this shit up.
