The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

  ‘Always had a good eye for a horse, Gill!’ She admired the rangy warmblood, then glanced down at Petra cowering beneath the wall, wincing as cold dog noses probed. An apologetic smile flashed up at her.

  Gill was introducing the other riders. ‘We ride out a few days a week, usually early doors,’ she went on, howling wind flapping the rim of her old-fashioned crash helmet silk. ‘You must join us sometime.’

  ‘Jolly kind offer.’ Ronnie nodded hellos at the two other women.

  ‘Isn’t that Petra’s dog?’ Gill leaned down to look at Wilf, rolling around scratching his back in long grass just inches from Petra’s foot.

  ‘Well spotted!’ Ronnie whistled the impromptu pack but the spaniel was an old-fashioned agitator, all three wagging their way round Petra now, like a freshly rediscovered bone, sniffing out treats in coat pockets.

  ‘Is he lost? What is down there? Not another dead sheep?’

  ‘Just taking him home. Remind me, Petra lives where?’ Ronnie smiled easily.

  ‘Upper Bagot Farmhouse.’

  ‘Kit Donne’s place?’

  ‘The Donnes moved out years ago, not long after Hermia’s accident. Surely you know that.’

  Ronnie didn’t for a moment betray her surprise, but her sense of being a time traveller hurtling along on the wrong bus returned. She should have known – perhaps she had and had filed it away during that painful termination of a friendship. Her foolish mistake struck hot flint sparks deep in her chest.

  ‘Right-oh, leave it with me.’ She waved the Bags off and called the dogs sharply as she waited for the three riders to trot out of earshot. ‘It’s safe to come out. They’ve gone,’ she said eventually.

  Petra hadn’t felt so gauche and idiotic since being caught with her taffeta hoicked up at a May Ball, weeing behind a marquee to avoid queuing for the Portaloos. Backside full of thistle needles, she straightened with a sharp intake of breath, inhaling hair as the wind whipped it into her face. ‘I’m truly sorry about that. I don’t normally hide.’

  ‘Wise move, I’d say.’ Ronnie was still gazing after the Bags, eyes creased against the wind, like a hill shepherd watching three old ewes gambolling off. ‘Gill’s a well-meaning bully, the girl with the nice Connemara can’t ride for toffee, and all Stokes women would knit while the rest of us lose our heads.’

  ‘They’re my friends!’ she said, hypocritically affronted.

  ‘And I only do allies.’ Ronnie clicked her tongue, watching her stretch. ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘Stiff. That was cowardly.’

  ‘Nonsense. I love hiding from people. We’re the cats who walk by ourselves.’

  Petra, who knew the Kipling story well, bucked up a little, peering over the wall to make sure the horses were out of sight. She might be mortified and in a tearing hurry, but that feeling of big adventure was back, as surely as Kathleen Turner swinging in on a jungle vine.

  ‘Are you in the village long?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘Flying visit.’ Ronnie was distractedly raking her fingers back and forth through her blonde hair, which the wind swept off her stormy-eyed face. ‘I’m on my way to the Moreton Morrell. Last comp of the year for my younger horse. Hope he stays upright in this.’ She watched leaves and twigs tumbling past, then launched herself through the fruit trees like one of Ed’s computer-game heroes dodging bullets. ‘Bloody jockey’s in mutinous mood, which doesn’t help. Don’t suppose you want to buy a nice little eventer to compete with a pro? Blair’s dying to keep the ride. He’d love you as an owner.’

  Petra remembered the Australian’s explosively short temper. ‘Can’t afford it, sorry.’

  ‘Shame.’ Ronnie smiled briefly, then set off for the stile to the track. ‘I’m fond of that little horse. His great-great-grandmother was a pony born in your old farmyard. I’m jolly sorry about abandoning a car in your drive by the way,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I thought Kit Donne still lived there. Shows how out of date I am!’

  ‘That was you?’ Petra laughed, as she gave chase, apples cannoning down.

  ‘Was he very mad when he picked it up?’

  ‘It’s still in our barn. When nobody came for it, Charlie had it traced, then decided to keep it safe when he discovered who it belonged to. We assumed a garage had delivered it back to the wrong address – Kit’s away working in New York.’ She had a nasty suspicion Charlie planned to use the Saab as social leverage, Kit being on his VIP-villager hit list, in the hope of scoring good theatre tickets and meeting Patrick Stewart.

  ‘I must have sent letters to the wrong address for years,’ Ronnie muttered, frowning at the ground, as she stalked along at the usual lick.

  ‘It was empty for a long time before it was developed,’ Petra said breathlessly, already struggling to keep up. ‘There was a huge wrestle over planning.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘We bought it from a hedge-fund manager who had it as a weekend party pad before us and chose the finishes, which is why the whole place is teched up like a Bond hide-out. Charlie loves it. I’m still trying to find the button that opens the floor hatch to reveal a shark pool beside the wine cellar to drop him in—Oh, shit, sorry!’ She remembered too late that Ronnie’s father had died falling in his cellar. ‘That’s so crass of me.’

  ‘It’s fine, honestly. Shark pits are the must-have gadget for the Cotswolds wife.’ Ronnie’s blue eyes were merry with empathy. ‘Is it that bad?’

  ‘Gosh, no!’ She gave an over-bright laugh. ‘Storm Claudia in a teacup.’

  ‘It’s only when one’s slung the entire wedding-gift dinner service at him that one needs to release Jaws and the gang, eh?’

  They’d reached the end of the track already, a gate leading into the woods, another to the ploughed field, their paths ahead split. Ronnie turned back, hair swept off her forehead again, its creases like neat music staves above the brightest of blue eyes. ‘Good luck riding out the storm. Ego procellosa sumus.’

  ‘We’re full of wind?’ Petra translated, delighted to unearth her latent Catullus-lover, untested for years.

  She laughed. ‘We will storm. We all have the tempest in us.’

  ‘Did you throw a dinner service, then?’ she asked, and a split-second flicker in Ronnie’s smile told her how presumptuous she was being, too chummy too fast as usual.

  But the blue eyes were bright with amused empathy again. ‘There wasn’t much left after my parents and grandparents had worked their way through the Percy creamware. I was more of a door-banger.’

  ‘Oh, me too. And bin lid.’ Petra plunged her hands into her pockets and looked up at the squally sky. ‘And keyboard, but that’s because work’s not going well, which is probably why I’m an angry Cotswolds wife in search of the shark-pit button.’

  ‘Do you ever just come out here and have a scream?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh, you must. It feels terrific. Go on – have a roar.’

  ‘I can’t. I’d feel silly.’

  ‘Nobody will overhear you. I don’t care – I’ll roar too. Always blows off the cobwebs and clears your head. I could do with one, frankly.’ She climbed two rungs up on the gate into the woods and hollered into the wind. ‘Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh...’

  Deciding it would be slightly less embarrassing to join in than to stare up at her like a tourist watching a performance artist, Petra hopped onto the bottom rung and had a go. ‘Eiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhh!’ It felt surprisingly good. Wonderful, in fact. ‘Aaaaaaaa!’

  Side by ride they roared and wailed, throwing their arms out like two Roses on Titanic’s prow, letting the wind blast in their faces, until their breath ran out and they were hoarse.

  ‘Morning. Windy out.’ A village dog-walker in a red Pac a Mac yomped past, raising his hiking cane, his West Highland terrier casting a worried look their way.

  The two women folded over in silent laughter.

  Jumping down, Ronnie leaned back against the gate, staring at the black clouds gathering on the horizon as sh
e rolled and lit a cigarette expertly in the wind, squinting at the horizon, the big life’s-good smile coinciding with a low sun blazing between scudding clouds.

  ‘Claudia has nothing on the Percy family.’ She lit it. ‘My older daughter’s at the stud right now, gathering what little Wedgwood is left.’ She looked over her shoulder in its direction. ‘Stupid of me to come today. We’re collecting horses later. And it’s Lester’s birthday, so I brought a hatchet to bury and a peace pipe to smoke, but I might have guessed Daddy’s groom savant would out-manoeuvre me again. He brought all the horses in first thing and has swanned off to Oxford for the day with Pip Edwards to sightsee and watch a musical, can you believe?’

  ‘Blimey. Is he... you know... with Pip?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nobbing her.’ Where had that come from? Her twelve-year-old self trying to impress the older girls with street-wise cool. Petra blushed. It was so Yorkshire.

  But Ronnie found it hilarious. ‘You sound like Blair. And I very much doubt it. I rather suspect he’s still avoiding me.’ She looked pensive for a moment, reaching up to pull a twig from her hair. ‘Lester was quite the Bardswolds bachelor catch once.’ That husky laugh revved up again. ‘Farmers’ daughters and hearty horse-riding girls from all over the county would queue up with game pies, jams, cakes and cider, believing the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But Lester’s appetite is bottomless, his legs hollow, and he never puts on an ounce of weight. Nobody lasts the trip.’ She looked at Petra, blue eyes triangulated and vexed. ‘Can one trust Pip, do you think?’

  Petra thought about it. ‘If she’s onside, yes. The thing she wants more than anything is to please, but she’s utterly ruthless in going about it. My husband’s cut from the same cloth. They have eternal optimism sewn into their bulletproof linings.’

  Watching Petra Gunn’s lovely dark eyes offering all the fun of friendship, Ronnie was entranced by the clever depth of them, like wells into which one could cast every secret wish, knowing they’d be safe there. She gave her confidence so generously, her quick wit a valuable weapon. Ronnie had long ago learned that a sense of humour between women was a universal language, its hidden truths as precious as its shared laughter. Petra couldn’t hide her emotional rawness, another Cotswolds wife perched guiltily on the edge of depression. Ronnie had seen too many to count. She’d been one herself.

  ‘Have you been married long?’

  ‘Almost twenty years. He’d just come out of the army to train as a barrister in London. Commercial law. The boring bits.’

  ‘And is he boring too?’ She raised her brows as one gate-screamer to another.

  ‘No, he’s supremely suave. Very witty. Very contained.’

  She still loves him, Ronnie realised, watching her face closely. But there was a deep cleft. It was little wonder Bay Austen was sniffing around. Relighting her roll-up, she listened to Petra talk about her husband, a loafing Hooray from the sound of it, although she was too loyal to badmouth him – no doubt she had close confidantes with whom she spilled all – explaining that he stayed in London all week. ‘We have a little flat there, my old nineties bachelorette pad bought when I was earning a decent whack, before the prices all went silly. We let it when we first moved here, which helped with school fees, but Charlie found commuting such hell, and once the boys both started boarding, the female domination at home was a bit too much.’

  Ronnie was quick to read between the lines, the talk of her single life, the sacrifice of a career, the hint at arguments over money and a gender-divided household.

  ‘You must come round for a drink some time,’ Petra was saying. ‘Charlie would love to meet you. I promise not to press the shark-tank button.’

  ‘I’m still living in Wiltshire, but let’s hold that thought,’ Ronnie said noncommittally. ‘Now I must go. I could root to the spot chatting but that won’t get horses sorted.’ Friendships were so much harder to find than love affairs, Ronnie had always found, and yet they fitted together so simply when they were unearthed. She needed to bury this one again quickly in case she became too attached to it.

  ‘And I must get back to work,’ Petra said, pulling a plastic bag from her pocket that she started to fill with blackberries, bagging and eating in rapid succession.

  Ronnie watched her in amusement. ‘Is foraging part of your job?’

  ‘This is displacement activity. It won’t last long.’

  She whistled for her dogs before asking: ‘What is it you do?’

  Petra watched as the two smiling terriers hared back from gambolling with Wilf in the distance, disheartened at the idea of returning to Black Tom. She was going to shake off the ennui and make blackberry champagne cocktails for Charlie when he got home tonight. Think positive, Petra. Be proud.

  ‘I’m an author.’

  ‘Oh, what fun. I must read you,’ Ronnie held the gate open for her dogs, who trotted through to sit to either side of her, like bookends, gazing up loyally. ‘Please don’t tell me they’re huge political biographies everyone at dinner parties pretends to be reading while they’re really guzzling up the latest Jilly Cooper.’ She closed the gate and leaned over it. ‘What name do you write under?’

  ‘Petra Shaw.’ She smiled gratefully. ‘And they’re steamy bodice-rippers.’ If only she could build up steam on this one.

  ‘You are clever. I could give you plenty of racy stories.’

  Looking at her exquisite face, imagining how irresistible she must have been to red-blooded men, like brooding huntsman Johnny Ledwell and the handsome jockey in the photograph, Petra had no doubt she could. That’s where I’m going wrong with the Fairfaxes, she realised. Her protagonists were far too wholesome to be exciting. If Anne Fairfax had Ronnie’s firework charisma, maybe she could turn the whole tangled plot round. That would keep Black Tom perpetually on his toes, dashing heroically back and forth from battle to claim her all for himself.

  ‘Do you put people you know in them?’ she was asking. ‘Gill Walcote in crinoline having a rampant affair with the church verger? Old Norm Turner squiring village damsels in his Romany days?’

  Uncomfortably aware that she’d been using Ronnie’s ‘friend’ Blair as inspiration, Petra felt her face colour. ‘Sometimes. The characters are usually an amalgam of people. I’m a bit stuck with my new hero.’ Russell Brand was bouncing around in her head in his skinny jeans, crying, ‘The swines!’ again. ‘He won’t behave himself at all.’

  ‘The most exciting ones never do. Who wants their bodice ripped by a crashing bore?’

  ‘He’s a happily married man.’

  ‘They can make the best lovers.’ She winked naughtily.

  Petra had clambered onto a bank to reach the juiciest fruit. Ronnie was disturbingly upfront, but she found her company addictive. It was as though they’d known each other for years. ‘Adultery’s always far more fun to write,’ she confessed. ‘Giving in to forbidden lust is a terrific aphrodisiac.’

  The husky voice dropped to a hush. ‘Remind me, are you having an affair with Bay Austen?’ She asked it so sweetly she could have been trying to remember whether she’d met a mutual friend at a party.

  Flustered, Petra slid clumsily down the bank. ‘No! We’re – friends. Not like you and Blair are friends. Just ordinary friends. I had a bit of a crush, but I’ve put it firmly to bed. Alone. I don’t mean I’m doing anything in bed alone with it. It’s just on ice. Over, I mean. Gone.’

  ‘Ah.’ Ronnie gave her a wise smile, picking blackberries overhanging the gate for her. ‘So he’s not in this new book?’

  She could feel the red spilling into her cheeks. ‘I’d probably get thoroughly carried away if I did that.’

  The bluest eyes in Gloucestershire were on her, sparkling with devilry. ‘There’s your answer.’

  ‘Bay’s all wrong for Thomas Fairfax.’

  ‘I didn’t say he should be the hero. Cast him as a libidinous sidekick.’

  ‘Is that wise? I’m trying to cool that fever.’


  ‘It’s a great way of getting rid of all the pent-up frustration.’

  ‘It needs re-penting.’

  ‘Make him a priest!’

  Petra snorted with laughter. The thought of Bay in a dog collar was disturbingly sexy. ‘Like The Thornbirds?’

  ‘Smuttier. My best childhood friend went to a convent school.’ Ronnie tipped a handful of blackberries into Petra’s bag. ‘Her reports would make your hair curl. Father Willy was a total rogue.’

  ‘Tell me that wasn’t really his name?’

  ‘It was. Looked like Warren Beatty apparently. He ran off with one of the sixth-formers. There was a terrific scandal.’

  ‘I’m not sure where I’d fit Father Willy in,’ she apologised, thinking about her Cornish battle scenes with erotically charged encounters in lamp-lit inns and sea-lashed caves.

  A moment later, they were both gripped with giggles.

  Ronnie was first to recover, the echoes of schoolgirl laughter from forty years ago disconcertingly close. She reminded herself firmly that she didn’t need the ties of a friendship in the village, but she knew she’d been right to ally herself to Petra Gunn. The Cotswolds could wrap the warm-eyed brunette up in its country-booted Sloane Ranger social frippery, but Petra had an unpretentious truth about her that would always find a way to an air pocket.

  ‘Thank you so, so much!’ Petra was bright-eyed with enthusiasm. ‘You’ve bucked me up no end. I can’t wait to get back to it. Ego procellosa sumus!’ She held up her blackberry bag triumphantly, buffeted in the wind.

  ‘Ego procellosa sumus!’ Ronnie saluted her, turning away.

  30

  Ash was late again setting off for college when Carly got back to the estate, still revving the pick-up in front of the house with the stereo blasting, having a loud conversation through the window with one of his cousins, Jed. Carly tapped her watch at him as she passed. He blew her a kiss and roared off, cranking the stereo louder.

  ‘You still up for coming out lamping some time?’ Jed called after her, as she wheeled the buggy up the path. Low-browed, with eyes like steel blades, he was among the Turners she mistrusted most, renowned for dirty deals, misogyny and poaching.