The Club(9)
Nikki did respect her boss, but it could be exhausting, all this. Just because Ned’s rages were frequent, short-lived and utterly indiscriminate – as likely to be triggered by an undercooked egg as a million-pound overspend – it did not mean they did not also upset people. Because really, isn’t that what power is? A middle-aged Rumpelstiltskin, jumping up and down, visibly out of breath, swinging on a chandelier, and no one daring to laugh. A grown man so cross with an oil painting of an old lady he looks as if he is about to burst the buttons off his shirt, and nobody daring to suggest he might be overreacting just a little.
There was one poor girl at the back, nibbling away on the skin of her already gnawed cuticles, pulling with her teeth a single strand of nail on the edge of her little finger in an effort to stem the tears. She must be new, poor love, to be taking it all to heart like that. If you worked at Home for any length of time, after a while you became accustomed to the outbursts, got used to not letting it get to you, stopped taking any of it personally. The rages, the rants, the rows? It was all part of the legend, wasn’t it? Ned Groom the visionary stickler. The volatile genius who had built an empire on taste. The man who could make a career if he chose to (or kill it stone dead on a whim). Nikki had seen him throw a decorative paperweight through a plate-glass window, three feet from a cleaner’s head (days before the launch of Country Home). She had seen him waving a kitchen knife within a few inches of a porter’s face (Highland Home’s opening night). On her own first shift at Covent Garden Home all those years ago, as a timid little coat-check girl, she had watched him literally roar at a receptionist for fluffing a member’s last name.
The thing you had to admit, though his delivery could do with some softening, was that he usually had a point. If those yolks had landed on a member’s table they would have been sent back. Once the details in this room were tweaked to his exact specification, it would undoubtedly look a million times better. And Nikki also knew – they all did, with the possible exception of the poor girl at the back of the room – that after he had vented, Ned would forget about the chandelier and the vase and the art. Everyone would get their slap on the back and their bonus, and get complimented for being a good sport.
‘You!’ Ned hissed, looming over the terrified five-foot-nothing assistant. ‘You look like you’ve got some taste – unlike this fucking guy.’ He jabbed his finger accusingly at her boss. ‘Did you not at any stage feel compelled to point out that this looks like the aftermath of a bar brawl in a junk shop?’ She looked pleadingly over at her superior, who simply shrugged apologetically. Ned looked from one to the other, then back again. No one spoke.
‘Right,’ said Ned, shaking his head, a slight smirk playing around his lips. ‘Who’s going to show me the library, then?’
Nobody looked very keen to show Ned the library.
Nikki excused herself at that point, pointing at her phone and miming making a call. The first floor of The Manor was a series of high-ceilinged rooms with sweeping views out to sea, with restaurants and bars and a glass-roofed orangery on the floor below. She walked along the oak-panelled corridor, peering either side into the various opulent snugs, then down the sweeping central staircase. In the soaring entrance hall, a few of Annie’s membership team were huddled around the front desk, flicking through members’ headshots on their iPads and giggling, while barmen criss-crossed the room carrying boxes of vintage Krug, doing their best to dodge housekeeping who were enthusiastically hoovering the Persian rugs and dusting the pair of stuffed flamingos that flanked the entrance.
It was slightly chillier outside than the brightness of the morning sunshine suggested. Nikki checked the time. Was it too soon to text Adam again? Or to call him? He was Ned’s actual brother. He should be there, dealing with all this stuff too, soaking it up, helping smooth ruffled feathers. ‘Adam,’ she sighed into his answerphone, the third message she had left this morning. ‘Adam, can you text me an ETA please? Ned was expecting you an hour ago and he is . . . not in the best mood.’
Turning back towards The Manor and surveying the smashed and scattered antiques on the lawn and in the flowerbeds and on the gravel path beneath the window, she sighed. Well at least that was out of the way now – on a day such as today, it was not a question of if Ned was going to explode, it was when, and how much damage the blast would do. Exactly, Nikki often thought, like her mother – which was probably why it simply washed over her most of the time.
What a revelation, what a relief it had been to realize, at the age of about twelve perhaps, that her mother’s tempers were not actually something you could prevent. That no matter how quietly you walked or how carefully you cleaned up after yourself, or how studiously you tried to avoid attracting her attention, she would always be able to find something to lose her rag about. That did not make it any more pleasant to be in the eye of the storm of course, but what it did mean was that you stopped internalizing any of it.
She heard a slam, looking up to see the girl who had been blinking back tears upstairs run out of The Manor’s front door, skidding to a halt when they locked eyes. Nikki smiled and beckoned her over. ‘I’m sorry, I should know this, but there are so many people on this island – what is your name?’
‘It’s Chloe,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. This is only my first month here. I was so excited. I thought I would be really good at this.’ She sniffed. ‘Do you think he’s going to fire me? Should I try to apologize?’ Nikki put an arm around Chloe’s shaking shoulders and gave her a squeeze. No, she thought, you’re safe. He doesn’t often sack the pretty ones. He even joked about it, paraphrasing a pretentious and long-sacked Home architect: ‘It’s like William Morris said, Nikki, right? Have nobody in your Home you do not know to be beautiful or believe to be useful.’