by Fiona Walker
While most visitors fell in love with pretty Compton Magna, Kit had always preferred its near neighbour Bagot for its lack of pretension and workman-like attitude, its long history boasting a castle mount and mottes, along with medieval barns and half-timbered cottages that sagged around its hilly lanes, like teeth sinking into an old jaw. It had taken a lot of dentistry over the years, packed with new housing and ugly extensions like cheap fillings. Recent expensive redevelopment had brightened the welcoming smile, and it bore a new, high-maintenance beauty, which saddened Kit somewhat. He’d seen too make fake white veneers in America; he craved uneven English teeth.
They passed the village hall, its porch fringed with ropes of light-up spiders and fake webs, a banner advertising a Hallowe’en Disco that evening flapping loose at one corner.
Kit could still remember the old Parish Rooms and British Legion being here, dens of iniquity housed in little more than two Nissen huts that shared a car park between the council estate and the allotments. In the eighties they’d been razed to make way for the Bernard Ugger Memorial Hall, a then state-of-the-art amenity with a stage, kitchen serving hatch and disabled loos, funded through the philanthropy of the local coach-company owner from which it took its name. Better known as the Bugger All, it was a Bradstone monolith of no architectural sympathy in one of the oldest corners of the village, looking uglier than ever amid all the recent prettification.
At least it hadn’t yet been converted into a house: the Old Post Office had stopped selling stamps and the Old Chapel hosting services since he’d first known the village. Very few gathering places remained. The butcher’s was a holiday let rechristened Chateau Briand Cottage, and two new thatched cottages stood in the spot once occupied by a little garage. Jack-o’-lanterns were perched on doorsteps and windowsills everywhere, a witch on a broomstick attached to the large oak beside the war memorial.
As they passed the Jugged Hare, Kit saw a large ‘Under Redevelopment’ sign in front of it, his first irritable thought being that he’d now go hungry.
‘That’s been bought by the television chef that won Strictly.’ His driver told him the name – he’d never heard of its owner. ‘It’s going to be a raw, vegan and fruit-beer pub. She’s already got one in Painswick. It’s really popular.’
He glared at its car park, scene of his first battle with Ronnie Percy, when she’d accused him of being too drunk to drive. Then, on the stormy night he’d abandoned Pip Edwards’s car there to summon help, those mocking blue eyes had seen right through his fragile, foolish shell. You will love her rang hollower than ever.
The car was climbing away from Bagot now, passing through the old orchards towards Compton Magna. Kit’s throat tightened as they drove past Upper Bagot Farmhouse. He looked away as always, but not quickly enough to avoid catching sight of children in the garden, the memory still sharp of his own two charging round it, Hermia in their wake, blonde ponytail flying. His kids had no idea he was back in Britain. He needed to cool off from Orla before he made contact.
He glared across the orchards, rotting windfalls pebble-dashing the grass, just a few red survivors clinging to the trees, all cast in sharp relief in a morning sun so golden it deserved God’s finger at the end of it. It wasn’t yet five in the morning in New York. Having left Newark airport early the previous evening, unable to snatch more than a fitful doze on the flight, his body clock’s hands were spinning in confusion.
‘Whereabouts d’you want dropping?’ his driver asked, as the view disappeared behind the high ironstone walls of Compton Magna Manor, keeping it all to itself.
‘Just down the lane to the right.’
‘It’s so pretty here.’ The driver sighed as she turned into Church Lane.
Compton Magna was putting on a predictably coquettish show, today seemingly hewn in pure gold, the stone luminescent in the amazing light. More pumpkins lined doorsteps and sills, a huge bonfire was already forming on the Green ready for 5 November – Hurricane Claudia had provided a bumper crop of wood to burn – and the horse-chestnuts were raining yellow leaves.
Today the most photographed village in the Bardswolds had even laid on a group of riders hacking towards them, a quartet of smiling women burnished by the sun. The taxi slowed and they all raised their hands in thanks.
‘I love horses,’ said their driver, waving back. ‘Beautiful creatures, aren’t they?’
‘No.’ Kit looked quickly away. ‘That’s it, ahead there. The one with the sweet-shop chimneys.’ Hermia used to call it their Lebkuchenhaus, like the old witch’s cottage a Hansel and Gretel.
He picked up the young-man’s coat and stepped out to fetch his case, its wheels rattling over the dropped kerb. The outside world could go hang. He wanted to be alone with his wife.
*
‘Hang on, wasn’t that your theatre man?’ Bridge was looking over her shoulder as her pony skittered across the lane in front of the churchyard.
Petra spun in the saddle, squinting short-sightedly as the taxi drove off. ‘Not in that coat.’
‘Must be the son.’ Mo waited for them. ‘He’s one of them flares – no, bell-bottom... What do I mean, Petra?’
‘Hipsters.’
‘That’s it. I knew it was a type of jean. Not like his dad at all.’
Petra clicked her tongue and winked. ‘I bet Kit cut a dash in the eighties.’
‘He’s always had a look of Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet.’ Mo sighed.
‘Adam Ant,’ Petra argued.
‘You two are so old,’ Bridge teased. ‘He’s a dad candy like Colin Firth, take it from me.’
‘What’s that?’ Gill called back.
‘Kit Donne,’ Petra explained. ‘Someone went into his house just now.’
‘In which case I’m sure he’d appreciate not being talked about on his doorstep,’ she lectured, beckoning them on. ‘And for your information he looks like Bryan Ferry.’
The other Bags caught each other’s eyes, sensing the crush that dare not speak its name had a rival, and it wasn’t the local MP.
‘SMC,’ Bridge mouthed.
‘I saw that!’
*
‘It’s all over social media that Orla Gomez was sleeping with her British theatre director,’ Pip told Lester, sweeping the cobbles around him as he leaned on the half-door, watching the foal plunging around on the fresh straw in one of the corner boxes on Big Yard. ‘We were in on the secret weeks ago, which is one step ahead of the Daily Mail online, who are only writing about it now it’s over. Orla Gomez is the hottest hashtag in New York this week. To think you saved her life. It could be really good PR for the stud.’
‘I don’t think so, Pip. We don’t get many calls from round those parts wanting mares covered.’ They didn’t get many calls from anyone wanting mares covered any more, just cancelling, but he kept quiet about that.
‘It’s the silk-thread effect, Lester. You need to keep the metadata weaving its magic out there, let the web tighten.’
‘If you say so. Needs sweeping over there.’ He nodded to the archway in which a drift of leaves had gathered.
As she whisked off, Lester turned back to the foal, grateful to have Pip at a greater distance, still yakking on about marketing the stud. With so many horses coming into the stables and barns for winter, he wouldn’t be able to cope with mucking out without her help, but his ears didn’t thank him, Handel’s Chaconne Variations in G barely audible from the feed-room stereo despite him turning the volume right up.
He watched the dun foal, racing from one end of the stable to the other, wall eye watching him, bubbling over with cabin fever. He was supposed to stay on box rest for another week, but Lester would let him have his run of the smallest paddock later. He’d healed well; it was a fine day. The scar on his chest needed old-fashioned fresh air.
The stud phone was ringing. Alice checking up on him, no doubt. He ignored it. Too far to run with his hips. She’d call back. Her reassurances that the future of the stud was a priority were st
arting to sound rather hollow. None of the grandchildren had been over in more than a fortnight.
‘Cake break!’ Pip had tired of sweeping now that she couldn’t easily be heard, bustling to her car for a tin of chocolate muffins and a can of gourmet dog food. ‘I brought choice cuts of duck in jelly for Laurence and Stubbs to share.’
Lester gritted his teeth. Since she’d discovered the fox in his ferret cage – not difficult, given it was visible from his kitchen window – Pip had spoiled it rotten, naming it and bringing it daily treats. They competed childishly for its affections while Stubbs watched jealously.
The cub was beguilingly tame, easy to scoop out of its cage and happy to loaf around Lester’s little walled garden pouncing on flitting leaves. Stubbs quivered in umbrage on the back step while his master followed it round indulgently. Pip clattered in the kitchen behind him, arranging treats on plates for them all. Lester had meant to set the fox free weeks ago, but he’d been waiting for the perfect day, knowing its chances of survival were bleak even after a brief stay in captivity. Now Pip had thickened its waistline with lapdog food, they were practically non-existent. It was yet another four-legged creature in his care whose future was uncertain.
‘Phone!’ Pip called, as it rang again.
It stopped abruptly, and he realised she’d answered. Limping inside, he found her bright pink in the face, tongue-tied and tangled in flex as she hummed and hawed and giggled, which meant it had to be a male caller, either Tim or Flynn or at a guess—
‘Bay Austen!’ she mouthed at him, then giggled and hummed again.
He nodded, reaching out wearily to take the receiver.
‘Okay, yes, I’ll pass that on if I do. Bye!’ She hung up. ‘There! I got rid of him for you. He wanted to know if we’ve arranged anybody to clear the fallen cedar yet because his boys can do it this week. The horses would need to come off it while they do.’
‘Not his land yet.’
Pip’s mind was revving. ‘It must mean the sale is moving forwards again.’
‘Hmm.’
‘He’s a lovely man.’ Pip sighed, perked up by his sexy voice in her ear. She hadn’t forgotten how deliciously he’d flirted with Petra at the funeral, although she supposed that was rather unfortunate timing.
‘If you say so.’ Lester’s wizened old face refolded itself from one disapproving expression to another as he fetched milk from the ancient, juddering fridge.
‘Why don’t you like him?’
‘Not my place to like him.’
‘The Captain obviously liked him,’ she pointed out.
‘He did not. Wouldn’t give him the time of day for years, let alone sell his lot any land. “Over my dead body, Lester,” he once said.’
‘Well, I suppose it is!’ she pointed out cheerily, stirring the tea in the pot. ‘Now he’s dead.’
‘Had no choice in the end.’
‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t!’ She poured two mugs. ‘The afterlife’s a bit of a blind date like that, isn’t it?’
There was an awkward silence.
‘Let the Austens clear the tree,’ he muttered eventually. ‘Never liked those horseshoes. Nailed the family ghosts in, Mrs Percy used to say.’
Pip felt this merited revealing her Hallowe’en-themed muffins with a flourish, their iced tops decorated ghoulish green to look like Frankenstein’s monster with strawberry string scars and chocolate matchstick bolts. She liked to add a seasonal touch for her pensioners, although the food dye had come out brighter than she’d anticipated, making them look radioactive. When Lester ate one, his lips turned green.
‘So do you think the Percy ghosts will haunt Bay for taking their tree away?’ she asked.
‘Lot of old nonsense.’
‘It almost finished Ronnie off, though, didn’t it? That’s got to be a bit paranormal.’
‘If you say so.’ Lester started on another muffin.
‘Bay’s bound to be a bit freaked, don’t you think, to want it gone?’
‘More so by Ronnie coming back to haunt him,’ he said cryptically. ‘He played a dirty trick there.’
‘What trick?’ Pip seized on this. It was all too rare for Lester to give anything away, but cake always loosened his tongue.
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Was it when she came back to the stud to see Pax during the summer holidays, the first year she was in sixth form?’
His eyes appeared out of their folds, surprised. ‘How d’you know that?’
Pip had now read every one of Ronnie’s letters to Hermia Austen that she could find in the Old Almshouses and pieced together some of her missing story. There were big gaps, and her keep-calm-and-carry-on predisposition for making everything sound as if she was having a riot, even through the gloomiest of times, made it hard to follow all the threads, but she had a fairly comprehensive picture of the year in question. Something had happened to make her leave again in a hurry. Whatever it was had driven a deep cleft between Ronnie and her youngest child.
‘The Captain told me about it,’ she reassured Lester breezily. If Bay was involved, she had a shrewd suspicion what it might have been, her mind hastily doing the maths. He’d have been twenty-one and fresh from agricultural college, Ronnie about to turn forty. It had cougar paw prints all over it. She looked at Lester expectantly.
‘Like hell he did.’ He flashed a rare smile. Even his teeth were green. Pip hoped her pensioners didn’t terrify the trick-or-treaters later.
Then Pip felt her blood run cold as she remembered. Hallowe’en! What did the Donnes call it? Swain or Sewing or—Samhain, that was it. The pagan Day of the Dead. She’d totally forgotten about Kit Donne coming back to visit his wife’s grave. Now he and Orla Gomez were washed up, he might even be planning to spend a night in his house. She’d left all the beds stripped, and William Shakespeare’s partially rebuilt pottery head was still mostly spread out on a tray in the Bulrushes like a thousand-piece jigsaw.
‘I have to go!’ She raced towards the door, then doubled back for the cakes, not noticing the relief lifting his creased cheeks.
*
As Lester watched her tear off through the garden to the gate into the yard, blowing a kiss at Laurence, the phone on his kitchen wall started ringing again.
‘Stud.’
‘Lester.’
The green smile vanished as soon as he heard that husky, melodious voice.
‘I’m coming back tomorrow. Make up two stables again, will you? This time, I’m staying.’
38
‘Carl, I need you! I’ve an emergency job on.’
‘I can’t, Janine, I’ve got a double shift at the farm shop. I’m on my way there now. I don’t knock off till six.’
‘Okies, babe. I’ll try Shell.’
One benefit of Ash taking over as unofficial Turner-clan leader on the estate, Carly reflected, was that she’d been elevated in status so Janine no longer bossed her about so much. A couple of months ago she’d have been ordered to throw a sickie while the family matriarch staged a drive-by at her workplace, tabard in hand, to whisk her off to moonlight with Henry Hoover.
She stopped by the gate to Sixty Acres, eyes searching for Spirit, but he still wasn’t out with the others. She’d stopped vet Gill on her horse more than once to ask after him and knew he was doing well, but that was nothing compared to seeing him. It was like Pricey, locked away from sight in Jed’s run. He said she was ‘grand’ and ‘training up nicely’ but Carly had yet to clap eyes on her, and could only guess whether she was in the back of his van as he came and went. It didn’t help that Ash and Jed were currently stamping round each other, like a couple of sumo wrestlers.
Ash told her to stop worrying about Jed and the dog: the Turners looked after their own. But he said Tony Soprano things like that a lot, these days. The family war hero was locked in a battle of his with his lawless cousins, Jed among them, and he used as leverage his training as a killer to keep them all in check, not any d
iplomatic skills. It was rule by threat, and Carly sensed a big fight brewing.
At home nothing much had changed. He stood to attention more when stoked, but the sex was as swift and untender as the day-to-day conversation. The detachment persisted, the insomnia and obsessive gaming to anchor his tremors and rages. He was more aggressive with things around the house, more argumentative with her and the kids. They were all on eggshells. She’d bought Ellis a new ’Splorer Stick, orange this time. The hedges to either side of her were laced with orange threads from his walks to and from school the previous week.
Excitement about Hallowe’en had kept him distracted through half-term. That evening Carly would go straight from work to meet Ash and Ellis out trick-or-treating with the big group of Turner kids who always went round the village. Ellis’s costume was already with his nan for him to change into. She only hoped Ash remembered.
At Compton Manor Farm Shop, Bay’s hollow-cheeked blonde wife, Monique, was stalking about in her tight breeches, designer water under one arm, hair scraped back. She looked like a ballerina in a wind tunnel.
‘Just the person!’ She collared Carly as she came in, pale eyes dictatorial. ‘Bay’s parents are holding a party tomorrow night, okay? Our caterer cannot get enough agency waiting staff. I hear you have experience. You can do it, okay?’ It was more of a demand than a request.
