The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

  ‘How is she?’ a husky voice asked anxiously behind Kit.

  Turning, he found he couldn’t answer. He’d been encountering Ronnie’s face in his wife’s photographs, trying to fathom what it was he didn’t like about her, what infuriated him so much. And, in an instant, he knew. Forthright, practical, clever and beautiful, hers were the health and vitality Hermia still deserved.

  ‘You look cold, you poor thing,’ she said now. ‘Did you not bring a coat?’ Those eyes were even bluer than the saturated coloration on the seventies photographs made out, the same bright speedwell as his wife’s. No wonder they had been mistaken for sisters. But while Hermia had radiated compassion, Ronnie seemed constantly on the verge of sharing an irreverent joke.

  He shook his head, then jumped forwards as something snorted against his neck. She was holding the lead-rope of the huge white sexual protagonist himself, now the equine equivalent of a man lying back against the pillows, ears floppy, eyes soft.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s a pussy cat after a shag.’ Ronnie grinned. ‘Plus I’ve slipped him a Mickey Finn of ACP – that’s basically horse Mogadon – while we wait for Lester to bring the horsebox.’

  ‘Petra’s horse will have a beautiful baby.’ Pip sighed, looking up from the Gumtree app.

  ‘Unlikely.’ The blue eyes shared the joke with Kit. ‘It’s jolly rare he does the honours with his own flesh and blood. He prefers the dummy. He’s a bit of a serial wanker, frankly.’

  ‘I’ve got a friend online like that,’ nodded Pip. ‘Three times during one episode of Homeland.’

  ‘Concussion,’ Ronnie mouthed at Kit, with an amused wink.

  He took another step away, the evidence disputing his wife’s you will love her claim now stacked extremely high.

  She was looking at him intently. The blue eyes had clocked his chattering teeth, the shivering chills running through him. ‘You are an absolute superstar, but we really can’t expect you to walk around freezing to death any longer. Go home.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ he said belligerently, not wanting to be bossed about by her.

  ‘Go home.’ She said it again, quietly and firmly.

  He glared at her, looking for compassion, but the only thing he could see was withering, bemused impatience.

  Not saying goodbye, he turned and walked as fast as he could back to the photographs of another Ronnie, not this supercilious woman with her smoking-room voice and smut but the Ronnie his wife had known and loved, the infectiously laughing girl she’d always insisted he would love when he met her.

  ‘What a sour-tempered man,’ said Ronnie, watching him go, thinking what a shame it was that all those silent, brooding good looks hid a curmudgeon. And that beard really needed to go.

  ‘Arty-farty leftie,’ Pip told her, with a knowing sigh. ‘His house has mice. I told him he needed a good mog when I first met him, but he came up with some gobbledygook about mice shunning a rascal budgies or something.’

  ‘The mouse ne’er shunned the cat as they did budge from rascals worse than they,’ Ronnie quoted delightedly. ‘Coriolanus.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she’s one of my favourite characters.’ Pip nodded.

  54

  ‘I should never have taken a fare up to the Comptons,’ the driver from S Express Cabs muttered into her Bluetooth to her mother, as she steered around snow drifts on the steep wooded lane from Chipping Hampton. ‘Broadbourne Hill’s already too dangerous without a four-by-four. It always snows more up here. I’ve had to come a right long way round.’ She regretted accepting a taxi-rank request from the station to the highest point of the Fosse Hills, the roads already treacherous. ‘I’m calling it a day after this,’ she whispered, into the headphone mic. ‘I’ve got a right one here, Mum. Call you later.’

  Her passenger had spent the entire journey having a fraught conversation on his mobile, which the driver pretended not to hear. ‘It’s not “all right for me”... I do know how much this is hurting you. She doesn’t have “it all on a plate”... I have to think about my children... I know I should have thought about them before... No, it wouldn’t help if she knew about you – or if you just didn’t exist...’

  The driver sighed. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard the same one-sided conversation. The Broadbourne commuters were an unscrupulous lot. She turned up the Christmas songs on the radio. ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ was playing.

  She glanced in her mirrors. He was a handsome bugger, an aura of privilege and power about him, a man who knew what he wanted. He had those soulful blue eyes few women could resist, matched with the hard-honed masculine body that looked like a loaded gun holstered in a sharp suit.

  As they reached the village, she slowed to a crawl. There were people in the road. And horses.

  Now she could see the blue lights of an ambulance in her rear-view mirrors. She pulled to one side.

  ‘Christ alive!’ came a cry from the back seat, as somebody in what appeared to be a padded red Superman cape led an excitable chestnut horse across the lane, carrying the saddle. ‘That’s my wife.’ He wrenched open the door and leaped out, narrowly avoiding being run over by the ambulance.

  ‘What about my money?’ she wailed, lowering the passenger window. He thrust a handful of notes in and dropped them on the seat. ‘Keep the change. Merry Christmas.’

  Glancing across, she saw there was more than enough of a tip to justify calling it a day. It was only when she was halfway home, trying to identify the tinny voice she could hear undercutting the radio that she realised he’d thrown his phone into her car too.

  *

  Heroic in a pinstriped suit and long wool coat, arms full of expensive boutique bags crammed with guilt presents, Charlie Gunn raced up to his wife. ‘Darling, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Hello.’ She kissed him as automatically as she would if she was collecting him from a train. The more extreme a drama, the more normally Petra behaved, Charlie had found. It was that or helpless giggles. He’d been bracing himself for helpless giggles a lot lately. ‘Bit of a drama to welcome you home.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ As Charlie looked around at the small crowd milling about, a horsebox parking behind the ambulance now, it occurred to him that this was the perfect homecoming, a chaotic scene to distract Petra from any suspicions she might have about his recent behaviour. ‘Can I help in any way?’

  ‘Hello, Daddy!’ His favourite daughter hung eagerly off her pony nearby. ‘We just watched a horse having sexual intercourse with the Redhead.’

  Better and better, thought Charlie. A village sex scandal.

  Petra’s amused eyes widened apologetically. ‘Like I say, there’s been a bit of an episode. Pip Edwards took a knock.’

  ‘Is she Pussy Galore from the stud you mentioned?’ he asked, as the ambulance doors clanked open.

  ‘Pip works at the stud.’ Petra turned as someone shouted something behind her. ‘Somebody called an ambulance. I don’t think she wants to go to hospital, but she took a fair old clunk to the head.’

  ‘She needs to get checked out,’ Charlie insisted, dismissing an evil thought that it would have helped his cause more if his wife had been the one with the bump on the head. ‘You’re probably in shock too, darling. I’ll need to keep an eye on you. Trauma can make you feel very confused for days, weeks even.’

  Petra was grateful for her husband’s solid good sense. He’d taken his fair share of concussions in the rugby field. She had to admit a frisson of excitement at seeing him with all his Bond Street bags, like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. She was uncomfortably aware of her bottom flashing kinkily beneath the red coat, her mind already frantically plotting how to get upstairs and changed without him coming face to face with evidence of its writerly expansion.

  ‘Is anybody going to hospital with her?’ called one of the paramedics, as Pip, listing and staggering like La Dame Aux Camélias playing out her last scenes, was led to the steps.

  The crowd hastily started to disperse, coughing
and looking away.

  ‘Somebody should go with her.’ Petra looked around helplessly,

  Lester and Ronnie were wrapped up with the stallion, now refusing to be parted from the Shetland. She had the Redhead, two daughters and three ponies to get home.

  ‘You could go!’ she told Charlie. ‘You have lots of experience in A and E.’

  To her total astonishment, instead of complaining quite justifiably that he didn’t know Pip, had only just got home, couldn’t see why he should do it and wanted to see his beloved mother, Charlie squared his broad wool shoulders and nodded heroically. ‘Absolutely. Leave it to me. I’ll call.’ Patting his pockets as he kissed her cheek, he added, ‘Best lend me your phone. I’ve mislaid mine.’

  ‘Not on me. It’s all right, Pip has two.’

  ‘Love you.’ With another kiss, this time firmly on the mouth, he strode to the ambulance, wool coat tails flapping, still carrying the designer shopping bags.

  ‘Daddy is so cool,’ sighed Prudie.

  ‘And he didn’t notice your bottom hanging out, Mummy,’ Bella added happily.

  ‘That’s a comfort.’ Petra licked her lips uneasily. There was definitely something odd about Charlie’s behaviour.

  *

  Pip loved the drama of her ambulance ride, the concerned paramedics asking her what day of the week it was, warm hands checking her pulse and fitting a blood-pressure monitor.

  She did feel pretty spaced and her head ached, but she hammed it up a little more to make sure she was getting the best possible attention.

  Charlie Gunn was so smiley and well-mannered. Okay, so he was a bit stuffy and bald and chummy – she could see why Petra flirted with Bay – but he was her hospital hero, and once they were in A and E, he sat with her, fetching cups of tea to her cubicle, and making her laugh with stories of his rugby accidents over the years. In return, she told him lots of village gossip, careful to let nothing too incriminating slip about Petra and Bay’s frisson, although she was feeling so groggy she might have made the odd passing mention, not that it mattered now that they’d both moved on. He was very interested in the Small Male Cock League. ‘There was me thinking all my wife’s friends talk about out hacking is their horses.’

  When the medics told them she could go home, they gave Charlie the lecture about keeping her monitored for a few days and looking out for signs of double vision and nausea, as though he were her husband. It felt lovely.

  ‘Have you got anybody at home to keep an eye on you?’ he asked, as they waited for Petra to come and collect them.

  Pip’s eyes gazed up at him mournfully. ‘I’m usually the one keeping an eye out for everybody else.’ She sighed. ‘I’m a wraparound carer, you see, Charlie. I look after my clients’ needs in a holistic way, whether it be baking a cake or personal protection. I also have a little side-line in private detection. Very discreet. Called Proof. It’s my affair to know your affairs.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He swallowed uncomfortably.

  ‘Do you remember the television series The Equaliser, Charlie?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘I am the Equaliser of Compton Bagot. With better baking skills.’

  ‘Gosh.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Well done, you.’

  *

  Lester was not given to apologies and Ronnie saw no gain in seeking one, although she was seething that this should have happened. It served as another reminder why this was just a stop-off in a getaway journey, not a terminus.

  They did final stables in silence, Ronnie working three times as fast as him, as usual. Without Pip holding them up, chatting and getting things wrong, they finished swiftly, Lester retreating cautiously across the frozen, snow-scattered cobbles to his cottage, Ronnie to the chilly, echoing house to try to warm her frozen bones in a bath, then sit with the dogs in the armchair by the Aga, using the house phone to call Petra to find out if there was any word on Pip. She was on a crackly car Bluetooth.

  ‘She’s fine, I think. I’m just driving to pick them up now.’

  ‘When will you be back? I need to come and apologise about the stallion.’

  ‘Oh, good, you can stay for a drink. Say sevenish. Charlie’s dying to meet you.’

  It wasn’t what she’d intended, but Ronnie knew a degree of diplomacy was required. ‘Thank you. I’ll see you then.’

  She pressed closer to the range, remembering this kitchen thundering with glugging bottles, clinking glasses and laughter in its Christmas heydays, all horse and hunt types, a vat of mulled wine stewing on the simmering plate, a scene she’d often re-created, the places and faces changing, the foundation deep set. It had patterned her life.

  On a whim, she called an old friend, her Wiltshire landlord, catching him dressing to go out to a recital. ‘When are you coming back?’ he asked hopefully. ‘We’re all in mourning.’ He chattered amiably about mutual acquaintances for a few minutes, nothing much changing, the comforting shallow lap of safe harbour. ‘You heard from Blair?’

  ‘No.’ The pain was getting easier to endure, she told herself.

  ‘They’ve finally found a live-in carer for Vee, whom she’s willing to tolerate. Rugged young Australian chap, queer as you like. Look of Blair about him. He says she gets them muddled up, which works out quite superbly.’ He laughed uproariously.

  Ronnie smiled, glad to hear things were getting easier.

  ‘I’ll tell him you called.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘Fair dos. How’s the Cotswolds whirl, darling? Knowing you, it’s more of a non-stop game of Twister. I bet your feet haven’t touched the ground.’

  She tucked them tighter beneath her. ‘You got it in one.’

  *

  Petra battled her way through Christmas shoppers, driving in awful, snow-choked, Friday-night rush-hour traffic to Warwick Hospital, then struggled to find a place to park. Ending up in the third overflow car park, she found her husband and Pip cosied up in the café, eating their third round of chocolate brownies, a big pile of magazines between them.

  ‘I’ve told Pip she must come and stay with us!’ he announced cheerfully.

  Her smile froze. Somebody appeared to have swapped her husband for a man she didn’t know.

  *

  Pip was given the box bedroom in the attic beside Petra’s old study, all hastily tidied in her honour. It felt like a little suite, with its own small shower room, Sky TV and many hundreds of books to read. Feeling like an honorary teenager, she was in Heaven, settling for an evening of box-set catch-up.

  Petra or lovely Charlie checked on her every hour with offers of drinks and snacks, the girls made her a get-well-soon card with two horses hugging on the front – ‘Mummy wouldn’t let us draw mating’ – and Wilf the spaniel bounded up to share her bed companionably for an episode of Sneaky Pete streamed on surround-sound 4K. Pip was particularly touched when age-defyingly glamorous granny Barbara Gunn came up to interview her for her blog, and posted a very flattering photograph of ‘the bravest woman in the Bardswolds’ on her @GunnPoint Twitter feed. ‘I have almost ten thousand followers,’ she told her, with a discreet eyebrow-shrug. ‘That’s more than Antiques Roadshow’s Fiona Bruce and she has five accounts.’

  Too polite to point out that the real-life Fiona Bruce wasn’t on Twitter, Pip shared the picture on Facebook. It got almost fifty likes, one of them from Ronnie’s daughter, Pax, as she was quick to point out when Ronnie came to visit her at the farmhouse that evening, bringing a stack of unread Horse & Hounds that Pip had put out for recycling.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t do any of that social-media business.’

  Pip had expected her to be purring apologies with classic Percy élan, but Ronnie was gruff, bluff and couldn’t wait to get away, backing towards the door barely a minute after coming through it. ‘Well, if you need anything, just say.’

  ‘I have actually written a short list.’ She held up her phone. ‘Shall I email it or would you like a hard copy? The printers are all networked here so
it’s no trouble.’

  ‘Just tell me it, Pip.’ Ronnie hovered reluctantly at the door.

  ‘Could you check on my Home Comforts clients? Make sure they’re eating? Drop off some edible treats? They’re very fond of home-made nougat.’

  ‘I only do soup,’ Ronnie told her.

  ‘Soup is good. They don’t have big appetites. I’ll text you their names and addresses. Oh, and there’s Kit Donne.’

  ‘He doesn’t need soup, surely. From what I can tell he’s already on a liquid diet.’

  ‘I just want him to know I’m all right. He was so kind, keeping me conscious until the ambulance arrived.’

  ‘You were chatting away happily, Pip.’

  ‘They say soldiers in the trenches in the First World War would stand up and light a cigarette after a bomb raid, not realising they’d had half their brains blown out.’

  Ronnie sucked her teeth. ‘Anything else you want me to do? Feed your cats? Water your plants?’

  ‘That’s very kind, but there’s no need. The neighbours and I take turns. They’re in my debt by three family holidays and seven mini-breaks to none so if I need longer to recover they say it’s fine.’

  ‘But you’re only staying the night here, right?’

  ‘Charlie said to take as long as I need.’ She settled back on her pillows with the remote. ‘He’s a lovely man, isn’t he?’

  *

  ‘I think you’re stuck with that one for at least a week.’ Ronnie tracked Petra down in her big, trendy kitchen knocking back a stiff gin and tonic. The house was very glossy magazine, all tastefully decked in its Christmas accessories. No wonder Pip looked like a pig in clover. Taking a bump on the head and ending up in the Gunns’ gorgeously furnished warm little attic room must feel like a luxury spa break. Ronnie felt uncomfortable surrounded by the luxuries of big family Cotswolds country life. She far preferred Petra out of context, hiding from her friends behind stone walls.