by Fiona Walker
Pip did so, reading from her little screen. ‘I’ve added Blair Robertson’s too in case he has better reception.’
‘Thank you.’ Alice coloured.
Lester hissed through his teeth, catching Pip’s eye with a rheumy warning. She ignored it, thinking about the little grief boat floating out to sea. ‘Mrs Petty – Alice – we’re always here for you. I’m always here for you. Bereavement is such a lonely place. I have some knowledge of grief therapy.’
Tucking into a second piece of cake, Lester coughed a piece of date across the room. It ricocheted off an old hunting saddle. Thunder bellowed closer again. The lights plunged off once more.
Ignoring Lester and divine signs, Pip ploughed on: ‘I’ve lost my beloved parents in recent years, and I know how important it is to be able to lean on those you trust. I won’t let you down. My door is open day or night.’
‘Then I suggest you invest in better security measures,’ Alice said briskly, handing her an empty cup and heading outside.
*
Carly cadged a lift home from Le Mill with a workmate, rain hammering down on the car roof from a black sky as she called the vet’s surgery on the way to check how Pricey was doing.
‘Barking the place down!’ the flaky young work-for-free receptionist told her, hollow echoes in the background confirming the fact. ‘They’re just waiting for her bloods back, yah, but it all looks super-good. Amazing powers of recovery. The lurcher sanctuary’s going to take her. She’ll probably go there tomorrow.’
‘Can I have the address? I’d like to visit.’ She let out a whoop when, eventually, she rang off.
‘You’re way too soft,’ her workmate told her, having heard the story of the rescued bull-lurcher between serving tables. ‘Those coursing dogs are psychos. Me and my other half go beating at weekends and the stories you hear turn your stomach. I despair what some men do for kicks.’
‘I’ve heard worse,’ Carly assured her. ‘I was an army wife for seven years.’
‘You and hubby apart now?’
‘It’s the army he left, not me.’ She laughed, although she sometimes felt a lot less certain of it.
Having collected the kids from Ash’s mother’s dingy, toy-crammed little maisonette, she and Ellis pushed the double buggy across the estate as fast as they could beneath a too-small umbrella, shouting back at thunderclaps to show them they weren’t scared. Carly expected the house to be empty, but a familiar sound of gunfire was coming from the lounge.
The curtains were drawn, a trio of lager cans on the side table as the console twisted this way and that.
‘I thought you were going to the gym?’
‘Storm broke again.’
It was still circling the ridge, rumbling round to terrorise Compton Magna and Eyngate Park once more.
‘Look, Dad! Look what I got!’ Ellis thundered in with the purple riding crop. Carly hadn’t realised he’d kept hold of it – it must have been left in the buggy.
‘That’s not yours.’ She made a grab for it, but he’d already thwacked it down on the leather arm of the settee, inches from Ash.
‘Jesus, fuck!’ Ash exploded from the seat, beer cans and console controller flying. He looked deranged.
Face crumpling, dropping the stick, Ellis ran out.
Shooting Ash an accusing look, Carly rushed after their son, hugging him tightly on the stairs as he wept and shook. ‘Ssh, ssh, baby. Your dad didn’t mean it – you took him by surprise, that’s all. He gets jumpy like that from being a soldier.’ Her hands were hot again. She cupped his face with them. ‘Ssh. Why don’t you both say sorry and make up, eh?’
Ellis nodded, blinking the tears away, his brave little face so like his father’s.
But when they went back into the front room, Ash was back on his game, eyes still wide and fixed, his reaction to Ellis’s stuttered apology a distracted fist-bump.
Carly picked up the crop and they retreated. ‘This has to go back to the lady who dropped it,’ she told Ellis, putting it on top of the hall cupboard.
‘It’s my ’Splorer Stick.’
‘Explorer.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll find you something else.’
He gazed up at it, bereft as a small terrier looking at a ball put out of reach.
Carly glanced round the hall. Her Feather Dusters cleaning kit and tabard were tucked beneath the stairs, a new multi-coloured fluffy duster poking up still in its plastic sleeve. She plucked it out. ‘Magic Explorer Stick.’
He looked at it dubiously. ‘What magic?’
‘Keeps you safe.’ She pulled off the cellophane sleeve and it puffed out.
Grinning, he took it.
Posting Ellis and his duster in front of CBeebies in her and Ash’s bedroom, she put Sienna down for her afternoon nap, gave Jackson his bottle and set him down too, then changed into joggers and threw her waitressing uniform into the washing-machine with that morning’s clothes, first fishing out the poo-soiled T-shirt to bag and bin.
When she took Ash a mug of tea, he’d lost the manic look, turning to thank her with a familiar cheeky wink.
‘The day I’ve had!’ She sagged on the sofa, still so new it squeaked and puffed out its showroom leather smell.
‘Tell me about it. Janine’s been giving me earache since first thing. She’s having kittens. Says she needs you all day tomorrow. Couldn’t get hold of you on your phone.’
Carly had ignored the calls. ‘I’ve got an interview at the farm shop, then going to visit the lurcher sanctuary. It’s important. You can look after the kids, can’t you?’
‘I’ve got your back.’ Still stalking KGB operatives around dark alleys on screen with a Kalashnikov, he half listened as she told him about finding the injured dog and rushing it to the vet, about the out-of-control horse riders, arrogant flat-capped Bay Austen and the mystery stiff, then the customer at Le Mill who had traded weird insults with his children and tipped her more than her day-shift rate.
‘Bet he wanted to get in your knickers.’
‘I think he was more of a head man.’
‘Filthy fucker.’
‘He knew French and binary and stuff.’
‘Kinky with it.’ The controller was laid down and he turned to face her, grinning. Silver eyes, white teeth, fast-track thoughts. ‘Nobody gets to be kinky with my wife.’ He slipped his hand inside her waistband.
‘Apart from you.’ She nudged her hips closer.
Ash was looking at her mouth, a sure sign that he wanted sex.
Lightning flashed outside. They could hear animated vegetables singing upstairs.
Carly smiled, biting down on her top lip, running her fingernails across her teeth with a percussive rattle. Tasting Ariel washing powder on her fingers, she ran them through Ash’s too-long hair.
‘Ellis is wide awake up there,’ she whispered, glancing up at the ceiling as she drew his mouth closer. ‘If Something Special comes on, we stop. He can’t stand Mr Tumble.’
‘You are something special down here,’ he breathed against her lips, slipping two fingers inside her to test the territory.
Carly was a long way off a hot, wet welcome – horny thoughts hadn’t entered her head much since Jackson’s birth – but there was enough soft and eager warmth waiting to make Ash shift his weight on top of her, his cock already springing from his fly.
‘Hung like a porn star,’ he’d boasted, when they were first together, handsome Fusilier Ash Turner with his big wolf eyes, bigger ego and quick tongue. At that point she’d never witnessed a porn star in action so she couldn’t judge, but it had felt plenty big enough. It always did.
Today it lacked its usual straight rhythm, its partner in pleasure still out of shape from her third long labour. They hit and missed as it slipped out repeatedly through hasty, sofa-squeaking changes of position and waistband adjustments, finally keeping connected and catching enough friction to bring him off, his head rammed against a cushion, hers banging painfully against his shoulder.
It lasted just a
few minutes, the vegetables singing another song upstairs while Ellis pogoed on the mattress, lightning fading outside, the screen above their fireplace showing an FBI agent frozen in pixilated motion with sinister music overlaid.
‘Love you, bae. You’re the best.’ He slapped her buttock affectionately.
‘You too.’
Carly drew his sweating forehead to her lips, grateful to feel this close, heartbeats crashing skin to skin, even if it hadn’t been great sex.
The back door banging made them both sit up.
‘Only me!’ came a familiar call from the kitchen, the perfume already snaking beneath the sitting-room door like tear gas.
Waistbands were snapped up just in time for Janine to bustle in, peeling off a RainMate and carrying a clanking cardboard box that she plonked on Carly’s lap. ‘Vikki who I clean for on the Broadbourne road – she’s a wedding planner, hubby’s in insurance, lovely house – had a load of votives left over from a marquee reception at Eyngate Hall so she gave me a job lot. I thought this place needed some ambient lighting. Help you two enjoy a few romantic nights in, eh? Always hard to rekindle the passion after a new baby.’
Carly tried to catch Ash’s eye, but he was gazing at the television screen. ‘Thanks.’ She peeled back a box flap, grateful for the kindness, if uncertain what to do with two dozen mini candles in frosted glass.
‘EBay them if they’re no use to you.’ Janine wedged in beside her, jacket arm cool and wet. ‘Now, Carly, Feather Dusters needs you tomorrow. Has Ash said? Can you do a double shift?’
‘I’ve got plans.’ She looked to him for support.
But Ash was already back on the console, eyes locked on target. The last five minutes might not have happened. ‘Ash?’
‘Do what you like.’ His semen might still be dribbling out of her, his tooth-marks on her areolas, but his mind was utterly focused on the screen.
‘This sofa’s like the inside of a new Jag, isn’t it?’ Janine sniffed appreciatively.
Boom-boom-boom went his Kalashnikov. Upstairs, Ellis was jumping up and down on their bed.
‘I thought that was you two when I came in!’ Janine snorted with laughter, elbowing Carly. ‘Now, tell me you can do it. I’ll pay extra.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘I’ll do your nails. Yours look shit.’ Janine planned to set up a mobile nail bar once she’d saved enough for the van. She had an Instagram feed dedicated to it, showcasing friends’ and family’s gelled trophy talons.
‘Not good with nappies.’
‘So just do it for the money. What about that motorbike you’re saving up for that Ash says is unladylike?’
‘Triumph Bonneville.’ She sighed. Her dream of becoming a biker was a big Turner family joke. In their world, only men were allowed throbbing engines between their legs, from sports bike to ride-on mower. ‘I’m saving for something else now.’
‘Not a bloody horse? Ash told me about that.’
Carly shook her head, glancing at her husband again and wondering how Janine got so much information out of him when she could hardly get him to say yes or no to a cup of tea. Or look at her during sex. She thought about the dog, war-torn and tough, like him. ‘How much extra?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Make it fifty.’
‘Are you kidding? Thirty-five.’
‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ Carly said, adding a last-minute ‘if...’
‘What? Spray tan? Non-injection lip filler? Red diesel for the pick-up? They’re yours, love.’
‘If you can tell me about lamping.’
The bright pink lips pursed. ‘Is that like a light-therapy thing?’
‘You know what it is. Lurchers. And coursing too.’
‘I don’t know a lot.’ Janine looked wary.
‘Tell me what you do know.’
‘If you’re really interested, I can do better than that. I’ll get someone to take you.’
‘Who?’
‘Wise up, Carl. There’s men in this family could light up the eyes of the cow jumping over the moon on a good night, hey, Ash?’
He wasn’t listening, the pixilation glittering as the gun-barrel on the screen swung from side to side. Carly remembered Bay Austen saying a Turner cousin had been caught poaching red-handed not long ago. ‘So who was out last night? Was it Jed?’
The pink lips disappeared as they were rolled between Janine’s teeth, reappearing with a small kissing sound. ‘Not likely in that storm. Be townies. Nasty sorts. Leave it, Carl. Best not to ask too much.’
8
Like all of the high-adrenalin men Ronnie had known, Blair had a tremendous capacity to catch up on sleep in short doses. She left him napping off a morning’s hard riding and afternoon of high emotion and went out onto the balcony to smoke three puffs of a roll-up, reminding herself that today was really happening.
‘Haven’t you quit those bloody things yet?’ her father had barked at her, when they’d first met for lunch a few weeks after her mother had died, lighting up his own.
They’d been sitting in a sunny restaurant courtyard at a country-house hotel near Bath, blossom on the trees. His invitation, as furtively arranged as a tryst with a mistress, had been full of warm entreaties about making peace. Within a minute of meeting, he’d picked up her cigarette packet with liver-spotted fingers, pocketing it in his blazer as though she was still fourteen. ‘Smoking killed your mother.’
She looked at her lighter now, flicking the flame on and off. Out, out, brief candle.
Tears threatened. She couldn’t bear to think of him lying alone in the cellar last night.
She gazed fixedly across the millpond instead, remembering the year the Young Farmers had hired swan-shaped boats for the summer ball here, leading to a lot of skinny-dipping and a huge cumulative dry-cleaning bill. It must have been the late seventies, Silver Jubilee year, glam rock and high jinks even reaching a backwater like Compton Magna. Not yet fourteen, Ronnie had borrowed her mother’s best taffeta, hurriedly taken in to fit her with great tacking stitches, and had floated about like Millais’s Ophelia. Hermia, resembling one of Waterhouse’s nymphs in a training bra and immaculately white knickers, had dipped and dived around her reciting Gertrude’s There is a willow grows aslant a brook speech. They’d both been high as kites on Jeremy Perriman’s spliff, thinking themselves wildly grown-up and sophisticated.
Goodness, but her father had been angry after that, grounding her for the rest of the summer. When not enduring relentless lunge lessons on the stud’s most brutish rides, Ronnie had exchanged long letters with Hermia – also grounded – handed to the postman amid much secrecy to deliver three hundred yards along the lane, just as they corresponded during term-time from schools three hundred miles apart.
With their precocious blonde charm and boundless energy, Percy daughters – rarities in any given generation – made friends easily and were fiercely loyal allies. For Ronnie that ally was fellow Pony Clubber and near neighbour Hermia Austen, the youngest and most overlooked of a large pack of farming offspring. Both girls had been taught to ride by Lester, a rigid old-school practitioner of ‘chin up and kick on’, whose terrifying challenges imbued them with such high-speed stickability that they were unbeatable in pairs hunter-trials classes, fearless daredevils in the saddle.
From the ages of six to eleven, the two girls had been inseparable, riding together daily, competing, camping in the paddocks, theirs a free spirit that conservative Compton Magna was happy to embrace. Both blonde, bubbly and generous, often mistaken for twins, the duo had been at the heart of village life, a youthful bridge between their stand-offish families and the villagers in an era when the old order was being shaken by social revolution.
While astronauts took one giant leap for mankind and hippies turned on, tuned in and dropped out, the girls started a small animal sanctuary in the church meadows, much to the delight of the pervy vicar, who took a close interest, and the horror of the congregation, who used the footpath through them and had
to battle past semi-feral goats, evil ponies and a despotic goose to worship.
The lame ducks were eventually rehomed and the girls forcibly separated when they were sent to different senior schools, cosseted far from IRA terrors, the first European Referendum and The Good Life, but they remained as close as sisters, writing those long letters every week and joined at the hip during holidays, even when grounded.
Lighting another cigarette, Ronnie watched a heron glide low over the millpond, landing on a protruding tree root at its edge, instantly still as a statue, its long beak angled to bayonet the surface for a fish. In her head, she could still hear the laughter and music of that ball – Abba’s ‘Mamma Mia’, Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May’, ‘In the Summertime’ by Mungo Jerry, ‘Spirit in the Sky’...Who the devil sang that? Hermia would know.
She looked up at the sky, a deep-cleaned blue, the heat of the sun finally throwing its full blowtorch strength into the afternoon. The wrong spirit was looking down on her. Why was she thinking about Hermia on the day of her father’s death?
I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I HATE HIM! she’d confessed in those long summer letters.
‘I hate him for dying,’ she breathed now.
Grinding out the barely smoked cigarette, she took the old silver-wedding-anniversary crown from her jeans pocket, just a small down-payment on a legendary royal union. Her parents had been married for fifty-seven years when their curmudgeonly dotage was cut off by her mother’s death, her father’s bitter mourning curtailed today. Yet still it was the childhood friend who filled her maudlin thoughts. And it was Hermia she sensed close by.
Ronnie flipped the coin. Queen Elizabeth II, unfamiliar in swan-necked, braided-hair youth: no trace of a coral V remained across that Greek-bust stern face.
She looked across the millpond once more. The heron hadn’t moved. Patience on a monument... How did the quote go? Hermia would know that too. She’d been a brilliant Viola.
By the time thirteen-year-old Hermia Austen had bobbed about in her undies to T. Rex quoting Hamlet, she’d already learned Shakespeare’s juiciest female speeches, her passion for theatre fuelled by trips to the nearby RSC – nicknamed the ‘nuns in the gods’ because her convent school had booked the cheapest seats – and a starring role in the village panto. Ronnie, reading Walter Scott in her cold Scottish dorm, fantasising that Harvey Smith would gallop in to rescue her in full Ivanhoe armour, had been equally taken with dressing up and high drama. Spearheaded by Hermia, the friends had turned their favourite corners of the church meadows into an open-air theatre and staged ambitious two-handed productions by the willow-arched pond or high on the rise near the standing stones. Fantasising themselves the next Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave, these productions had been such a triumph of one girl’s teenage talent that Ronnie had challenged her friend to follow her dream professionally. ‘You just have to act on the main stage at Stratford.’
