Nigel is, as is so often the case, alone for the evening. Winifred only accompanies him to public work shindigs these days—she says the other kind give her a headache, although what she really means is Nigel gives her a headache—and the girls are at college or on an overseas exchange program, conveniently out of the way. Of course he doesn’t have to be here—when you’re a minister you’re not short for party dates—but he’s heard that Schiller throws great parties, and he’s been curious for a while.
The chauffeur opens the door and Nigel pulls himself unsteadily to his feet, blinking at a sleekly smiling platinum blonde in a black evening gown. She offers him her opera-gloved hand. “Welcome to Nether Stowe House, Minister, we’re so glad we could welcome you tonight! My name’s Anneka Overholt and I’ll be your hostess for the evening.” She has an odd accent, trans-Atlantic with a trace of something Scandinavian, and Nigel smiles back, pegging where she’s coming from immediately.
“Thanks,” he slurs, then squares his shoulders and offers her his arm. She rests her hand on it and guides him discreetly towards the marble mosaic floor of the entrance hall. “Charmed, ’m sure.” He stifles a hiccup. The champers in the car was somewhat stronger than expected, or else he forgot to eat lunch again: he’s not sure. “Happy to be here.”
“I’ve heard so much about you,” his companion gushes happily, ice-blue eyes twinkling, and for a moment Nigel’s mind sharpens: I’m sure you have, he realizes. This isn’t amateur hour and the girl’s clearly top-drawer talent, not somebody you rent by the half hour off the back of a phone box postcard. “We have a seafood buffet in the Grand Hall, there’s a very accomplished swing band playing in the Prince Regent’s Ballroom, and a firework display after dark at the end of the Rose Garden. There are other refreshments in the pavilion on the terrace, and if you want anything—anything at all—I’ll see to it.”
“I’m sure you will,” Nigel purrs amiably. She dimples as she smiles, earrings glittering as brightly as her perfect teeth—gosh, Schiller must own half of Hatton Garden, he tells himself as he notices the amount of ice she’s wearing—and she sways closer for a moment.
“Would you care for refreshments?” she asks, and without looking away she reaches sideways and produces a glass of Buck’s Fizz from a tray presented by a uniformed waiter. “Something lighter, to pace yourself with, perhaps? The night is young…”
Damn it, he’s had a wearisome week. The fallout from that mess up north is the gift that just keeps on fucking giving, one damn hearing after another, not to mention the headache of dealing with Barry’s insensate demands that he shut down this rogue agency immediately, a job just concluded this week. He deserves an evening off, especially one on the dime of the trans-Atlantic cousins who’ll be picking up the slack. Kicking back with the delectable Anneka is just what the doctor ordered, he decides. “Thank you! A glass for yourself?” he suggests.
The night is indeed young, and if he’s reading the signs correctly it’s going to prove a much more memorable affair than the other options that were on his menu—the Defense Electronics Association’s annual dinner or some tedious constituency thing. Anneka from the Planet of the Platinum-Amex Playmates smiles at him with a glint in her eye that makes his pulse race as she raises her glass in a toast. “Your health!” she proposes, then leads him arm in arm towards the ballroom.
The ambiance in the public rooms of Nether Stowe House is carefully curated, remaining just on the tasteful and up-market side of riotous. Not that Nigel’s anyone to criticize—he was a member of the Piers Gaveston Society back in the ’80s when that prize rotter Graf von Bismarck was running it as a live-action reenactment of Oberst Redl—but it’s interesting to watch. Lots of distinguished men of business wearing DJs and a fair few older women in designer gowns, but the female age distribution skews a couple of decades younger than the men’s and there’s something, something oddly uniform about the girls, as if they’re animated mannequins from the same dress agency window. Servers in dickie bows or old-fashioned maids’ uniforms keep a discreet eye on the level of bubbly in the guests’ glasses. As Anneka leads him through the Grand Hall he hears laughter from the top of the sweeping staircase. He looks up in time to see a piece of prize totty leaning over the banister, displaying side-boob and cleavage down to her navel as she giggles behind her hand at something a milky-skinned Adonis in a leather jockstrap has just told her. “Tonight is your special night,” Anneka purrs in his ear, “you can have anything you want. Anything.” She tugs his arm around her shoulders like a stole. Her glass has disappeared somewhere and she produces a silver pill pot with her gloved left hand, flipping it open to offer him a familiar-looking blue tablet: Pfizer’s little helper. Nigel takes it without a second thought, washing it back with the last of his drink. “Anything at all,” she adds, leaning against him in such a way as to make her meaning clear.
The drawing room seems to be reserved for movers and shakers sad or staid enough to have brought their spouse along for the evening, but as she draws Nigel towards the rear of the house he recognizes a wilder scene, like a grown-up version of the excesses of his student days and certain discreet private events at Party Conference. He spots a couple of fellow Bullingdon alumni, a younger Saudi prince in mufti, and a couple of MEPs who pointedly fail to make eye contact. They’re all accompanied by toned and tanned arm candy, mostly (but not exclusively) female, appreciatively hanging on their egos. The band is indeed playing swing, but the ballroom floor provides a stage for a small professional dance troupe who retreat between each set to shed more layers of their outfits. The audience mostly stick to the edges, watching from the sidelines or conversing.
“I must say you know how to make a fellow welcome,” Nigel murmurs in his companion’s ear. “For some reason I wasn’t expecting … well, this.” His wandering gaze takes it all in, a couple billion pounds’ worth of distinguished silverback executives and their glittering constellation of personal entertainers: a euphemism he can just about convince himself fits. (Political probity dictates that nobody here will admit to paying for, or selling, sex for money, but the young and athletic will doubtless leave with their personal finances improved, and the old and the louche with the other side of the coin bankrolled by their host.) “It’s all rather remarkable.”
“Oh, I can’t take the credit for it; it’s all thanks to our CEO,” Anneka reassures him. “He likes to lay on a good spread and send his guests away happy.” She smiles, reaches out, and snags a champagne flute from a passing waitress, and passes it to him. “Perhaps you’d like to meet him personally?”