The Club(7)
No sooner had Annie hung up than another incoming call immediately lit up her screen.
Fuck’s sake. Jackson Crane’s PA. No doubt calling – for the third time that day – to update Annie on her very famous, very important client’s progress, his estimated time of arrival, to confirm when dinner was scheduled that evening, to triple-check that Jackson and his wife Georgia had been given separate cabins (they were always given separate accommodation when they stayed at Home, with no questions asked or eyebrows raised). And just as she had on the first and second calls, Annie reassured the PA that both Jackson’s and Georgia’s rooms would be set up to precisely the specifications outlined, down to the exact number and type of bottles in Jackson’s drinks cabinet and the exact brand of activated charcoal on Georgia’s bedside table.
She would get all of this right, as she always did, as Home always did – but there was more to a successful launch party than inviting the Very Important People and making sure they had everything they needed. There was an alchemy to it, just as there was an alchemy to who was accepted as a Home member in the first place. In some ways this was very complicated. In some ways it was very simple.
No wankers.
That was Ned’s sole directive, the sole criterion he had offered Annie when she accepted this position, when it came to how to decide who ought or ought not be accepted for membership. No wankers. On Ned’s confidence in her ability to understand that instruction had rested Annie’s entire career at Home. Wankers was, for Ned, a broad and varied category. It included – for starters – all bankers, all consultants, all lawyers (even though he had for several years worked as a barrister himself). Nobody barking into their phone about being the CEO of an app while tapping away ostentatiously on their laptop. Bad behaviour in the clubs was fine, encouraged actually, it just couldn’t be naff. He never wanted to see an oligarch waving a platinum Amex, ordering a bottle of chablis from the bottom of the wine list and asking for a few ice cubes in it. Because even though that would undoubtedly have kept huge amounts of cash ringing through the tills in the short term, those sorts of overpriced hot-right-now joints had an in-built expiry date. Home’s long-term reputation lived or died on an ineffable, unforced cool – and on the quality of its members.
Obviously, one needed to be at a certain level of wealth to consider joining – but essentially, although a good deal plusher than its original dusty incarnation, Home was still intended as a place for artists, dreamers, creators, performers. That was Ned’s vision. Just look at the five members he’d invited for dinner tonight. One major Hollywood star and his highly successful actress wife. One of the most recognizable (and expensive) artists in Britain. A transatlantically visible talk-show host. A hot young film producer, and son of one of the most famous directors of all time. Forget Gandhi, Jesus and Oscar Wilde. This was the stuff of which dinner party dreams were made. And she, Annie, had arranged it, got to sit in, make small talk. Instead of pre-agreed monosyllables spat out at junkets by celebrities who would rather be anywhere else, she got to hear what Jackson Crane really thought about working with Christopher Nolan. To hear what Georgia’s guest appearance on the Chanel Haute Couture catwalk felt like. To understand first-hand how hard it was on live TV to coax an entertaining anecdote out of, say, a Formula One driver. What Elton really asked for in his dressing-room rider.
And all five of them, no matter how celebrated, were probably a little bit excited about it too. But not one of them had any idea yet, the slightest inkling, what was in store for them tonight, what Ned was planning.
It could be pretty brutal, this job.
Annie absolutely loved it.
Nikki
It had been clear that Ned Groom was revving up for a tantrum from the moment he’d arrived at breakfast.
‘Big day today! This lot had better not fuck it up,’ he’d barked, with a jut of the chin in the direction of the waiters bustling nearby in stiff denim aprons. ‘Got that?’ he added, to the one nearest to him, smiling warmly when the boy nodded in answer, clapping him on the arm, telling him he was sure he wouldn’t be letting anyone down.
Joking. Joking. Not joking. Joking. That was how it worked, with Ned. Everything was a joke until it was serious. Everything was serious until it was a joke.
Their table – their regular table – was right next to the building’s vast picture window. Ned sat down. He glanced briefly through it to the wildflower meadow beyond, the grass still frosted where the shadows of the trees fell, the mist still lingering in the hollows of the ground. He adjusted his napkin on his lap.
‘Now then, Nikki, what’s on the agenda?’
Nikki ran her boss through the morning’s diary between sips of green tea – final meetings, before the first members were due, with the head chef, head barman, head gardener, spa manager, design director and events team. When Ned’s attention turned briefly to the menu, she discreetly dashed off a three-word email with them all on CC: Warning! Bad mood.
‘I need everyone to be match fit. Biggest opening in the history of Home, this. Certainly the most bloody expensive. It needs to be perfect,’ he said, draining the first of many coffees, dabbing at his lips with a folded napkin. ‘Any word from my brother this morning?’
Nikki looked at her watch. It was 6.45 a.m.
‘En route by now I think. I’ve asked him to call and let me know when he’s on the causeway.’