by Fiona Walker
He’d always rather liked Bay for all his over-charming swagger. He was one of the least self-seeking Austens, which wasn’t saying much, but he was unendingly sociable and far brighter than most of them, his mind wasted on farming. Hermia had insisted he had the talent to act, and he certainly looked the part, upright and handsome, tailor-made to saunter on screen in a big-budget Trollope adaptation.
A bottle of ten-year-old Islay was placed on the bar.
Kit held up a hand apologetically. ‘I’m driving to Stratford. In fact, I should have set out already, so if you’ll—’
‘One quick drink won’t hurt.’ Bay unplugged the top. ‘We’re all on the hoof. You must at least toast the Captain with us. Aunt Hermia was a great favourite of his.’ He turned to bark over his shoulder. ‘Guy! Fizz! Uncle Christopher’s here. Dad, Mum – come and say hello to Kit!’
They appeared on all sides now, tall handsome athletes, Kit’s white-haired brother-in-law, Sandy, several years his senior but still enviably loose-limbed and fresh-faced, with a handshake that could dislocate a shoulder. ‘How the devil are you, Kit?’
He heard his own hollow laugh, then his voice claiming good health, like an automatic pre-record, his eye on the door once more. ‘You?’
‘Absolutely bloody marvellous!’ He’d forgotten how hammy Sandy was, another loss to the theatre, far out-luvvying any actor in his acquaintance, albeit in a voice more accustomed to carrying across twelve shooting pegs than rows of theatre seats.
A glass was pressed into his hand, more pats on his shoulders.
Austens surrounded him now, more crowding in, asking after his theatre work, exclaiming how delighted they were to see him, how much they loved getting together with his and Hermia’s children when they stayed in the Comptons, urging him to do the same. They were so easy to warm to, so genuinely happy to see him, so bonded together and easy-going. So terribly like Hermia had been. How could he have forgotten that?
‘To Captain Percy!’ The entire bar raised glasses as one.
Lifting his too, fully expecting cash-and-carry siphoned hooch, Kit’s lips were kissed by the most complicated, familiar of old Islays. Without warning, he had a deep, nostalgic kick of being back home.
*
‘Get him back outside!’ wailed Janine as, feet skittering on the flagstones of the Gunns’ kitchen, the Shetland careered into the glass orangery, greedy eyes fixed on a potted fig. Having slipped out of his head-collar, he’d already demolished an orchid and taken bites out of two potted aspidistras and a kaffir lime.
‘Don’t you just love him?’ Fitz couldn’t stop laughing, sagging against a wall, lead-rope still in hand.
‘Why’d you bring him in here?’ demanded Janine, who’d taken shelter behind the kitchen island with her niece. ‘My robot vacuum’s in peril over there somewhere.’
‘He comes in all the time.’ Fitz wiped his eyes as the Shetland unpotted the fig. ‘Bella used to sneak him in for midnight snacks at sleepovers. Being a house pony is his big gig now nobody rides him. The ’rents get him in whenever they have friends over.’ Dropping the fig in disgust, the Shetland moved on to a spider plant and Fitz finally went to retrieve him. But before he could buckle up the head-collar, the robotic floor cleaner whizzed out from behind a wicker sofa making the pony shy back. Breaking free, he clattered off into the kitchen again.
‘Oh, shit! The larder’s open!’
Within seconds of the Shetland crashing in to investigate the smell of sugar, Petra’s beautifully organised, well-stocked pantry was total chaos, the pony covered in flour, rice and cereal, one foot in a wicker basket of meringues, the other in an old panettone tin. Reaching up to get his nose on a shelf of icing goodies, he knocked down tins and jars, herbs and spices so that he was coated in bright colours like a cow at Holi festival.
Smoothing aside his gravity-defying floppy fringe, still laughing, Fitz swaggered in to try to drag him out, determined to show off his heroics to Carly. The Shetland aimed a small hoof accurately and efficiently into the centre of the teenager’s groin.
‘Little sod!’ Pulling on two pairs of rubber gloves to protect her nails, Janine (‘I’ve handled stroppy vanners all my life’) then tried to pull him out by the tail, only to receive a long, insulting volley of flatulence as up close and personal as a deodorant application. The pony refused to budge. The teenage niece suggested calling the fire brigade.
‘I could have a go?’ Carly offered.
‘What do you know about horses?’ sneered Janine.
‘She’s read a book,’ Fitz pointed out.
Sneezing repeatedly from the curry powder, the Shetland had already decided to come out of his own volition. But as he tried to turn round, he got stuck between the shelves, panettone tin rattling as he let out an alarmed, shrill whinny. He was wedged. Losing his footing in his fight to free himself, the pony fell into the narrow space, thrashing amongst the wicker, eyes rolling furiously. The more he struggled to escape, the more trapped amid falling cooking ingredients he became.
Carly picked her way in past the spilled food.
‘Don’t risk it Carl!’ cried Janine. ‘Think of your children. You have no idea how dangerous the little ones are!’
Ignoring her, Carly stooped down beside his thrashing head and flailing legs.
16
‘You must come down for a spot of shooting this autumn, Kit,’ Sandy insisted, ‘or a day out with the hunt.’
‘I don’t ride.’
‘Neither do half our mounted followers, eh, Bay?’
‘Kit would be a huge asset to the village panto. It’s nothing like it was in Hermia’s glory days.’
‘I’m working in New York until Christmas.’
‘What a shame. Next year, maybe.’
Still trapped under a relentless family charm offensive, Kit had started to remember how much their bonhomie had once irritated him, and why he’d deliberately disassociated himself from his wife’s family. He’d endured long tracts of his marriage at odds with their gregarious asininity. The Austens, self-appointed village grandees, had an evangelical zeal to get everyone involved in social events and country sports. Kit, who at best was uninspired by hanging about in cold fields killing things to eat, and radically opposed to slaughtering things for fun, had never been easy to recruit into the family firm. That they still counted him as an insider showed their innate, ridiculous cliquiness.
The other mourners were straightening ties and looking at watches, and Kit realised with relief that the funeral must be about to kick off. But the Austens had always treated time like cocaine: the finer it was cut, the better the high. ‘Got a good half-hour yet. Another round!’
‘We bloody miss you, Kit.’ Bay topped up his glass.
‘You have a funeral to get to,’ Kit reminded him, setting it aside, remembering that he was driving. ‘You’re not here to toast me.’
And yet it felt like that. Days like this were nostalgic to them, joyful even, harking back to an era when Kit had been the academic malcontent in their midst.
‘You do the toast, then,’ Bay insisted.
Today in the tiny Jugged Hare side bar, locals who knew Kit of old – and there was a surprising number, this being a gathering of its village lifers toasting one of its legends – had greeted him as a long-lost friend too. He remained a clansman and comrade, tempted by a sixteen-year-old Lagavulin. What the hell?
‘To Captain Jocelyn Percy!’ He raised his glass, not at all certain if he’d ever met the man.
The woman in the fascinator, whose name Kit had forgotten again, trapped him in a beady stare. ‘Does this mean you might get involved in village life again? Only the parish council desperately needs committee members. Some I shan’t mention are very half-hearted.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m away for the rest of the year.’
‘I’d heard as much. What a shame. If you don’t mind me speaking out, you could look after your place a bit better. It’s an historic building. Your garden’s j
olly wild, and there’s something of a plague of rats living in that old greenhouse of yours. The Boswell Boys offer horticultural services locally – I can give you their number – and Vic Phipps’s your Fosse Hills rat man. And if it’s as bad inside the house as it is out, I hear Carly Turner is an excellent char, although you have to go through the ghastly Janine at Feather Dusters to get her.’
‘Thank you.’ Kit bristled. He preferred rats to shrews any day, and his children should take responsibility for all this, given they refused to let him sell the place. ‘All very useful advice.’
‘A pleasure.’ She grabbed a business card from the bar-top plastic display of local traders and taxi companies, and wrote several numbers on the back. ‘Mention my name. I’ve added it here because you’ve forgotten it again. Gill Walcote.’ Two fierce ursine eyes fixed on his as she handed it across. ‘We thought your play was a bit odd, but we liked it.’
‘Thank you. By coincidence I feel much the same way about this village.’ He took on the forceful gaze and held it, then looked sharply away as it threatened unexpected mutual warmth.
The village mourners were starting to troop out now, thank goodness. The Austens, last to leave and acquisitive as always, were still at the bar, having an animated conversation about a piece of land they wanted to buy from the Captain’s estate: ‘Ronnie won’t let it go cheap. Last I heard, she was a blue-chip bloodstock agent in Germany. Or was it a blue-blood one?’
‘Chip off the old block either way. Drives a hard bargain, I’ll bet.’
‘It’s not just her decision, it’s all the trustees. The agreement has always been that we have first refusal.’
‘That’ll be a cool million around here at current market value.’
‘Rubbish. Half that. The land’s in poor heart.’
‘With a big sward. Percy family are no fools.’
Poor hearts and big swords sounded all very medieval to Kit.
‘Ronnie Percy doesn’t know what she’s up against.’ Bay emptied the whisky bottle into the glasses of the few remaining drinkers and caught Kit’s eye, his eyebrows ironic lions rampant.
The name again reverberated in Kit’s head. The embossed stationery had carried the name Veronica Ledwell, but Hermia’s memories another: Ronnie Percy a.k.a. the Bardswold Bolter. She had made contact after years of lapsed friendship at a time when the Donnes’ lives had been whirlwinds of London Theatreland and Cotswolds nesting. Kit hadn’t paid much heed at the time, only aware of the bold, round handwriting Hermia had devoured and how much it always lifted her mood. Years of postcards, letters, birthday and Christmas cards and gifts. A riddle of a symbiotic friendship, rekindled then abandoned in an hour of need.
Ronnie was a horse dealer. That figured.
Kit found his shot glass refilled as the small group of hard-core local stragglers revved up for a final toast. Not waiting, he downed it, Hermia’s joyful face in his mind’s eye, as it had been so often this past fortnight, head thrown back, the golden snaffle at her throat.
He banged down his glass. ‘Ronnie Percy’s a bloody cow.’
Bay Austen turned to him in surprise. Then, with a lot of approving guffawing and a muttered, ‘Good man,’ the stragglers lifted their glasses.
‘To the bloody cow!’ Bay proposed.
Finding his glass had been refilled once more by Paranoid Landlord, brandishing a suspiciously orange Glenfiddich, Kit calculated what he’d drunk, wondering if three espressos cancelled out any part of it. He knew he really shouldn’t have any more. But in need of analgesic and shocked by his own sourness, he sank it.
The last of the reluctant mourners was heading outside.
‘Come along!’ Sandy Austen urged Kit. ‘You’ll be among friends.’
‘Thank you, but I’m running late as it is.’ If it came to the toss, he’d rather lie under his greenhouse catching rats.
Detouring to the Gents, grateful to be alone, Kit knew he had to do something about the house. His children were only selectively domesticated. It had been bad enough in May, his Beltane visit, when he’d dived inside for all of ten minutes to collect a pile of books and plays and some old CDs.
He reached into his pocket for the card the woman with the fascinator had handed him.
Home (from) Home Comforts
All-inclusive domestic package for second homes!
Want to arrive to a clean and aired house, freshly changed beds, still warm baking and a freezer full of home-cooked food?
That would do.
*
It took Lester half a dozen failed attempts to line up the two pointed silk tails of his black tie at optimum lengths, wrapping one neatly around the other, lifting it though the wide loop and feeding it down through the small one to slide up to the painful lump in his throat. Stubbs leaned hard against his calves, solid in sympathy, teeth chattering for want of a decent walk because Lester had forfeited the usual boundary check to take a bath after mucking out.
He wanted the funeral over with. From the onset, the grandchildren had squabbled about the order of service, the music, its readings, invitees, nominated charity. The Captain’s life had been lost to the detail long ago. But the devil in him spoke loud and clear now. Tell them all to go to Hell, Lester!
He slotted a handkerchief into his top pocket, neatly folded with the monogram showing – a gift from Ann twenty years earlier, still carefully starched and ironed after each use – then put another fresh one inside his wallet pocket to offer to Pip later.
She’d arrived this morning in a flurry of tearful efficiency, although whether her tears were for the Captain, down to her all-night baking marathon, or because she was going to miss the service was unclear. Alice still insisted that Pip must stay at the house while everyone was at church, a Cinderella in mourning.
‘Somebody we trust has to be here to oversee the domestic side,’ she’d told Pip, amid much protest, determined to keep the Captain’s unruly housekeeper in her place. Deeply hurt, Pip had bustled across the courtyard, with a brace of Bakewell fingers, to complain about it.
‘If she only knew the extra mile I went to for that man! I knew the real dirt on him, the bad things he did, and I forgave them all.’
Lester had given her a very sharp look, then realised she was just talking about the Captain’s bad habits, such as shouting obscenities at the television, stuffing used tissues down the side of the sofa cushion and his refusal to bathe. Pip couldn’t possibly know the seven-magpie secret. Nobody did.
But she did seem to know something. The last time he’d seen that fevered, sleep-deprived look, Pip had just learned that a celebrated author lived in the village and had spent two nights reading absolutely everything she could find online about the woman’s life, loves, family, house extension, mother-in-law and financial affairs. Just not her books.
Thankfully, she’d pushed off soon afterwards to do her morning round of pensioners. She was now late back – deliberately so, Lester was certain, to show Alice she wasn’t one to be bossed around. Pip had a rebellious streak. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was already waiting in church, saving a space on the front row for Ronnie. The thought made him fish in a pocket for his inhaler.
There was a light knock on the door. He braced himself. But it was just the funeral director.
‘Ready for you, sir.’ He and his team were consummate professionals. Lester liked their quietness, their politeness and detachment. It felt familiar and safe.
He checked his reflection, pausing briefly to take the clothes brush and sweep it across his jacket where the coffin would rest, then went out to let his old friend lean on his shoulder one last time.
One step out of line, and he’d tell them to go to Hell.
*
Mrs Hedges was now washed and dressed in a velour jogging suit, watching Bargain Hunt with a cup of tea and a coffin-shaped slice of chocolate brownie.
‘I’ve left you a light snack in the fridge for later,’ Pip told her, as she watched more mourners passin
g the window. It was a big turn-out. She hadn’t yet seen Ronnie. That was who she was waiting for. That, and anyone at the big house acknowledging the Captain’s loyal, grief-stricken housekeeper was missing.
The mobile phone in Pip’s right pocket rang,
‘Is that Piped Wards?’ Deep voice, lovely northern accent.
She was nonplussed. ‘Sorry?’
‘I picked up a card in the Jugged Hare in Bagot. Home from Home Comforts. Piped Wards.’
‘That’s me! I’m Pip Edwards. It was a printing error. How may Home from Home Comforts help you today?’ Aimed at village weekenders, the second of the little entrepreneurial side-lines she’d started after her parents’ deaths had never really taken off in the way Home Comforts had for the Comptons’ elderly. She’d designed a website and printed flyers: I keep your second house your forever-ready home. Nobody had ever responded to it. Until now. The timing wasn’t great, but her prospects at the stud seemed distinctly shaky so it paid to be polite.
‘Would you be available to look after a house for me? Tidy it up a bit?’
‘That’s my job! Whereabouts are you?’
It was the theatre director three doors along Church Lane. She couldn’t remember his name, but he was a local celebrity of sorts.
‘How much do you charge?’ he asked now.
Pip had never thought out a price structure. The amount she charged her oldies barely covered her costs, but she liked to feel needed. The Old Almshouses looked like the perfect Hansel and Gretel cottage. He was bound to have lots of famous friends visiting. She’d happily tidy, cushion-plump and snoop around it for free. She named a temptingly low figure, adding, ‘Plus expenses.’
‘Are we talking parliamentary expenses?’ He laughed. ‘That’s incredibly reasonable.’
‘Just cleaning materials and any groceries you need getting in.’
‘Can you provide a reference?’
Pip felt pissed off. Untrusting bastard. She was practically offering to do it for free. ‘Sabrina ffoulkes-Hamilton from Glebe Farm.’ She reeled off a number.
‘Thank you. I’ll call you straight back.’
